She tucks something into my mouth—two fat, smooth capsules that she places between my back molars, before pressing my jaws together to split them open. Fluid rushes across my tongue, thick and coppery, and I’m swallowing it before the bright tingle it leaves behind registers. Vampire blood. My eyes open in surprise, the car a swirl of foggy colors that snap into focus as the substance races to my stomach and begins to spread.

“Auggie!” Daphne snaps her fingers, pulling my attention. The pain in my side is already dulling, my thoughts unscrambling as the static in my brain dissipates. Our eyes locked, Daphne reaches down and unbuckles my seat belt. “Listen to me: As soon as you get out, you need to run, okay? Head straight home, don’t stop—we’re only about a mile away, and those capsules should give you enough juice to make it in a few minutes.”

“What do you mean? What’s happening?” I reach for the torn skin on my neck, and feel it close under my fingertips. The windshield is destroyed, the front end of the car wrapped around the trunk of a massive oak, and my door hangs open. At first, I don’t see Rasputin—but then movement catches my eye from the middle of the road, a dark shape flung some twenty yards from the crash, slowly twisting its limbs back together.

“I told you I’m going to protect you, and I meant it.” Daphne leans over and kicks hard at her door, forcing it open with an angry croak. “I’m going to keep him busy, but … I don’t know how long that’s going to work. So I need you to watch out for yourself. The second you get out of the car, just run and don’t look back. Understand?”

I blink, the words clear but confusing. “What do you mean, you don’t know how long it’s going to work?” She opens her mouth, and for a moment I think she’s going to tell me something … but then she looks away. My voice rising, I demand, “Daph?”

Instead of answering, she reaches across me, grabbing hold of my injured shoulder and rolling it. The sudden pain makes me gasp, bones and tendons crunching back together as she manipulates the joint—but when she releases it, the throbbing ache is gone entirely. With a smile, troubled and brief, she says, “Don’t be a hero, and don’t wait for me.”

And with that, she turns and clambers from the car. Panicked, I roll out on my side, tumbling onto someone’s lawn—lights springing on up and down the block as people react to the crash. Rasputin is just beginning to stand when Daphne advances on him, and even from thirty feet away, I can see malevolence in the feral grin that sharpens his face.