Lucas charged at me, and I dodged him, but clumsily, because controlling Kate’s body was weird and unfamiliar, sort of like my first driving lesson. I shouted, “Everyone, let’s go!” Talking in Kate’s voice sounded odd, but I kept giving orders. “We’re getting out of here now!”

Then I felt an even stranger sensation — Kate’s spirit, struggling against me, trying to push me out. Could she do it? I decided to let her, if it was possible.

Instantly, I felt myself scattered and invisible, floating upward in a dreamlike haze. My reverie was broken when I heard Kate say, voice shaking with fear, “We have to leave.”

The hunters ran for their trucks and vans, responding either to her first order or her last. Lucas sprang after her, but Balthazar shoved him aside and took him down, keeping him back.

As their taillights vanished down the road, Vic jogged out of his house, both hands in his sandy hair, like he was trying to hold his head together. “What, I just called the cops for nothing?”

“First be glad that Black Cross is gone,” Ranulf pointed out, brushing himself off and calm as ever.

“Well, the police are coming. So maybe get the car out of the yard.” Vic looked at the deep tire tracks in the grass and groaned. “There are not even words for how grounded I’m going to be. They’re gonna have to invent words for it. New words.”

I coalesced amid the guys. “Ranulf’s right, though. This could have been a lot worse.”

Lucas turned toward Vic. His eyes remained flat and blind, his fangs still extended. With horror I realized that Lucas hadn’t yet drunk blood and the killing rage from the fight held him in its grasp.

He lunged at Vic. Ranulf managed to knock Vic out of the way, but Lucas tore at him with his whole strength, willing to shred Ranulf if that got him closer to the human, to the source of fresh blood.

Vic’s jaw dropped. “Oh, my God,” he said, standing in place out of shock instead of running for his life. “This isn’t happening.”