“Isabeau,” he admitted ruefully. “The Hounds are a great tribe, but they have no sense of fashion.”

“So she tore your jeans?”

He grinned. “No, she tore at a Hel-Blar. I just happened to get in the way.”

I grinned back at him. “Cool.” Have I mentioned? Our girlfriends are fierce.

“What are you doing in here?” Logan asked.

“I don’t know,” I admitted.

“You don’t know?” he repeated, confused.

I sighed. “It’s complicated.”

He snorted. “It always is. Solange or Lucy?”

“Solange.” I shook my head. “Let’s get out of here.”

He followed me down the stairs. “What’s going on, Nicholas?”

I nodded to his guard on the other side of the door. “Wait,” I mouthed.

We went out to the porch and Logan smiled easily at her. “We’re going to walk back,” he said. “To patrol. And to talk about girls,” he lied. “Can you hang back, Grace? My brother here’s a little shy.”

She smiled back at him. “Sure.”

“You can take my bike,” I added, tossing her the keys.

“Sweet.” The silver studs on the leather strap across her chest glinted in the light as she turned toward my motorcycle. She had a dozen stakes easy on that strap and a sword strapped to her back.

Logan looked down the lane and frowned. “Where’s your guard?”

I waited until we were crossing the field to the forest to tell him the rest. The growl of the motorcycle behind us helped cover our voices. I told about Solange compelling our guards, even the part about finding her in the woods drunk on a bloodslave.

“Our Solange? Really?” Logan scrubbed his face. “Have you told Mom and Dad?”

I shook my head. “No. It’s been a bad day already.”

It got worse.

Of course, it got worse.

The woods were crawling with Hel-Blar, vampires from around the world, and vampire hunters. We passed a broken stake stuck in a birch tree, a clump of ferns covered in what looked like ash, and several trails of blood.

“Remember when no one ever came here?” Logan asked. The moon scattered light between the branches and turned the river to pewter.

“Yeah, I kind of miss being in shameful exile,” I agreed.

And then we heard it, even over the rumble of the motorcycle pacing us.

Battle.

Logan and I glanced at each other and then launched into a run, the trees a blur of green and gray around us. The sounds of a struggle, cursing, the distinctive quiet whoosh of a vampire turning to dust. We skidded to a stop under a huge ponderosa pine tree.

It looked like the fight was down to three vampire hunters and a vampire girl in black pleather pants out of the Matrix movies. I recognized the short black hair and the sneer, instantly.

She was family. And though she might have accidentally almost gotten Solange killed this summer, she still needed our help. Because she was clearly losing.

Grace sped up and cut us off, sliding the bike between us and the fight. “Stay back,” she ordered, drawing a sword, slender as an ice pick.

We diverted around her, leaping into the air and landing in unison on the other side.

“That’s our cousin,” I tossed back at her, still running. “London! Hang on!”

Grace tossed back a few words that weren’t anatomically possible. Logan pulled the nearest hunter out of the melee and threw him into a clump of purple monkshood. He landed on his arm and there was an audible crack.

“Is it broken?” his partner shouted.

“Dislocated,” he grunted.

I jumped over him and grabbed his partner. She whirled, snarling, and tried to bite me. And she wasn’t even a vampire. I dodged a punch and then a stake, but only just barely. I used vampire speed to pop from one side of her to the other, until she was frustrated and dizzy. Then I threw her at the first hunter just scrambling to his feet.

London used her elbow on the third hunter’s nose, and blood sprayed into the grass. He didn’t fall, only staggered and grabbed for another stake. There was a cut on London’s cheek and a gash under her knee.

“Nick, behind you!”

I reacted to Logan’s shout before thinking. I dropped and rolled toward the attack instead of away, which was expected. I caught the hunter in the ankles and knocked her down. Her stake still flew true enough to pin my sleeve to a tree root. I yanked free just as the wounded hunter also threw a stake, this one at London. She yelled and toppled. I smelled blood but couldn’t see if she was badly hurt.

Logan bent his body forward as if he’d been doing yoga with Lucy, and then he kicked backward at the last second and caught the female hunter in the hip. Grace flew off the motorcycle, fists flying, and knocked her out to finish the job.

Logan reached London just as her eyes rolled back in her head and she slumped down into the pine needles. “Stakes are soaked in holy water!” he yelled. “She’s down.”

It distracted me just long enough to get caught by the hunter with the beard. He lashed out at a brutal angle, catching my kneecap. I fell, screaming, my fangs biting through my gums. He kicked my shoulder as I bent to grab my knee, rolling me slightly into a nest of withered ferns, keeping me pinned. His boot ground down on my neck. Pain choked me. He was stronger than he looked, with scars on his throat and a rattling necklace of vampire fangs.

Logan was bent over London and didn’t see me.