I hadn’t learned Amias’s name for eight months after the Thanksgiving Day attack. One night he’d simply appeared and stood in front of me, shuddering and sick, and told me who he was.

“I am Amias,” he’d said. “I am your master.”

I’d lost my shock beneath the fury of my rage, and that had been the first time I’d discovered that trying to hurt Amias would hurt me.

But right now, I was too spent to fight. Too hurt by the fangs of the vampire I’d just killed.

“Shhh,” Amias said, as though I were screaming. “You must listen to me now. I need you.”

But all I could see was my sister’s blood-spattered face, and all I could hear were her screams before she died.

I welcomed the rage that grew inside me, and I leapt like a mad thing, an unthinking animal, clawing the air with empty hands. He moved almost casually, but still too fast for my depleted body, and I fell to a heap upon the ground where he’d sat a second earlier, watching as a young vampire nearly killed me.

I jumped to my feet, agony streaking through every part of my body, panting with rage as I sniffed the air and found him, then leapt at him once again.

He didn’t move that time. He grabbed me, spun me around, then pulled me against his body. His arms fastened around me like a vice, squeezing the breath from my lungs. He bore me to the ground, and as I sat upon his lap, caught in his arms, he wrapped his legs over mine and I could not move.

I gave voice to weak howls of rage, terror, and pain, and I couldn’t remember how it’d felt before he’d created those emotions inside me.

The vampire I hated above all else held me in his arms.

And I couldn’t do a thing about it.

My heart distended with a sort of terror and dread I’d never felt before—not even when he’d attacked me, not even when he’d killed my family. This was something more.

Something worse.

Because beneath the hatred, beneath the agony, and beneath the sorrow an unthinkable sort of joy sprang to life. I belonged there, somehow, restricted, taught, and mastered by the vampire.

That vampire.

“No,” I screamed, but my denial was a wheeze of expelled breath, loud only in my mind.

“I made you.” His murmured explanation slid into my ear, through my brain, and down into my soul and finally, I understood.

He’d made me.

“I’m a vampire?” I cried. “I’m a vampire?”

“No, Trinity.” And his voice comforted me because it was impatient and irritated. “Not a vampire.”

I’m not a vampire. Of course I’m not a vampire. I don’t need blood. I’m not a parasite. I don’t have vampire strength and speed and—

“You are just not the same. You carry some of me inside you, and that gives you certain…advantages.”

I would have spat on him but I hadn’t the strength. “Advantages.” And I knew that even if he couldn’t hear my scorn, my disgust, my hatred, he could feel it.

As I’d felt him.

“You killed the woman,” I accused.

“Yes.” Then he added, “To end her suffering.”

I stiffened in surprise at his ready admission. “Why did you kill my family?” Because that was really all I cared about.

That was all I would ever care about, surely.

He sighed. “I am a vampire.”

“So?”

“I cannot fight certain things as you have fought them. It took me two years to completely break free of the poison inside me. It took you mere months.”

Three months. The months I’d spent in the hospital, unaware. Unresponsive. Torn apart. That’s how long it had taken me.

“I don’t know what that means,” I said, my voice dull and tired. I couldn’t sustain the rage when I was so beaten. So filled with pain. I couldn’t win. Not against him. I couldn’t bring back my family. I couldn’t make it so the attack never happened.

“I can feed you,” he said, bringing me back from the edge of unconsciousness, and I began to fight once more. But my fight was not enough.

He squeezed me so tightly I couldn’t breathe, and when I thought I would die from suffocation, he eased his hold and continued to speak.

“I can feed you,” he continued, “though it may only upset your stomach. I will allow you to recuperate on your own. There will be pain.” He hesitated, then put his mouth close to my ear. “You are growing stronger. I am proud of you for surviving the sick vampire.”

“Fuck you,” I whispered, or tried to whisper.

“Sleep, Trinity, and heal. We are not finished. Do not attack me again. I am tired of your useless rage. The next time we meet, you…”

His voice faded as I sank down into comforting layers of unconsciousness, and some small part of me prayed that I would never awaken from that sweet sleep.

I woke up—sort of—to Angus swearing as he grasped me under my arms and dragged me from the backseat of my car. There were only flashes afterward. His scent, warm and comforting. Lights, thumps, yells. Voices.

