I sprinted, squeezing every drop of speed out of my legs. The road turned and I saw the Mt. Paran Sinkhole, a football-field-sized gap like a giant’s mouth half-open in the ground. The sinkhole had been born during a strong magic wave, and Northside’s wealth made sure that a single-lane bridge had been built over it almost overnight. The moonlight bathed the stone railing and the six shapeshifters waiting on the bridge with three familiar-looking Jeeps.

One shapeshifter stood in front of the others. His jacket was off. He leaned forward, his dark eyes fixed on the vampires behind us with a cold predatory expression, his muscular body coiled like a compressed spring. I used to call Derek “boy wonder,” but “boy” no longer fit. He was nothing but hard muscle wrapping bones connected with sinew. His body might have been nineteen, but his eyes under the dark eyebrows were thirty-five. Well, I did tell Jim to put someone solid in charge of the backup unit.

A second shapeshifter perched on the bridge’s stone railing to the right of Derek. The light of the moon slid over his face. The bane of my existence. Figured.

Derek and Ascanio. As long as they were separated by the length of a football field, they got along just fine. Getting them into close proximity to each other was like bringing a lit match into a house full of gas fumes. It’s a wonder the bridge didn’t explode under the pressure.

The distance between us and the vampires shrank. The undead were gaining. The air turned to fire inside my throat. A moment and we pounded onto the bridge. A white line drawn in chalk crossed the stone—the border. We cleared it.

The leading bloodsucker was so close, if we stopped it would be on us.

Derek shot past us like a bullet out of a gun.

I glanced over my shoulder. The vamp stepped over the chalk line. Derek leaped and kicked the undead. His foot connected with the vampire’s head. The impact knocked the abomination back twenty feet. It fell, sprang back up, froze, and trotted back to the rest of the living corpses waiting for it on the sidewalk.

I kept moving past the line of shapeshifters, slowing to a walk. I really wanted to bend over but I was on display, so I forced my body to remain upright. Breathing is like riding a bicycle. You never forget how to do it, and eventually my body remembered that it too could breathe instead of biting the air and swallowing it down in great big gulps. I walked on, past vehicles, until the bulk of the Jeeps hid us from the bloodsuckers’ view. The rest of the group followed me.