He was fighting even after the guns were empty, even as he reloaded, keeping two of them at bay with scything spin kicks until the shotgun could dispatch them completely. Danner watched him fight and could not believe that this was the same man he had tortured the night before. He did not move the same way, did not favor his crotch or the ribs and fingers that the vampire had taken perverse pleasure in breaking. He fought with a maniacal fervor that took even Danner aback. And worried him.

Stiles took out another adversary, this time only temporarily with a point-blank blast to the forehead, and then he looked back at Danner. In that one instant, as if rehearsed, the fireglow played on Stiles’s face. They were the same bruised, puffy features, all right, perhaps even worse now. But their expression was different. His face was drawn and frozen in a mask of barely controlled rage, a face almost translucent, unable to hide the roiling emotion beyond. It was a madman’s face.

And then it smiled.

“Your turn, Sebastian,” he said almost casually, turning the shotgun one-handed in Danner’s direction. The vampire froze—whether from pain already inflicted or not, he simply couldn’t will his limbs to move. And in that split second, for the first time in decades, he was afraid. But then another of his creatures leaped onto Stiles from behind and drove him to the ground and the gunshot went wild. It struck Danner high on the left shoulder, just enough to rupture the deltoid and throw him into the fender of the car behind him. But the vampire did not cry out; instead he used the searing pain to fuel his movements. He scrambled away on his three limbs like a great wounded spider, across the yard’s soft grass where Bean’s antipersonnel devices couldn’t reach him and then full out for cover. Despite the deputy’s gunfire from somewhere in the darkness he made it to the corner of the house.