In front of the class, I checked, loaded, and laid each handgun; clipped the magazine into the AK47; and was loading the rifles when the teacher coughed and said, “Well, I guess we know who my

assistant this semester will be.”

Everyone had laughed, and I’d finished loading the rifles too. There was no reason to stop, and it

felt good to have my hands performing movements they knew by heart.

I didn’t touch the crossbow, though. It looked like a polycarbon recurve, not a compound. The arrows were weird, with a head I’d never seen before. Even the gang down in Carmel who went out to

clean sucker holes—the only time I ever heard of humans taking on suckers and winning—used

guns, more guns, and flamethrowers. Nothing even close to a crossbow, for Christ’s sake.

I couldn’t wait for vampire anatomy to be covered in the Paranormal Biology class. Right now we

were on basic wulfen anatomy because it was closest to humans. But finding out how to use a crossbow on a sucker—wow. I mean, you never want to be face-to-face with a sucker. But still . . . a

crossbow.

It really says something about you when that’s your idea of fun. Just what it says kind of isn’t nice,

though.

I loaded the 9mm, checked it, raised it, and squeezed off three rounds.

The echoes died away. I hit the target button to bring it home. Nicely grouped and even, star-shaped

holes. I laid the gun down carefully, checked twice, and we all took our ear protection off. The holestarred target was unclipped and passed around.

Babbage held up the remains of a fired bullet, showing how it had fragged apart on contact. “This is

what happens—when it hits tissue, it explodes. Why is this important?”

I could have answered in my sleep, but I didn’t. He called on a blue-eyed djamphir with a round

babyface.

“Bleeding out,” Babyface said. I think his name was Bjorn or something, but I wasn’t sure. “They

heal quick, especially if they’ve just fed and have a lot of fresh hemo in their systems. So, you gotta

cause enough damage to drain ’em. Make ’em weak.”

“Even a weak nosferat is a dangerous one, though.” Babbage laid the bullet down. “So when you go

in for the kill, keep your weapon handy. I repeat myself only because so many Kouroi have failed to

do so and been uncomfortably surprised.”

Nobody laughed at that one. We’d all seen the pictures. Big, glossy 8x10s, bigger versions of the

ones you’d see in forensic textbooks. Vampires are only messy sometimes when they feed. But

when they kill a djamphir, they like to make a statement. There’s nothing like hating something

that’s part of you to make you really savage.