Fading light means more than just the end of another day. Night is when terrible things emerge from their sleep and seek soft flesh and hot blood.

Apocalypse is a frame of mind." [Nicodemus] said then. "A belief. A surrender to inevitability. It is a despair for the future. It is the death of hope.

A pure heart and mind only takes you so far - sooner or later the hormones have their say, too.

Her flawless pale skin was also spangled with gemstones. I don't know how they'd been attached, but they clung to her and sent little flashes of color glittering around the cavern when she moved. They were concentrated most densely around her ... well ... She'd been, ah, vajazzled.

Alone. It's one of those small words that means entirely too much. Like fear. Or trust.

There's power in the night. There's terror in the darkness. Despite all our accumulated history, learning, and experience, we remember. We remember times when we were too small to reach the light switch on the wall, and when darkness itself was enough to make us cry out in fear.

So in addition to a feisty new Black Court partner in the war dance between the Council and the Vampire Courts, I also got angry lust bunny movies stars, deadly curses, and a thoroughly embarrassing job as my investigative cover. Oh, and bean curd pizza, which is just wrong. What a mess. I made a mental note: The next time I saw Thomas, I was going to punch him right in the nose.