my pupils dilated and the dim hallway turned scorch-bright. The female vampire hung in the air;

she’d cleared the tangled frozen mass of the boys duking it out and was stretched out like Superman, her fingernails turned to ten amber-burnished claws, each about four inches long and pointed

at me. Her skin was perfect, matte, and poreless, her hair a floating banner writhing with horrible

life.

Everything sparkled, encased in hard clear plastic. There was nowhere to go—if I could have

ducked aside, I would have. The snap like a rubber band that would bring the world up to its regular

speed hovered on the edge of my consciousness, held back by mental muscles hardened by the practice Gran had hammered into me in her own way when I was still a toddler.

Did she have any idea what she was training me for?

Something in me I’d never noticed before dilated. Warmth bloomed at the crown of my head,

flowed down my skin to my numb-tingling sock feet. My teeth stung a little, the fangs sliding free,

and the comfort of the aspect fought with uneasy disgust.

Because they had fangs, too. Bigger ones, sure—but the same kind.

My knees hit the stone floor with a jolt and I pitched forward, rolling.

Snap!

A bone-jarring crunch, a howl and a fresh splatter of acidic black blood. Wetness splashed me. I let

out a short miserable cry of panic and disgust, kept rolling. The smell was every foul rotting thing in

the world wrapped up together and powdered with rotten eggs, choking-thick in the confined space.

The female hit the door with another massive hollow gonging sound, and Ash was down, scrabbling

on the floor with the last surviving male. He wasn’t growling anymore. Neither of them made a

sound.

The female vampire slid down, landed on her feet, and reversed with unnatural, fluid speed. I hit the

wall hard, fetching up half-dazed and shaking the noise out of my head, the comforting warmth of

the aspect still encasing me. My pulse thundered in my ears like feathered wings.

She saw me again, and the hate dancing in those black eyes was enough to make me sick. I threw

out my hands, as if I was tossing a dodgeball, a great painless gout of force leaving me. It was like

hexing the American history teacher back in the same classroom where I’d met Graves, the sense of

steam bleeding through a valve, a relief like lancing a wound.

Only this time I wouldn’t feel guilty and pull the hex back like snapping a towel. No, this time it

was for real, and I wanted to kill the thing in a female body that was looking to kill me.

The hex flew true and hit her squarely just as she was getting ready to leap. It flung her back against