And then, as Amias had predicted, there was pain as my body fought the wound above my collarbone, the blood loss, and something else…the vampire saliva, maybe, that coursed through my veins? I had only Amias’s bite as a comparison, and it felt like that. Only somehow, it was changed.

My mind cleared abruptly, though I had no idea how long I’d been out of it.

“—hospital,” someone said, her voice hard and angry.

“No,” Angus replied. “It will go badly for her if we involve outsiders.”

“Badly for us,” someone else said.

I opened my eyes. “I’m okay,” I said, as much to assure them as to assure myself. I was okay. I moved, flinching at the stiff soreness of my body. Nothing woke up screaming, as it had earlier—I briefly remembered crying out at a pain that seemed unending and unendurable—and I groaned with relief when that particular agony did not reappear.

I stared at the circle of concerned faces above me, then pushed myself into a sitting position. “Where am I?”

“My house,” Angus said, his voice terse, his brows low, eyes stormy. Angus was very, very angry. “What the fuck happened to you, Trinity?”

Miriam stood beside him, her own emotions hidden beneath the brightness of her pretty façade, and beside her stood…

“Rhys?” I murmured, surprised. He and Angus weren’t exactly pals. “Why are you here?”

Rhys Graver watched me, his quick black eyes impassive.

“I brought him,” Angus replied, when Rhys remained silent. “I thought you were dying, Trin. I ask you again. What the fuck happened to you?”

I kept my stare glued to the unreadable Rhys. “What are you?” I asked.

A smile, there and gone, lifted his lips. “Nonhuman,” he replied. Nothing more.

“You were bitten,” Miriam told me, and smoothing her skirt, sat down beside me. “But not just bitten for blood. Your wound is—was—torn and gaping, as though a dog attacked you.”

I reached automatically for my neck, pressing at the thick bandage I found there. It was only then, when I caught a movement against the wall, that I realized the golem was in the room as well.

I gathered the sheets in my hand and pulled them a little higher on my chest. I wasn’t naked, but Clayton made me feel as though I were.

“Tell us your story,” Miriam encouraged, gently.

I ran my dry tongue over even drier lips. “Can I get some water?”

“Clayton,” Miriam said.

He detached himself from the wall immediately and went to do her bidding. I flushed, uncomfortable. “Don’t do that,” I told her.

Her brows rose. “What?”

“Don’t order him around on my behalf. I don’t like it.”

She shrugged. “Stop delaying, honey. Tell us what happened.”

I blew out a breath. “The woman on the news.”

“The one killed in New Gravel?” Angus asked. “What about her?”

I kept my gaze on Miriam’s. “I went there, to where it happened.”

“You really are insane,” Angus roared. “Why the hell would you do something that fucking stupid?”

And I looked at him then, confused. He thought I was insane? Was that the general consensus among the supernaturals? “I’m not insane,” I whispered, but something dark trickled like slick oil through my mind. Was I?

Miriam patted my hands. “Of course you’re not.” She shot a glare at Angus. “Keep your mouth shut, you moronic beast, and let me talk to her.”

To my surprise, he dropped his angry stare from mine, shamefaced, and gestured at her. “Go on.”

Clayton slipped into the room and gave Miriam a tall, icy glass. She grasped the straw and guided it to my lips, and I drank long and deeply. The water filled my mouth, cleansing it, and gushed down my throat and through my body, and I widened my eyes in surprise. Nothing had ever tasted as amazing as that icy water.

My throat began to burn from the coldness and at last, I spat out the straw and allowed Miriam to set the glass aside.

I put my fingers to my throat, still lost in the taste of that water, and they all watched me silently. When I looked at them, I saw something in their faces that made me almost afraid.

“What is it?” I asked.

Miriam touched my cheek, bringing my attention to her. “Nothing, Trinity. Continue, please.”

I folded my hands into my lap. “I killed the vampire who attacked Carrie Alden. I killed him.” Suddenly vicious, I repeated it yet again. “I killed him.”

Angus took a step back. “Trin.”

I wasn’t sure why he sounded so sad. The killing made me happy, and confident, and proud.

“Dead?” asked Miriam, quickly, shooting him another warning look. “How do you know?”

“Because he dried up like a raisin and he didn’t move again,” I told her. “He looked like the husk of a worm when I was done with him. He was dead, Miriam. I can promise you that.”

