A tangy, metallic taste tingled her tongue. There it was. Blood. A shapeshifting vampire’s magic was as strong as a mage’s, but deep down, he was still a bloodsucker. There was no hiding that, no matter how many layers of magic they wrapped around themselves.

The Blood Brothers stood back-to-back at the center of the pit. A spotlight swung toward them, bathing them in crimson light. Their long, black cloaks glittered like crushed rubies, and their emerald eyes, cat-like, glowed out from the darkness of their hoods, meeting Sera’s gaze. They turned, their cloaks kissing the ground as they swayed.

The cracks, puddles, and general disarray in the fighting pit had been repaired with magic since she’d last been there. The metal mushroom clusters appeared dormant, but she wasn’t counting on them staying that way. The magic barrier around the pit was up. Right now, it was gleaming a particularly sickening shade of green.

“Hi,” Sera greeted the vampires.

A cool breeze cut through the pit, swirling up wisps of sand. It knocked the hoods off the two vampires. Their faces were hard and gaunt; their skin cast green in the barrier’s eerie light.

“I’m Sera,” she said, trying again. “And you are?”

They watched her in silence, their eyes screaming hunger. Some crazy vampires starved themselves before a fight. It made them stronger and meaner. The really crazy vampires starved themselves, then consumed a single drop of blood just before the fight. Such was the recipe for an all-out bloodbath. Sera hoped these two vampires were only normal crazy, not really crazy.

“Stop chatting and fight!” shouted someone—likely drunk—from the crowd.

“Rip off their heads!”

“Pull out their spines!”

“Fry their brains on that barrier!”

Sera rolled her eyes. “Fools,” she muttered under her breath.

The vampires still hadn’t moved, as though they were waiting for something. For her to cut her own throat and throw herself at their feet maybe. Not damn likely. She rolled her shoulders back, stretching out her arms. The vampires remained as stiff as statues.

“Fine,” she told them. “I’ll just have to come to you.”

She didn’t even make it halfway to the vampires. They disappeared into a cloud of purple mist. The mist gurgled and bubbled, pouring down to the ground like a gaseous waterfall. Sera couldn’t see. She could hardly breathe through the stench soup of rotten fruit and animal droppings. A shrill cry pierced the purple veil. Bats.

She’d no sooner had the thought when a squadron of the creatures broke through the fog, diving straight for her. She rolled out of their path, and they shot over her head. A deep, primal growl roared out of the mist, followed a moment later by a big, silver wolf. Hello, vampire number two.

The wolf snapped at her, trying to tear itself a mouthful of her flesh. So much for distracting the vampires with her feminine wiles. Sera kicked it in the face, her new boots doing their job nicely. The wolf flew across the pit, swallowed up by the mist.

The wolf’s blood brother screeched again. The bats were coming around for another pass. Sera turned and ran, following the strongest magic in the pit to its source: the barrier. The mist was so thick that she couldn’t see the glowing curtain of magic, but she could feel it. She stopped when she was a few feet from the edge and turned her back to it. The bats screeched another time. They were close—so close that the vampire’s pliable magic rippled across her skin. She still couldn’t see a damn thing.

On instinct, she ducked. A gust of fluttering wings rushed over her and smashed into the barrier, which gurgled and gushed. The light show of clashing magic from the collision was finally enough to pierce the fog. Dozens of glowing green eyes pulsed, and then there was a vampire at Sera’s feet. His cloak was torn and his skin tie-dyed with black scorch marks, but he was still breathing. He’d gone into a deep sleep to regenerate his body. He’d be napping for a while.

A howl split through the fog, shattering it. Tiny purple shards rained to the ground, then dissolved against the sand. The wolf was standing only a few feet away. He ran forward, closing the distance in a few bounds. He brushed past Sera, ignoring her, and prodded the sleeping vampire with his paw. His head snapped up. As his eyes met hers, a sneer slid across his snout, exposing two rows of pointy teeth.

Sera shrugged. “He was the one who flew into the barrier. All I did was duck.”

The wolf’s snarl swallowed the chorus of chuckles from the audience. Bands of silver-tinted magic curled around his body, morphing him back into a vampire. Sera blinked. No, make that two vampires. He’d magically cloned himself. Fantastic.

The vampire and his clone charged. Since Sera didn’t have a death wish, she ran. Vampires were strong, fast, and had the personality of a grizzly bear with a bad rash. If she’d had her sword, maybe she could have taken them. Maybe. But she didn’t have a sword. And thanks to Gropy the Guard, she didn’t even have her knives. What she did have was—Sera looked around the pit—sand? Lots of sand. A magic barrier the vampires weren’t going within spitting distance of. And a few clusters of inert metal mushrooms drilled into the ground. Why couldn’t they at least make themselves useful and spit out some sticky liquid? Burning goo? Anything? They’d been perfectly content to squirt all sorts of weird shit at her earlier today.

The vampires were gaining on her. Her ingenious plan to run for her life obviously wasn’t working, so she darted into the mushroom cluster, zigzagging between the cylinders. The vampires followed, with every stride gaining ground. The stench of boiling blood singed her nose and turned her stomach.