The chase went on for a good mile and I didn’t lose pace with him once. I blocked out the chaos around me and focused my acute senses. There was nothing I couldn’t see, nothing I couldn’t sniff out. Without looking, I knew that we had covered one mile, passed two hundred and twenty-three pedestrians and another three hundred and twelve people inside their cars. I felt their fear as they saw me, and their relief as I passed. I smelled their blood and wanted to taste it. At that moment, I knew that my current lucidity wasn’t going to last. Eventually the bloodlust would take over and the human in me would disappear. It was a suddenly sobering thought in a moment when I felt the best I’d ever felt.

Fuck it. I couldn’t do anything about it tonight. I might as well have fun and rid the world of one more bloodsucker.

I ran on, tireless. My nose focused on Dave and I sensed his fear of me suddenly subside. Something was wrong. He was leading me now. We were leaving Studio City and heading straight toward the L.A. River. I almost slowed down, knowing I was almost certainly running into a trap. But I was too far gone to be scared as my bloodlust welled to a breaking point. Trap or no trap, I was going to shred that vampire into tiny little bits and pull each and every nose hair from that ugly pug-nose.

We ran into a park as close as a foot apart. I could almost reach out and poke him with a claw. I smelled the trap, picturing it in my mind before I actually saw it.

We were running downhill, toward the huge, cement aqueduct that snaked throughout Los Angeles. Dave leaped a wire-mesh fence; I tore through it. Ahead was a clearing. At the bottom, the vampire took a sharp left, then swung around and faced me as I came to a halt. I could smell a presence around us. We were surrounded, but I was too focused on Dave to figure out how many or exactly where they were.

I sniffed the air and caught a whiff from the trees. The sound of water echoed through the cement channel. We stood facing each other in the pitch-black darkness of the park.

“Well?” I barked. “Your move, pig-face.” My voice was gruff and phlegmy. My half-animal throat wasn’t built for speech.

The vampire lunged. I stood my ground and cut him short, slashing his throat open with a swipe of my left while slashing his chest with my right. He reeled sideways and I slashed again, catching his shoulder. He was hemorrhaging stolen blood. Whatever he thought was going to happen, didn’t.

I could smell panic rising in him again. Realizing his plan wasn’t working, he began to back away. I advanced, snarling. He stumbled away, holding his throat as blood spewed through clamped fingers.