“It’s a vampire, all right,” Ted took a single step back toward the kitchen. His eyes turned a vivid red. Lena readied her bokken, and I heard the telltale puff of Smudge’s flame. Ted hissed and backed away, shaking his head.

“What is it?” Lena asked.

Ted rubbed his jaw. “You know how I’ve stayed alive all these years, Isaac?”

“By hiding in a basement?”

He ignored me. “Instinct. Pure, animal instinct. When I step into that room and get a good whiff of the thing that killed your friend, those instincts tell me to get as far away as possible. You’d be wise to do the same.”

“But you can smell it?” I asked. “Which means you can track it.”

His animalistic snarl eased into an expression of disgust. “Aw, shit. I shouldn’t have said that. Yah, I can track it.”

I turned away from the blood, though I doubted I would ever be able to scrape the image from my mind. The vampire would have been drenched in blood. They couldn’t have simply strolled away without attracting notice, but some vampires could move too fast to see, especially at night. “Let’s go.”

“I’ll follow this thing, but once we find it, you’re on your own,” said Ted.

I straightened my jacket, taking comfort from the weight of my books. “You find it. We’ll take it from there.”

Chapter 7

Chapter 7

I WASN’T SURPRISED when Ted led us onto campus, directly toward the remains of the MSU main library. A dead Porter and a destroyed archive in the same city? How could they not be connected?

Nightfall had added strength to Ted’s step, making him seem somehow larger. He puffed on a cigarette as he walked. Apparently smoking didn’t interfere with his ability to track the other vampire. “This is a bad idea,” he muttered.

I remembered the MSU library as an imposing four-story fortress of brick and glass, built on the northern bank of the Red Cedar River. As a freshman, I had gotten hopelessly lost on the third floor, trying to track down a journal article about Jacques Derrida’s contribution to literary theory.

The attack had smashed the entire building to rubble.

Roads were blocked off, and the smell of smoke and dust choked the air. A hastily erected chain-link fence circled the ruins. Yellow caution tape was woven through the fence, framing a hill of broken bricks and twisted metal. Intact sections of wall and floor jutted from the pile at random angles. Broken glass glittered in the street, illuminated by enormous halogen lamps set up around the edges. Generators and construction equipment growled like angry metal beasts.

A crew in reflective orange vests and hard hats was working to clear the debris. Others worked with dogs, presumably searching for survivors trapped within the wreckage. A bulldozer was parked a short distance away. I spotted a police car and an ambulance as well.