For a moment I couldn't move. I felt like I was carved from ice, hollowed out and numb, unable to tear my eyes away from Luke's fallen form. The night was too dark and his hair was too black for me to see if he was bleeding. I willed myself to help him, but my legs were rooted to the ground.

The black-clad figure stood over Luke, hands on her hips. "Don't worry, he's not dead."

I wanted to snarl that I already knew that. Luke was the other half of my soul – I'd know if he was dead. But my tongue was as numb as the rest of me. I sent a savage mental signal to my legs that if they didn't start moving, I was going to chop them both off. They seemed to get the message, though not quite the way I wanted. My knees folded and I crumpled to the ground beside my fallen boyfriend. Gently I turned him over and eased his head onto my lap. My fingers fumbled through his hair. No blood, thank goodness, but the impact of the branch had left a nasty knot on the back of his skull.

"Why?" I whispered, tearing my eyes away from Luke's pale face to look at the figure standing over me. I still couldn't see her face beneath the hood. "Why are you doing this?"

The woman tossed back her head and laughed. I caught a fleeting glimpse of a full mouth and gleaming white fangs.

"Little Kiara Morrow," she hissed, and the hatred in her voice chilled me. "I've come to destroy you."

"Why?" Bewilderment surfaced amid the anger. I didn't recognise this woman's voice. In fact, I'd bet money I'd never met her before in my life, so why was she doing this? Why had she targeted me? What did she want?

The woman didn't say anything, but I could practically smell the self-satisfaction rolling off her.

"At least show me who you are instead of hiding your face like a coward," I snapped.

She wagged a finger at me as if I was a naughty child. Her fingernails were very long and sharpened to points like tiny daggers. "All in due time, little Kiara."

Any minute now she'd attack. I'd put myself in a vulnerable position, kneeling on the ground with Luke's head in my lap – if she came at me, I was defenceless. It wasn't the beating I was worried about – I'd taken enough of it during my time as a hunter, but I couldn't protect Luke like this. Right then that was the only thing I cared about.

She made a sudden move, stamping her foot down like she was about to charge. I flinched before I could stop myself. The woman sniggered. I wanted to reach under that black hood and claw her smug face off.

"Not this time, little Kiara. You and I will meet again, but that moment is one I shall savour." She drew in a deep breath like she could already taste it. "I'm looking forward to it more than I can tell you."

She stabbed a taloned finger at the sky. "The sun will be up soon so I'd better be going. You're welcome to chase me, but you won't catch me." She made an ugly noise of satisfaction deep in her throat. "And your beloved boyfriend will burn to a crisp while you're wasting your efforts."

She was gone so fast it was almost as if she had teleported. I wanted to chase her. I wanted it so badly my whole body ached, my teeth clenching until my jaw hurt. But whatever had happened and whatever else would happen, Luke came first. There was no question about that.

Desperately I cast about the woods. Out cold as he was, Luke was too heavy for me to carry, and I could hardly drag him all the way home. Even if I had time before the sun came up, someone was bound to see me and call the police. I could scream for help but that presented the same problem. And if someone didn't call the police, they'd call for an ambulance. That'd be great if Luke was human but, as a vampire, there was no way he could go to hospital. Even if he could miraculously avoid the sunlight, there were enough differences between vampires and humans for any doctor to start asking questions.

I bent low over Luke, my lips brushing his ear, my hands caressing his cheeks. "Luke," I whispered. "I really need you to wake up now. Please, darling, please wake up."

Vampires recovered quicker than humans, even from crushing blows to the head. Luke would be okay; he just had to wake up. I looked up at the trees, but their branches were locked too tightly together for me to see the sky. But the shadows surrounding me seemed less dense that they had before. I was running out of time.

"Please, Luke, you have to wake up." I punctuated each word with a series of tiny pats to each side of his face.

Luke groaned and stirred, one hand coming up to touch the back of his head. He couldn't since his head was in my lap, so he ended up clasping my knee inside. His eyes flickered open, and mine swam with relieved tears.

