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  Sebastian snarled. “What she is, is a little girl. And what do you care anyway? This isn’t your business.”

  “Serenity and Elizabeth have been my business ever since you left. You just abandoned them. Someone needed to watch over them.”

  “I still watched over them, but from afar.”

  This was news to Serenity. “What? What do you mean?”

  He turned to her. “I saw you a couple of times. I came to the house to make sure you were all right.”

  Her mouth dropped open in amazement. “And you didn’t think to come in and say hi?”

  Sebastian scowled at Vincent. “I guess you could say you were busy.”

  Her eyes flicked between the two vampires. “You have got to be kidding me!” she said to Sebastian. “You didn’t come and speak to us because Vincent was around? Haven’t we been through enough for that to not even be a complication?”

  “Vincent wasn’t the only reason,” he admitted. “I wanted you to get on with your life. I couldn’t risk my being around to put you or Elizabeth in harm’s way.”

  “He can’t even trust himself,” Vincent said in a low tone. “I’ve been warning you about him, Serenity.”

  “This isn’t your place, Vincent!” She tried to keep the emotion out of her voice.

  But Vincent seemed to think this was his time to not hold back. “I don’t know what you see in this guy anyway,” he said. “He’s nothing but a goddamned murderer. He doesn’t know how to control himself.”

  That did it. With a growl, his upper lip curling in a snarl, Sebastian launched himself at Vincent. He grabbed the other vampire by his shirt and, as though Vincent weighed no more than a child, lifted him and flung him across to the other side of the room. Vincent landed on his back, skidding across the floor. Instantly, he sprang back to his feet, his shoulders rounded, his neck hunched like bull about to charge. But Sebastian didn’t give him the chance. He leaped for Vincent. The two vampires collided, Sebastian shoving Vincent back until he smashed into the living room wall. A framed picture bounced off the wall and fell the ground, the glass shattering, shards scattering across the rug. Vincent outweighed Sebastian by about eighty pounds of solid vampire muscle and had him by a least a couple of inches of height, but Sebastian was two hundred years older, and in vampire terms that made all the difference. He pinned him up against the wall and made no attempt to let go.

  “Would you two quit it!” Serenity hissed at them, not wanting Elizabeth to come downstairs and catch them like this. It was bad enough the girl had to deal with her own problems without seeing two grown vampires acting like a couple of testosterone-filled college kids.

  “They’re my family,” Sebastian growled, his face pushed up in Vincent’s. “I get to say what happens to them.”

  “Actually, I get to say what happens to us,” said Serenity. “So you two either sort out your differences or you can both leave.”

  She wanted to put herself between the two fighting vampires, but knew if either of them lost control, they could crush her like a moth between two slabs of marble. Even so, she got as close as she dared, standing to one side of them, close enough to reach out with both hands and go through the motions of pushing them away from each other. She tried not to let the sight of them frighten her, though any human would have been a fool not to experience even a frission of fear.

  Both the vampires’ eyes were glowing yellow, their jaws thickened with corded muscle. Their faces were deathly white, fangs showing from beneath curled lips. But despite maintaining eye contact with each, Sebastian let go of Vincent and they slowly stepped apart.

  “Good,” she said, her shoulders relaxing. “And if I see any more of that bullshit, you’ll only have each other for company.”

  Suddenly Sebastian froze, his line of sight shifting to the ceiling. “You hear that?”

  She shook her head. “What?”

  He looked to Vincent. For once the two males were in agreement, Vincent nodding, his lips thin. Sebastian turned, and in a blur of movement, too fast for Serenity’s eyes to see, vanished from the room.

  “What?” she demanded of Vincent. “Hear what?”

  “Nothing. I can’t hear Elizabeth’s heartbeat or her breathing.”

  “Oh, my God.” The room seemed to spin around her, her legs going weak. Only Vincent’s strong hand stopped her from falling.

