Freshman year, right after I came out, I had the classic recurring nightmare about being naked in front of my entire class. That sense of total exposure was nothing compared to what I feel when I leave the shadows for the moonlight, drowning in the vast openness of the picnic grounds. I’m radioactive with nerves, visible from space, with an angel uncoiling inside me. More whispers scatter across my skin, a snare closing, and I swallow hard.

The dominoes are beginning to fall.

“Okay.” My voice is so thin it could splice atoms. “Here I am. Now it’s your turn.”

Shapes begin to form around the golden eyes that hover in the trees, bodies emerging from the darkness in unison. Seventeen figures, all wearing identical robes of flowing white fabric, step into the clearing—staring creepily, like those animatronic bears at amusement parks. I brace myself, readying for an attack … and that’s when I hear the squeak and crunch of heavy wheels passing over dirt—when I sense three of the remaining Northern Wolf vampires approaching.

A wooden cart trundles into view, creaking and unsteady, from the mouth of a dark trail that snakes through the birch trees. Pushed by Rasputin’s remaining stooges, its weathered chassis bears up a sizeable cage, like something meant to hold tigers for a traveling circus—only the trembling, pitiful creatures being held in captivity aren’t animals. They’re my parents.

“Auggie?” My mother’s voice breaks when she sees me, her face gray, haggard with fear; and I take two frantic steps forward before I remember how much peril I’m in. I’ve got limitless opportunities to lose everything, but only one chance to save the people I love. To save the world. Rasputin wants to break me, to provoke me into charging, and I have to be smarter than that. Even if it hurts beyond enduring.

Just now, my heart sparking and explosive, I want to mesmerize these zombies into letting my parents go—to turn them against each other in a death match … but I don’t try. Even with vampire blood in my system, I know instinctively that I can’t control this many minds at once. The Corrupter’s hour is approaching, and I can feel him pulling away; pretty soon, this body won’t be big enough for the both of us, and one of us will have to go.

I’m starting to lose my grip on his power, and I’m running out of time.