Clarity sparked in his storm-cloud grey eyes and he sat up. Anger blazed across his face, his fangs flashing white in the lightening darkness. Muscles bunched in his arms as he balled his hands into fists. He looked about as pissed off as a vampire could be.

"Where is she?" he growled.

"Gone." That one word left a sour taste in my mouth. My stupid plan had almost worked. The culprit had literally been within our reach, standing right in front of me, and the bitch had gone after the thing I loved the most, knowing that if Luke was hurt, I'd never leave him to go after her. The whole night had been wasted. All we'd learned was that our foe was female, and that didn't tell us anything.

With a groan, Luke hauled himself to his feet, leaning on me for support. Vampires were made of stern enough stuff that they could usually survive even the worst blows to the head, but that didn't mean they couldn't suffer concussion. The woman might not have hit Luke hard enough to crack his skull, but he needed blood to properly recover.

I wished the woman had hit me instead. I'd rather suffer the headache than know it was Luke going through it. Of course, knowing him he was probably thinking that he was glad she'd gone after him and not me.

His gaze swept over me. "You're alright? She didn't hurt you."

"No."

He looked over my head, his eyes darkening as they searched the woods. "She can't have got far –"

"It's over, Luke," I interrupted. "At least for tonight. You're injured and it's nearly dawn. We're not going after her and we're not bringing anyone back to look for her."

Luke looked like he was about to object, then a wave of pain passed over his face, and he swayed slightly on the spot.

I grabbed his arm, looping it around my shoulder. "Come on, we need to get out of here."

Offering him my own blood would have healed him quicker, but that would take minutes we didn't have. Even if I could help him heal, we'd still have to get out of here before the sun came up. Much as I hated to leave Luke suffering, it was better to wait until we got home to give him blood.

We stumbled out of the woods, Luke with his arm around my shoulder and me with my arm around his waist, supporting him. The trees had only just faded back into pavements and roads when Samuel rushed up to us, worry written across his face. His hair was windswept, his breath coming in sharp gasps. "Kiara, Luke, thank goodness."

Guiltily I realised that Samuel must have come after us. But he was too slow to keep up and had probably been combing the streets for us since we raced after the black-clad woman.

He pulled us both into a quick hug, exclaimed with paternal anger over Luke's bruised head, and cast a worried look at the sky all within the space of a minute. The pitch-black of night was giving away to the lethal lightness of impending dawn. We were running out of time.

"Come on, son," he said, draping Luke's other arm across his shoulder to help me support his weight.

It was early enough that we only encountered one other person on the streets – a middle-aged woman out for a jog, dressed from head to toe in bright pink spandex. She slowed when she saw us, suspicion flashing across her face.

Samuel gave her his most winning smile. "Night on the tiles," he said.

The woman nodded and offered her own sympathetic smile. She was old enough to have teenagers of her own, so she probably knew all about them rolling up drunk or hungover at this time in the morning.

"Where are the others?" I asked, as we hurried along.

"Back at the house. I left them to deal with Leon while I went after you two," Samuel replied.

Inwardly I groaned. The female vampire had created enough drama that Leon had slipped my mind. He wasn't responsible for the rats or the dead man, but he'd still turned up at our house and I wanted to know why.

Still, there was plenty of time to question him once we'd got Luke and Samuel home.

But Leon wasn't there when we got back.

We turned the corner into our road, and fear shot through me like a bolt of lightning. Ethan was pacing the front lawn, his hands bunched into fists. Elena hurried behind him, looking like she was trying to console him.

"What's going on?" I cried as we reached them.

Ethan swung towards me, his eyes reddened with tears. Fear took a stronger hold of my body, iron claws locking me in a vice-like grip.

"Leon." He half-gasped, half-snarled the other man's name. Elena stood just behind him, tears silently sliding down her face.

And that's when I realised what was truly wrong with this picture. It wasn't that Leon wasn't here. It was that Riley wasn't.

"Ethan, what's going on?" I cried, my hands starting to shake. "Where's Riley?"

"He took her," Ethan whispered. "Leon took her, Kiara. Riley's gone."