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so the vampire would pay attention to him and leave his daughter alone. But the woman’s body rolled smoothly off of him and lay on the floor—two wooden chair legs stuck through her back.
    â€œAre you all right? Jorge left the security door open, I knew it when the Linnfords came in. We broke the legs off Jorge’s chair and used whatever he used to toss the furniture around to drive them into her back.”
    The soldier in him insisted on a full and quick survey of the room. Linnford was dead, the abused chair was the obvious cause of death. A woman, presumably his wife, sobbed harshly, her face pressed into Linnford’s arm: a possible threat. Stella and Devonte were standing way too close to the vampire.
    They’d killed her.
    For a moment he felt a surge of pride. Stella didn’t have an ounce of quit in her whole body. She and the boy had managed to take advantage of the distraction he’d arranged before he could.
    â€œEveryone was gone, Jorge and everyone.” He looked at the triumph in Stella’s face, not quite hidden by her worry for her friends.
    She thought the vampire was finished, but wood through the heart didn’t always keep the undead down.
    â€œAre you all right?” Stella asked. And then when he just stared at her, “Papa?”
    He’d come here hoping to play hero, he knew, hoping to mend what couldn’t be mended. But the only role for him was that of monster, because that was the only thing he was.
    He pulled the sheet off the bed and ripped it with a claw, then tossed it toward Linnford’s sobbing woman. Stella took the hint and she and Davonte made a rope of sorts out of it and tied her up.
    While they were working at that, he walked slowly up to the vampire. Stella had called him Papa tonight, more than once. He’d try to hold on to that and forget the rest.
    He growled at the vampire: her fault that he would lose his daughter a second time. Then he snapped his teeth through her spine. The meat of her was tougher than it should have been, tougher than jerky and bad tasting to boot. His jaw hurt from the hit he’d taken as he set his teeth and put some muscle into separating her head from her body.
    When he was finished, the boy was losing his last meal in the corner, an arm wrapped around his ribs. Throwing up with broken ribs sucked: he knew all about that. Linnford’s woman was secured. Stella had a hand over her mouth as if to prevent herself from imitating Devonte. When she pulled her eyes away from the vampire’s severed head and looked at him, he saw horror.
    He felt the blood dripping from his jaws—and couldn’t face her any longer. Couldn’t stay while horror turned to fear of him. He didn’t look at his daughter again as he ran away for the first time in his long life.

    When he could, he changed back to human at the home of the local werewolf pack. They let him shower, and gave him a pair of sweats—the universal answer to the common problem of changing back to human and not having clothes to put back on.
    He called his oldest son to make sure that Stella had called him and that he had handled the cleanup. She had remembered, and Clive was proceeding with his usual thoroughness.
    Linnford was about to have a terrible car wreck. The vampire’s body, both parts of it, were scheduled for immediate incineration. The biggest problem was what to do with Linnford’s wife. For the moment she seemed to be too traumatized to talk. Maybe the vampire’s death had broken her—or maybe she’d come around. Either way, she’d need help, discreet help from people who knew how to tell the difference between the victim of a vampire and a minion and would treat her accordingly.
    David made a few calls, and got the number of a very private sanitarium run by a small, very secret government agency. The price wasn’t bad—all he had to do was rescue some missionary who was related to a