She took a deep breath, "Last chance. Are you in need of rescuing?" His expression turned very strange, almost as if she'd struck him, "Yes," he said finally.

Little mouse," a voice said through the keyhole. "Don't you know the more you wriggle, the greater the cat's delight?

He must have been handsome when he was alive and was handsome still, although made monstrous by his pallor and her awareness of what he was. His mouth looked soft, his cheekbones as sharp as blades, and his jaw curved, giving him an off-kilter beauty. His black hair a mad forest of dirty curls.

Maybe it was that nearly everyone else was dead and she felt a little bit dead too, but she figured that even a vampire deserved to be saved. Maybe she ought to leave him, but she wasn't going to.

I don't want to be a vampire' she told herself. But in her dreams, she kind of did.

Keep going' she told herself, 'Don't look back.' But she looked anyways.

Be careful," Aidan called from the bed. "You don't know what he might do." "We all know what you'd do, though, don't we?

Are you sure?" Aidan asked, "Gavriel's still a vampire." "He warned me about you and about them. He didn't have to. I'm not going to repay that by-" she hesitated, then frowned. "What did you call him?" "That's his name," Aidan sighed, "Gavriel. The other vampires, while they were tying me to the bed, they said his name." "Oh." With a final tug she pulled the blanked free and tossed it over to 'Gavriel

You said you were allowed to lose it,' some part of her reminded herself. 'Not yet, not yet.