The remaining vampires-and there were painfully few-made their way to a village in the wilds of Romania. The village surrounded a castle where a few distant relatives lived, and where they would be made welcome, and kept protected and safe.

Who would believe a vampire village in Transylvania, anyway? It was too cliched to be true. And anyway, they would be beyond the reach of the U.S. government, with all of its nosiness into things it did not, and could not, understand.

According to the newspapers and the surviving witnesses, heroic Nash Gravenham-Bail, the scar-faced agent of the DPI had sacrificed his own life to keep America safe. The vamps, the media claimed, turned to dust upon their deaths, which was why no remains were ever found.

The press bought that, because it was what the government told them, and for the most part the public bought into it along with them.

There was a lot of Monday-morning quarterbacking going on. Commentators and politicians blasting those in charge for the poor way in which this had been handled, regrets for the destruction of a race the world had never had the chance to truly know. A lot of mea culpas and heartfelt apologies. A lot of raging on the Sunday-afternoon news programs. But the party line was that no vampires had survived in the U.S. and that, as far as they knew, had never existed anywhere else. Maybe they didn't want it known that there were others in the world, or that the Chosen had been grievously mistreated, their civil rights violated, their lives unforgivably disrupted.

A generous settlement with a confidentiality clause attached, had been awarded by the government, and those with the Belladonna Antigen were promised that, so long as they never spoke of what had truly happened that night, they would never be watched nor studied again.

But the Chosen knew better.

They also knew, however, that they had a family of supernatural protectors who would spring into action if it was ever warranted again. A family of protectors forced to live in the shadows, in hiding, in secret.

At least for now...