“Drive north two blocks, then turn right at the edge of the Witches’ District,” I instructed Alec.

We were driving to the source of the vampire attack, our sirens flashing. Traffic parted in front of us, but they weren’t moving fast enough for Alec. He swerved the truck onto the sidewalk, speeding past the lines of cars. He was driving like a maniac. Usually, I would have complained, but we were in a hurry right now. If the last attack were any indication, we could be in a lot of trouble. A typical vampire had the potential to cause a massive amount of carnage. If his powers were boosted like Serenity’s had been—if he’d acquired magic outside the vampire spectrum—then this could turn into nothing short of a disaster.

We were getting close. I could see the trail of destruction. Buildings had holes in the sides; something hard and heavy had been thrown at them. Cars were overturned everywhere. The warped remains of streets signs lay on the pavement, like they’d been used as baseball bats. A car was impaled on a traffic light. I prayed that we didn’t find anything else impaled.

“Park here,” I told Alec. “This is the place.”

The car had barely stopped moving when we all ran out. It looked like a battle site. Blood was splashed across the buildings. There was a low rumble, the love child of a hiss and a growl. It echoed in the darkness, seeming to come from everywhere. And it was growing louder.

A potent electric charge danced across my skin, causing the hairs on my arms to stick up. A strange, unsettling feeling washed over me. It wasn’t exactly dread, though I was feeling a lot of that at the moment. My magic clenched up inside of me, like an iron ball in my stomach, like it had eaten something it didn’t agree with.

We moved carefully, weapons out, searching the shadows. A bent streetlamp was buzzing, flickering at erratic intervals. A scream shot down the street. We kicked off into a run, following the sound to its source.

When we reached the end of the street, we found bodies on the ground. Two of them were Legion soldiers. They’d been ripped apart, mutilated. My stomach lurched as I glanced across what remained of their uniforms. Corporal Jenkins and Sergeant Lee. They were the ones who’d called in the report. Just minutes ago, they’d still been alive. If only we’d gotten here faster.

A shaking lump lay beside their bodies. I squinted and saw that lump was actually a woman on the ground. Her skirt was torn, and the strings of her corset had split open. It looked like an enormous beast had scratched her across the stomach. The short sleeves of her blouse hung limply against her arms, soaked in blood. The top might have been white once, but now it was stained crimson.

“A witch,” I said.

She was bleeding but still alive. Ivy ran to her and began to mix up potions using the ingredients she drew from the pouches on her belt.

“What happened here?” I asked the witch as Ivy healed her.

The witch’s body shook with fear. “A beast. A horrible beast.”

“A vampire?”

“Yes.” Her lower lip quivered. “And no.”

“What do you mean yes and no?” Alec asked.

“It was big. So big. Especially his fangs,” she said. “But he was not beautiful like a vampire. He was…wild. A monster.”

“Where did he go?” I asked her.

The witch pointed up, her eyes trembling.

I looked up, squinting to see through the darkness. I caught a hint of movement. I ignited a ball of fire, sending it up there to light up the darkness. A vampire fell down from the shadows. He’d jumped off the roof of a hundred-foot building. His bare feet landed on the cobbled ground with a thump, but the drop hadn’t hurt him. He was very resilient, even for a vampire.

His eyes were lit up like rubies. Blood dripped from his fangs and fingernails. His pale hair was stained with it. His clothes, the fashionable clubbing outfit of a vampire going out on the town—a silk shirt, a pair of designer jeans, dress shoes—it was all torn to pieces and stained with blood and rust, the latter presumably from the old street signs and posts he’d thrown around.

When the vampire saw us, his mouth opened wide and he let out a horrible noise. The growl-hiss I’d heard earlier belonged to him. There was something deeply primitive about it, as though there was no rational thought left in him, only instinct. The witch was right. He was truly a beast. His eyes shone with uncontrolled rage.

I waved at Drake and Alec. They tried to move toward him from two sides, to surround him. The vampire pivoted sharply, lightning sizzling down his right arm. An electric whip formed in his hand, snapping and hissing as he lashed out at Drake.

No vampire had elemental magic. This was definitely linked to the earlier incident with Serenity. But what had caused this strange sickness that gave them both powers and drove them mad? What was turning them into monsters?

Monsters. That’s what Serenity had meant when she’d said the monsters were taking over. The monsters inside of her, taking over her mind. I glanced at the wild vampire. Those same monsters lived inside of him.

The vampire’s whip knocked Drake against the wall. Lightning kissed the brick facade, creating a wide laceration with a black burnt line on either side. He swung again, but Drake was already on his feet.

The vampire turned around and, in a flash of speed, slashed his whip at Alec, who’d tried to sneak up on him. Alec caught the lightning whip around his forearm and tugged. It disintegrated into smoke. The vampire roared in fury.

Alec shot at it with his Hellfire, but the vampire was too fast. It ducked out of the way, and the flaming bullet tore through the building behind him.

Drake and Ivy charged at the vampire, but he shifted shape, turning into Ivy. There were two of her now. One of the Ivys grabbed the other and they tumbled onto the ground, kicking and punching.

Alec aimed his gun again, but then he paused. “Which one is the vampire? I can’t tell them apart.”

Drake shook his head in frustration. “I don’t know.”

I looked at the two Ivys. It was a powerful spell, a good copy. Thanks to my recent training in shifting magic, though, I could pick out the subtle differences between them. I spotted the vampire in the shadows, behind the Ivy mask. I ran forward and punched him hard in the jaw. I put a lot of magic behind that punch, enough to break through the illusion. The false Ivy shattered, revealing a feral vampire.

“It’s sure great to have my magic back,” I commented.

I moved in to knock out the vampire, but he darted out of my path, his nimble grace in complete contradiction to the primitive gleam in his red eyes. He was so fast, faster than any vampire I’d ever fought. Faster than I was. I couldn’t get in close enough to land another punch.

