Magical darkness of Necrontium flooded the hallway next to Bartolome's room, so the vampires attacked Freida in pitch-black.

The brooch gave me insane night vision. It was enough to make out that the Ancients abandoned their happy-seniors forms, and that the halls' dimensions stretched into something more befit a gothic cathedral than a nursing home. Yet the swiftness of the combatants turned the action into one frightening blur.

As I cowered by the wall, I wished my mortal hearing was inadequate too. Freida's maddened laughter along with my own wail pounded my eardrums, echoing like in a cavern.

"Don't be afraid," Cruz whispered, creeping forward. "I'm here."

"Thank you." I shut my weak mortal eyes, trusting him to lead me away from the terrible battle.

Torn strips of silks, velvets and lace littered the floor, but something hairy brushed my ankle. My eyes popped open, then goggled out of their sockets. "Oh, my God! A head! Someone's head!"

"It's a wig, Zoe," Cruz whispered into my ear. "Just a wig."

I looked closer: it was a wig, a formal, powdered affair like the Founding Fathers might have worn. "S-seriously...that's just gross."

Shivers of released adrenaline and terror quaked through my body. I clung to Cruz's arm tighter, which proved to be a fortunate move. An out-of-control vampire whistled right past me, and he would have clipped me for sure without my unintentional dodge!

With the dodge, the vampire hit the wall with an explosive thud, showering us with plaster.

"My Lord!" I squeaked.

"At your service," the combatant in a Regency coat, and—oh horror!—fitted leggings, grumbled. He gathered his excessively contoured legs under him. "Get out! Get out, children!"

"What do you think we were doing?" I muttered, but he already launched himself right back into the fray, leaving behind a dent in the wall and a whiff of perfume.

Both eyes peeled now, my head whipping around, pressing myself into Cruz and the wall, I followed Cruz to the exit. Fifty yards might not be that long of a distance, but with the vampire missiles zipping around, it might as well be in Juneau, Alaska.

Impact craters from the superhuman bodies' already pitted the walls and the ceiling, with alarming cracks spider-webbing all over the palace. Having survived one building collapse just recently, I melded into my boyfriend even harder, giving my heart another fit of crazy palpitations.

On top of crossing the freakish vampiric mayhem, Cruz was my boyfriend! "Can we go faster, please, please, please..." and slower.

Cruz's cold hand covered mine, but he stopped instead of speeding up, stiff as a board, the nostrils of his aquiline nose flaring and his gaze glued to the opposite corner.

"Cruz! The exit is the other—" way.

Things happened so fast, I wasn't sure I saw the sequence of the events or my mind pieced it together at the glacial speed of a human thought.

Bartolome tumbled out of the thick of darkness.

A six-feet long stake with a tag Lilium 'Big Smile' still attached to the non-pointy end, rolled out of his lifeless fingers.

With the scream of Grandpa! Cruz broke away from me, plucked the stake from the floor and leapt into the air in one super-powered move.

He hurtled straight into that corner. The wrong corner. Freida's one.

A shrill cry full of disbelief and fury dropped me to my knees. I didn't recognize Freida's voice in that wail, but the unnatural darkness winked out, leaving the hall just regularly dim, the way vampires liked it.

Cruz had pinned Freida to the wall through her heart with the gardening stake, for crying out loud!

As the hallway shrunk to its normal dimensions, the body of the defeated villainess lowered from up-high to hanging about a human height above the floor. Instead of blood, darkness oozed and snaked from the wound. Freida's hands clenched the dirt-coated shaft, breaking it in two. She screamed and pulled, while her feet dangled like string puppet's...if her puppet-master had drunk a dozen espressos in a row before the show.

Ten vampires hovered mid-air, hissing, dressed in the mind-boggling outfits of the eras passed, increasing the resemblance to the puppet theater. Cruz floated down, landing on his knees, by his Grandfather's side. His face was so broken with pain, I crawled to him on all fours.

The wail stopped as suddenly as it began. Freida's head dropped to her chest, her limbs hung, as if the strings had been cut.

Bile coated my throat, but I suppressed the urge to vomit and weep, and draped Cruz's still naked shoulders with my arms. I didn't ask, because the questions I could think of seemed dumb.

One by one, the vampires descended and circled Freida.

"Take Bartolome to his room," one of them ordered.

Despite the hoarseness in her voice, I recognized it as belonging to the old lady with the lavender hair from the boule pad. Except, in her vampire form, her hair was dark, straight, parted in the middle, with a wing of gray on each temple.

"He has much to answer for once he wakes up," she said.

While it didn't bode well, a gigantic sigh of relief erupted from my mouth. "Cruz, Bartolome is in a vampire sleep...trance...whatever... The main thing, he'll be okay!"

"What shall be done with the Betrayer, Aquinnah?" one of the resting vampires asked.

