Marc nodded. "I know." He'd seen the fear, the hopeless expressions on most of their faces. Even with only one eye, he wasn't so blind he couldn't see that. He'd also seen how those same faces had beamed with pride when he claimed them as his own. "Everyone did a great job tonight. You especially. You really held it together for me when I needed you to. I was proud of you." He smiled at Heather again. "I was proud of all of you."

"So does this mean we can go there again, any time we want?" she asked.

"Why? Are you that tired of our own parties already?" he asked, only half-teasing. Besides being convenient and safe, they also provided the nest with a nice little income. He wasn't willing to give any of that up just yet.

"No." Heather shook her head. "Not tired, I just...I just thought it would be fun once in a while. You like it there too, don't you?"

"Yes, I do." Akeldama still felt like home and he'd especially enjoyed renewing his acquaintance with Danny. So there were two more things he wasn't ready to give up. "I think we should visit there as a group a couple more times before I feel comfortable sending you all out on your own. You're still very young and there's no need to rush, but tonight was a good start."

"So what are our plans going forward?" Nighthawk asked. "It's a new year, after all. Got any resolutions for us?"

Marc smiled. He had big plans for the coming year, most of which he wasn't yet ready to share. "More of the same, for the most part. Find Elise. Find Audrey. Study the scrolls we have and keep an eye out for any others that might be hidden around here. Hit the rest of the clubs. Get the word out. Really consolidate our position."

Nighthawk smirked. "So, not much then?"

"Exactly." Marc couldn't help but laugh. "Not much at all." He was talking about nothing less than completely re-ordering the world. But, when he thought back on how far they'd already come in so short a time, he couldn't help but feel optimistic about the future.

Nighthawk levered himself out of his chair. "Well, if you'll excuse me, I'm gonna go get a head start on some sleep. Sounds like we've got a busy year ahead of us."

"I think that's a good idea for all of us," Marc agreed. He smiled at Heather. "You too."

Heather kissed his cheek before getting to her feet. Marc watched as they walked to the door. "Good-night," he called as they left the room. Once he was sure they were gone, he double-checked the lock on his door, then crossed to the mirror that hung over the faux fireplace. The face that stared back at him was weary, but antic.i.p.ation glowed in his one remaining eye as he lifted the patch away from his face.

The room grew instantly brighter. In the socket from which his eye had been plucked, behind a bulging, translucent membrane, a milky orb could be seen taking shape. The evidence was indisputable. What he'd initially brushed aside as imagination and wishful thinking was no such thing. His eye was growing back. He smiled in grim satisfaction. This wasn't supposed to be happening. This wasn't supposed to be even remotely possible. But, then again, neither was he.

Chapter Nineteen.

January 1, 2001 Julie pulled the string on another party popper. Confetti shot across the living room, accompanied by a faint smell of gunpowder. Marc sighed wearily. "C'mon, Jules. Don't you think that's enough now?"

"It's New Year's Eve," Julie replied, stubbornly setting off another one. Tangled strings of paper floated lightly to earth, and ended up draping themselves over the ice bucket in the middle of the living-room coffee table. "What's wrong with you? I'm trying to be festive."

"It's after midnight," Marc pointed out. "So, technically, it's New Year's Day. Besides, it's you, me, a bucket of blood and d.i.c.k Clark on TV, so festive might be a stretch." Leaning forward, he brushed the confetti aside and retrieved one of the vinyl blood-bags. "And, just so you know, you're on your own with cleaning up all this confetti."

"Spoilsport."

Marc bit through the vinyl and immediately felt as though he'd been transported back in time. The faintly chemical taste of the blood reminded him of his childhood-all part of Julie's plan, he supposed. He couldn't recall when the last time had been that he'd tasted anything like it, but it certainly wasn't any time in the last year. Conrad's instructions to him had been clear. They were to eat out as much as possible and in the time honored tradition of their kind, which was to say, under cover of darkness. They were not to bring food home with them unless circ.u.mstances required it, but Marc had understood that to mean live prey.