  Serenity broke her paralysis and ran up the stairs two at a time to burst into Elizabeth’s room. Sebastian already stood by the window. A shot of irrational horror hit her. Had she jumped from the window because she couldn’t handle what was happening to her? Oh, no, surely her baby wouldn’t do such a thing?

  Wind and rain gusted into the room; the drapes lifted and whipped wildly in the storm. Sebastian stepped back from the window and she sagged with relief. His expression was concerned, but not devastated as she’d expected.

  “She’s gone,” he said.

  Serenity managed to shake her initial fear, but another quickly replaced it. “What? Where?”

  “I have no idea.”

  Vincent stood in the doorway. “Maybe she’s gone out to feed again.”

  Serenity thought back to what Vincent had said earlier about Elizabeth exposing their kind and the dangers that might bring. Never mind the dangers of any thirteen-year-old girl wandering around the streets in the middle of the night. But Elizabeth was hardly a normal girl. If the change had taken hold of her again, the person she came across would be the one in the most danger.

  Still, Serenity was a mom—even if she was the mother of a thirteen-year-old half-vampire—and it was her job to worry. She couldn’t leave Elizabeth out there on her own.

  “We need to go and search for her.”

  Sebastian turned to her. “Stay in the house,” he instructed, and the next moment he’d vanished from the window. Serenity ran up to the empty window, leaning out into the storm. The wind snatched the air from her lungs.

  “Sebastian!” she yelled, but a rumble of thunder above her head drowned her voice. “Dammit.”

  “I’ll go after them,” said Vincent. In the next moment, he’d also disappeared from the room.

  Serenity yelled in frustration, her voice torn from her by the wind and rain.

  If they thought she’d just sit around and wait, they could think again.

  Sebastian jumped from the window, leaped the tall wall and raced out into city. He tried to catch Elizabeth’s scent, but the downpour had washed away any trace of her. He noticed something else. The storm had a strange smell to it, a flat, dead odor of nothingness. Of something unnatural. He was used to storms having the opposite effect and making the atmosphere feel more alive and filled with energy. The change was strange and did nothing to help him track his daughter.

  But right now, he didn’t have time to give the abnormality any more thought. The pounding rain around his ears and the almost constant crack and rumble of thunder above his head masked his hearing.

  He lifted his head and yelled, “Elizabeth!”

  Intent, trying to focus all his senses, he strained his ears for any response. None came.

  He ran, quickly covering the streets of their neighborhood before heading downtown. In the distance, he heard Vincent’s voice, also calling for his daughter. The knowledge that the other vampire was out here stirred mixed emotions. While he felt thankful for another pair of eyes searching for her, Vincent clearly hadn’t forgiven him for his mother’s death.

  The lack of trust between them went two ways. A vampire couldn’t directly harm another vampire—something written into the oldest, darkest laws of his kind—but, if such a thing were possible, it wouldn’t surprise Sebastian if he found a stake in his back with Vincent holding the other end.

  The wind increased and slates pinged off the roof of a house across the street, picked off as though they were no more than tiles of Lego. They hit the sidewalk below, shattering into pieces. Fronds of torn palms skittered and danced, caught up in invisible hands to race
down the road.

  He stopped to think. She was just a kid, she couldn’t have gone far. But then he corrected himself. She wasn’t a child anymore, and certainly not a regular one. He had no idea about the limits of her strengths, but he assumed by the fact that she hadn’t been harmed by the jump from her window and had run off silently into the night without him hearing that they were greater than he’d given her credit for. Besides, he also had absolutely no idea where a teenage girl would go in this city, never mind a half-vampire teenage girl on the verge of her change.

  He could only cover as much of the city as possible and hope he came upon her.

  Sebastian took off at a run again, wishing he could split himself into two or three, or even four. That way he’d cover more of the city. The storm continued to rage around him, but he was absorbed in his search, keeping every sense alive for any trace of Elizabeth. She has to be in the city, he told himself. Why would she go any farther?

