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But what does that matter now? I’m a monster. And I hurt her.
    He remembered her hands pushing him away, her sobs as she begged him to stop. But he couldn’t stop. Because now he was a monster, driven by blind hunger. He thought of the taste of her as he bit into the flesh of her neck. At that moment, he didn’t care about anything but the blood, and now what he’d done to her sickened him.
    He sat up and looked around his room. Like the other three bedrooms in the house, it was big – bigger than his bedroom had been in Beverly Hills and almost the size of his entire New York apartment.  It was filled with matching mahogany furniture – ornately carved dressers, a desk, night stands, and a four-poster bed – a full, not a queen, indicating it was old. He guessed the set was probably from the 30s or 40s.
    The plain white walls were adorned with art in wood or gold frames – a landscape in oil, an etching of a European cathedral, a pair of botanical prints. The boards over the windows hadn’t been painted as they had been downstairs, and the bare curtain rods were still attached to the wall above. The ceiling was high, framed in dental molding, and the hardwood floor was covered with an oriental rug, heavily worn.
    He started to get dressed, and eyed the full laundry basket in his closet that needed to go downstairs. Laundry was one of his household chores and he made a mental note to do a few loads later, pondering how vampires in the movies never had to do mundane chores. But neither do most of the humans in movies, come to think of it .
    He left his room, crossing the wide hallway to the bathroom to brush his teeth, popping his fangs down to give them a scrub. He could extend them and fold them back against his upper palate at will, but sometimes they moved of their own accord. When extended they were amazingly sharp, and when relaxed, his teeth looked perfectly normal.
    There was no point in shaving, but he ran a comb through his hair before going back to pull the chenille bedspread back in place.
    He decided to sit on the bed to watch the news for a minute. This was how he’d learned of the body that had been found long after Madeline had killed him. He was sick when he realized that Madeline or the brothers had murdered some innocent person and planted the body near where Derek had been killed. Thanks to Madeline, the authorities had remains – not identifiable as Derek’s, but at least human, and the world had stopped looking for him soon after.
    He wondered to what lengths the brothers had gone to see that his missing person file was closed – medical records changed, memories wiped clean, loose ends tied up. All the brothers were good at their jobs. Madeline saw to that.
    He was reported to have gotten lost hiking. But he was never lost. He’d sprained his ankle – maybe broken it, and had literally crawled back to his car, taking almost the entire day. He had worried Clara would be angry because he’d be late for their date, but he couldn’t get a signal in the canyon to call her from his cell phone.
    He could see the road and the safety of his car through the trees when Madeline appeared in front of him. It was dark, but the moon was full and he recognized her, relieved to see someone who could help him.
    “I need some help,” he said, feeling it was obvious since he was crawling on the ground.
    She smiled and nodded, which he found strange.
    He’d seen her several times before and had noticed her. She was quite beautiful with long dark red hair and green eyes that were lighter than most. She was very pale and thin, and she wore blood red lipstick. He wondered why he kept running into her and then thought it even odder that she was here.
    Before he had a chance to say another word, she was on him and he felt her bite into his neck. He tried to push her off, but she was alarmingly strong. He knew she was killing him, and even though he fought with all his might in spite of the pain in his ankle,