Bartolome told me to be on my guard.

If I listened to him, I wouldn't dangle five feet above the floor, with a wickedly sharp knife pinching my neck. But if you saw Cruz in that coffin, you'd understand why I bolted to his side!

Poor guy looked frozen in torment, despite being unconscious. My heart ached in my chest so badly, I almost sliced my own throat on the blade while twisting my head to glimpse him.

"Let's not do anything rush, Freida," Bartolome said.

The arms that held me were shapely, and cold, despite velvet sleeves lined with fur. There was no heartbeat, and no breath touched my hair. Of course, it was Freida. Who else could it be?

"Only fools rush in, Tolo," Freida said in a sonorous voice that even sounded like it came from beyond the grave. "Just what I told Corazon, 'my dear, it doesn't matter that you screwed up. Fools rush in. We'll have them.'"

"That's right, you have me." Bartolome folded his arms across his chest. "Let the children go. What use are they to you? The girl is a helpless babe even by the mortal's accounts, and the boy will take decades to train before he hunts for you. I'll serve as many years as you'd ask in exchange."

I stopped my squirming and gaped at him. Did he always mean to do this? Come before Freida and surrender on her terms? Bartolome noticed my widened eyes and shrugged one shoulder, nearly imperceptibly. It could have meant, I'm playing it by air or not now, mortal or deal with it. Regardless of what he meant, I dry-swallowed with anxiety, because Freida wasn't buying it.

She laughed so hard; her levitating body shook, and the knife pierced my skin, drawing a drip of blood. I hoped Bartolome wouldn't say anything funnier than offering to trade for Cruz, because she'd nick my artery in her merriment.

"Don't insult my intelligence, Tolo," she said after having her fill of cackles. "My Fledgling woke up from a single, accidental touch of this girl-child's hand."

That damn coffee! Why couldn't I hold on to the cup? If not for my butter-fingers, Cruz wouldn't be lingering between life and death in a vampire's lair!

"He tingles with thirst even when he touches her scarf," Freida said, throwing my thoughts in disarray.

Maybe the nature of his interest in me was sus, but he kept my scarf!

"Oh, Cruz," I whispered, tears welling in my eyes.

"Once we share her blood and he tastes the delights of flesh, he would become the most powerful vampire in seven generations," Freida said with a satisfaction that loosened a screw in my head.

My tears dried out on the fires of outrage. "That's abuse of minors, you stinking fossil!" I mean, I saw the problem with pissing off a vampire holding a knife to my throat, but come on! Things she said about Cruz were vile, and totally, unimaginably wrong for our times. Plus, she smelled of leaf mold, wet fur and baby powder. So, was I wrong? Never!

Freida scoffed. "When I was your age, sixteen-year-olds were warriors and kings."

"Oh, snap." I had to either let go of my hard-won feeling that I was a grown-up, or I had to betray Cruz to a gruesome fate. I hated both options, so I tried to kick her shins, without simultaneously impaling myself on her knife. The result was rather pathetic and Freida handled my wriggling without difficulty.

"Hybrids are truly special," she addressed herself to someone of her own size, Bartolome. "A youth is more malleable, just like you once were. Now, you're too old and too stubborn, and the increase in your power is questionable at best."

Bartolome looked straight at me and smiled, showing off protruding incisors. I could have sworn in court they weren't there before. "Good thing I brought a greater power to fight you."

"Please, what power? A teen girl?" Her voice seethed with contempt. "Did you watch too many cartoons at your beloved home for cripples and washouts, that you actually went senile and believe in the power of friendship?"

"You always underestimated mortals and their ability to love...or did you?" Bartolome replied. "Remember Clarissa? You expected me to drain her and discard the husk. But I was enchanted for a hundred-sixty years...hundred-sixty wonderful years—"

"A blink. A fling!" Freida snapped.

"Not for someone so pitifully in love, she wouldn't even admit a mortal's victory. Wouldn't admit her jealousy and her envy, not even to herself. That's why you didn't fight me as a vampire would fight a vampire, but manipulated Clarissa to hurt me as much as I hurt you!"

"Nonsense!" Freida hissed. She tossed me and the knife into the wall, not even looking where we'd fall, because Bartolome consumed all of her attention.

If she was serious about throwing, I'd be dead. Her half-hearted gesture resulted in an impact that stunned me. I groaned, tasting blood on my teeth and sat up groggily. Once my vision cleared, I saw Freida's in her entirety for the first time.

Besides her muscular arms, she was tall, with blonde hair braided away from a marble-white forehead with heavy golden rings. Her dress was a long, two-layered affair, with masses of pearls sewn onto the outer layer of fabulous burgundy velvet.