Under no circ.u.mstances were they to do what Julie had done-to buy, barter, or compel any human to provide them with an alternative form of nourishment. They were still too young, too untried, Conrad had said. He did not yet feel confident in their abilities to influence thought.

It had never occurred to Marc that Julie would not have received the same instructions he had. He didn't have the heart to mention it to her now, not knowing she'd gone out of her way to surprise him.

"It's our first New Year's Eve alone, Marc. I just wanted to make things nice."

Marc sighed. "I know. You always do." It was the same thing she'd been doing all year. Memorial Day, Fourth of July, Labor Day, Halloween, Thanksgiving, Christmas and now tonight. And it still doesn't matter. It still isn't enough.

"Just think, maybe next year we'll be doing this in San Francisco," she said in wistful tones. Just as she'd said on all those other holidays as well.

"Maybe not next year, but I'm sure it won't be too long." At least that's what he wanted to believe.

"An actual city, a whole house full of vampires-can you imagine it?" Julie asked, her eyes aglow as she contemplated the future, but all Marc could think about was the expression on Conrad's face, the note of concern in his voice, the night he and Damian had left for the west coast.

"You won't be the only vampires around. There are others in the vicinity. You might run into them from time to time. You might even be able to go to them if you encounter trouble. But, in general, try to steer clear of them," Conrad had cautioned him. "I'm not sure how soon I can send for you but, in the meantime, you will look after your sister for me, won't you?"

Marc had nodded. "Of course. Have a good trip," he'd added with barely conceived envy. Julie wasn't the only one who dreamed of big cities and houses filled with others like them. Some day.

"Thank you," Conrad had said as he turned to go. Then he turned back again. "And, Marc?"

"Yes, sir?"

"Look after yourself, as well. I don't always say it, but I hope you both know how very dear you are to me."

Of course they knew that. It was a big part of why it had been so hard to say good-bye. It was why it was so hard, even now, to contemplate a future where they'd be on their own.

However much he and Julie had wanted the chance to prove themselves, to stand on their own two feet, to make their own decisions-and that was mostly him, anyway-he knew they were both still daunted by the prospect. Maybe it was a vampire thing, or maybe it was the result of the way they'd been raised, but he was pretty sure neither he nor his sister was ever going to be truly happy until they were reunited with their family.

Maybe it would be a year. Maybe it would be a decade. Whenever or however it happened, it would be good to be home.

About the Author.

When she's not pestering her husband to help her research scenes for upcoming books, or being amused by her two vastly entertaining children, P.G. Forte can usually be found serving the needs and whims of her characters...or her pets. It's a difficult job, but someone's got to do it.

Originally a Jersey girl, P.G. now resides with her family on the extreme left coast where she writes rule-bending, genre-blending romance and paranormal stories.

A lover of all things Internet-related, P.G. can also be found on Twitter: www.twitter.com/pgforte or Facebook: www.facebook.com/pgforte.

To learn more, please visit her website at www.pgforte.com. Send an e-mail to or join her Yahoo! group to join in the fun with other readers as well as P.G. Forte at http://groups.yahoo.com/group/pgforte.

Look for these t.i.tles by P.G. Forte Now Available: Children of Night In the Dark Old Sins, Long Shadows Now Comes the Night Home is where the heart bleeds.

Now Comes the Night 2013 P.G. Forte Children of the Night, Book 3 Growing up, vampire-born twins Julie and Marc Fischer were taught one simple fact of life: you can choose your food, but not your family. Six months after moving to San Francisco, though, the new challenges and choices each are facing are a Gordian knot of complicated.

Marc must decide whether to stay with Conrad and Damian, the only family he's ever known, or embrace his destiny and the unexpected family-the ferals-that comes along with it. Meanwhile, Julie is forced to deal with the unpleasant realization that the man she loves isn't necessarily the man who's best for her.

