Slamming my hand down on the hood of Joe’s car, I feel the plastic dent a little. Fuck it. I think the department can handle the repair bill. Besides, now it doesn’t scream Para Justice so damn much. “Thanks for finally showing up!”

Joe shrugs, spreading his hands. “Looks like I was just in time. Sorry. I nearly got seduced by a hot succubus.”

I roll my eyes, wishing Joe would stop thinking with his dick. He’s a fine partner, but women are his weakness, even if he is—thankfully—professional with me. “C’mon, Joe, this is no time for jokes. I was nearly a vamp meal while you were looking for a blowie.”

Joe looks over at me, then glances at the remains of Blood Boy. “What the fuck did you hit him with, a tactical nuke? You blew his ass to smithereens.”

“Wasn’t me,” I admit. “Blood Boy had the drop on me and would have munched on me if not for some . . . Samaritans.”

“Great . . . let me guess, the four Paras I saw who pulled the fucking Batman act as soon as my lights hit them?” Joe asks.

I nod. “Captain’s not going to be happy,” I reply, wiping a bit of Blood Boy off my left arm and flipping it down to the pavement. “You want to call this in, or should I?”

“Wait until we’re gone and send a couple of Patrol Petes down here to ‘find’ it,” Joe says. It’s a clever idea. If there’s any chance in hell of this undercover operation continuing to work, our hanging around a crime scene isn’t going to help. “And you get to tell the cap. I delivered the unwelcome news last time.”

It’s nearly dawn when I open the door to my apartment in New Haven’s Fellowship District, not the best part of town but all my salary can afford. I have to smirk with frustration when my little sister, Alyssa, nearly catapults herself over the aluminum coffee table to roll to her feet.

“Well, I’m glad to know that at least some of those judo classes I put you through worked,” I greet her, trying to keep my temper. She’s over eighteen. She can stay up until dawn if she wants, even if I don’t want her to.

“Holy fuck, knock next time?” Alyssa fumes. “Damn near gave me a heart attack.”

“Are you serious?” I ask as I set my purse down and take out my duty piece to put it in my kitchen safe. “I live here. When you pay the bills, maybe then you can make the rules. By the way, what the hell were you doing?”

Alyssa picks up her iPad and shuts it off, setting it down on the table. Most likely, she’s been talking to her boyfriend she thinks I don’t know about . . . but if she only knew. Now isn’t the time, though, so I let her keep up the act. “Chill. I’d stayed up late watching some Netflix and was nodding off. You scared me, that’s all. You don’t have to go all Mommy of the Year on me.” She stops, looking over my clothes and hair, lifting an eyebrow. “What the hell happened to you? You look like a three-week-old plate of chitterlings.”

Ugh, I didn’t need that imagery. “Just an undercover job gone bad. Word in Old Haven is that the vamps are doing some trafficking.”

It’s not protocol. In fact, I’m breaking department rules by talking about an active case with anyone, even family. But Alyssa’s always been my rock even if she is young, the person who listened when the rest of the world said they didn’t give two shits about the both of us. I’ve been a mother as well as a big sister to her, so it goes both ways.

“The vampires are stealing blood?” Alyssa asks.

“Not quite. Stealing humans is more like it,” I reply, grabbing myself a water from the fridge. I want to sit down, but there’s no way I’m going to dirty up my couch with this mess. “We’re trying to figure out whether it’s voluntary. Either way, gotta bust the ring.”

I tell Alyssa about my encounter at the club and Blood Boy’s attack on me, leaving out the four hunks who saved me, for some reason. Probably because I’m not sure how to handle them myself. “So . . . what you’re seeing is the last remnants of him. He disintegrated about six inches from taking a bite outta crime fighting.”

Alyssa shivers, coming over and looking at the mess. “Holy shit. That’s scary.”

“I know. Thank goodness Joe had my back.”

Alyssa frowns. I wonder if she can tell that I’m lying about Joe saving my ass, but a moment later, she wipes at her eye, shaking her head. “I feel sorry for the guy. Blood Boy.”

I slam back the rest of my water, scowling. Sometimes, my little sister completely vexes me. “Feel sorry?” I rasp, coughing as the last drops of icy water go down the wrong pipe. “Are you kidding me?”

Alyssa nods, strong but unsure about pissing me off. “I mean, he didn’t ask to become a vampire and be hunted.”

Ugh. There’s being sensitive, and then there’s just being . . . misinformed. “If he didn’t want to be hunted, Alyssa, then he could have stayed within the law and taken his blood from the banks just like every other accidental vamp from the wars. But honey, vamps like Blood Boy are creatures of the night. They’re evil, and if not for knowing we hold the upper hand now with ultraviolet weapons, there would be absolutely nothing stopping them from turning the entire world into bloodsuckers.”

