Her voice came from the center of the room, but she was hidden behind the vampires, shielded by them. "I have offered you no violence, yet you have drawn weapons. You seek my aid, yet you threaten me."

"It's not personal, Itz … " I stumbled over her name.

"You may call me Obsidian Butterfly." It was odd talking to her without being able to glimpse her through the waiting figures.

"It's not personal, Obsidian Butterfly. I just know that once I put up the gun, chances of drawing it again before one of your brood rips my throat out is damn small."

"You mistrust us," she said.

"As you mistrust us," I said.

She laughed then. Her laughter was the sound of a young woman, normal but the strained echoes from the other vampires were anything but normal. The laughter held a wild note to it, a desperation, as if they were afraid not to laugh. I wondered what the penalty was for not following her lead.

The laughter faded away, except for one high pitched masculine sound. The other vampires went still, that impossible stillness where they seem like well-made statues, things made of stone and paint, not real, not alive. They waited like a host of empty things. Waited for what? The only sound was that high, unhealthy laughter, rising up and up like the sounds the movies have you hear in insane asylums, or mad scientists' laboratories. The sound raised the hair on my arms, and it wasn't magic. It was just creepy.

"If you put up your guns, I will send most of my people away. That is fair, is it not?"

It was fair, but I didn't like it. I liked having the gun naked in my hands. Of course, the gun only worked if shooting a few of them would stop the rest from rushing us, and it wouldn't. If she said, go to hell, they'd start digging a hole. If she told them to rush us, they most certainly would. So the guns were just a security blanket, a delaying tactic before the end. It took only a few seconds to think it through, but that awful laughter kept going like it was one of those creepy dolls with a laugh track inside of it.

I felt Edward's shoulder pressing against mine. He was waiting for me to give the answer, trusting my expertise. I hoped I didn't get us killed. I put the gun back in its holster. I rubbed my hand against my leg. I'd been holding the gun too long, and too damn tight. Me, nervous?

Edward put his gun up. Bernardo was still in the stairway, and I realized that he was making sure nothing came down the stairs and blocked our retreat. It was kind of nice working with more than just two people and knowing everyone on your side was willing to shoot anything that moved. No bleeding hearts, no empathy, just business.

Of course, Olaf was off to one side with Dallas. He had never pulled a gun. He had waded into this many vampires, following her bouncing ponytail to destruction. Or at least to potential destruction.

The vampires drew a breath, each chest rising as one, as if they were many bodies with one mind. Life, for lack of a better term, flowed back into them. Some of them looked almost human, but many of them were pale and starved, and weak. Their faces were too thin, as if the bones of their skull would push out through the sickly skin. They were all pale, but the natural skin color of many was darker than Caucasian, so even pale, they weren't the ghostly paleness I was used to seeing. I realized with something like shock that most of the vampires I knew were Caucasian. Here, white skin was the minority. A nice reversal.

The vampires began to glide towards the door. Or some of them glided. Some of them shuffled as if they didn't have energy to pick their feet up, as if they were truly ill. To my knowledge vampires couldn't catch any disease, but these vampires looked sick.

One of them stumbled and fell at my feet, landing heavily on hands and knees. He stayed where he was, head hanging down. His skin was a dirty white like snow that had lain too long by a busy road, a greyish white. The other vampires moved around him as if he were a bump in the road. They flowed past him, and he didn't seem to notice. His hands looked like the hands of a skeleton, barely covered with skin. His hair was a blond so light, it looked white, hanging down around his face. He raised his face up, slowly, and it was like looking at a skull. His eyes had sunk so far into his head that they seemed to burn at the end of long black tunnels. I wasn't afraid of looking in this one's eyes. He didn't have enough juice to roll me with his eyes, I could tell that just standing here. The bones of his cheeks pushed so hard against the thin skin that it looked like they should tear through.

A pale tongue slid from between thin nearly invisible lips. His eyes were a pale, pale green, like bad emeralds. The thin walls of his nose flared as if he were scenting the air. He probably was. Vamps didn't rely on scent the way shapeshifters did, but they had a much better sense of smell than humans. He closed his eyes in the middle of drawing a deep breath. He shuddered and seemed to swoon, faint. I'd never seen a vamp act like this. It caught me off guard, and that was my fault.

I saw him tense, and my hand was going for the Browning, but there was no time. He was less than a foot away. I never even touched the gun before he slammed into me. He knocked the breath from my body. His hand was on my face, turning my head to one side, baring my neck, before I had time to breathe. I had a sense of movement even though I couldn't see him. I felt his body tense and I knew he was coming in for a strike. He made no effort to control my hands. I kept going for the gun, but I would never get it out and pointed in time. He was going to sink fang into my neck, and I couldn't stop it. It was like a car accident. I just had time to see it coming and to think, "I can't stop it." There wasn't even time to be afraid.

Something jerked the vampire backwards. His hand curled in my jacket, and didn't let go. His desperate grip nearly pulled me off my feet, but I got the gun out before I worried about staying on my feet.

A large, very Aztec-looking vamp had the skeletal vamp, holding him pinned against his body, only that one arm with its clutching hand not pressed to the larger man's body.

Edward had his gun out pointed at the vampires. He'd gotten to his gun first, but then he hadn't been shoved up against a wall and manhandled. Or would that be vampire-handled?

The big vamp jerked the thin one hard enough that he nearly pulled me off my feet, but that one clutching hand stayed curled in my jacket, catching on the shirt underneath. I had the Browning pointed at the vamp's chest, though I wasn't sure if the Hornady ammo was safe to shoot at arm's distance into one target pressed directly in front of another person. I wasn't sure if the ammo would go through the first vamp and into the second. The second vamp had saved me. It really wouldn't be nice to blow a hole in him.

The other vampires were leaving the room in a hurrying line to get past us and up the stairs, out of harm's way. Cowards. But it was thinning out the ranks, which would be great. Eventually, I'd care that there weren't so damn many vamps in the room, but right now the world was narrowed down to the vamp that had hold of me. First things first.

The big vamp kept backing up, trying to get the skeletal one to let go of me. We kept moving further into the room. Edward paced us, gun held two-handed pointed at the vampire's head. I finally put the barrel of my gun underneath the vamp's chin. I could blow his brains up without hitting the second vampire.

Obsidian Butterfly's voice slashed through the room like a whip. The sound made me wince, shoulders tightening as if it had been a blow. "These are my guests. How dare you attack them!"

The skeletal vampire started to cry, and his tears were clear, human. Vampire's tears are tinged red. They cry bloody tears. "Please, please let me feed, please!"