Olivia fastened her holster and slipped on her jacket.

Five minutes later she was back in the security office. This time, Robby, Connor, Angus, and Emma were there, along with Howard and Carlos.

"This could be it," Robby said. "Casimir and his followers could be in the other storage unit."

"The escaped prisoners, too," Olivia added.

"If we get there right at sunset, we could catch them by surprise," Connor said.

They made plans. Howard was to remain behind to keep Romatech secure. Robby downloaded contact numbers for five more Vamps in Olivia's cell phone so she could call for backup if necessary. They armed themselves. Robby slipped some wooden stakes into her jacket pocket and wedged a long dagger under her belt.

They called Barker from the speakerphone so all the Vamps could use his voice as a beacon.

"I'm just getting off the freeway," Barker told them. "Damn. The sun's going down."

"Let us know the second ye arrive at the facility," Angus said.

They all waited, tense with excitement.

"It's dark now," Barker reported. "I'm about a mile away."

Olivia prayed J.L. was all right. The minutes seemed to drag on like hours.

"Okay! I'm pulling into the parking lot," Barker said. "I see J.L.'s car."

Olivia held onto Robby, and everything went black. They arrived in a dark parking lot. Connor had brought Carlos. Angus and Emma arrived together. Barker exited his car and joined them.

"Let's go." Angus dashed forward.

Olivia found herself with the two shape-shifters, running to try to keep up with the Vamps. Inside the facility, she heard screams of terror. The Vamps drew their swords as they zoomed toward the noise.

She heard the clashing of swords in the distance. The battle had begun. She arrived at the storage unit with her gun ready. It was a huge room with too much movement and mayhem for her to get in a clear shot. She recognized the faces of the escaped convicts. Some of them were hissing with long fangs as they clumsily wielded swords. The Vamps made short work of them, stabbing them in the heart. They turned to dust.

A few escaped prisoners screamed when they were stabbed. They fell to the floor, writhing in pain. She spotted bite marks on them. They'd been kept mortal to provide food for the vampires.

"Olivia, help!"

She spotted Yasmine at the back of the unit. The poor woman looked terrified. Blood seeped from punctures on her neck.

"Hang on!" Olivia drew her dagger and eased into the room.

A vampire made a grab for her, and she slashed at him with her dagger. He hissed and lunged, then turned to dust as Robby stabbed him through the heart.

She rushed toward Yasmine, but a vampire grabbed the woman from behind and teleported away.

"Olivia, darling."

She turned to see Otis coming toward her. He smiled, and his pointed fangs were stained with blood.

"No!" Robby pulled Olivia behind him.

"Well, hello, Robby." A vampire with black eyes moved next to Otis. "So good to see you again."

"Casimir." Robby pointed his sword at him. "'Tis time for you to die."

"If you come after me, my new friend here will attack the woman," Casimir said.

"She's the one I told you about," Otis whispered to Casimir. "She'll be mine for all eternity."

Robby shifted his sword to Otis. "Ye'll never have her."

"You will, dear friend." Casimir seized Otis by the arm. "But not tonight." He vanished, taking Otis with him.

Robby lunged forward, but it was too late. "Dammit. Bloody hell!"

Olivia glanced around. There were piles of dust on the cement floor and the writhing bodies of wounded mortals. The other Vamps were still fighting, but the Malcontents were starting to teleport away. She spotted Barker and Carlos in a far corner and headed toward them.

Her heart lurched when she realized they'd found J.L. He lay unconscious on the ground, trussed up in ropes. Carlos cut through them with his knife.

She fell to her knees beside J.L. and grabbed his wrist to check his pulse. Usually, she would check a pulse at the neck, but J.L.'s neck was punctured with bite marks and stained with blood. More blood was clotted along his temple where he'd been bashed in the head.

"He must have thought there were only vampires in here," Barker whispered. "He thought it would be safe as long as the sun was up."

"The mortals in here must have attacked him," Carlos added. "They tied him up so the vampires could feed on him when they woke up."

