Unfortunately, the answer was no. At least the Tall Man hadn’t succeeded in doing a lot of damage. His axe had nicked Lurine’s coils, and Stefan had a gash in his forearm. He assured me it was nothing, although blood was soaking through the bandanna he wrapped around it. Jen was shaken by her encounter with Clancy Brannigan but otherwise unharmed. Her sister, Bethany, was displaying the bullet she’d expelled from her chest—don’t ask me how, since I’m not up on the intricacies of vampiric healing abilities—with all the pride of a first grader with the coolest item at show-and-tell. While Stacey Brooks was either in a state of shock or pretending to be in order to justify clinging to Sinclair’s arm, she didn’t have a scratch on her.

But despite the best efforts of the ghoul squad, there were injuries among the spectators. No fatalities, thank God, but there were a lot of scrapes, bruises, and sprains, two nonfatal cardiac incidents, and one probable case of broken ribs.

And Cooper was ravening.

It was the panicked cries for help somewhere in the crowd that alerted us. I kindled a feeble shield and followed Stefan as he strode down the street, leaving the police and the arriving EMTs to deal with the injured.

Aside from Stefan, all the other Outcast had beat a prudent retreat when they’d reached the limits of their discipline. Not Cooper. He’d overestimated his abilities, and now he was confronting a trio of tourists: Mom, Dad, and a teenaged daughter who was standing slumped and vacant-eyed in the circle of her mother’s arms while her mother shouted for help and her father, looking terrified, took a protective stand in front of them.

“...scared, are ya, boyo?” Cooper was taunting the father. “That’s all right, then. I like scared, me.” He made a rude, deliberate slurping noise, his features contorting in ecstasy. “Yum, yum!” The tourist dad’s face turned slack and blank. “That’s right, let good old Cooper take care of you, make all your fears go away. Though there’s nothing quite as tasty as the terror of a sweet little bird like your daughter, innit?”

“For the love of God, leave us alone!” the mother cried in a shrill voice, wrapping her arms tighter around her daughter.

“Don’t you worry yourself, Ma,” Cooper replied jauntily. “God’s got nothing in the world to do with it. But I promise, it won’t hurt a bit.”

“Cooper!” Stefan said sharply. “Stand down!”

“Big man.” Cooper turned. There was a note of scorn in his voice. His pupils were fully dilated, swallowing all traces of his blue irises, and his eyes shone like dark moons in his narrow face. “Always trying to make us into summat we’re not. When are you going to learn? We’re not heroes, not the likes of us. We’re Outcast.”