She looked the way you'd imagine a Dark Ages' Viking queen.

"The joke is on you! I mourned Clarissa, but I remember her love in every perfect detail," Bartolome was saying, as the two vampires—one in stark black, another shining in gold—circled. "Our son is a perfect image of her."

"A mortal, like your doxy," Freida parried. "Useless. But you're right. Clarissa had a bit of value to me—her living womb."

"Another thing to envy after a millennium of fruitless existence!" Bartolome sniped.

"Not really." Freida pointed to the urns in the wall. "I created more children than any mortal, saw them to maturity or demise. I'll have your hybrids to add to my host soon. It took some waiting to breed Clarissa, but patience is a vampire's virtue...something you had never learned, Tolo."

"No!"

I didn't know what Bartolome was denying with his wail, but it couldn't have been his absence of patience. With a twisted face and fangs sharpened to curved points, he flashed through the air to grapple his former Mistress. His feet never once touched the floor.

Freida cackled, pushing him with clawed fingers—and he crushed into the ceiling, raining crumbling marble onto me.

"You lie!" he yelled before launching himself from the ceiling back at her.

They bounced around the crypt like a ball of lightning.

"Your hybrids are mine!" Freida's words echoed with a chilling finality.

The speed and power of their fight were such that I could no longer see anything but a blur and blue fog of magic enveloping the two vampires. My only weapon was useless, even if I could lift my hand to weave my enchanted yarn. The Ancient vampires would have ripped through it like I would through a spider's net.

The force of impact on the walls, ceiling and the floor, whenever Bartolome or Freida's body connected to solid stone was so terrifying, however, it shook me out of my stupor.

I climbed on my hands and knees, clutching my hook in one hand, and Freida's knife in another. Both were useless to me, since I was too queasy to even stand, but I clung to them stubbornly as I crawled toward the sarcophagus. If worse came to worst, I wanted to die closer to Cruz.

The strength left me at the foot of it.

"Cruz?" I called over the sounds of wanton destruction and listened with a foolish hope.

He didn't answer.

I collapsed to my side, breathing far too shallow and far too fast.

Calm down, calm down, calm the heck down!

But how could I, when the epic vampire-vs-vampire duel threatened to drop a giant stone dome on top of me; when Cruz lay in his coffin; when blood kept trickling down my neck from Freida's knife without clotting; when a blue glow began thickening next to me...growing brighter and brighter...with a familiar swirl inside...wait a minute!

A portal to our world! Salvation! If I could crawl through it, I'd be safe and... "Cruz!"

With trembling fingers, I stuffed the crocheting hook into the yarn, and the knife—behind the belt of my jeans. I clawed at the carvings in the sarcophagus's side for purchase and attempted a pull-up for the first time since Grade five.

"Cruz, please wake up. We have to go."

Up and up, suppressing a sick feeling, I lifted to my feet and leaned over the casket.

Freida left Cruz in his game pants, but removed his shirt and covered his bare upper body with magical ink so thick, it looked like a sinister outfit with his navy spandex.

"Cruz, can you hear me?" I was crying now, but at least I was no longer hyperventilating.

If he heard my voice, he showed no sign of it.

The scariest thing was that his chest no longer lifted to draw breath, even though his lips were red, not blue, and parted in a desperate want for air. They describe death as a peaceful sleep, but Cruz didn't look peaceful. However, despite the pain obvious on his sharpened features, he didn't look dead either. This emboldened me.

I scowled at the mournful lilies, grabbed Cruz's shoulders and shook him. Blue sparks erupted between us as soon as I touched him. Sparks were a good sign, right?

Before I could properly rejoice, though, a single drop of blood from the still unhealed cut on my neck fell onto his lips.

Just a tiny ruby speck, less than an eighth of a teaspoon, but the sound it made when it hit his lips resonated in my ears louder than cymbals.

My breath hitched, as a terrible guess took shape in my mind at the same time as the tip of Cruz's tongue shot out to lick the warm red liquid.

God be good, his mouth wasn't pried to draw breath! He thirsted, and it wasn't for water. He drank exactly what he desired: blood. My blood!

Cruz's eyes opened, as sad as always, but clouded.

"Zoe Green," he whispered with a wistful smile, like he was dreaming about me and thought he was still asleep. I hoped it was a happier dream than our reality.

"Hi..." I stammered.

His tongue ran over his gums, catching on the incisors. He made a smooching sound, recognizing the taste in his mouth...his eyes cleared and widened out of their sockets.

"Zoe," he whisper-screamed, "Zoe, what have you done?"