Aquinnah, formerly the Lavender Lady, licked her fangs. "Chain Freida in the basement. More stakes, but don't put the stone in her mouth just yet. We need her to talk, because if she doesn't give up the location of her feeding farm, her feeders will perish."

The vampires murmured their agreement, but three of them slumped against the walls.

"Aquinnah, tell the Attendants to open another emergency supply," one of the exhausted ones said. "The first hit is wearing off."

Aquinnah gestured to Lilian and a few others dressed similarly to her, who'd entered the hallway and stood respectfully to the side.

"Only those who guard Freida feed on blood. Shifts, for we want no more incidents," Aquinnah said. "Me, Anselm and Sophia will question Freida once she's cognizant. Dorian?"

The dude in the Regency get-up bowed with a flourish, despite the extreme pallor of his cheeks and wobble in his knees. "My Lady?"

"Track Corazon. She's likely gorging on Freida's herd."

"As you command." He bowed again.

Freida's herd! What a terrible word for Freida's human victims...including Dylan!

I tried to chase away the image of my ill-fated former crush being attacked by Corazon, with her cruelty jacked up by an order of magnitude by vampiric hunger...and couldn't. "My God, no!"

My exclamation must have reminded Aquinnah about us. Her eyes narrowed with distaste as she contemplated Cruz, then flickered to me. "Mortal child, for your own safety, you must leave the Acres immediately."

"But Cruz and I—" We had to help Freida's feeders, even Dylan.

Aquinnah's thoughts obviously went in a very different direction than mine. Her eyes flashed. 

"You two meddling kids had done enough damage!" she snapped, then pinched the bridge of her nose. "I apologize. Terrible damage had been done to both of you as well. Please, understand that I don't blame you...or not entirely. Someone as rush and arrogant as Bartolome should have never been put in charge of fledglings, let alone hybrid fledglings—"

Cruz tossed his head. "I assure you, Ancient Aquinnah, that my grandfather had done nothing wrong. He's been..." his voice broke. "He's been an exemplary mentor to Corazon and me."

"You love Bartolome, and we'll take that into consideration," Aquinnah said, not without pity. "But someone must take responsibility for unleashing the most powerful hybrids in three centuries on the East Coast, unlike his experiments on poor Clarissa. We can't very well ignore the ascension of a new Prince of Necrontium with his young Queen, can we?"

Cruz straightened, squared his bare shoulders. The ancient symbols inked on his skin suddenly seemed appropriate for the occasions. "I take full responsibility for my actions regarding Zoe."

"You are sixteen. By the laws of this age and this palace—"

"I can explain!"

"Again, you are sixteen," Aquinnah said coldly, in contrast to Cruz's agitation. "You'll stay on the premises until this matter is fully resolved."

"He can't stay! We can't stay, because we must find Corazon!" I explained about the blood vials in Freida's room as well and as fast as I could. "One of our classmates could be dying in Freida's hideout. So, you see, we have to figure it out."

Cruz's face froze into a chunk of ice. "Dylan. Of course. I should have known that it was always about Dylan." He jerked out of my arms. "I'm such a fool!"

My jaw hung low. "No, no, and no! Thousand times, no! Cruz Triana, I love you with all my heart, and Dylan is a jerk. He's a terrible jerk who fully deserves to suffer!"

Cruz pinched his lips so tightly, his fang pierced his lip. He didn't even notice, watching me with tormented eyes.

I drew an enormous breath in, then used it to blow stray hair out of my face. "But, Cruz, Dylan is a high-school scale jerk, deserving high-school scale suffering, not a torture from your deranged sister's hands in some scary vampiric place!"

I would have said more, but Aquinnah yelled, "Enough!" and pointed at me. "You. Go home."

Then she pointed at Cruz. "You can stay in Bartolome's room and watch over him while he sleeps. Leave the rest to your elders."

Cruz climbed to his feet and offered me his hand. "Actually, I wouldn't mind staying with Grandpa, at least till the morning."

"Morning?" I frowned. What time was it? Without my phone— "I...I need to get my stuff from Freida's room. My phone, my bag...everything is in there."

"I'll come with you, then walk you to your car," Cruz offered softly.

Aquinnah rubbed her temples, though if they were dead, shouldn't the vampires be free of the headaches? "Fine, fine, go! Touch nothing in her room, except your possessions."

We nodded, like two good kids, rather than the annoying meddling teens. Cruz took my hand, and I couldn't help it. I laced my fingers through his and smiled, gazing into his face. The Earth's rotation slowed down. I glanced at the mending cut in his lip. "Can I kiss it better? I know you're regenerating, but I would love to."

The vampires and the attendants groaned in unison.

Crap! Other people...existed. Aquinnah spoke for them. Or yelled. Even regular adults, like forty-something, had no patience to speak of and were ridiculously quick to anger. The ancient vampires, hundreds of years old...

"For the sake of all that is unholy! Get going already! And put a shirt on, my Prince of Darkness!"

Ouch!