He drove on, searching.

There were crouched figures along the street ahead, and upon seeing the car they rushed it and tried to leap onto the hood. But then they saw the face behind the wheel and they scrambled away, letting the cruiser move past. Danner spared them little more than a contemptuous sneer. Half of him wished them away, the lumbering ill-witted shits. They were all so grotesquely stupid. They didn’t even know when to wake, losing precious night hours. At times their wit and cunning could seem intact, but it was an act, and then only in relation to hunting their prey. Anything else, whether it be books or television or simply the weather, drew blank stares and mumbles. The dead were ever poor conversationalists, he had relearned of late. It was ironic; all of those years of solitude, hungering not just for sustenance but for company as well, for the spoken word of another, be he living or not. Anything but that perfect silence. But now he’d learned that words alone were not enough. He needed something . . .

He dismissed that notion out of hand. I am a vampire. The vampire. I’ve survived for almost a century, and will do so for centuries more. I need nothing.

Still, someone to speak to now and then . . .

He felt his rage at Stiles and sought to determine its core. Vengeance? Surely. Few men had ever hurt him so. But a tinge of disappointment as well? He had wrapped it in a film of retribution and used it to humiliate Stiles, but his offer of immortality had been more than that. Perhaps he should have killed the man when he had the chance, but he had felt something. It wasn’t very strong—he did not care for this man, certainly not as he had for the Master. But there was something still . . . a recognition of likeness, perhaps. A kinship. Stiles would have made a good vampire, he’d seen that from the start. He would have accepted it, given time. And how he would’ve thrived.

But then the fanciful thoughts faded and he grumbled. Stiles was no longer an issue; kinship or not, he had stepped too far over the line. He had to die. And the vampire now derived a great deal of joy in planning just how.

The patrol car rounded the corner at Ritter Street and Danner immediately stomped the brake hard enough to nearly shove it through the floor. The wheels locked as he swerved to the side, barely missing the rusted white van that sat at the curb there.

Stiles’s van?

He could scarcely control his anticipation—he ripped the driver’s door off in his haste to get out and almost did the same to the other vehicle. The van, he found, was empty. But the color, the outer rust, the upholstery . . . it had to be. He crawled inside and sniffed the air, straining it through supernatural senses. It was Stiles all right. He could feel his presence around him, thick, almost palpable. It vividly brought back the scene of last night’s confrontation. The scent of the soldier’s fear.