"He's still alive," Olivia cried. "Call an ambulance."

Robby knelt beside her. "I'm so sorry."

She flinched. "He's not dead yet!"

Connor crouched on the other side of J.L. "He hardly has any blood left in him. He'll never make it to a hospital."

"We have to do something." Olivia's hands trembled as she took hold of J.L.'s limp hand. Hot tears stung her eyes. "We can't just let him die."

"We could transform him," Angus suggested as he approached.

"Nay." Robby shook his head. "We canna force such a change on him without his permission."

"He'll be all right with it," Olivia insisted. "He thinks your powers are awesome." She grabbed Robby's arm as tears ran down her face. "Please. You have to help him."

Robby's face paled. "I-I've never done it before."

"If ye doona do it, I will," Angus said. "We need all the good men we can get."

"Ye'd better be quick about it," Connor said. "We're losing him fast."

Olivia squeezed Robby's arm. "Please. Save him."

His eyes glimmered with unshed tears. "All right."

CHAPTER 26

Robby feared he would lose Olivia forever. He couldn't guarantee J.L. would survive the transformation. Sometimes human bodies rejected the change, and if that happened now, he would be responsible for killing her friend.

And regardless of the outcome, wouldn't Olivia be repulsed by the gruesome act he was about to commit?

"Give him some room." Connor shooed everyone back.

"Ye should step into the hallway," Robby told Olivia. "Ye doona want to see this."

She shook her head, and a tear rolled down her cheek. "I'm not leaving."

Robby was tempted to argue, but there wasn't any time. He leaned over her friend, closed his eyes, and breathed deeply the scent of blood. The primitive urge was always there, usually well-controlled, but this time he surrendered to the lust for blood. His gums tingled. With a hissing sound his fangs sprung out.

He was barely aware of Olivia's gasp. He sank his teeth into J.L.'s neck. He drained the last of J.L.'s blood from his body, and then, instead of stopping, let his vampire saliva seep into the wound.

Angus had described the process to him before, but Robby had never had occasion to use it. He could only hope he was doing it right. If he was, J.L. would defy death and slip into a vampire coma.

"Ye did it, lad." Angus touched his shoulder. "He's in a coma."

Robby sat back with a relieved sigh. He glanced at Olivia, and her eyes widened with alarm. Bugger. His fangs were still out. He was repulsing her. He wiped the blood from his mouth and focused on making his fangs retract.

"What happens now?" she asked.

"He'll either come out of the coma or he'll die," Angus told her bluntly, then looked at Robby. "Give him a few moments to adjust before ye proceed."

The room grew quiet except for the moaning of a few wounded escaped convicts.

"I need to call an ambulance," Barker said.

"No' yet," Angus replied. "We have to let Whelan handle this."

"We'd better erase their memories before they go back to prison," Connor said.

Barker kicked at a pile of dust. "Some of these dead vampires were escaped prisoners. Why didn't they teleport away like the Malcontents?"

"They were newly turned," Emma explained. "They hadn't learned how to teleport yet. I doubt they even realized they had the power."

Robby took a deep breath. Time to proceed with the next step. He removed the dagger from the sheath on his calf.

"What are you doing?" Olivia asked.

"I have to feed him." Robby's eyes misted with tears. "If he rejects my blood, he'll die. I will have killed him."

She touched Robby's arm. "Whatever happens, it won't be your fault. You've done your best."

He gave her a wry smile. "Still trying yer therapy on me?" He sliced his forearm and hissed in a long breath. Blood oozed from the wound. He pressed the blood against J.L.'s mouth.

Nothing happened. Drops of blood dribbled down J.L.'s cheek.

"Come on, lad." Robby grazed his wounded arm against J.L.'s nose to make sure he caught the scent.

J.L.'s nostrils flared.

"That's it." Robby held his arm above J.L.'s mouth. Drops of blood landed on the closed lips. "Drink, lad."

