Somehow Ryan withheld the scream that threatened to burst out of his chest. He sensibly called 911 while Danica took the shattered corpse away. At least Kelly's screams had subsided. That gave him incentive not to scream, lest he get her started again.

Danica had not returned when the paramedics arrived. He explained he had heard Kelly screaming and found her lying on the ground. He did not even try to explain Danica or the body.

Danica burned the body and remained out of sight of the paramedics, although she did come close enough to overhear the hospital directions. She saw Ryan climb into the ambulance with Kelly, and then ran to meet him at the hospital.

First she stopped at her car to put in contacts to cover her now red eyes.

She arrived at the waiting room. Ryan was in a delayed shock; he did not seem to notice her entrance at first. When his eyes landed on her, he jumped.

"Is Kelly okay?"

"What was that?" Ryan returned sharply.

"A vampire," Danica said, purposefully keeping her voice calm. The cameras had not followed them, or at least they had not reached the hospital yet.

Ryan blinked. "What . . ." he breathed in and out, "How did you know?"

"I'm a vampire." Danica remembered to add, "But I don't drink human blood."

"Then what were you doing to Kelly?"

"The vampire - the other one - bit her and his venom was in her system. That was what was causing her pain. I had to remove the venom or she would turn."

"Turn into what?"

"Into a vampire."

Concern filled Ryan's face. "Is Kelly going to become a vampire?"

"No. I removed the venom. Other than a small scar on her neck, she'll be back to normal."

Danica suspected the conversation would circle around like this for the next few hours. She warned Ryan, "Kelly's family will be here soon."

A pause as Ryan absorbed this overfill of information. Kelly was attacked by a vampire. Danica was a vampire. Kelly's family would be here soon. Danica sat down. She was stone still, not given to fidgets.

"How did it happen?" he asked.

"I guess the vamp nabbed her when she was -"

Ryan repeated, "How did it happen to you?"

Danica's hand moved up, tracing her finger along the side of her neck. To the scar that developed when she turned.

"It's a long story," she warned.

"Please," Ryan said. He needed to make sense of this, and the only way he can is if he learned as much about this chain of events as possible.

So she told him.

"I lived with my family in Sarajevo, Bosnia. My parents and my brother and my sister and I were like any normal family. At fifteen I was the middle sibling. Anja was sixteen and Milo was thirteen. Both my father and my mother were teachers.

"I was asleep when it happened. One early morning, a bomb exploded in our building. I remember the roar of fire, Anja screaming, and then everything went black.

"When I came to, I was on the ground, pinned under my bedframe. It took a long time to get out from under it, but eventually I freed myself. I saw my home was reduced to debris and my family's body parts lying among the broken walls and furniture. Everything I had known in my life was gone.

"The next couple of years I did nothing but survive. I took shelter in an abandoned apartment of a neighbor and left only to get food and water. I passed the time by reading my neighbor's books, and in the winter I burned the books I had already read. I did not think about my family or my future or anything, just about what I needed to survive to the next day.

"One afternoon I was carrying groceries home when I was accosted by a band of soldiers. A couple of them used to go to school with me, but they surrounded me with their guns and called me 'pig girl.'

"I managed to escape. I heard guns firing behind me but I kept running until I passed out. The next thing I knew, I had woken up in a hospital. The Greenpeace volunteers had found me by the city's border. The doctor at the hospital was a volunteer. He was pale with caramel colored eyes. He was very kind when he explained that I had been shot and I had only hours to live.

"The doctor was a vampire. He had a family, a wife and adopted children who were vegetarians - which is what we call vampires that don't drink human blood. His adopted children were like me, people he saved from the brink of death. After he saved me, he brought me back to America in a private plane. I moved in with some friends of his, a coven of three sisters in Alaska. They taught me how to hunt and how to control my cravings. I stayed with them for ten years until I felt secure enough to move out on my own."

By the time she finished the story, Kelly's family arrived. Laura dashed in and embraced Danica.

"Is Kelly all right?" she asked tearfully.

"Yes. She'll be fine," Danica said confidently. Ryan echoed her greetings to the Kapoors. Kelly's parents stared down disapprovingly at him, but did not voice any of their accusations.

From what the police deduced, a mugger had encountered Kelly. She had panicked and tried to fight him and she had fallen onto the pavement. The mugger had run off by the time Ryan had reached her and he called 911. The only way Ryan could explain Danica's involvement was that he had called her.

After the police took their statements and the doctor's pronounced Kelly's good health, Ryan left. Throughout this ordeal, he did not once look towards Danica.