"Whoa!" Chad backpedaled. "Vampire or not, I wouldn't want that. Come on. Obviously, it's him. He's the one who wanted to split up."

I turned the gun on Neil. He paled. Sweat trickled down his temple.

"All right," he said. "I'd really rather not, but if that's what it takes, go ahead. I'd only ask that you let me turn around and aim for the base of my skull. It's the quickest way to kill someone."

"What the h.e.l.l kind of freak knows that?" Chad said. "Sure, let him turn around...so he can run away as fast as his scrawny legs will take him."

Neil turned. I could see the side of his neck throbbing as his heart raced. He didn't even shake, though. Just stood there, waiting. That took guts. Incredible guts.

I swung the gun back on Chad. He dove at me. I could have shot him. But I wouldn't, not while I had any other option. So when he came at me, I dropped the gun, grabbed him by the wrist, and threw him.

Before I could pin him, he flipped over, a hard elbow to the jaw sending me flying off my feet. It took me a second to recover. As I did, I heard a grunt and a thump behind me, and when I turned, Chad had the gun-and Neil, holding him as a shield, one arm around his neck, gun barrel pointed at the side of his skull. Neil's gla.s.ses were gone, lost in the scuffle.

Neil said, "Considering I just agreed to be shot, this really isn't the position of advantage."

"Shut up, freak."

"Keep calling me that and I might take offense."

Neil's voice was steady, jaunty even, but sweat still slid down his face, and I could see that pulse in his throat.

"Let him go," I said.

"Or what? You'll bite me? Feed on me?" Chad's lip curled in undisguised disgust, and that answered my question better than any test I could have given him.

"You aren't a vampire," I said.

"No, thank G.o.d."

"But you are part of the experiment, I'll bet," Neil said. "You're the right age, and that's the most obvious way you'd know about it. What are you?"

"Half-demon."

"I'm sorry."

Chad's arm tightened around Neil's neck. "You think I'd want to be a bloodsucker? G.o.dd.a.m.ned parasites should have been wiped out centuries ago."

"I didn't mean that. I was expressing my condolences on your status as an experimental failure. Your lack of powers."

Chad's eyes blazed. "I have powers, smart-a.s.s. You want to see them?"

He closed his eyes, face going rigid as he concentrated. I charged. I smacked the gun from his hand and knocked Neil free. The gun sailed into the bushes. Chad and I hit the ground. He grabbed me by the shoulders. I felt his hands through my shirt, felt them heat and smelled scorched fabric. But that was it. As powers went? Kind of sad.

Chad threw me off. When he came at me, I kicked, and sent him flying, then leaped to my feet. We circled each other. He glanced over at Neil, who hadn't moved.

"Letting a girl fight your battles?" Chad said with a sneer.

"She seems to have it under control."

"Coward."

Neil shrugged.

Chad threw a punch at me. I caught his arm and flipped him. He leaped up and charged. I kicked and knocked him into a tree. He staggered up, shaking his head like he was dazed, then rushed me. I spun out of the way, but he caught me by the arm and yanked me off my feet. Then it was my turn to meet the tree.

"Need help?" Neil called as I recovered.

"Nope," I said.

Chad and I went a few more rounds. I had the advantage of skill-I'm a second-degree black belt in aikido and a brown belt in karate, from self-defense training that Marguerite had insisted on. He had size, plus a generous dose of real-life brawling experience, it seemed, which I definitely lacked.

The advantage swung slightly my way, but not enough to make it a quick or easy fight. We'd been going at it for about five minutes-which feels like fifty when you're actually fighting-when Chad threw me down hard. I lay there, winded.

At a grunt behind me, I jumped up, thinking he'd gone after Neil, and found Chad face-first on the ground. Neil had one knee on Chad's spine, Chad's arm wrenched behind his back.

Chad tried to buck Neil off. Neil twisted his arm until Chad was the one with sweat streaming down his face. He didn't take it as stoically as Neil had, though. He snarled and gasped as Neil kept inching Chad's arm up. Finally Chad stopped struggling.

"I don't suppose you'd care to tell us anything helpful," Neil said.

Chad spit out a string of curses.

Neil glanced at me. "Does that sound like a no?"

"Sure does."

"Do you think we're likely to get anything from him?"

"Nothing useful," I said. "I think we can guess the story. The guys who captured us are relatives. They kind of looked like him. Same build. Same coloring. They know about the experiments because he's a subject. They got a lead on us, probably, like he said, from someone your parents and my guardian have stayed in touch with. Rather than turn that information over to the Edison Group, they figured they could make some money rounding us up. Only they're missing a couple of names, so they recruited Junior here to play captive in hopes of getting those names from us." I bent beside Chad. "Am I close?"

"Go to h.e.l.l."

I turned to Neil. "We can ask whether he's contacted his coconspirators yet, but either way he'll say he has, just to freak us out, hope we'll take off and let him go."

"You're right. There's nothing we can get from him." Neil backed up a few inches, making Chad wince. "I can knock him out, but your method seems safer."

Chad struggled again then. It didn't do him any good. A little more pressure on the arm and Chad was screaming. A quick bite on the neck and he stopped screaming.

This time, though, I forced myself to stop as soon as blood filled my mouth.

"You're hungry," Neil said as I rose from Chad's unconscious body. "You should drink more. If the book is right, he'll only wake up weak, as if he donated blood. It's not like he doesn't deserve it. And there's no sense turning down a free meal."

How many times had I given Marguerite c.r.a.p for ignoring an opportunity to eat? Or told her off for trying to hide her feeding from me? Rolled my eyes and said she was being stupid about it. She had to eat and I understood that. Just consider it a blood donation to save a life-hers.

