I don’t wait to see if he follows as I spin around and shove through the tangled garden. He could run again, but he wants this. I can tell. He sees us as a team, especially with the extra power around my neck. He actually thinks giving me the man who bit my mother will make me forget who set it in motion.

I break through onto the shore again. Most of the action has made its way from the boats to here. Fighting bodies churn in front of me. The screaming and the shouting and the sounds of death blows push in on me, and I shake my head like I can get rid of the awful, screeching music of it. I don’t want to kill another vampire. Even these ones. Aren’t they here because we’ve been hunting them?

But I’m not going to sit back and die either.

A woman with startling blue eyes and blood dripping from her blond hair lunges for us with her teeth bared.

I’m quicker. My stake is in and out of her chest before her teeth can clamp together.

I snarl. I can be the predator if I have to be.

Lucius brushes a hand down his vest and strolls straight into the mayhem like he’s taking a walk in the park. For a second, it’s like they’re parting for him. Until a group of vampires forms a semicircle around him. He moves in a blur of white and red and blond and flashing metal, and I hear the thump thump thump before I can even register what happened. When he stills, there are no more vampires in his path, only heads detached from bodies that are already withering to nothing. He props the sword on his shoulder and strolls onward.

They don’t part for me the same way.

I crouch and slide deeper in, weaving around vampires with stakes protruding from missed shots and magicians pulling knives from their own bodies. I stub my toe on what I discover is a severed head and decide not to look down ever again. Keep moving. Keep moving.

Fangs latch on to my arm, and I scream, slashing my weapon toward the pain without looking. My stake jerks out of my hand, and the teeth release me. I spin and face a tall, thin boy with curly blond hair. Blood drips from his mouth and down his neck, and I try not to gag, but it’s not the blood that gets me. My stake pokes out of his cheek. He smiles, and it bobs with the movement before he reaches up and pulls it out, tossing it over his shoulder. He keeps smiling as the wound stitches itself back together, and I should move and run, but I can’t look away. It’s like I never touched him.