“Jacob,” Martin said thoughtfully. “I had not heard.” He shrugged. “I am not a vampire to fear Bonarata’s power. He will not lightly take on Libor or the Vltava Pack. That is not to say that someday there might not be war between us. But it won’t be over something as small as my saying his name.” He smiled, and it lit his eyes. “It might take something like you. Or not.”

Jitka’s door opened. “Okay,” she said. “You—”

And that’s when the vampire dropped off the roof and on top of Jitka like a piano falling on Roger Rabbit.

Vampires are hard to detect because when they are still, they really don’t make any noise at all. I don’t know what they had done to disguise their smell, but I’d seen too many vampires move to mistake them for anything else. And once the one landed on Jitka, there were suddenly more of them.

My whole life, I’ve heard people trying to compare vampires and werewolves. Vampires are faster and werewolves stronger. Or werewolves are faster, and vampires are stronger. I’ve now seen them both in combat enough to form my own opinion: the one thing that really matters is that both werewolves and vampires are stronger than I am. The only thing I have going to match them is speed—which is why I broke and ran.

I didn’t run to the road—there were innocent civilians in that direction. I didn’t run to the woods. I didn’t know the lay of the land, I didn’t like being lost with vampires chasing me, and my coyote didn’t blend in with the local fauna.

Because I also didn’t believe in letting other people fight my battles while I watched, I ran to the fenced paddock, rolled over the rail fence, and grabbed the scythe. I especially didn’t run from a fight when there was such a handy weapon lying around.

Properly armed, I turned to see what had happened while I’d been running. There were four vampires swarming Martin and Jitka—presumably having gone through the same basic evaluation that I’d just done. The werewolves were more of a threat than I was.

Assuming they came from Bonarata, the only thing they knew about me was that I’d run from Bonarata and I was weaker than a werewolf. In the fields and the woodlands beyond the fields, it would take me a long time to run far enough that the vampires couldn’t find me. So they’d ignored me and attacked the werewolves.

Fights usually happen really fast, especially fights between supernatural creatures. I’d seen one or two that lasted longer because the combatants were just that tough, but even then, seconds counted.

I stood behind the fence, waiting for what seemed like ten minutes and was probably closer to thirty or forty seconds. I thought I was going to have to try something else because the fight stayed too far away.

But then Jitka threw one of her attackers like a shot put. She—the vampire, not Jitka—hit a post and staggered. She grabbed the fence for support, her eyes on Jitka.