There was gray light in the sky, to the east. Dawn was coming. But the night was still around me. Inside me. For the first time in my life, I was running full out. My muscles reached and pulled away from me with each long stride, stinging and sweet. I'd never trusted my body like this before. It propelled itself forward and allowed me the pleasure of the ride.

I ran straight for Sidney's house, even though she said she wouldn't be there. I had no other starting point. When I arrived and crept onto the property, lights were already coming on in the house. The Cross family were go-getters. Early risers and hard workers. Porter was typing frantically upstairs and had probably never gone to sleep.

I could smell a trace of Sid in the driveway, along with exhaust from her Lexus. No one in her house seemed to notice that anything was wrong, but Sidney had left here in her car last night and had not returned home. As I followed the trail away from the house, Sidney's scent faded and I was left with the smell of exhaust and her frequency in my bones. But that was enough.

I ran for miles. When the sun rose and my eyes began to burn, I realized I'd forgotten my sunglasses. I'd get over it. My need for Sidney urged me forward. The anxiety I'd been fighting for so long was like a energy injection that kept me running, faster and faster. I felt like an idiot for fighting it for so long. This was its purpose. To keep me sharp. Make me quick. Get me to Sid before it was too late.

There were cars and school buses on the road by the time I found the house. I had run to a more rural area, so there was acreage on either side of the home. There was also a “For Rent” sign in the front lawn. Suddenly, I understood. The Cross family had rental properties. Several of them. I'd never seen this house before and had no reason to believe Sidney would be here rather than any other place. If there was a car, I couldn't see it. But as I approached the house I caught the smell of Sid again and every other sense fled me. She was here.

I ran straight up to the front door and tried it. Locked. The door in the back was also locked, as was the window closest to it. I checked under the doormats for a key. Nothing.

I had to get in here. Someone had Sidney. I could smell the danger she was in, and danger smelled like the stench of another predator. It made me so angry, so afraid, that I knew I would kill if I got the chance. Sidney was my prey. Mine.

Locked windows and doors wouldn't be able to stop me, if I decided to break in. But I still believed I might have an element of stealth. So I ran around to the farthest side of the house, and that's when I found the Lexus, along with a sliding glass door that led into the kitchen. I approached the door, and then I saw Sidney inside.

Sid looked like death. She lay on the kitchen floor, half-propped against the wall, the skin of her face cold white and pulled tight across her skull. Her hair was stringy and damp and her mouth was gagged with a dishtowel. Sweat poured from her body. Her shirt was soaked. Her chest rose and fell in shallow gasps. She was far past the point where she should have come to me, but now I could see why she hadn't: both of her wrists were handcuffed to an exposed pipe that ran through the wall behind her. Her phone, my lifeline to her, sat three feet away on the floor. So close, but still out of reach.

“Sid,” I whispered.

She didn't hear me. She didn't even appear to be awake. I tried to slide open the door, but it was locked just like the others had been. If I had to break the glass, I would, but instinct still kept me quiet. I whispered to her again, this time pushing in the only way I knew how. Telepathically, the same way I pushed my prey to sleep.

“Sidney. Wake up.”

Her eyes opened and her head rolled toward me. She searched for me, and when she saw me her eyes widened. She moaned against the gag and tried to pull her arms away from the pipe. The handcuffs clanked weakly against the PVC. There was no way she'd be able to get free from it under her own power. Whoever had done this to her was about to die.

I quickly scanned the area for any place a key might be hidden, and I was just about to try to open the window above the sink when movement from inside the kitchen caught my eye. Someone sat in the shadows, cross-legged, just beyond Sidney. As I watched, the figure got to its feet. It wasn't tall. Not enough to overpower Sid. The figure stepped into the light, and a face became visible.

How can I describe how it felt to see Parva there, standing on the other side of a locked door beside my Sidney? Parva's smile, so superficially beautiful, sent a shock wave of remembered terror down my spine. Her posture was easy, her smile playful. It was the first time I'd seen her since she changed me and, man, I don't want to admit this, but she looked even better now than she did then. It was my eyes. I could see everything now. Every detail. Every flaw. And she didn't have any. It was like she'd been molded out of plaster by a master artisan. I couldn't help but acknowledge that her beauty was on a different plane from the humans around me.

But the relaxed manner, the playful smile, it was all a facade. Even her beauty was like the lure of an angler fish, designed to attract prey for the feed. But now I could hear, and smell, the truth. Her heart was racing. She was rancid with predatory pheromones. She was preparing for a fight.

I pressed my hands against the glass and looked Parva in the eye. Could I protect Sid from her? Realistically, no, but vampire me didn't know that. That predator smell, the one that made it so hard to control myself, was her. She didn't smell like a meat locker anymore. That had just been the smell of dead human on her clothes. No, the smell that was Parva was not much different than that of an ordinary human, except that it triggered an animal instinct in me that I didn't recognize. She had to die.

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“Get away from Sidney,” I said, not loudly. I knew she would hear me through the glass. But she acted as though she didn't. Instead, her gaze moved slowly down my body. Then back up again, as though she was appraising me for purchase. Her eyes met mine again and her smile widened.

“Looking good, Nate. New night cream?”

Even that comment threw gasoline on the fire of my anger. As though she'd done me this huge favor by turning me into a vampire because now my acne was gone.

“I said get away from her.”

“Why?”

“Because she's mine,” I said before I could stop myself. Parva's face showed mock surprise.

“Yours? But I thought you weren't going to bond with her. Isn't that why you stayed away for so long? So you could get over her?”

