The Brotherhood volunteered to die for this cause, but nobody bothered to ask me. I want to live. I want a chance to make the world better, to do something beautiful. The Knights on the field always planned to die for their beliefs. I intend to live for mine.

“Jude and Gunnar are leaving the picnic grounds.” I can feel them, darting through the trees along the streambed, a blur of speed. “They’re heading toward Adriana.”

A few blocks away from us—close enough to reach on foot—Adriana sits behind the wheel of Hope’s car. She’s the getaway driver, waiting for her girlfriend and my parents to fill the empty seats so she can take all of them as far away as possible.

“Then they have your parents!” Hope squeezes my hand again. She’s made the same deduction I have, and I reach out with my mind, because I have to know for sure. It’s Gunnar’s thoughts I find first, and when I understand that he’s carrying my mother as he sprints after Jude, my eyes well with tears. But there’s no time to cry, because I’m picking up other thoughts as well—ones filled with malevolence.

“You should get moving,” I say urgently. Rasputin’s forces are dwindling fast; he’s losing his followers, and no matter how satisfying he finds it to kill, he’s losing his patience with the distraction of the battle. In fact—“Go! Now!”

Four of the remaining Northern Wolf vampires suddenly spring away from the clearing, each hurtling with impossible speed in a separate direction. I don’t even have to reach into their easily accessible minds to know that this is a recon mission—that Rasputin wants to find me, and these are his advance scouts.

One of them is headed our way.

Hope pales, lurching to her feet, and she starts to run—but she barely makes it five yards before a figure rises into the night sky, arms wide and eyes blazing, soaring above the trees that separate the factory from Colgate Woods in a gravity-defying leap.

The Northern Wolf minion is still in midair when I raise his blood, speeding its atoms, until he erupts; he bursts into flames as he passes over the chain-link fence and crashes hard to the pavement, dead before he hits the ground. His body shrivels, burns, and disarticulates so fast that Hope still hasn’t even made it to the main road before he’s nothing but ash and bone—before I swivel and shout, “STOP!”

She stumbles to a halt and spins around, our eyes connecting. This time, I know she hears what I’m thinking. The telepathic connection linking vampires to their progeny means that the second his outrider spotted us, Rasputin knew where we were as well. And now he’s coming, abandoning the battlefield, and bringing his remaining minions with him.