Nick charged me. The vines smashed all around me, scouring the ice with their thorns. I dodged and ducked on instinct. Left, right, left, left. We danced across the ice. My feet slipped. Thorns scratched my arms like stinging bees. I wasn’t fast enough.

Robert lunged from my right. The vine took him straight across the chest. Clothes ripped and a wererat in a half-form dropped to the ground. One vine whistled over his head. He lunged under it, snarled, and kicked Nick’s feet from under him with one devastating sweep.

Wow.

Nick stumbled. Desandra, huge and shaggy, leaped over my head and smashed into the crusader. Derek must’ve finally cut her out. Nick slid across the ice into the hole gaping in the pavement. His vines shot out and caught the ice with their thorns. I dashed forward, slid on my knees, and sliced across the vines. Slayer’s blade sliced through the shoots. Nick dropped down into the hole.

“Move,” Derek roared behind me.

I rolled to the side. A rusted truck blocked the sky. Derek turned it and hurled it into the hole, hood first. The vehicle slid in a couple of feet and stopped, wedged. A frantic scratching sliced against the truck—Nick’s vines scouring the metal.

I exhaled. My ribs hurt. Small cuts on my shoulders and sides stung as if burned.

“And stay there!” Desandra snarled.

I turned to Derek. “Let me see your hand.”

He thrust his left hand at me. The cuts from the thorns hadn’t closed. The skin around them turned dark. Blood streaked with gray oozed from the wounds. The toxin was killing the Lyc-V inside his body. The scratches on Desandra’s furry arms were still bleeding, too.

“I’m fine,” Derek said.

“Yes. We’re fine,” Desandra added.

There was nothing to be done. The best we could do was to get through to the crime scene and get back to the Keep, where Doolittle could treat them.

Ascanio sniffed at Derek’s hand. “Smells wrong. I think we should chop it off. Here, hold it steady.”

Derek pantomimed squeezing Ascanio’s throat with his other hand.

In the distance the two vampire minds stopped pacing and moved toward us. Shit.

“We have to go.” I jumped to my feet. “Now!”

• • •

CUDDLES GALLOPED THROUGH the streets. No need or time for stealth now. We had to get to the crime scene and get the hell out.

We swung onto Jonesboro and Cuddles pounded down the street. The Fox Den loomed before us, alternating apartment buildings of red brick and yellow stucco fused together into one giant complex. Finally.