“I didn't stay away.”

“Yes, you did. Remember? You spent the night with that other girl because you thought it might help you forget---”

“No!”

“Then what were you doing there?”

I looked down at Sidney. Her body strained away from the pipe. What did she think of this accusation of betrayal? That I would deliberately abandon her? Surely she would not believe Parva over me.

“There's a reason she didn't come to you, Nate,” said Parva. “She doesn't want to be your slave. She wants to be free.”

“You're lying!”

“I'm not lying.”

“She didn't come to me because you handcuffed her to a pipe!”

Parva laughed a bit. Her voice was intolerably calm. “No, she did that herself. She's a lot stronger than your other one. She was willing to risk never being found by anyone if it meant she wouldn't be found by you.”

Lies. Nothing but murky, confusing lies. But tears streamed down Sidney's cheeks, and her eyes pleaded with mine for understanding.

I slammed the glass again. Harder. A crack appeared under the heel of my hand.

“Open the door!” I shouted.

“No, darling. That's not how this works. If you want in, you're going to have to earn it.”

God, I was tired of her riddles. I was tired of being nice. All that stood between me and Sid was a thin layer of glass, and that wasn't enough to keep me out. Not nearly enough.

I drew back my fist and punched the window, not caring that I was about to send my hand through a wall of shattering glass.

But that's not exactly what happened. When my fist made contact, it didn't penetrate the glass. Instead, it felt like the glass was reinforced by a thick layer of Styrofoam. My fist landed with a solid smack, and the glass broke in all directions, a spider's web of hairline fractures. But the glass didn't fall away. The pane was still intact.

What kind of glass was this? Shatterproof? Bulletproof? I punched again, harder, in the exact same place. The glass crunched, and shards of it sprinkled down on both sides of the window. I punched again, but my fist wouldn't go through the pane, even as more and more bits of glass broke loose and fell.

I punched until enough glass broke free that I made a baseball-sized hole. I got the idea that I would reach into the hole and pry the glass out toward myself. But my fingers, instead of passing through to the other side of the pane, were stopped by an invisible wall. I couldn't feel anything, but it was that same experience of hitting Styrofoam. A bit soft, but still impenetrable.

I stared at the hole. My fingers were halfway through it. Yet even though there was absolutely nothing there, they could push no farther.

I stepped away from the door to grab a handful of gravel from a flower bed. I came back and threw the gravel at the hole. Most of it sailed right through and landed halfway into the kitchen.

“What the hell is this?” I said. Parva fingered the end of her braid, as though she were bored.

“You don't know?” she said. “Thought you'd understand it right away, but I guess you're not at your intellectual best.”

I'd already snatched some much larger rocks from the flower bed. I started hurling them at the window. At first, they only made holes, but then the integrity of the entire window was compromised and large chunks of glass broke free. It fell around the door frame and skittered into the kitchen. Once most of the pane was gone, I tried to pass a hand through the door. That same solid air stopped me. I pounded a fist against the invisible wall. I felt nothing but resistance and my own increasing frustration.

Something was keeping me out of the house, but that something wasn't physical. It was like an inviolable law of nature, but it didn't apply to glass or rocks. Only me. Only the vampire.

That's when I got it.

I couldn't believe it. But I still heard myself whisper the words, “I wasn't invited.”

Parva beamed with pride. “I knew you'd figure it out. You've watched too much monster trash to get fooled by something so elementary.”

I punched the invisible wall again, as hard as I could. I made absolutely no headway, but I didn't hurt myself, either. If something was there to stop me, it should have shattered my hand.

Parva laughed. “You look so stupid right now.”

“This isn't possible.”

“You're a vampire, Nate. Was that possible?”

With the window gone, I could smell more of Sidney, her salty skin and sweet blood. And I could smell Parva, the bitter, musky threat of a rival on my territory. I had to get into that house.

I threw my body at the gaping hole in the sliding glass door. I didn't progress even an inch through it. I tried again. Nothing. I did manage to knock loose some of the remaining glass whenever I accidentally banged into the door frame. It rained down around me, into my hair, and onto my clothes.

“Invite me in,” I said, with as much authority as I could muster.

“Can't, actually,” she said. “You have to be 'among the living' to let a vampire in, and I'm not.”

“I can hear your heart beating, Parva.”

“And I can hear the refrigerator running. Do you have a point?”

“Then what the hell am I supposed to do?”

“I don't know. Maybe you can convince Sid here to invite you. She invited me. Of course, that was before the gag, but . . .”

Sidney sobbed into the towel. I couldn't believe she'd invite Parva and not me, but that was a problem for later.

“Sid, invite me in,” I said. “Just try. Maybe it'll work.”

Sid mumbled into the gag, but then she rolled her head back and forth in a desperate sort of “no.” Parva just gazed at her without passion.

“I think she said, 'Whatever you do, keep Nate away from me.'”

I punched at the invisible wall and shouted, “Shut up!”

“Come in here and make me.”

I yelled, an incomprehensible sound of animal rage. Something flashed in Parva's eyes and I heard her heart rate quicken. She bared her teeth.

“I don't think you really want to fight,” she said.

“Take that gag out of Sidney's mouth so I can tear your goddamned head off!”

“What, you think she'll invite you in?”

“If she wasn't going to, you wouldn't need to gag her in the first place. Now take it off, bitch!”

Parva's eyes narrowed. I was right. I knew it.

But then she said:

“Maybe that's why I gagged her. Or maybe I just didn't want the neighbors to hear her screaming.”