For Conrad and Damian, the holiday season is stirring up bittersweet memories, and neither can keep from revisiting past pa.s.sion and pain.

Faced with new mysteries to solve, new alliances to forge, new secrets to keep, and old relationships to rebuild, it's no wonder the Fischer-Quintano vampires long for the good old days-when food was food and family was all that mattered.

Warning: If you've previously suffered from Disco Fever, this book could precipitate a relapse. Extreme care is recommended for anyone with a p.r.o.nounced weakness for mistletoe, fang play, pretty young men of either species or extremely dangerous alpha-male vampire single dads. May contain trace amounts of polyester.

Enjoy the following excerpt for Now Comes the Night: New Year's Eve, 1969 According to the clock on the living room mantel, it was almost midnight. Conrad Quintano glared at the offending timepiece. Its measured ticking grated on his nerves, mocking his attempts to ignore the relentless pa.s.sage of time. He was tempted to pick up the clock and hurl it across the room. In fact, the only thing preventing him from doing so was the lack of a spare hand. As he paced the floors of the small suburban tract home he'd recently purchased, his arms were filled to overflowing with squirming infant vampire-two vampires, twins to be exact-both of whom appeared to be every bit as frustrated and wide-awake as he.

Conrad gazed at the babies with a grudging sense of wonderment. So small and yet still so strong. How was it they were still awake?

He should be able to subdue them, d.a.m.n it. It was almost inconceivable that he could not. He was both their sire and their creator, albeit at one small remove, not to mention the undisputed head of a large and powerful household. He was also a Lamia Invitus, one of the last and strongest of his kind, with over a millennium of skill, experience and strength to draw upon. The idea that one such as he should be bested by two such tiny creatures was laughable. Yet the pair still resisted all his efforts to compel them back to sleep.

Oh, yes, they may have deigned to yawn a time or two, no doubt in deference to his pride. They might even have allowed their eyes to momentarily fall shut, but it was all just part of a cunning ruse, a transparent attempt to lull him into a false sense of complacency. Conrad wasn't fool enough to fall for such obvious tricks-at least not after the first five or six times.

He could see right through their tactics. Were he to make the attempt to lay them down ever so gently in their crib, their eyes would pop open the instant their backs touched the mattress. Then their little limbs would start to flail and they'd begin once more to cry-those tearful, heart-rending, nerve-wracking sobs that always seemed disproportionately loud for the size of the bodies from which the sounds issued.

He supposed it was not really their fault they refused to be soothed. The baby books Damian had purchased, and insisted they both study, had had a lot to say about the terrifying maladies to which newborns were p.r.o.ne-things like growth spurts, teething pain, food allergies and colic. And even though the books had not been written with baby vampires in mind, Conrad was confident that what he was witnessing now was a reasonable approximation of what he'd read about within their pages. If only that wasn't the only thing about which he felt confident!

The babies were hungry, that fact was indisputable. They needed blood-apparently more frequently now, and in much larger quant.i.ties than they'd been used to receiving. That too was a given. But how much did they need? And how soon did they need it? How long did he have before these newest of his children were irreparably damaged by malnutrition? Before starvation set in? Before they expired? Or before even worse things occurred? Only two months old and already their lives were in peril.

If vampire blood would have sufficed, Conrad would have happily opened every one of his veins in order to gain even a half hour's respite. But, alas, only human blood could supply the twins with the nourishment their bodies craved. Unfortunately, their suddenly ravenous and increased appet.i.tes, while understandable, had caught him off guard. There was no blood left for them in the house.

Damian had gone out several hours earlier on what should have been a simple enough mission-a quick trip to the local hospital to purchase the needed sustenance from the connection he'd been cultivating, and then straight back home. He should have returned by now. He hadn't.

If he doesn't come back soon... No. He will. He has to.

