"Aye, I can hardly recognize myself." Ian had gazed for five minutes at the photos Vanda had taken. And it wasn't just his face that was different. His body had grown so quickly, he'd barely had time to adjust. He occasionally knocked his hand against things when he overreached with his longer arms, and sometimes he tripped over his bigger, size thirteen feet.

The microwave beeped, and Dougal removed his bedtime snack. "We just had a martial arts practice downstairs." He guzzled down some blood. "Ye should have seen it. Our new guard knocked Phineas off his arse."

"Really?" Ian was impressed. It wasn't often that a mortal could defeat a Vamp in hand-to-hand combat.

Dougal headed out the door. "I'd better get to my shower before the sun rises."

The sun was nearing the horizon. Ian could already feel his metabolism dropping. He followed Dougal down the back stairs to the guardroom in the basement. The pool table had been shoved to the far wall by the sofa to create a large open space for their practice sessions.

Ian picked up a chair that had been knocked over and noticed one of the legs was broken. "That must have been one hell of a fight."

"Aye. A bit embarrassing for Phineas, though." Dougal finished his bottle as he strolled into the dormitory next door. A bathroom door banged shut.

Ian wandered into the dormitory, expecting to see Phineas McKinney, but the young black Vamp wasn't there. The sound of rushing water emanated from both bathrooms, so he was probably taking a shower like Dougal. A lot of Vamps liked to be clean before succumbing to death-sleep. It helped them feel less like a dead, rotting corpse.

The dormitory was nearly empty now. Ian remembered a time when there'd been ten coffins in the room, one for each Vamp guard to sleep in. Most of the Vamps were gone now, transferred to Eastern Europe to hunt for Casimir.