“Do you really believe that? Do you really think all vampires are evil?”

It’s a long-running difference between Alyssa and me. For her, the world’s a bright place, while for me, I’ve seen the dark side. Sometimes, it’s useful. She helps me remember what I’m fighting for. She often reminds me the ethics of trying to keep the Paranormals in check. To her, it’s a ‘civil rights’ issue, even after knowing how they’d nearly destroyed the entire world when we were kids. She thinks that everyone’s pink cotton candy inside, that they want the world to be a happy place.

She’s half right, but right now, I’m too tired and biased because I was almost dinner for a vampire tonight to debate. I barely have the words to express how disgusted I am with what I see daily in Old Haven, how the law of the jungle reveals all of us for the animals we are. And since the Para Wars, that jungle’s gotten mighty damn big. Instead, I open my purse, dumping the file I’d brought home on Blood Boy on the table. I take the pictures of the lifeless bodies, not even bodies but just husks after they’ve been drained and dumped in the garbage around Old Haven, and toss them in front of her. “No, I don’t think they’re all evil. But he was. You think something good could do this to innocent people?”

Alyssa stares at the pictures, her face turning white before she gulps, closing her eyes. “The wolves are not like that,” she says finally. “They just want to be left in peace.”

I wish the world were like she wants, but it isn’t. And while I wish I could say I’m fighting to give her the world she deserves, the reality is that I’m barely hanging on to keeping the barbarians from the gates. “There are bad folks in every camp, Alyssa. Yeah, wolves aren’t too bad, but they have their bad apples too.”

“Choose.”

I look around, wondering where the voice came from. I’m naked, standing in a field greener than anything I’ve ever seen before, and I know this is a dream.

How do I know? Well for one, I normally don’t stand in the middle of fields talking to disembodied voices while naked.

“I’m not disembodied, dumbass,” the voice says, and I look around. There’s a tree in the middle of the field, and wrapped around the trunk is a giant snake looking at me.

“Seriously?” I ask, approaching the tree and the snake.

As I approach the tree, I feel a power growing inside me. I feel . . . I don’t know, like the center of my body is growing warmer, filling with energy that must be unleashed soon or else it might consume me. It’s sexy and scary at the same time, and as I step closer, the snake . . . smiles?

“You feel it. Now you must choose your path.”

The snake looks up, and I see two fruits hanging from parallel branches. They’re both perfect, shiny and ripe and looking so delicious that all I want to do is pick one.

But which one? They both glow with an inner light that seems to radiate from every inch of their flawless skin. But one is golden, with sparkles that almost shower down to disappear into the air. The other is a powerful green, not blending but dominating.

“What are these?” I ask, and the snake hisses.

“They are you. Now . . . choose.”

I reach out, touching the green fruit, and my body is jolted with a bolt of absolute power. I’ve never felt anything like this, and the power within is seductive, whispering to me that if I choose it, I’ll never have to worry about hunger, or money, or anything else again. I will never have to bow to my enemies. They’ll be crushed under my heel.

Taking my hand away, my body throbbing with need and . . . and desire, I gasp before touching the golden one. The light is pure, joyful. It says that terrible things may happen, but like tears in the rain, they will be washed away. It says that with it lies the chance at not power, but joy and happiness.

I look back and forth, and the snake studies me. “They are both you . . . but which shall you let guide you? Choose.”

I close my eyes and reach out with my left hand. I can feel it drawn toward the green fruit, but at the last moment, my heart cries out and I take the golden one. The snake chuckles and disappears, only to be replaced in a flash by the presence of figures behind me.

I turn and see the four men from the alley. “You chose well, my princess,” the dark-haired one . . . Cole, if I remember right, says. “Let us show you.”

As the four men close on me, I feel myself enveloped in warmth and joy. Lips find mine as fingertips stroke over my skin and set my body aflame with light and desire.

The big one wraps me in his arms from behind, his massive chest and even more massive cock pressed against my body. “You have us at your disposal,” he rasps, rolling his hips against my ass. I can feel his cock slide between my ass cheeks, and I whimper in want, looking back at him. “Yes. It’s all yours.”

“As is this,” the snarky one, Jacob, adds, kissing down my side to playfully lick my hip. I can feel his tongue start to work its way closer and closer to between my legs, but my eyes are on Cole as he watches, his cock long and proud in front of him.

He’s the only one standing back, waiting for something. I can feel it in my mind and deep within my gut as well. “To me, Cole,” I whisper, and he steps forward. In a single motion, I’m lifted by the other three, my legs spread wide as Cole steps between them. He kisses me deeply, and with a single thrust—

“Pound the alarm!” my radio blares before an electronic cacophony hits, and I wake up, covered in sweat and my body trembling on the edge of a massive orgasm.