Amanda Malreaux was a woman of deep faith. Her faith colored each day and brought peace to every corner of her soul.

Her faith was all that sustained her now.

She lay with a bullet wound in her shoulder and hissing vampires all around.

So much good work she had done, talking to the lost ones night after night (dressed warmly), helping them back to humanity. Other Sisters and even people in the community had started to show interest in her project. She had not been able to reach Jeremy Paxton but Brandon and Kevian had said they might walk with her some night.

And now to fall victim to a senseless, ordinary hate crime.

One moment she’d been speaking to a gathering of the lost souls in front of a building. The next moment a window grated open behind her and a voice half crazed with terror stamped down by hate screamed, “Get away from here! Go home to Africa, you crazy--!!” Vampires surged at the window, cutting off the epithet he’d been surely about to add.

A vicious sharp explosion! Pain stabbed through her shoulder.

She fell to her knees, still managing to hope that he hadn’t meant to shoot.

As a woman of color, she’d never been safe from racism. It pressed at the entrances of everyday life like – like the vampires! Once, pulled over for a busted taillight, she had reached for her license too fast and the pimply white officer’s hand automatically started toward his hip. She’d been called the N-word too many times.

But she hadn’t been physically assaulted since elementary school bullying. The shock and the pain made her retch. And worse than anything, the man had screamed, “Go home to Africa!”

It wasn’t the inherent racism in his words. It was that he’d said she should “go home.”

Which meant that she wasn’t home now.

Hungry throats hissed at the blood staining her brown Community of Francis robes. Hands brushed her face, her arms, her back as she struggled to push herself up. She’d already be torn to pieces except that the ones she’d been talking to held back, still nearly human. For the moment.

A clunk of metal and another bang—they’d pulled the gun from the shooter’s hands. Before she had to find the Christian love to defend the man who had shot her, the window grated closed again.

The mob swelled with new vampires. In a moment, she would be torn to atoms.

Praying that she was doing right, she picked three because she remembered how they had looked as individuals. “Tall woman with the eyepatch, and you good man with the red scarf, and you, handsome white man with the blue workman’s shirt. Take turns protecting me from the others … and I will not fight as you drink me.”

Their hands stretched. The stab of pain when they picked her up knocked her into red mist.

Then they were crammed into a rotten alley between garbage cans. The two who had been male fought back the mob at the narrow entrance. As the first attackers fell, the mob turned on the fallen ones. Easier prey.

As she now was. Gently, almost sweetly, the slender woman with the eyepatch slid her fangs into Amanda’s neck.

A homeless woman had once told her, perhaps hoping to shock her, “When Jack One was done, he passed me on to his buddy and when he was done, he passed me on to Jack Three. Fine with me, just gimme the Big Rush, ‘s all.” Amanda felt like that woman now as the slender hands passed her to the next, who drank in turn.

God was surely unhappy with her choice.