I didn’t have to hunt vampires.

They were hunting me, just as Clayton had predicted. They were coming for me.

I was ready.

Sort of.

I shrieked and whipped Silverlight through the air, and it took me all of five seconds to realize that I needed to stop fighting the sword for control. She knew what to do, much better than I did. So I gave her my right arm.

The vampires surrounded me, darting away, screaming as Silverlight caught one in the throat and sent him reeling—but another took his place immediately. There were at least a dozen vampires, or so it appeared to my terrified brain, but Silverlight didn’t hesitate.

And some of them went after the humans who’d followed me. “Run,” I begged, but I heard their screams, and I knew it was too late for the men.

Adrenaline lent me speed and strength and I whirled, dodged, and leapt, cutting and killing, truly killing, and the vampires I downed did not rise again. As one fell I was already attacking another.

And those still living began to falter.

They’d known I was a hunter, but they’d been sure they could take me out. One inexperienced hunter against a dozen vampires? No hunter would survive that.

But they hadn’t counted on Silverlight.

I heard distant sirens screaming toward us, but I heard them through a filter, and somehow, they weren’t even real. The only things real were the vampires, the sword, and the fight.

I drove Silverlight through a female vampire’s heart, and turned to get the one on my left as she fell. At that instant, one of them rammed me from behind. He sank his fangs into the back of my neck, and I felt the pain all the way to the bone.

The success of his attack seemed to give the remaining ones courage, and they all converged upon me at once. Still, I gave Silverlight her head, and together, we fought on.

The vampire biting me snaked his arms around my waist and jerked me off balance, and he began to suck. It was as though a stick, long, thin, and sharp, had gotten lodged in my body and he was pulling it out with his teeth.

It was agonizing.

Another vampire sank fangs into my left forearm, and I could almost hear the bone being scraped. My entire body began to shiver with the pain of it.

I plunged the sword into that one’s head. As he fell to the ground, Silverlight followed him down to enter his heart. Not because he’d come back from the injury to his brain—she was Silverlight, and he wasn’t coming back—but because his heart tasted like a little slice of heaven.

There were stakes in my belt and I yanked one out, grinding my teeth against the pain, but even as I lifted it, another vampire latched on, sinking his fangs into the top of my left shoulder. I immediately dropped the stake as the pain shot from my shoulder to my fingertips and even after Silverlight took his head, the arm still hung useless and unmoving.

The vampire who’d bitten my neck was gone, just abruptly gone, and I had no idea what had happened to him until I glimpsed a very welcome sight.

The new guy, Shane Copas, was fighting with me. He fought like a fierce shadow, fast, strong, and mean, and I could barely take my eyes off him.

And watching him almost got me killed.

A vampire leapt and grabbed me around the waist, trying to bring me to the ground where I’d be less of a threat. Silverlight was ready for him, even if I was not, and a second later, his head was rolling across the pavement.

There were others, but I was not alone, and my reluctant partner fought with experience and speed. He held a long blade in one hand and a stake in the other, and used them like magic wands, dropping every vampire he touched.

And then there was silence.

The dozen vampires lay spread across the street, dead, shriveling in pools of spilt blood that hadn’t ever belonged to them. Some of it—a lot of it—was mine.

Some of it belonged to the young men who’d followed me. The humans. Their deaths would haunt me, I had no doubt. I hadn’t saved them. I hadn’t even attempted to save them, really. The supernats were right. I wasn’t ready. Lesson learned, though it was a lesson that’d come too late.

But I was alive.

Silverlight gave me back my arm.

I automatically shoved her back into the sheath, and breathing hard, I turned to look at Copas.

He snarled at me, then turned and pointed.

Police cars, lights on, screamed to a halt not half a block away. Cops took shelter behind their open doors, guns drawn and trained on the battle scene. On us.

I shook my head to clear it, then reached up with my right hand to clear blood from my eyes. Still breathing a little too hard, I flung the blood away to land upon the pavement.

My shivering intensified as I watched the police. They’d begun to creep toward us, slowly, guns still drawn, silver crosses gleaming from around their necks. I felt for my own cross, but it was gone. The chain must’ve broken. Most likely the vampire had broken it when he’d bitten the back of my neck.

At the thought, the injury from that bite began clamoring for attention. My left arm hung like dead weight, and I realized there wasn’t an inch of my body that didn’t throb with pain.

I groaned. “Dear lord,” I murmured. “I hurt.”

Shane didn’t even look at me. “You caused this, baby hunter. You killed the humans and you brought the cops. You deal with it.” And then he turned on his heel and trotted away, fading into the darkness even as the police shouted at him not to move.

It dawned on me that the police weren’t exactly pleased with me only when they began screaming at me to get on the ground.

“What?” I asked, slightly dazed, very tired, and tempted to do as Shane had done and run away. But with my luck, the cops would have shot me dead.

“I said get down,” a cop screamed. “Get down now.”

“Asshole,” I muttered, and dropped to my knees.

“Hands on your head,” he screamed.

“I can’t move my arm,” I explained. I lifted my right arm and put my hand on my head, but that wasn’t good enough.

“I said get your hands on your head,” he yelled.

“And I said I can’t, you fucking moron!” Fury rushed through me, and I would have liked nothing more than to leap at him and beat him to a bloody pulp.

Fortunately for me, I got a handle on the anger.

“Get down!”

I fell to my stomach and put my right hand behind my back, and then they were upon me. I was pretty sure more pain was coming from the unimpressed cops.

I was right.

By the time they slung me handcuffed and controlled into the smelly backseat of a cruiser, I was blubbering like a baby.

And they’d taken Silverlight. They’d taken my stakes, too, but those didn’t concern me. One night as a hunter and I found myself in trouble and missing my sword. It wasn’t my proudest moment.

Policemen walked around the area as I watched from the car, talking and pointing and speaking into mics on their shoulders, and still more cars arrived. The area was taped off, investigators bent over the dead humans and what remained of the shrunken vampires, and still no one drove me away.

No one asked if I needed medical care, or came to talk to me about the fight.

The life of a beginner hunter was obviously not a very glamorous one. It was filled with pain and sorrow and so very many mistakes. Rookie mistakes.

Shane was gone, the street was littered with dead vampires and dead humans, and I was the only one left for the police to concentrate on.

Then someone began screaming, crying, and yelling for God, and I saw the cops holding back a woman who’d burst through the rapidly growing crowd. “That’s my boy,” she screamed. “That’s my boy.”

“No,” I whispered. “Oh, no.”

I’d messed up. I’d messed up badly.

But then I saw something that made me feel a little less alone.

Rhys and Angus strode toward us, anger in every line of their bodies, and it didn’t matter that some of the cops rushed toward them, stopping them before they got halfway to me. It didn’t matter that they couldn’t speak to me, or see me, or take me home.

They’d come for me.

A little warmth spread through my frozen body, thawing the horror. I rested my head against the glass, and kept my stare on them until finally, a cop got into the front seat and drove me away.