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I’d created a gang—a vampire gang. How exciting.
    Eli made his way toward me. I was surprised that his shades had stayed on after I’d knocked him down. Wet board shorts clung low on his hips, those sexy lines of muscle on his sides and abdomen that disappeared beneath the waistline; I noticed every detail, appreciating them all. And he knew it. With long fingers, he shoved the loose wet hanks of dark hair from his face, put his hands on his hips in a total cocky-guy manner, and, his shades still on, stared down at me. I waited; I didn’t have to wait long.
    The corner of his mouth tipped upward. “I’m impressed.”
    I nodded and pushed his shades up onto his forehead. Pale blue eyes regarded me. “Turns you on, doesn’t it?” I said.
    “Hell yeah,” he answered in a quiet, seductive voice meant only for my ears. In a possessive grasp, he draped his hands over my hips and pulled me close. “But Jack and Tuba are mere mortals. Estelle could take them, with the right training. I want to see”—he shook his head—“I want to know you can handle yourself against a vampire, or a handful of them, if I’m not around, Riley.” His eyes turned serious. “So, from now on, you train with me, my parents, my brothers and sister.” He tapped the end of my nose. “And maybe with Zetty.”
    With the palms of my hands firmly pressed against the hard muscles of Eli’s chest, I pushed. “If you think for a second I’m going to seize blades and kick to the ground your sweet, elderly parents, you are insane,” I said. “Your siblings, sure. Zetty? Absolutely. I owe him, anyway. You? Any day of the week. But your parents? No way.”
    Eli grazed my jaw with a knuckle. “Oh, you will, chérie . I promise you. You’re ready. And tomorrow, we go back to Da Island.” He grinned, making himself seem more like just a regular hot guy at the beach than a nearly two-hundred-year-old strigoi vampire who had the capability of snapping someone’s spine in half with barely a flick of his wrist. “And I’d pay good money to see you call my parents elderly to their faces. Neo.”
    I couldn’t help but return the cocky grin at Eli’s reference to my new Matrix -y capabilities. I had no idea what I’d ever do with them, but one thing I did know. Seth and I, while changed with supertendencies, couldn’t stay on Da Island forever. I had a business to run. Seth had to finish school. We had lives to return to—and the sooner, in my opinion, the better, even if it did mean kicking some old, sweet-looking Dupré strigoi vampire ass.
     
    A few days later . . .
     
    It’s strange to think of all that’s happened over the past month; to grasp how much I’ve changed. Stranger still, that I’ve accepted it. I’m not a huge fan of change. Once I’m used to something, I like to stick with it. Not that I had any choice. I was damn lucky to leave Bonaventure that night with my life, instead of a new unlife. Seriously. Having both Arcoses sink their fangs into my flesh, squirt their disgusting venom into my blood, and still walk away alive? Eli had saved me; he’d killed Valerian, and nearly Victorian, as well. Preacher told Eli that half a minute longer and I would have either died from blood loss or turned completely strigoi, neither of which I had a hankering for. The screams of those innocents who’d been attacked that night still resound inside my head. Visions; flashes of bodies twisted, distorted; blood; the sound of bone snapping—I wish like hell I could forget about it, forget the sound, forget them. But I can’t. I don’t think I ever will. I’ll hear those screams inside my head until I die. And now even that would be a very long time.
    So much of what happened after Bonaventure is still a blur. You know, after I was two bites to the wind and lying in a pile of graveyard dust. Once I’d been taken to Da Island (and after I’d briefly awakened), I fell into the throes of strigoi venom d.t.’s for much of the time