**Sneak peek into the next installment!**

She took a deep breath, staring out into the eerily quiet parking lot. A pitch-black parking lot, she added, laughing nervously to herself. Anika Massey never thought that she would be too chicken to walk out of the hospital at night by herself to go home, after working a twelve-hour shift.

“You can do it, Massey,” she muttered to herself. She had become accustomed to having her vampire guard trailing her everywhere she went, after her best friend, Nadira, was attacked about a month ago. Today was her first day with no guard and she was more nervous than a prostitute walking into a church for confession. Taking a deep breath, she pushed open the door to the hospital and practically ran to her silver Toyota Camry. She looked into the car first, to make sure no one was hiding in the back seats, then jumped in and locked the doors.

“This is crazy!” she said, shaking her head as she started the car and put it into drive. She didn’t live far from the hospital and made sure that she drove a little faster than normal to hurry home. She thought of all the tips that her vampire guard, Idris, had given her. He had taught her tips on how to spot someone following her; he had installed a new alarm system in her condo, and even taught her a few self-defense maneuvers, just in case someone threatened her.

Her best friend Nadira Olaru, a vampire princess who wanted to have a purpose in life had become a nurse. Having met in nursing school, the girls had been inseparable since. Nadira was even able to pull some strings to help Anika get her nursing job at Lutheran Hospital, a private paranormal hospital that few humans were privileged to know about and Anika was one hundred percent human. She was one of the few humans that worked for the hospital.

In all of her twenty-nine years, she would have never thought that supernatural beings walked this earth with humans. Nadira was patient in explaining about her being born a vampire and the other paranormals. A little over a month ago, Nadira became the target of a group of powerful beings called necromancers who were currently at war with the vampires. An attempt was made to snatch Nadira and Anika was with her right before it happened. As a precaution, Nadira’s father, the king of vampires, assigned a guard to watch over Anika. It had been a month now and since no other occurrence involved Anika, it was decided, she would no longer require a guard.

“I’ll be fine. The necros do not want a pleasantly plump human,” she tried to reassure herself as she pulled into the parking lot of her condominium. She didn’t live in the best of neighborhoods but at least there were plenty of streetlights to illuminate the parking lot. Her building was an all brick three-story building with two condos on each level. Goosebumps spread across her arms as she walked up to her third-floor condo. The Cleveland night air could be chilly in the fall.

She hurried up the stairs when a feeling of dread appeared in her belly. She slowed down as she made it to the top of the stairs on her level. She silently cursed herself for taking the top floor condo and the building did not have an elevator. But it would be great exercise; she had thought when she first bought the place. At five-foot-five and one hundred and sixty pounds, she wasn’t drastically overweight but she was definitely out of shape. She definitely wasn’t what was plastered all across the supermarket magazines.

The condo across from her had been empty for a few months. The previous owners moved due the husband’s job transferring him to Phoenix, Arizona. She stopped outside her door, putting her ear to the door to listen to see if someone was in her apartment.

“Get a grip, Massey; there is no one in your condo!” She unlocked the door, and immediately noticed something was wrong. She pushed the door open, flipped the light switch in her entryway, and immediately a scream tore from her throat. “Oh my God!”

Her place had been ransacked. Everything was flipped over, her pictures slashed and thrown across the room. The pillows in her couches were slashed and the filling scattered across the floor. Even her television didn’t make it; it was cracked as if someone kicked it in.

“Snowball?” she called out for her little West Highland white terrier that her parents had given her for her birthday seven years ago. She didn’t come running as she normally did when Anika came home. She frantically wiped her face as tears flowed down her face. She knew she shouldn’t go into the apartment but she had to find her beloved dog. “Baby, mommy is home,” her voice cracked, ending on a whisper.

She pulled out her phone as she carefully entered into her apartment, stepping over her broken coffee table and slowly making her way down the hallway. She stopped dead in her tracks at her bedroom door, frozen, as she stared at Snowball’s tortured, bloody body hanging from the ceiling fan in her bedroom. “No…” she moaned, falling against the doorway, sobs racking her body.

She backed up, bumping into a solid mass. She quickly turned around, seeing a hooded figure. A scream flew out of her mouth, quickly cut off as the figure grabbed her by the throat, lifting her off her feet and slammed her into the wall.

“Where is she?” the figure growled. She shook her head frantically as she clawed at his hands, fighting to get a breath as he pulled back, slamming her again against the wall causing her world to go black…