What options did Conrad even have if Damian failed to return? He couldn't just leave the twins unattended while he went out hunting. Nor could he take them with him. Exactly the reasons he'd appealed to Damian for his a.s.sistance in the first place!

Conrad should never have agreed with Damian when he'd argued that it made more sense for only one of them to risk getting caught trying to buy blood illegally. He should have made his own plans, cultivated his own hospital contacts. Why hadn't he?

There was only one answer to that, an answer so screamingly obvious it should have shamed him to admit it-even to himself. He hadn't wanted to accept the fact it might someday prove necessary. He hadn't wanted to even entertain the possibility that Damian's willingness to a.s.sist Conrad might, at some point, come to an end.

If Conrad were forced to go out tonight and find food for the twins, he'd have no one to blame but himself and little choice as to what he would have to do. He'd have to leave the twins unprotected, take to the streets, waylay random strangers and drag them back to the house.

And then kill said strangers when he was done with them in order to prevent them from talking about what they'd seen.

The very thought sickened him. Not because it would be the first time he'd unjustly ended someone's life. No, not even the thousandth time. But he'd been happy to allow the dust of several acc.u.mulated centuries to cover over those horrors, to bury and obscure his murderous past. He'd hoped never to have to dig it up and revisit it.

Now, unpalatable as the idea was, it had to be considered. It was possible he no longer had a choice-nor the luxury of scruples. The twins were his first responsibility. Everything else had to take a backseat to their needs.

How long should he wait? Conrad's anxiety increased as his mind began to once again tick over the list of possible explanations for what could be keeping Damian. Maybe his luck had run out and he'd been caught. Maybe he was being interrogated, even now, by curious humans with questions as to what dire circ.u.mstances could have driven him to buy blood-or by other vampires wondering much the same thing. He might be dead, injured, incarcerated...

Or perhaps it was none of those things. Perhaps he'd merely stopped to slake his own hunger and lost track of the time.

That was always a possibility, wasn't it? It was not as though either of them were strangers to such debauchery. If it turned out Damian had merely chosen to spend a few hours, or even the entire night, sating himself, gorging 'til dawn, Conrad really couldn't fault him overmuch.

Given that Damian was already risking his life at Conrad's behest, that Conrad had no legitimate hold on him beyond blood and loyalty, that the two of them were no longer even intimate with each other... No, Conrad couldn't fault him at all.

There was still another reason to consider. A reason Conrad dreaded, possibly more than any of the others. Maybe this was the night Damian finally decided he'd had enough, that endangering his life in an effort to help Conrad with this endeavor was too foolish a gamble even for Damian to continue to take. Perhaps this was the night he'd decided to never come back at all.

Conrad could not repress the sound that left his lips as the thought took hold. Part snarl, part howl, wild and not even slightly civilized, it was the sound of a man bereft, the sound of a man pushed to the very edges of his sanity. In some tiny, sane corner of his mind, Conrad was glad Damian was not around to hear it. For it was also exactly the kind of sound that would likely cause anyone with any sense at all-even someone who was not already thinking of leaving Conrad-to take to their heels and flee.

Even the twins were not unaffected by this evidence of their sire's unstable temperament. They stirred restively in response, their whimpers steadily increasing in volume until Conrad forced himself to regain some measure of control over his emotions. He couldn't afford to fall apart to this extent. Not when there was so much at stake.

If he were on his own now, so be it. He should have expected it. After all, he'd had misgivings all along about the long-term success of this partnership. Just look at how quickly Damian had reached the decision to help Conrad. As though it were nothing more than an impulse, a whim, a matter of no consequence. If Conrad had been a more honorable man, or a less desperate one, he would have demanded that Damian take some time to think before committing himself. A few days perhaps. A few hours at the very least. He hadn't.

A thrill of unease shot through Conrad as he gazed at the children in his arms, so fragile-seeming, so innocent. Did they really have the potential to someday shake his very world apart? It seemed too fantastical to believe. How he wished those legends had never been written. It didn't matter whether or not they were true. Either way, they made his twins a target.