  Though engrossed in the hunt, something in the street ahead made him draw to a stop once more. A tall, black figure in the shape of a man crossed the road. Though it looked human from a distance, Sebastian could tell the thing was cloaked in shadows and recognized the truth of what it was immediately.

  The sight made him stagger back, his eyes wide. Surely he wasn’t seeing what his eyes were registering. A creature like this had no right being in this world!

  The demon paid him no attention, instead seeming to focus its attention on a house across the street, as though something inside drew it.

  A vampire wasn’t capable of suffering from nightmares, but if he had of been, these things would have been haunting his dreams. What the hell was it doing here? He glanced up into the terrible storm, the clouds swirling as though around an inner cell, lightning flashing at its midst. Did the storm have something to do with this? He had to admit that when he’d first seen the storm hovering over the city of Los Angeles, it had made him think of something paranormal, but surely it didn’t also have something to do with the demon he now saw.

  The creature slunk across the road and vanished through the wall of the property opposite. Sebastian hesitated for a moment. Should he follow? Find out what it was up to? But then he had to refocus himself. He was out here trying to find Elizabeth, not chase demons around in the middle of the night.

  But what if they are connected?

  Was all this happening for a reason? Elizabeth’s change, the storm, the sudden appearance of demons? Demon, he corrected himself. So far, he’d only seen one, though he had a horrible feeling it wouldn’t be his last.

  Leaving the thing to its mischief, he raced through the streets, searching as much of Los Angeles as possible. Every few minutes, he stopped to call his daughter’s name, but got no response.

  In the poorer areas, the storm damage was worse. Fences were laid flat, trees toppled, their thick, knobby roots poking out of the ground toward the black sky like some kind of topsy-turvy world. And the storm didn’t seem to be letting up any. Sebastian suspected the small homes would fare a lot worse by the time this thing ended.

  Overhead, an electrical wire sparked and cracked. A split second later, all the houses on one street went dark. He could hear the waves from the ocean a few blocks away, smashing down on the shore.

  This was useless. He was running around in circles with no direction. They needed to regroup and think this thing out, at least try to come up with some kind of idea about where Elizabeth might go. At this rate, he’d achieve nothing. In a few hours, morning would come and he’d be trapped once again, unable to help.

  With his heart twisting in his chest, he forced himself to turn and head back toward the house. A couple of blocks away, he saw a figure standing in the street.

  Elizabeth! His heart leaped with hope.

  But no, this person was too tall, her hair longer, her scent wrong.

  Serenity.

  She was soaked through and crying. He reached her and pulled off his own jacket. Despite the thing being as wet as she was, he used it to cover her head, holding it like a shield from the forces. The material billowed and flapped, the wind doing its best to lift it from his grip and tear it down the street with the rest of the debris, but he held firm.

  “I thought I told you to stay at home,” he yelled above the storm.

  “I wasn’t going to sit around helpless when my little girl is missing.” She shouted this at him, though tears rolled from her eyes, quickly washed away by the deluge.

  He hustled her toward the house, using his body to press her forward. “Have you seen Vincent?”

  She shook her head. “Not yet. God, I hope he’s found her.”

  Sebastian pressed his lips together, grim. “So do I.”

  They reached the house to find Vincent’s large form dwarfing their huge front door. He paced back and forth, the knuckles of one fist pressed against his mouth. He must have noticed them approach for he stopped walking and turned to them. Serenity’s eyebrows arched in a hopeful question, but he shook his head.

  “Damn.” Sebastian marched into the house, pushing past the other vampire. “We must have missed something. She wouldn’t just leave like this.” He headed back up the stairs to her bedroom.

  He struggled to believe this was the bedroom of the girl he’d raised alone for two years. He felt a pang of grief for the loss of the small presence that had seemed to be constantly by his side in those days, the way her little hand had always reached for his larger one, her warm hand automatically slipping into his own wherever they went.

