Tempted

of twigs attached to it, and lifted it easily, glad for the extra strength that came with her new status as fully Changed red vampyre. Using the branch like a broom, she brushed over the blood, pausing every so often to toss another broken branch, or once, a whole side of a collapsed holly bush, onto the telltale crimson pools.
    Following her earlier path, she turned to her left, away from the street and back onto the nuns’ lawn, staying inside the fence. She hadn’t gone far when, just like before, Stevie Rae found a big splotch of blood.
    Only this time there wasn’t a body lying on top of it.
    Distracting herself by humming Kenny Chesney’s “(Baby) You Save Me,” she hurriedly brushed over the bloodstains and then followed the trail of drops she knew she’d find, kicking ice and branches over the evidence, as the blood path led her directly to the little garden shed.
    She stared hard at the door, sighed, and then turned away, walking around the shed to the green house. The door was unlocked and the handle turned easily. She entered the building and paused, breathing deeply and allowing the scents of earth and growing things, mixed with the new spice of the three horses that were temporarily housed there, to soothe her senses, as the warmth of the place thawed the icy dampness that seemed to have penetrated into her soul. But she didn’t allow herself to rest there long. She couldn’t. She had business to take care of and not much time before dawn. Even if the sun was going to be shrouded by clouds and ice, it was still never a comfortable thing for a red vampyre to be caught outside, exposed and vulnerable, during the day.
    It didn’t take Stevie Rae long to find what she needed. The nuns obviously liked the old-school way of doing things. Instead of a system of modern hoses, electric switches, and metallic thingies, the sisters had buckets and dippers, watering pails with long, perforated nozzles made for gently showering baby plants, and lots of tools thatwere obviously as well used as they were well cared for. Stevie Rae filled a bucket with fresh water from one of the many faucets, grabbed a dipper, a few towels from a clean pile she found on a shelf used to store garden gloves and spare pots, and then, on her way out, she paused near a tray of moss that reminded her of a thick, green carpet. She stood there chewing her lip indecisively as instinct warred with her conscious mind, until she finally gave in and pulled up a long row of the moss. Then, mumbling to herself about not knowing how she knew what she knew, Stevie Rae left the green house and returned to the shed.
    At the door she stopped and focused her attention—keyed all of her keen, predator-like ability to sense, smell, see anyone, any
thing
lurking around. Nothing. No one was outside. The sleet and the late hour were keeping everyone tucked safe and warm inside.
    “Everyone with any dang sense,” she mumbled to herself.
    She took one more look around, shifted her load so she had a free hand, and then touched the door latch.
Okay—okay. Just get it over with. Maybe he’s dead and you won’t have to deal with this great bigassed new mistake you made.
    Stevie Rae clicked the latch down and pushed open the door. Automatically, she wrinkled her nose. It was jolting after the earthy simplicity of the green house, this little building that smelled like gas and oil and musty crap, all mixed with the wrong scent of his blood.
    She’d left him at the other end of the shed, behind the riding mower and the shelves that held lawn care stuff like garden shears, fertilizer, and spare sprinkler parts. She peered back there and could vaguely make out a dark shape, but it wasn’t moving. She listened hard and didn’t hear anything except the ice spitting against the roof.
    Dreading the inevitable moment when she was going to have to face him, Stevie Rae forced herself to step into the shed and close the door firmly behind her. She made her way around the mower and shelves to the creature that lay at the far end of the shed. It didn’t look like he’d moved since she’d half dragged, half carried him there a couple of hours ago and literally tossed him into that back corner. He lay crumpled in on himself, curled into an awkward fetal positionon his left side. The bullet that had torn through the upper right side of his chest, had ripped through his wing as it exited his body, utterly decimating it. The huge black wing lay bloody, shattered,