The vampire snarled in my face, fangs snapping; only my forearm shoved against his throat kept him from tearing mine out. I was more than human-strong, but I was a small woman, and even super-strong, I wasn’t as strong as the man pinning me to the table. He grabbed my wrist where it pushed against his throat and tried to pull it out of the way. I didn’t fight him for it; the best he was going to do was turn more of my arm into his throat. He didn’t know how to fight, didn’t understand leverage, he’d never grappled for his life-I had.

I heard the door slam open but didn’t glance at it. I had to stare into those burning blue eyes, those fangs; I couldn’t afford to look away, even for a second, but I knew the door meant help was in the room. Arms grabbed him from behind, and he snarled, rising up off me, taking his arm from behind my back so he could stand up and face them. I was left lying on my back on the table, to watch the vampire hitting the men, careless blows with no training behind them, and my knights in uniform went flying. I took the moment they’d given me to roll off the other side of the table and to the floor beyond. I landed on the balls of my feet and fingertips; the heels of my Mary Jane-style stilettos didn’t even touch floor as I crouched.

I could see legs: the vampire still shackled, the other legs uniforms and slacks; police. Two of the policemen went flying. One uniform didn’t get back up, lying in a painful heap against the wall, but two other sets of legs, one uniform and one slacks, were still struggling with the vampire. The shoes with the slacks were shiny and black like they’d been spit-polished, and I was almost sure it was Captain Dolph Storr.

The vampire popped the chain on his shackles, and suddenly the fight was on. Shit! In the bad old days I could have gotten my gun from the locker where it was stored and shot his ass, but I didn’t have a warrant of execution for this vampire. Zerbrowski and I had lied to him. Without the warrant, we couldn’t just shoot him. Fuck.