He stepped around the corner into plain view, but he didn’t run. He staggered along, imitating their own ambling gait as best he could, heading directly for the female and not around her. She glanced at him once but paid him little attention, not until he was much closer. But by then it was too late. The sword was drawn and already slicing toward her. By the time she reached up for her own throat, there was nothing to find but a stump.

The other two turned to look just as the female slumped to the ground. Stiles sprinted for them and slashed low as he passed the first, taking the vampire off at the knees. As it fell, he whirled on the second and took its head as cleanly as the girl and left its body staggering about as he rounded the next corner and headed across the front lawn.

His eyes scanned the yard, hoping to gauge the situation even as he acted on it. Six of them, maybe seven. At least the ones he could see. They turned casually as he ran past, surprise etched into the alabaster faces. It bought him a few extra seconds. A few more steps.

You’re gonna make it, you’re gonna make it . . .

A teenage boy and girl scrambled across the yard in a parallel path to his own, but as they approached the front gate they turned in and tried to intercept him. He held the sword against his side until the last minute, and as the boy groped at him he brought it up in a measured slash and sheared both arms off halfway to the elbow, then drove a kick into the boy’s face to remove him from the path. The girl saw this and tried to slow her momentum but it was too late; it took her right into the arc of the blade. Her body slid to a stop, but her head kept going. And as her cadaver fell from Stiles’s view, he found himself directly in front of the small wooden-slat gate to the property. No more than a few feet away, at the shoulder of the road, was rust-plagued salvation—the van.

The sound of many feet caused a realization to explode in his gut. The boy and girl hadn’t thought to stop him. They were meant only to slow him down.

He started to turn. That was when they hit him.