Olivia leaned close, with tears glistening on her cheeks. "J.L., please. If you can hear me, you have to drink."

More drops plopped onto J.L.'s mouth, staining his pale lips red. His mouth opened.

"That's it." Robby pressed the wound to J.L.'s mouth.

A shudder racked J.L.'s body. He suddenly grabbed hold of Robby's arm and sucked.

"It's working." Robby blinked back tears. He hadn't lost J.L.

Now if he could just hang on to Olivia.

Olivia perched on the edge of a bed where J.L. was resting. Robby had teleported her back to Romatech, while Angus had brought J.L. They'd placed him in one of the bedrooms in the basement.

She'd cleaned the blood off J.L.'s neck. To her amazement, the wounds were actually healing. Robby had explained that a Vamp's body could heal during death-sleep.

Robby and Angus had then teleported back to Kansas City to hunt for Casimir and make sure Whelan cleaned up the mess at the storage unit.

Alone with J.L., Olivia recalled how difficult the transformation process had been on Robby. He'd suffered both physical and emotional pain. His eyes had glistened with tears. Would he have to do the same process on her someday?

She slipped into Robby's room next door to take a shower. Then she rummaged through his chest of drawers for something that wouldn't fall off. She ended up with a pair of flannel pants with a drawstring she could cinch tighter. She topped it off with a T-shirt that reached her thighs.

She went back to J.L.'s room to keep him company. He was still in a coma, so he wasn't aware of her presence, but she needed to be there.

An hour later Robby strolled into the room. "I brought you some clothes from yer apartment." His mouth twitched when he saw she'd already changed.

"Sorry." She tugged at the baggy T-shirt. "I helped myself."

"They look better on you than me." He walked over to the small fridge and removed a bottle of blood. "Tomorrow night at sunset you'll need to be here with a glass of warm blood ready for J.L."

Robby set his bottle in the microwave. "In fact, ye'd better have several glasses ready. He'll awaken with a terrible hunger, and he may be tempted to jump you."

Olivia winced. Poor J.L. He was going to be in for a shock when he woke up.

"I'll be awakening next door." Robby removed the bottle from the microwave. "I'll come here right away."

She nodded. "Thank you for saving him."

Robby sighed. "He may not like being Undead."

"It's better than dead." She perched on the bed next to J.L.

Robby took a long drink. "There is a process for changing Vamps back into mortals, but 'tis verra dangerous."

"You - you could become mortal again?"

"Nay." He settled in the easy chair. "It requires a sample of yer blood and original DNA from when ye were human." He motioned toward J.L.'s bloodstained clothes. "We have that for J.L., but 'tis impossible for us old-timers."

"Oh." She tried to hide her disappointment.

He gave her a wistful look. "I'm afraid ye're stuck with me the way I am."

She took a deep breath. That was what it all boiled down to. Could she accept him as he was? Could she accept the consequences of her acceptance when it meant she might become a vampire, too, someday?

"How did it happen to you?" she asked.

Robby took another sip from his bottle. "I was a soldier back in 1746. Dougal and I went to fight for Bonnie Prince Charlie and the end of English tyranny. We lay dying on the field of Culloden as the sun set. I was drifting in and out. I thought I was imagining it when a voice asked me if I wanted to keep on living so I could fight evil."

"And you said yes."

"Aye." Robby drank some more. "'Twas Angus who asked the question. I dinna realize at the time what I was agreeing to. I just knew I dinna want to die."

"Of course you didn't," Olivia whispered.

"Angus changed me, and Connor changed Dougal." Robby finished his bottle of blood and set it on the table.

She frowned. Robby was being macho and completely glossing over the pain and fear he must have experienced. "I guess you had to bite people back then?"

"Aye, but I was careful never to hurt anyone. I tried to go back to my farm, but I could only farm at night. And my wife - "

"Your what?" Olivia stiffened.

His mouth thinned. "I had a wife and daughter. They were repulsed by my new condition. Mavis taught my little girl to run from me for fear I would bite her."