“That’s it. Where’s my money?” she asked, trying to sound sufficiently afraid, no problem there.

The man smiled a truly ugly smile. Were those canines long and pointy? She gave herself a mental shake. Her mind was obviously messing with her in its panicked stricken state.

“Oh, I have something much better for you. You see your skills….well, they’re very useful to my employer.

He’d like to offer you a permanent place in our company,” he said the last word as if it amused him.

The other two men snickered.

Oh, that couldn’t be good……

“Um, thanks, but no thanks,” she said, backing up.

One of the men grabbed her and hauled her back against his chest. One arm went across her chest, keeping her arms pinned to her sides while his other hand gripped her chin and tilted her head back and to the side.

“Seriously, I don’t make a good employee….I’m always late, I take long breaks, I suck at office politics, my desk is always messy, I get cranky if I don’t have a constant flow of caffeine, I’ve even been fired from volunteering, twice. I mean seriously that should tell you something.

Who gets fired from volunteering? If you just let me go I’m sure we can work something out on a contractual basis,” she rambled on nervously.

“Shhh, you’re annoying me. Now shut up and let me do this. When you wake up everything will be fine,” he said as he leaned in.

Isabella’s eyes widened to the point that she was actually afraid her eyes might pop out of her head.

Either she was in a fear induced hallucination or those two teeth were fangs. She didn’t have much time to contemplate her situation before those very long and very sharp teeth were in her neck.

She screamed as sharp pain tore through her. Isabella tried to breakaway only to find herself in a death grip.

She immediately stopped fighting when the grip became more painful than the bite and stood there whimpering as the man drank her blood. There was no doubt in her mind that’s what he was doing.

He was making slurping sounds!

The man suddenly stumbled back from her. She felt two small drops of hot liquid run down her skin beneath her shirt. Ew! The man clutched his stomach, gasping.

“What’s wrong?” the man holding her asked.

He sucked in a hard breath and managed to say, “Sentinel.”

“Oh shit!” The man holding her shoved her away into the other man who shoved her right back. Great, they were playing keep away. Nice. Between that and blood loss she was seriously ready to puke.

“Kill her!” the man on the ground roared.

The two men stopped shoving her and pulled out guns.

Isabella squeaked as she covered her head and dropped onto the ground in the fetal position. From her position she watched in horror as the man who’d been drinking from her started to smoke. Seconds later he was on fire.

“Sentinels!” one of the men yelled.

“You bitch! You tricked us!” the other man yelled.

Isabella squeezed her eyes tightly shut as the sounds of flesh hitting flesh, gunshots, and blood curdling screams tore through the night. Something heavy landed on her legs, earning another frightened scream from her. A few seconds later it rolled off.

“Grab her!” a new voice said.

She gasped as she was hauled to her feet. A man with spiky blonde hair pressed a cross to her forehead. A freakin’ cross! He pulled her collar down and ran a finger over her bite marks.

“Hmmm,” the man said. Intense blue eyes met hers.

She squirmed under the rather unnerving observation.

He was looking at her like he could see her, really see her. Without a word, and much to her embarrassment, he yanked up her tee shirt and pointed a flashlight at her navel.

“Hey!” she said as she tried to shove her shirt back down.

He ignored her as he ran a finger over the birthmark below her belly button. “You’re unmated,” he said.

Okay…….This night was just getting weirder and weirder. What next? Would he check the bottom of her foot to see if she was a chocoholic?

She finally managed to shove her shirt down and took several steps back and nearly tripped over her bag.

Keeping her eyes on the four new people, two men and two women dressed in black fatigues, she bent down and quickly reloaded her bag with shaky hands. They made no move to stop her, but just watched her as if they were waiting patiently for her to finish.

When she was done she stepped back, too afraid to take her eyes off them. She didn’t feel like being anyone else’s late night snack again and she had no idea if these people were like whatever the hell those three guys were.

“Well, um, thanks. I’ll just be going now,” she said, taking several more steps back.

The man who helped himself to her navel took a careful step forward. “We need to talk to you,” he said slowly as if he was afraid of frightening her off.

She cleared her throat nervously, taking another step back. “Sure. Yeah, that sounds like great fun, but right now I have somewhere to be.”

“I’m afraid that I must insist that you stay,” he said more firmly the same moment his three friends broke off and started moving towards her.

“Okay, I guess I could-,” she suddenly pointed behind them, “Look! Behind you!”

The four of them shared a bored look before looking back at her. She smiled sheepishly.

The leader of the group folded his arms over his chest and tilted his head to the side to study her. “You really didn’t think that would work, did you?”

She made a pinching motion with her thumb and index finger. “Maybe just a little?” It had worked on Angela Briggs in the fourth grade when the much larger girl cornered her against the building and demanded her lunch money and her shoes.

He sighed wearily as he pinched the bridge of his nose.

“Grab her.”

Chapter 2

“Wake up.”

Chris muttered a few choice words and rolled over onto his stomach. He opened one eye and groaned when he saw the time. It was barely one in the afternoon. What the hell was wrong with people that they couldn’t let a man sleep?

“You’ve left me no choice,” his brother warned.

“Fuck off, Josh,” Chris mumbled into his pillow.

Joshua sighed heavily as if interrupting Chris’ sleep somewhat pained him when they both knew he got a kick out of messing with his older brother.

“I must do this for the good of the family,” Joshua announced, sounding as if he were fighting back laughter seconds before ice cold water was poured over Chris’ head and back.

Chris came fully awake in less than a second. Two seconds later he was off the bed and chasing Joshua out of his room, uncaring that he was only wearing a pair of soaking wet boxers and that their grandmother would most likely slap him upside his head. He was going to kick the shit out of his brother this time.

Laughing and unconcerned about his impeding ass whooping, Joshua ran down the long hallway taunting Chris as he went.

“Aw, did Chris get wet?” Joshua asked in a syrupy sweet voice as he easily sprinted down the long hallway.

“What’s going on?” Marc, their little nine year old brother, asked from the safety of his doorway.

“I woke the bear!” Joshua happily announced as he easily ducked Chris’ mad grab.