Had they been someone else's children, anyone else's children in fact, Conrad would have been among the first to insist they be put to death-humanely, of course-but swiftly and without delay. Vampires didn't have to be the monsters they were so often portrayed to be, after all.

Instead... Well, there was more irony for you. He couldn't help but chuckle bitterly as he considered it. For four hundred years, he'd been the self-styled protector of the Vampire Nation. He'd done everything in his power to strengthen and solidify his people's position in the world. No one had been more dedicated to the task than he. There'd been no one more vigilant, more diligent-or less merciful-when it came to seeking out and eliminating potential threats against his kind.

Now, he was throwing that legacy away. He was putting all of it at risk, everything he'd worked to build or safeguard or preserve, right down the last dying embers of his own humanity. He was branding himself a hypocrite, a turncoat, a traitor, and all for the sake of a promise made to a dying girl.

A perfect firestorm of desire could save their people...or cost them their lives.

Kindred of the Fallen 2013 Isis Rushdan Kindred Chronicles, Book 1 Serenity's soul-reading ability lets her easily create custom tattoos. Everything else in her life is a struggle, from trying to make it work with her best friend, Evan, to nightmares and visions that make her question her sanity.

Then she meets a man who sharpens her craving for something more, but her commitment to Evan means nothing beyond sparks can exist between them.

Cyrus has been watching Serenity, preparing to claim her as his Blessed mate-the other half of a split soul that, once reunited, is his only chance to break the curse that plagues his people.

One moment, Serenity is confronted by armed militants firing questions she cannot answer. The next, she is safe in Cyrus's arms, reveling in his burning kiss...and learning she isn't even human. She is Kindred, blessed with preternatural powers, cursed to suffer the twin horrors of the blood rage and the dark veil.

Their union is the greatest hope for redemption in a thousand years, but not all Kindred want to be saved. A dark secret could snuff out their lives before love has a chance to unite them...and redeem the Kindred for all time.

Warning: Contains a headstrong, soul-reading tattoo artist, a s.e.xy alpha hero who knows how to get what he wants, adrenaline-packed action, and explosive s.e.x that literally shatters bulletproof gla.s.s.

Enjoy the following excerpt for Kindred of the Fallen: Cyrus caressed Serenity's cheek, as he groped for the right words to explain what he'd known all his life.

She pushed his hand from her face. "Kindred?" Her eyes flared. "What are you talking about? How is it possible for us to have the same birthmark?"

All of his plans, even the way he wanted to explain everything, had disintegrated to ashes. "The bond we share goes beyond the constraints of time, s.p.a.ce...the sh.e.l.l of our bodies."

He stroked her jaw down to her neck. Lush heat stirred his flesh. "Our souls are one."

"Please, say something that makes sense. Those men told me...you aren't human."

"We aren't human. We're Kindred."

"You're definitely not like everyone else, but if you expect me to believe that you're..."

Her head shook, curly chocolate wisps of hair accentuating the loveliness of her face. He slipped off the band restraining her hair in a ponytail. The wildness of her tresses quickened his pulse. He twined a lock around his finger, petal-soft.

"That I'm..." Her lips, rose-colored and full, moved but no sound came from her mouth.

"You and I are kabashem, two halves of one soul." He lifted her fingers to the mark on his chest. "We're meant for each other."

"What? Soul mates?" she scoffed, skimming the birthmark.

"Not in the distorted way you think of today. Our affinity is far more complex." He struggled to clarify. The feel of her fingertips gliding across his chest brought him peace of mind, even though he could practically taste her fear and confusion. They were together. The rest would fall into place. "We're one soul, split into two different bodies. Our kind-"

"Our kind?" She pulled away, brushing his hand from her hair, and pressed against the car door. "I asked you to tell me something that made sense."