The four supernaturals looked at each other with shock and…wonder, maybe. Or maybe I was misreading everything.

I was sick, after all.

Then they turned back to me, and even the golem looked suitably impressed. I’d done something no lone human woman should have been capable of doing—I’d killed a crazed, murderous vampire, and I’d killed him with a stake and a prayer.

Rhys finally decided to join the conversation. “You gave a vampire the true death.” He didn’t sound like he was convinced.

I leaned back against the headboard, tired, sore, and suddenly, I was ravenous. “True death? Obviously anyone can stake a vampire. Anyone can kill a vampire. I just proved that. Angus.”

He stepped closer. “Yes?”

“Can you ask one of the kids to bring a pizza? I’m starving.”

He looked at the others and spread his hands, then pointed at me. “She’s…” But he shook his head, his search for the right word unsuccessful.

“How did you get back to the park?” Rhys asked.

I took a deep breath, then flinched as the horror of all vampires, Amias Sato, flashed through my mind. “Shit,” I said. “I’d forgotten.”

“You forgot how you got to the park?” Angus asked. “You couldn’t have driven. When I found you, you were in the backseat, nearly dead.”

I looked down at my hands. I shuddered as the reality of that night began to sink in. Delayed shock catching up with me, maybe. Whatever it was, I was suddenly in a bad place and they all knew it.

Angus sniffed the air, then clenched his fists. His words, when he spoke, came through gritted teeth. “You’re afraid. Suddenly, you’re afraid. What is it, Trinity?”

“It’s cold in here.” My voice quavered and I wrapped my arms around myself. “Turn up the heat, Angus.”

They simply waited.

“Amias was there,” I murmured, finally.

Everyone in the room stiffened.

“He sat watching as the other vampire…” My shivering became more violent, and my teeth clacked together when I tried again. “He watched as the other vampire tried to kill me. He watched me stake the guy.”

“Sweetie.” Miriam squeezed my clasped hands.

“He said he was proud of me,” I said and tried for a scornful laugh. It sounded like more of a watery sob. “Bastard.”

“Then he brought you to us,” Angus said.

“He said he made me,” I told them, hoping one of them would scoff at the very idea. Hoping they’d tell me that was bullshit, that part of Amias Sato didn’t live inside me.

They nodded.

“He made you a killer,” Rhys said.

I didn’t disagree. I remembered that darkness inside me. The desire. “But I’m not his. I’m not a turned human.”

“He changed you,” Miriam said. “But he doesn’t own you.” She glanced at Clayton, and even as his face hardened, she smiled.

It was not a nice smile.

“He watches you,” Rhys said. “He stalks you. Doesn’t he?”

I nodded.

“How do you know that?” he asked.

I shrugged. “Because I see him.”

“Master vampires have ways of hiding when they don’t want to be seen,” Rhys said, smoothly.

“Obviously something changed inside me after the attack. Made me immune to their tricks. That doesn’t mean I’m made.”

“No, but…”

“What are you trying to say?” I asked, suddenly angry. “Just say it.”

Angus punched at his phone screen with a hard finger. “He’s trying to say that you’re different. That you’re not quite human. Humans can’t give vampires the true death. Humans don’t see masters who don’t want to be seen. Humans can’t fight vampires and live to tell about it. That’s what Sato meant when he said he made you. He made you what you are now.”

“Vampire killer,” I murmured.

“She’s still human,” Miriam told them. “Just different.”

“Altered,” Rhys agreed.

“We knew she was,” Angus said. “Which is why we took her in.”

“I’m right here,” I said, irritated.

Angus heaved a heavy sigh, and the bed dipped as he lowered his massive body to sit beside me. His big hand swallowed my fingers when he enfolded them in his tight grip. “To us, you’re a friend. To the world, you’re a human.”

“To Amias Sato,” Rhys said, “you’re an obsession. A thrall. A possession.”

Miriam went to stand beside her golem. “And to the vampires,” she said, “you’re one of the very few people in the world who can give them the true death. They can’t even do that to each other.”

“What does that mean?” I asked, as my insides quivered.

They exchanged long, meaningful glances once again, leaving me—the puny human—out of their mysterious supernatural loop.

But when their silence was finally broken, it was the golem who spoke.

“It means you’re a hunter,” he said. “And they’re going to come after you. They’re going to come after you hard and fast, and they’re going to try to kill you before you kill them.”