Easy to say when you're on the other side. But crouching here beside an unconscious kid, even a jerk like Chad, while having another guy watching you, a guy who wasn't a jerk, but maybe someone you'd like to impress...

"I'm good," I said, rising.

"Katiana..."

"I don't feed like that. I get my meals from the blood bank."

He frowned. "The journal says vampires need fresh-"

"My guardian doesn't want me to hunt yet."

"Okay, but you didn't hunt him, so...I mean, if you don't want to, sure. It just seemed, back there, like you did want-" He flushed. "Sorry. I'll shut up now."

He knelt beside Chad and started patting him down for a phone. Neil had a point. It wasn't like Chad didn't deserve to wake up feeling like h.e.l.l. This was what I'd wanted, right? Not just drink a single mouthful, like I had with the other guy, but to take a full meal straight from the source, see if it made any difference. See if it dulled the edge.

But I couldn't do it. I don't know if it was the thought of feeding off someone I knew or of doing it in front of Neil. I wanted to-oh G.o.d, I wanted to-but I couldn't.

When I glanced over at Neil, he was holding his gla.s.ses. It looked like they'd been a casualty of my bout with Chad, stomped underfoot.

"I knew I should have worn my contacts yesterday," he said, trying for a smile.

He ran his hand through his hair, shoving it back from his face as he squinted and blinked. Without gla.s.ses, Neil wasn't magically transformed into a s.e.x G.o.d. He just looked a little less like a guy who should be planted behind a computer monitor and a little more like one who could manage a first-rate throw-down and pin. Definitely cute though-with or without the gla.s.ses.

I shook the thought off. Really not the time for that.

"Can you see?" I asked.

"Well enough." He tossed the gla.s.ses aside, retrieved the gun, and held it out. "You may want to be in charge of this, though."

"Can you still shoot?"

He shrugged. "Sure, but-"

"Can you avoid shooting figures with brown hair, blue jeans, denim jackets, and"-I looked down at my feet-"dirty white sneakers?"

A genuine smile. "I can."

"Then keep the gun. I have no idea how to use one. Now we should see if Chad did ditch a cell phone. It's a long shot, but we need to head back to the road anyway. Maybe we can find his trail."

We did. It wasn't hard. Chad was no backwoodsman, and we didn't need to be trackers to find his trampled path through the undergrowth. I followed a detour where he'd walked deeper into the brush, then returned, and at the end of that path, under the bushes, I found a phone.

"Do you think there's anything I should know about using it?" I asked Neil. "Maybe a GPS that needs to be disabled?"

"My tech skills are limited to being able to turn things on and operate them. In other words, zero on the geek scale."

I glanced over at him. "I wasn't a.s.suming. I was just asking."

"Did I sound defensive?"

"A little."

A rueful smile. "Sorry."

I turned the phone on and waited to see if anything would happen. Then I checked for outgoing calls. One had been made twenty minutes ago. d.a.m.n.

Before I called Marguerite, I needed some idea of where we were. Neil thought he'd seen a sign on the side road he'd been supposed to take. We found a path heading in roughly the direction we needed to go. Once we found the sign, which promised a town two miles away, I dialed Marguerite's cell number. On the second ring she answered with a wary, "Allo?"

"Miss me yet?" I said.

"Katiana! Where are you? What happened to you? Are you all right? Are you hurt? They called, the police, about the car. The accident. I said the car was stolen, but I have been looking everywhere, calling everyone-"

"I'm fine. Just kidnapped by bounty hunters rounding up missing vamps from the experiment."

A pause, then, "That is not funny, Kat."

"You think I'm kidding? I wish. I'm with another guy they grabbed. Neil..." I tried to remember his last name. "Walsh. Neil Walsh."

"Actually, it's Waller," Neil said. "Walsh is the name my parents have been using since they left the experiment."

Marguerite overheard and said, yes, she remembered Neil. She warned us not to call his parents on the phone we'd found. If it was owned by Chad, our captors could check their billing and which numbers we'd called. I hadn't thought of that. Neil agreed. We'd get to the town and lie low until she could pick us up. Then Neil could notify his parents from a pay phone.

As we walked, Neil fussed with the gun, taking a better look at it and checking the ammunition, saying, "If those guys find us, we might actually need to use it."

"I'm sorry about earlier," I said. "With Chad. I wouldn't have shot you."

"You needed to see how we'd react. While I'm not eager to be turned, I'd rather do that than go back to the Edison Group. My parents told me...things." He let the word drop, heavy, and stared at the gun, lost in thought. Then he turned it over in his hands. "It appears to be police issue."

"Is that a problem?"

"Only that it may mean we're dealing with someone who knows how to fire a gun significantly better than I do."

"We'll be fine. You've got some killer aikido skills to fall back on. Speaking of which...That might be a popular choice with cops, but there's no way you picked that up in a co-op term. What level are you?"

"In the black belts."

I had to press him for more than that, and after some waffling about nonstandard terminology, he admitted he was fourth-degree.

"Seriously? I just made third. d.a.m.n."

"Sorry."

I laughed. "Is that why you didn't want to tell me? You think I'd be p.i.s.sed because you're a higher level? It just gives me something to strive for. Can't have a guy beating me."

I grinned, and when I did, he gave me this look, like...I don't know. He just stared at me. Then he glanced away fast, cheeks flushing.

"Any other martial arts?" I asked as we walked.

"Just that. I'm not much of an athlete, but I like lunch."

"Huh?"

"In fifth grade we moved to a new city and there was this kid, a head taller than me. He decided my lunch money was a good way to supplement his income."

"And you needed a way to keep it."