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family.
    Ashburton was thirty miles to the northwest. His family’s manor and plantation about twenty-four miles. If he ran as fast as he could, he would be there in less than an hour. Bursting from the house, the street outside was empty. He was across town in five minutes, moving so fast, the humans he passed thought they had been buffeted by a gust of wind on an otherwise still and humid night.
    Pushing himself harder and harder, not caring who saw him, he ran and ran, hoping he would make it in time. Victoria would kill everyone he had ever loved to teach him obedience. Perhaps she already had, waiting for him to show up to rub it in his face. Or maybe she would do it in front of him, to wrench the last piece of humanity out of an otherwise empty body.
    As he turned up the long road that led up to the main house he smelt the blood. Unable to control himself, his eyes misted into black pools of nothingness, but he didn't stop. He couldn't.
    Skidding to a halt at the top of the driveway, he heard the screams. Shaking his head to clear his thoughts, he listened for his parents and his brother. He couldn't lose control now, not when their lives were at stake. Then he heard her musical laughter on the air, drifting from around the side of the house.
    He ran towards the sound, coming to a complete stop at the doors to his fathers study, an invisible barrier stopping him from entering. The floors and walls were splattered with blood and he couldn't get in. Willing it to be a bad dream, he saw his mother and father on the floor, the life having ebbed away from them. The sickly scent of their blood hung thickly in the air, threatening to take his sanity, but his grief was enough to hold him.
    "No," he whispered, unable to move.
    "Zac?" came the familiar voice from across the room.
    "Samuel?" he cried, his head snapping up from the gruesome sight before him, seeking out his little brother.
    He stumbled from the shadows, his eyes flickering to the bodies of their parents and up to those of his older brother, whose eyes were eerily black. It was then he realized Victoria was behind him, staring over his shoulder into Zac's eyes, the bloodlust etched in her once pretty features. They'd invited her in.
    Zac saw the blood in Sam's mouth, dripping from his lips. Victoria had fed him her blood , she intended to turn him .
    "No," he pleaded. "Not him, please not him."
    She stood behind his brother, grinning maliciously. "This is what happens when I'm defied, Zachary." 
    Sam gasped as she snapped his spine, his legs crumbling beneath his weight, useless. Then she bent down and snapped his neck before he had a chance to cry out.
    "No!" he roared, lunging for Victoria, his eyes black with rage, all the human occupants of the house now dead. She had taken everything from him. His parents, his brother, his home. She even took his  death . He should have died in that pile of corpses and remained that way.
    His hands grasped empty air as she disappeared, laughter coming from behind him. Snarling deep in his throat, he swung around to find her on the verandah, just outside the open French doors.
    "Come and kill me, Zachary, or help your little brother change," she sneered at him. "It's the only choice I will ever give you."
    His eyes shifted down to Sam's limp body. In this moment he hated Victoria more than he ever thought possible. She had forced him to make a hopeless decision. He would either have to kill his brother or turn him.
    Unable to control himself, he rushed Victoria, wanting to tear her to pieces. If this was the one thing he was good at, then she would bare witness to it first hand.
    She ran, luring him into the surrounding forest, but all the training he had in the army came as second nature out here. He cornered her in a small gully, where the old cave used to be. They were surrounded by rock, Victoria's back against a fallen boulder. Her eyes widened slightly as if she comprehended the monster she had created. His rage was all