“Kick some ass, Buffy,” he murmured.

“I’m going with you,” I said, catching up to Hunter. “I’m technically one of you and one of them. Maybe it’ll help.”

Nicholas didn’t look thrilled. “Maybe you should stay here.”

I just looked at him.

He sighed. “Then I’m coming with you.”

“No way. Didn’t you hear what Hunter just told Quinn. And anyway, remember our last date? When Helios-Ra students and Huntsmen tried to kill you? How is that going to help me?” I went on my tiptoes and kissed him quickly. “I’ll be fine.”

Hunter and I followed the trail to where it ended, knowing full well that both Quinn and Nicholas were tailing us. We’d have done the same thing. There were dozens of other eyes watching as we stepped into the narrow clearing, the snow crunching under my school-issued boots. Hunter stood straight-backed and proud as any new recruit. I just nocked an arrow, feeling trapped.

“The vampires know you’re here,” Hunter called out. She didn’t even call them names. I totally would have. “You’ve lost the element of surprise and the weapon of dawn.” I knew she specifically used “dawn” instead of sunrise. “Any minute now they’ll be coming out to defend themselves. We can end this before it starts.”

“Why would we want to?” someone said with a snort. “Now get out of the way, vampire lover.”

“Yeah, we’re not the monsters here,” another hunter broke in. “Or have you forgotten which side you’re on?”

“Oh, I haven’t forgotten,” she answered grimly, nudging me when I opened my mouth to fire back a retort. “This isn’t defending an innocent from a vampire feeding or even a Hel-Blar. And I’m not suggesting some vampires shouldn’t be taken out for everyone’s safety. I think we can agree Lady Natasha and Montmartre aren’t going to be missed.”

There was a soft, menacing hiss from somewhere behind me. I tensed but refused to give in to fear. Hunter didn’t betray even a flutter of nerves. “Jenna has our back,” she murmured to me. And the vampire, no doubt once one of Montmartre’s Host, wouldn’t have bothered wasting his time hissing if he’d really wanted to kill us where we stood.

“We have a right to protect our town,” someone said.

“But that’s not what this is,” Kieran argued, stepping up beside us. He and Hunter stood shoulder to shoulder, as I imagined they had since they were little. It was the same way I would have stood with Solange or any of her brothers. “This is genocide and murder. It’s not who we are. We deserve better than what Dawn is making us into.”

“They’re vampires and we’re vampire hunters. Do the math. They’ve been killing in Violet Hill, leaving bodies behind every night. That queen of theirs is insane, worse than the last two.”

“Most of that was Dawn,” I argued, searching the undergrowth, hoping to see a hunter I recognized, someone who might actually listen. “She murdered humans to manipulate you all into this attack. She manipulated the vampires too. She framed Solange.” I thought about the vampires we’d found in Kieran’s house that night. “And she hired vampires to kill Kieran, to set Solange off, to set us all off.” I was sure of it. “She’s playing you.”

“Son of a bitch,” Kieran muttered, realizing I was right.

“We don’t care,” a hunter barked, though I still couldn’t see his face.

“You have to listen!” Hunter insisted.

“We’re doing right. Who the hell are you to tell us differently?”

“She’s my best student,” Bellwood barked back, suddenly emerging out of the shadows. I’d never seen her in her field gear outside of the old yearbooks in the library. “If I don’t expel her for this, of course.”

“Um . . .”

I wasn’t sure I’d ever seen Hunter that flustered. Of course, what else can you say to the headmistress of your school while standing in the middle of the forest at night during a covert op, surrounded by hostile hunters and vampires?

She slanted us a look. “You didn’t really think you could do this alone and undetected, did you?” Her stern gaze shifted, raking the faces now peering out of the bushes and trees. I’d be willing to bet over half the hunters around us had studied at the academy under Bellwood.

“And Ms. Dailey is in on it too,” Kieran called out. “I saw her at the caves. She tried to poison Hunter, one of our own. How is that honorable?”

Bellwood nodded her approval. “I’ve taught you better than this.”

“School’s been out for a long time, lady,” a Huntsman sneered. “Now move!”

He wasn’t the only one yelling at us.

“Hunter Wild, you go back to school right now.”

Hunter spun around. “Grandpa?”

He barreled out of a thicket, wearing leather straps across his chest, studded with stakes, Hypnos, nose plugs, and wild fear in his blue eyes. “Get out of here,” he said. “That is an order, young lady.”

“Nothing like being scolded by your grandfather to really make you look like a force to be reckoned with,” Hunter muttered. “You know I can’t do that,” she added louder, even though the vein in his temple was pulsing alarmingly. “Grandpa, this is wrong. And it’s going to be a massacre.”