When Cyrus entered, they paused in what they were doing to notice him. All except three of them. They sat in the sanctuary, where he’d been held that morning. Candles marked the perimeter of a circle around them. Their fingertips touched and they chanted in a low drone. He recognized one as the person who’d pulled him from the other side, a tall female with a gravelly voice and an ugly face, even for a vampire. The other two looked as though they’d been younger at the time of their change. One was male, with spiked black hair, the other female, with a similar coif. They all wore their grotesque feeding faces.

Rage so intense it burned in his veins took hold of Cyrus, but his limbs were so weak that when he ran toward them, he stumbled, falling flat on his face. He looked up blearily as the vampires at the perimeter of the room advanced on him. They tangled their claws in his hair, tore the clothes on his body.

A scream, painfully familiar, rent the air. The monsters holding him froze, and he looked up in time to see the Mouse, her flimsy dress clinging to her wet skin, her sopping hair hanging like a tangled mop around her shoulders. She rushed at the vampires holding him and pushed them away, an action Cyrus might have perceived as fearless if she hadn’t been trembling and shrieking hysterically. She’d shocked them, though, and that was enough. They were too stunned to attack or even resist her.

She gripped Cyrus’s wrist with her cold, wet hand, pulled him to his feet and supported him with surprising strength. He looked back once at the three vampires in the circle, considered trying again to reach them.

“Please!” The Mouse tugged his arm frantically. “Please!”

She was right to be afraid. The vampires wouldn’t stay stunned forever. They would seethe over them like a tide of death, and weak, pathetic, human Cyrus would not be able to stop them. He held tight to the Mouse, his feet twisting beneath him, boneless as she dragged him from the sanctuary.

They made it only as far as the door before the monsters pursued them. The Mouse screamed as one of them caught a handful of her hair, but she tore free, tightening her arm around Cyrus. A few more steps and they would be safe, but those steps seemed like miles due to his deadened legs and her ebbing strength. With a final, heroic burst of energy, the Mouse wrenched the basement door open and pushed him ahead of her. He collapsed and nearly tumbled down the steps. She shoved the door closed and locked it.

The vampires clawed at the door, but the clawing gave way to angry voices, and then the voices faded into heavy footsteps. The Fangs had left them.