The second soldier had returned with the young nobleman and began pushing the crowd back. The first soldier turned on his knee toward the manservant, checking for life. In front of the guards and everyone else the young nobleman sobbed like a child. He lifted her body and pulled it to his chest. Her blood smeared across the side of his face. He looked around wildly.

"Help me! Someone get help."

Chane watched in puzzlement as the young man rocked the woman in his arms, back and forth.

It wasn't fair. He should still have the joy of the hunt and the kill, but it had come and gone in an instant. Euphoria eluded him, no matter how much warm flesh he bit into since…

That night in the Apudalsat forest, Wynn, bleeding from a shoulder wound, threw herself in front of Magiere. Chane hesitated. Magiere took his head. And then nothing but waking in terror from that last instant, and thrashing free of the corpses thrown over him.

Watching the young nobleman, Chane felt no pity or regret, but there was an image in his thoughts, as he imagined…

Wynn collapsed across his own headless body. She sobbed upon his chest, her small face streaked with dirt and tears and his own black fluids.

Chane couldn't watch any longer. He slipped along the wall, deeper into the alley. No one noticed his departure. He kept seeing Wynn's face marred by his own second death.

The first long, eerie wail rang out through the night air, close enough that Chane froze. He stood in an open street, completely unprotected from the shield of Welstiel's ring.

Chap was hunting him.

Magiere walked toward an inn, and as they drew near Leesil's torch lit up the yellow-painted letters of its sign-THE BRONZE REEL. Hunger rumbled in her stomach, and the barest burn of it rose in her throat. She hadn't bothered to eat anything before they stepped out on the hunt. Her jaw muscles twinged, probably from all the tension she'd suffered in the last few days. She reached for the door handle to enter the inn.

"Magiere…" Leesil whispered from behind.

She turned and saw his face strangely lit up inside his deep cowl, but the clomping of heavy boots pulled her attention away. Two men in leather armor, shortswords unsheathed, ran by through the intersection they'd just crossed.

Chap snarled and broke into a full-throated wail.

Hunger sharpened in Magiere's stomach in response to Chap's cry.

"Damned dead deities… we're right on top of him!" Leesil said.

He pulled the crossbow off his back, a quarrel already fitted under its holding clamp as he cocked it. Magiere saw why his face was lit up within the cowl.

The topaz amulet glowed upon his chest.

"Chap, go!" she ordered.

The dog bolted down the street, wailing as he turned the corner after the running soldiers. Magiere followed as fast as she could with Leesil close at her side. Chap outdistanced them to the next cross street, but there he pulled up short.

Two soldiers held back a small cluster of people before the mouth of an alley. Chap paced behind the townsfolk, trying to look through their legs into the alley. When Magiere caught up, she and Leesil stopped as well. She pushed halfway through the crowd before she saw the spectacle that had drawn them here.

A torch on the alley floor illuminated a man in an indigo cloak rocking the body of a small woman-his face smeared with her blood and his tunic soaked from her torn throat.

Magiere's hunger burned her from the inside. She was too late.

Chap wormed out of the crowd and past the two soldiers. Leesil pushed forward to follow, torch and crossbow held up in one hand. One soldier stepped in his way.

Leesil planted his foot behind the soldier's without breaking stride and struck the man with his hip and shoulder as he walked on. The soldier's footing slipped, and he flopped to the cobblestones.

"Leesil, easy!" Magiere snapped as she followed.

Chap scurried deeper into the alley, head low and swinging with his nose just above the cobblestones. He stopped, shook himself, and looked back to Magiere and Leesil with a high-pitched howl.

The crowd's murmurs softened, and two armed men behind the noble turned at the sound.

Leesil trotted ahead. He was halfway to Chap as Magiere drew her falchion to follow. The second soldier turned his back to the crowd. Short-sword drawn, he tried to cut Magiere off before she got into the alley.

Magiere lowered her sword but kept it in front of herself. She held up her empty hand.

"We were hired by your ruler to deal with whatever did this."

The soldier hesitated. She stepped along the alley's far wall, keeping well away from the kneeling noble. When she'd cleared the grieving man the soldier appeared satisfied and turned back to holding off the townsfolk.

Armed men surrounded the noble and tried to take the woman's body from him, but he wouldn't let go of her, and clutched her tightly to his chest. There was nothing Magiere could say or do for him, and she ran after Chap and Leesil heading out the alley's far end.

An old woman in an olive shawl and brown cloak stood across the wide street where the next stretch of alley continued on. She pointed east along the street, peering hesitantly around the alley corner.

"He went there," she said.

Chap was well ahead. So was Leesil. Magiere nodded to the old woman and ran to catch up. The dog howled out again, this time pitched to an almost human wail of anger.

"Go on!" Leesil shouted over his shoulder as he swerved right toward a cross street. "Don't let him duck for cover. I'll try to head him off."

Magiere ran after Chap, falchion in her hand. They would have to harry this undead closely to do as Leesil wanted. She caught sight of a tall man in tattered clothing running ahead and knew this was her quarry. She felt it, the same rage and vicious hunger that overwhelmed her each time an undead was close by.

The few people she passed on the street were a blur quickly left behind. A wide-bellied man called out angrily as she brushed past him. Magiere let her dharnpir nature rise, and the night lit up in her sight. Hunger seeped into bone and muscle little by little, and she gained ground, coming up behind Chap.

The dog had the full scent of their quarry, and Magiere focused on keeping up. Buildings blurred by. Even if she hadn't felt this thing for what it was, nothing on two legs could stay ahead of Chap but a vampire.

She spotted the city's wall beyond the rooftops and realized they were headed in the direction of the main gate.

The tattered man veered right into a side street.

Magiere tried to curse, but it came out a hiss. If Leesil managed to stay parallel to them in the next street over, that thing was going to run right into him. Chap let out a sustained howl as he turned to follow. She hoped Leesil understood they now headed his way.

The dog rounded a corner. Magiere swerved, and her boots slid. She didn't have all fours and claws to run on as Chap did. Her feet wouldn't hold the turn at full speed.

She slammed sideways into the planking of a shop, spun on recoil, and fell. The falchion tumbled out of her grip. The drag of her hauberk against frozen mud brought her to a stop.

Chap wailed out ahead of her, and Magiere's anger cut away her control.

When she lifted her head, rising to her feet, her jaws pressed apart as her teeth elongated. The night grew so bright that tears leaked from her eyes.

The fleeing undead skidded to a stop in the next intersection, as if something blocked his way. Beyond him, in the next section of the street, a figure crouched behind a small flame.

Magiere saw a white brilliance around his face, and the amber glow of his eyes like tiny suns in the night.

Leesil had gotten ahead of them, crossbow aimed and the quarrel lit. He fired.