  Now, posters of bands he’d never heard of covered the walls and items of clothing—more pairs of jeans than he could count—were draped over every surface. Face creams, hair products and makeup she didn’t need took up the surface of her vanity table.

  Then he saw it, flapping on the floor. They’d not closed the window before they’d left, wanting her to know she could come back if she wanted—like some weird vampire version of Peter Pan. A piece of folded paper lay on her carpet. Then he realized something else he had missed, another scent underlying Elizabeth’s dominating one. Young, male—a boy had been here.

  Sebastian narrowed his eyes and growled.

  “What?” said Serenity, her own eyes widening in alarm. “What is it?”

  “A boy has been in here.” He snatched up the paper and quickly read it out loud. “’Mom, a friend thinks he can help me with my problem. You can’t call me ‘cause my phone will be off. Don’t worry, I’ll be back. Check my tablet. Love you, Elizabeth.’” Sebastian frowned. “Tablet? What does she mean, ‘check my tablet?’ Is she on some kind of medication?”

  “Jeez, you really have been living in the middle of nowhere.” Serenity picked up the small, flat computer from where it lay on Elizabeth’s bed and switched the device on.

  She flicked through, her eyes darting over screen after screen, application after application. Then she pulled up the photographs and her eyes widened.

  She handed the computer to Sebastian. “I think this is what she was trying to tell us.”

  He stared at an image of Elizabeth’s face. Her eyes were wide, as if trying to tell them something. She was crouched down in front of the screen, but over her shoulder was someone else. Quickly, Serenity touched the screen, readjusting the picture until they brought up the other person in more detail.

  A boy, not much older than Elizabeth, with dark red hair and pale skin.

  “Does she have a boyfriend?” asked Vincent from behind both their shoulders.

  Serenity spun around. “No, she does not! She’s only just turned thirteen.”

  Vincent shrugged. “Kids grow up quick these days.”

  “Not that quick.”

  “You sure about that?”

  Sebastian went to round on him, but Serenity’s hand against his chest stopped him.

  “That’s not going to help anyone,” she said. “We need to find out who this kid is.” She tapped the corner of the screen. “Look at the date and time it was take
n. Right before she went missing. He must have something to do with her leaving.”

  “Is he from her school?”

  She shook her head. “I’ve never seen him before. We need to find out who he is, and there’s only one way I can think of doing that. We need to go and see Elizabeth’s friends.”

  Chapter Eleven

  Within minutes, Serenity found herself behind the wheel of her car, Sebastian in the seat beside her, Vincent in the back. They’d reach Elizabeth’s friends’ houses faster if they travelled by vampire speed, but considering she was about to show up in the middle of the night, she at least wanted to appear as normal as possible. Though they didn’t live far away, to appear to have walked in this weather would have looked strange.

  She found herself sneaking glances toward the passenger seat whenever she got the chance, reminding herself Sebastian was with them. He sat staring straight ahead, his jaw locked, his hands clenched at his side. She couldn’t tell if his tension came from being in the car, the storm, or his concern for Elizabeth. Despite being terrified about Elizabeth, she couldn’t help her heart lifting a little every time she glanced at him and had to stop herself from reaching across the car and lacing her fingers through his. Her need to touch him wasn’t just because he was still as heart-achingly beautiful as he’d always been, but because she needed to remind herself he was real. She wanted to hang onto him so he wouldn’t go away again.

  Serenity leaned over the steering wheel as she drove, peering through the lashing rain and carefully maneuvering around torn branches and other debris which had landed in the middle of the road. The wind buffeted the side of the vehicle, threatening to push her off course. A rumble of thunder rolled across the sky above them, culminating in a sharp crack that sounded as though the heavens had just split open. A split second later, the world around them lit up with a fork of lightning.

  That was close, Serenity thought, trying not to cringe. She was sure being in the car meant they were safe, but it didn’t stop her worries. Elizabeth might be out in this somewhere.