“Not for you, apparently.” He glanced over as Hoyt strode back in, and Blair sprang to her feet.

“There’s a van on the lane there. The wheels are all ripped. There are some weapons in it.”

Blair didn’t bother with a jacket, but went out, jogged down the lane. The driver’s door was open, she noted, with the key dangling from the ignition, as if someone had tried to start it, then abandoned it in a hurry.

There were a couple of swords and a cooler holding several packets of blood in the cargo area.

“Well, it’s theirs,” she said to Hoyt. “No question of that. And the chances of all four tires going flat come in at zero.” She hunkered down, stuck her finger in the wide hole in the rubber. “Larkin did this, somehow.”

“They must have abandoned it, taken to the woods, I’d think, to hide from the sun.”

“Yeah.” Her smile showed grim purpose. “At last I have something to do. I’ll go get armed.”

“I’ll go with you.”

She went into the forest with crossbow and stake, seeking out the shadows, moving like one. At the fork of a path, she and Hoyt separated, each moving deeper into light that was dappled and dim.

She found one cowering, curled on mossy ground in deep shade. A boy, she noted, no more than eighteen when he died. From his clothes—holey jeans and a faded sweatshirt, she imagined he’d probably been a student doing the backpacking thing.

“Sorry about this,” she told him.

He hissed at her, crawled over to hide behind the trunk of a tree.

“Oh come on, like I can’t still see you? Don’t make me come up there.”

She didn’t hear the one coming behind her, but sensed it. Blair did a half pivot, lowered her right shoulder, so when it leaped at her back, she flipped it over.

This one was about the same age, a girl, and looked a lot more frisky.

“You two a couple? That’s cute, and really bad luck.”

The female charged, and Blair lowered the crossbow. She didn’t just want a kill, she realized, she wanted a fight.

She dodged the kick, taking the brunt of it on the side of the hip, and the second in the small of the back. There was enough force to pitch her forward. She landed on her hands, sprang over, and planted the heel of her boot in the vampire’s face.

“Kickboxing classes, huh?” She saw something in the eyes when it came back at her, when they traded blows. It hadn’t fed, she realized, remembering the cooler in the van. It was desperate.

And prolonging the kill was only torturing it. This time when it charged, Blair pulled her stake and put it through the heart.

“Bitch. Stupid bitch.” The one behind the tree shouted it out, and the heavy dose of New Jersey in the voice nearly amused her.

“Which one of us?”

When he leaped up, she rolled to her toes. But he began to run away. “Oh, for God’s sake.” She snatched up the crossbow, and put an arrow in him. “Coward.”

She whirled at the sound behind her, then relaxed when she saw Hoyt coming along the path. “Only one,” he told her.

“Two here. There may be more, but they’ll have gone deeper. We should get back, see if there’s any word on Larkin.”

“I couldn’t sense anything, but neither could I sense his death. He’s a clever man, Blair, resourceful, as you can see by what he did with the wheels on the van.”

“Yeah. He’s nobody’s jackass, even if he can change into one.”

“I know what it is to care about someone, and to worry for their life.” As they walked, Hoyt’s eyes tracked through the trees, alert and watchful. “We can defend each other in this, but we can’t protect each other. Glenna taught me the difference.”

“I never had to worry about anyone before. I don’t think I’m very good at it.”

“I can tell you that the skill of it comes entirely too easily.”

When they stepped out of the woods Moira was running out of the house as if it had burst into flame. The light of absolute joy on her face had all the fear inside Blair dropping away.

“He’s coming back!” she shouted. “Larkin, he’s coming home.”

“There now.” Hoyt put at an arm around Blair’s shoulders as relief shook them. “So you needn’t use that worry skill any more today.”

I t took everything he had to stay the hawk, to stay in the air. Pain and fatigue warred inside him, each threatening to break through and shatter the strength he had left. He’d lost blood, he knew that, but how much he couldn’t say. He only knew the bite at the back of his neck was a constant searing fire.

There had been no one—human or vampire—in sight when he’d come to, after dawn, in his own shape. There’d been blood on the shale, not all his own. Not enough, he comforted himself, not enough of it to mean all he’d freed had been slaughtered.

Surely some had made it. Even one…

He felt himself falter, felt his wing try to tremble itself into an arm. He bore down, calling the hawk to hold him.

There the river, he thought. There the Shannon. He was well toward home now.

He brought Blair’s face into his mind, that two-pointed smile, the strong blue of her eyes, the quick music of her voice. He would make it, he would make these last miles.

He could feel his heart—the hawk’s—racing, too fast. Even breathing was a vicious strain, and his vision was no longer sharp. There was something else inside him, something the demon in a child’s form had put in him. Inside him, pumping into his own blood, poisoning it.

A weakness, the dark of it, whispered slyly that he should just let go.

Then he heard something else, stronger.

You’re almost home, bird-boy. Keep going, you’re almost back. We’re waiting for you. Going to make you the breakfast of champions—all-you-can-eat buffet. Come on, Larkin, come home.

Blair. He held on to the sound of her voice, and flew.

There were the woods, and the pretty stream, and the stone house and stables. And beyond them, the graveyard where he was damn well determined not to end up now that he was so close.

There! There was Blair, outside the house with her face tipped up to the sky so he could see it. Her eyes. And there was Moira, his sweetheart, and the others save Cian. He gave one heartfelt prayer of thanks to all the gods.

Then his strength simply dissolved. He fell the last ten feet to the ground as a man.