A dim red traffic light hovered above the road. Lines of snow in the gray air outlined the pole holding the traffic light. A green rectangle smudged with snow hung from a cable. The sign said Byrant. I turned right, passing a NO OUTLET sign, and followed the road winding up the hillside.

To the left, behind a snow-encrusted chain-link fence, construction equipment looked like giant prehistoric beasts hunkered down for the winter. Down to the right, oblong cylinders of natural-gas tanks lay nestled together under a blanket of snow. A vacant two-story building loomed on the left. The road curved to the right, past rows of storage sheds.

Up ahead, a plywood sign rested against a telephone pole. Snow trickled down the spray-painted scrawl: Soda Creek Wrecking Yard.

My tires abruptly spun. The transmission whined. My Dodge slowed. I dropped into first and nudged the gas. The rear tires spun again. The car slid to the right and then backwards.

The hill was too steep. This was as far as I would get on wheels. I turned the steering to straighten the Dodge and let it settle with a thump against a pile of rocks marking the edge of the shoulder.

The heavy snowfall turned the glow of the street lamps into orbs of hazy luminescence. In the diffused light, a wire fence materialized in the haze of the snowfall. Scattered behind the fence were derelict cars and a tow truck. At the far perimeter of the yard stood a simple, prefab metal building with a pitched roof.

I searched for auras betraying the presence of humans lurking behind cover. Nothing. This place was lifeless as my refrigerator. And about as cold. I rubbed my hands in the hot air blasting from the vents and tried to absorb as much heat as I could.

My watch said 6:43. Time to move. I turned off the car’s motor and tugged my knit cap low on my forehead. I pulled Merriweather’s SIG-Sauer out of my pocket and checked the magazine. I had plenty left for the four vampire hunters. Those I didn’t shoot and kill outright, I’d finish off with my fangs. My kundalini noir coiled expectantly, relishing the thrill of impending violence. Stepping out of the car, I stashed my keys and the pistol in the pocket of my barn coat. I cinched my gloves. My boots crunched into the snow. The sound sent a shiver up my back to remind me how much we vampires hated these frigid temperatures. A chilly dankness was okay, but this cold was bitter enough to freeze me into a big Popsicle.

The snow fell with a hiss. Halfway to the wrecking yard, I turned around to get my bearings. Snow an inch deep already covered my car’s windshield.

My fingertips tingled. I sensed I was being detected but not watched, as if some force were tapping into the energy of my aura. Perhaps it was Wendy, there was much about her I didn’t know.

How to sneak into the building? I could transform into a wolf. The fur would keep me warmer. But at some point I’d have to transform back into a vampire and then I’d be naked. The cold was barely tolerable in these garments. Without them, I’d frost over in minutes.

A strand of razor wire ran atop the fence. Hooking my gloved fingers into the fence, I swung my legs up. I balanced on top of the fence, then hopped between the spiraled strands of the razor wire and dropped to the ground. I should have floated but my vampire levitation powers were all but gone. Perfect.

My legs flexed to absorb the impact. The SIG-Sauer sagged within my pocket. Now, inside the perimeter of the wire, my ears and fingertips tingled in alarm. This was the right place. The vampire hunters were here.

My fangs extended. My fingers curled in anticipation at clawing flesh and breaking bones. My vision turned red. I wanted more than to spill the blood of my enemies; I wanted to taste it even if I wouldn’t drink it. So what if I had weakened powers-I also had the SIG-Sauer.

I crouched behind a Ford Galaxy resting on cinder blocks and examined the building’s stained, corrugated metal surface. Piled against the back wall were jumbles of acetylene gas bottles, workbenches, a lathe, broken office chairs, and stacks of wheels. The relentless snowfall added to the bleakness of the yard. In the center of the building, a garage bay door faced me. Windows flanked the door. I hoped they had heat inside.

I hunched my shoulders and tightened my scarf. My fingers began to go numb. I hadn’t expected to linger in the snow like this or I would’ve dressed in heavier clothes.

I zigzagged, creeping, through the yard to the bay door. My ears buzzed, warning of danger. Somehow I sensed that my aura was being probed. But how? Humans had no tools to detect the supernatural.

I halted next to the rusted hulk of a Studebaker. I scanned the roofline and telephone poles and tried to discern anything that looked like a video camera. Nothing.

I approached the bay door and pressed my ear to its surface. From inside drifted the soft murmur of a woman’s whimper-Wendy.

I clasped the door handle to jerk it open and then stopped. This door wouldn’t open quickly, if at all, and not without causing a racket. There was the window to my right. I’d break through that and rush in.

I looked through the dirty glass and scanned the interior. Anybody inside was tucked out of sight.

I lifted a car wheel from the snow and swung it toward the window. Grasping the SIG-Sauer, I leapt after the wheel as it smashed through the panes. I held my hands in front of my face to ward off the glass shards.

I skidded off a desk, knocked over a stack of notebook binders, and tumbled to the floor. It reeked of dust and grease. Two burning auras rushed from the gloom in opposite directions.

As I sprang to my hands and knees, a stiff heavy bar whacked my back. Pain blasted through my spine. Falling to my knees, I clawed the air and dropped the pistol. I barely managed to turn my head to the left to view that attacker.

An aura of hate outlined his beefy mass. He swung a length of rebar and hit me again along the small of my back. A lightning bolt of pain shot down my legs. I convulsed and choked.

From my right, a pole with a thick, open hoop on the end like a set of jaws reached toward my neck. My nostrils flared at the metallic smell. Silver. I grasped the pole but the shaft slid through my weakened grip until the hoop closed around my neck. The silver burned the bare skin of my throat. I gagged in pain.

A tall, bearded man twisted the pole so that the silver hoop singed and choked me. His scowling face matched the photograph of Nicolae Dragan, the vânätori leader. The pain and panic kept me from focusing a vampire stare upon him. I fought to stop the agony by jamming my gloved hands under the silver hoop.

Dragan leaned over me and twisted the pole to keep the silver metal hoop pressed against my bare skin.

I writhed on the floor like a fish gaffed in the gills. I groped for the SIG-Sauer.

“Petru,” Dragan yelled instructions to the other vampire hunter, who kicked the pistol from my reach. Petru grasped my right arm and kicked his heavy boot into my armpit. A spasm of excruciating pain shot across my torso and paralyzed me. My arm went limp. Petru looped a steel chain around my wrists and neck, then fastened me to a heavy metal pipe that he laid across my shoulders. He secured the chain to the ends of the pipe with steel padlocks.

Dragan pulled up on the pole, burning the bottom of my jaw, and forced me to get to my knees.

Petru grasped a steel cable and carabiner hanging from the ceiling. He snapped the cable to the pipe at a spot right behind my head.

The silver hoop around my neck opened, and Dragan pulled the pole away. I gasped in relief, light-headed with pain.

Dragan palmed a hand control at the end of an electrical cord dangling from the ceiling. He pressed a button. A winch whined from above and tightened the slack in the cable. The pipe lifted. The chain squeezed around my wrists. My shoulders were wrenched upward. Dragan kept raising the pipe until I danced on tiptoes, crucified. Sickened by waves of pain, I hung my head and retched, tasting bile and blood.