Fury Calls by Caridad Piñeiro

blood on the otherwise pristine white collar of the male vampire’s shirt. The young female vamp had a wild gleam in her eyes—a feral, intensely needy look that Blake didn’t quite like. Even if he hadn’t seen the blood on the male vamp’s neck, he would have known that she had been the one doing the biting from that savage glimmer in her gaze.
    He faced the young male vampire, a recently turned yuppie if he was any judge of age. “Mind the little chit, mate. She seems a bit too hungry for you to handle,” he said, but the newbie vampire merely laughed, making Blake feel like a doddering old fool as he left the room.
    Maybe he was doddering, he thought, recalling how in his youth he might have enjoyed a roughhouse tryst with an eager vampiress in her prime.
    With a sniff of prideful indignation, he tucked the tray under his arm and returned to the kitchen, intending to help out Meghan and maybe walk her home again.
    Maybe even take another step toward convincing her that he was changing for the better.
    He had just finished laying out the last of the plates Meghan had prepared for the staff when he felt an odd vibration beating against his vampire senses.
    A plate crashed to the floor a few feet away. Meghan had dropped one of the meals she had prepared. He realized she felt the sensation as well, given the pale greenish cast to her skin and the way her eyes widened with fear.
    He rushed over and laid his hand on her arm. “Meghan, what’s wrong?”
    A second later Diego and Ryder came running into the kitchen.
    â€œWho’s left in the building?” Ryder asked, looking around, his gaze lingering on the vampires in the kitchen area.
    Blake answered first. “Stacia, possibly. A young couple in a private room—”
    Diego and Ryder tore out of the kitchen and Meghan raced after them. He joined in and realized that they were headed to the dining room he had left just moments earlier.
    As they neared the door, the out-of-sync vibration intensified, growing so strong that it called forth the demon in each of them.
    Ryder tossed open the door and they all spilled into the private room.
    The willing vampiress from before had the male vampire pinned to the ground. She had torn open the yuppie vamp’s throat and a regular spray of blood splattered against her face, but she seemed to not notice as she continued to feed noisily from his ravaged neck.
    Ryder launched himself at her, dislodging her from the prone body of the vampire. She bit and clawed at him, and Diego had to join Ryder to keep a hold on the young hellcat.
    â€œBloody hell,” Blake muttered, pulled off the small towel that Meghan always kept tucked into her apron strings and raced to the bleeding vampire.
    As Blake applied pressure with the towel to staunch the flow of blood, he said, “Meghan, could you go shut and lock that door? We don’t want prying eyes seeing what’s happening.”
    She raced back to the entrance. A few of the staff were headed toward the room, and rather than cause a scene she shut the door and locked it behind her.
    Walking to the staff, she smiled at them and waved off their fears. “Just someone who had a little too much to drink. The men are taking care of getting the young couple a cab.”
    Her acting must have been enough to convince the mortals, but the undead employees recognized her lie and were probably already guessing at what had happened…again.
    She shooed everyone into the kitchen so that they could finish up, but as she did so, she shot a look back at the locked door and worried about exactly what was going on within.
    Â 
    Blake stared at the young vampire’s eyes. They were glazing over, losing the sheen of life. His skin was damp and growing colder with each passing second.
    Definitely not good.
    The pressure he was applying at the vampire’s ravaged throat had slowed the flow of blood. Vamp healing had started to close the