And then the vampire just froze, his eyes locked on my pale hair. It had mesmerized him, just like it did all vampires. He shared that trait with his brethren. I took advantage of his distracted state and slammed a punch into his head.

He withstood my hit. Damn. He wasn’t only stronger and faster than a standard vampire. He was more resilient too.

He struck back with a psychic blast. It smashed into me with the force of a train, flinging me across the dark alley. My back slammed against a building, bricks spilling down on me. I staggered to my feet, my bones creaking, my head pounding, the world spinning. I lifted my hand to the back of my head, and my fingers came back covered in my own hot blood.

The vampire was closing in on me. I swung again, but he was quicker. He caught my hand, and in a single swift movement, he snapped my wrist. Biting back the pain, I drew my knife with my other hand and stabbed the vampire in the side. He knocked me aside like I was a mosquito. And then he went after my companions. He didn’t even remove the knife I’d lodged in his side. It was like he didn’t feel it at all.

Alec fired the Hellfire again, and this time he didn’t miss. The vampire roared with pain, grabbing the gun out of Alec’s hand. He twisted it back on itself, then tossed the warped piece of metal to the ground. Alec glanced down at his mutilated gun, a look of total mortification on his face.

He drew another gun and fired. The mundane bullets tore through the vampire. One of those bullets hit the vampire square in the forehead. The shot should have killed him, but it didn’t. It didn’t even slow him down. Drake charged the vampire, tackling him. The vampire bucked, throwing him off his back.

I shot the vampire with a fireball. If he noticed, he didn’t show it. He continued to beat into my companions. Nothing hurt him. Nothing except the Hellfire bullets, I realized. Bullets that were made of dark magic. Dark magic hurt the vampire.

So I changed the tone of my fire, using my dark magic instead of the light. That the vampire noticed. He roared and spun around, charging at me. I created a whip of my own, made of dark fire. Everywhere it touched, it cut into the vampire’s skin.

But his wounds healed too fast, sealing right before my eyes. The vampire was too close. He was almost upon me. I continued to slash and burn, but he was closing in. I couldn’t hold him off much longer. I just couldn’t do damage fast enough. I snapped the whip, curling it around the vampire’s neck, pouring more dark magic into the spell. The vampire roared, swinging his arms widely. His fist slammed into me and threw me back.

I pushed myself off the ground, pulling a stake out of my leg. A wooden crate had broken apart when the vampire had thrown me onto it. I limped forward on my good leg, clutching my broken wrist. My companions weren’t faring any better. Drake was trying to pull a pole out of Alec’s torso. Ivy was trying to protect the witch.

I prepped my dark magic. Flames erupted on my unbroken hand. The vampire stalked forward, looking as good as new. There wasn’t a scratch on him.

“You have got to be kidding me,” I groaned.

The vampire was almost to me.

A growl shook the buildings, and a werewolf jumped out of the shadows. It looked ready for a fight. I was surrounded, trapped by a vampire on one side and a werewolf on the other. And it wasn’t just any werewolf. That werewolf was bigger than any I’d ever seen. It was the emperor of all werewolves. Its lips peeled back, revealing a mouth of sharp teeth.

But the werewolf didn’t attack me. It jumped over me, diving at the vampire, tackling it hard. Lightning sizzled on its fur, shocking the vampire. I cringed. The werewolf was infected too.

The vampire and werewolf were so busy fighting each other that they’d forgotten all about the rest of us. At least they weren’t friends. If they had been, my team wouldn’t have had a prayer of making it out of here alive.

The werewolf knocked the vampire aside, then it went for me. It froze, its eyes locked on my hair, mesmerized. Ok, that was weird. So far, only vampires had ever been mesmerized by my hair.

Speaking of vampires…

The vampire jumped up and attacked the dazzled werewolf. They rolled across the ground, ramming into a building. Bricks fell down and glass shattered.

I rushed over to Alec and Drake and, with my good hand, grabbed the pole jammed through Alec’s torso. I met his eyes. “This won’t hurt a bit.”

“You lying—”

I pulled out the pole. A roar erupted from his mouth. I quickly poured a healing solution over the wound. It sizzled and steam rose from it.

Alec roared even louder. “That felt like acid! What the hell is the matter with you, woman?!”

“That’s Lieutenant Woman to you, and you’re welcome. I just healed the gaping hole in your stomach.”

“You call that helping?” he growled. “I’d rather bleed to death.”

“Not in my truck, you don’t.” I helped him to his feet, then limped toward the truck. “Drake, help him in. Then get the car started.”

Drake was staring at Ivy, who was kneeling beside the witch, trying to keep her alive. The vampire and werewolf were fighting around them. The monsters had already nearly barreled them over twice.

I snapped my fingers in front of Drake’s eyes. “Snap out of it, Drake. You get Alec inside and start the truck. I’ll get Ivy and the witch.”

Drake nodded, his face half-apologetic, half-defiant. I zigzagged around the fighting vampire and werewolf, ignoring the throbbing pain in my leg.

“Grab the witch,” I told Ivy. “We’re getting out of here.”

While the two supernaturals were busy trying to kill each other, Ivy lifted the victim into her arms, and we ran back to the truck. Ivy carried the witch. I ran in front, keeping the path clear, which meant knocking the vampire or werewolf out of the way whenever either one got too close. They were so intent on killing each other, they didn’t even seem to notice.

We made it to the truck, and I slammed the door shut, shouting to Drake, “Drive! Now!”

As the truck sped off, tires screeching, I only hoped the vampire and werewolf kept fighting each other long enough for us to get away. As soon as one of them won the battle, the winner would come for my team. And I wasn’t sure our truck could outrun them.