The candle went dark. I scrambled up, and I ran. Behind me, I heard a thud and a gurgle as Sara rose and grappled with the dead thing. Evis shouted again and a pair of crossbows threw, thunk-whee, thunk-whee.

I charged across the cobbles. I couldn’t see the door. I couldn’t see the wall. I couldn’t see the thing behind me, but I could hear it, hear Evis and his halfdead as they grappled, leaped and struck.

The ruined thing screamed again, so close I smelled its foul exhalation, felt cold spittle on my back.

I slammed face-first into a wall that might have needed new plaster and new paint but hadn’t suffered much loss in the way of structural integrity. The room spun. Blood spewed out of my nose.

It shrieked at the scent, maybe a dozen steps behind. I put the wall on my left and charged, arms groping for a door, any door.

More crossbows threw. A bolt buried itself in the wall a hand’s breadth from my head. I ducked and kept moving-had I turned the wrong way? Was the door behind me now?

Something hissed. Something cold and wet laid itself on the back of my neck. I bellowed for Evis, lashed out with a back kick that sank into something soft. The smell hit me anew. I whirled and kicked again and it screamed, wet and triumphant, nearly in my bloodied face.

I couldn’t see. I couldn’t see at all, but I felt the air rush past me, heard the pair of grunts and thuds as a pair of vampires dived into the creature and pinned it to the wall. A thick, foul spray of fluid caught me square in the face when the halfdead hit, and I retched and stumbled away, pawing and spitting.

A cold hand gripped my shoulder. “This way,” said Evis, shoving me forward. “Go. Find the carriage. Tell Bertram and Floyd to wait with you.”

Behind me, I heard shrieks and blows-short wet shrieks punctuated with fast, hard blows. I assumed they had the dead thing pinned and when Evis let go, I moved.

I wasn’t followed. The gurgling shrieks behind me grew fainter and shorter. I heard the faint sound of steel slicing the air and, suddenly, all was silent.

I found the ruined door, cut my hand on the splintered doorframe, darted through it and was down the hall at a run. My footfalls were loud in the dark, and all the way out to the street my mind played tricks on me, hearing the sounds of pursuit behind me, hearing a faint growl that crept from a bloated, gurgling throat.

But I made it. I stumbled whole into the street, mopped blood from my nose, tried to pick out my rights and my lefts from the shadows and the warehouse fronts. That way, I decided. Right. Right for Evis’s carriage. Left to just skirt the whole mess and head for the country and raise a crop of sheep or do whatever it is they do out there.

I’d taken a single step that way when hands-gentle hands-fell on my shoulder. “That way,” said a voice, and I was turned around, and a clean white linen handkerchief was placed in my hand. “The carriage awaits.”

I mopped blood and blinked.

The street was full of halfdead.

Ten or more glided past, quiet as ghosts. My giver of handkerchiefs joined them, gliding toward the warehouse like a black-clad puff of wind.

I shuddered, but I held the cloth tight to my nose and marched toward the carriage. More halfdead popped out of the shadows. Each and all ignored me, though I tottered and stank and dripped their favorite beverage liberally out onto the street.

There’s a metaphor there, somewhere. Something about bleeding profusely at a vampire parade. One day I’ll finish it and tell Mama it’s a Troll saying. But that night I just clamped the cloth to my nose and headed for Evis’s carriage.

I found it easily enough, though the coachmen had lit their lanterns. They were both on the street, and both bore crossbows and nervous frowns.

They backed up and wrinkled their noses at my approach.

“We’ll never get the smell out,” said one to the other.

“Just be glad you aren’t wearing it,” I said. The driver, bless him, produced a clean handkerchief and stepped close enough to hand it to me.

“The boss said you found a bad one,” he said, quietly.

I mopped and nodded, not asking how the Boss had communicated this to the driver. I figured House Avalante could afford the finest sorcerous long-talkers.

The driver’s friend opened the door. “Best get in. We’ll be leaving soon, and in a hurry.” He squinted at me in the lantern light. “It didn’t scratch you, did it?”

Hell. Had it?

I shook off my old Army jacket, kicked it into the gutter when I saw the thick black stain all down the back. I rolled up my sleeves, checked my arms and waist and legs.

All the fresh blood was from my nose or my right hand. All the other-well, it wasn’t mine.

“No,” I said. My voice shook, and I was getting weak at the knees, so I climbed into Evis’s fine carriage, leaving black stains as I went.

Bertram and Floyd-I never learned which was which-watched me go, then turned their frowns and their crossbows back out toward the night.

I sat and I panted and even with the door and window open I gagged at my smell. My heart still rushed, and memories of the thing’s bloated, eyeless face, I knew, would haunt my dreams for years.

“The boss said you found a bad one.”

That’s what the driver had said. A bad one. The flip side of Evis and his well-groomed friends. Halfdead in the raw-a hungry corpse, rotted and foul, still driven to a grim parody of life by a hunger that drove it from the grave.

I shuddered, couldn’t stop, did what I’d done when that happened during the war-shut my eyes, clasped my hands and counted my breaths. One, two, three, four. Over and over, until it was past.

I’d only gotten through it twice when I heard the driver mutter a curse and the carriage rocked as his friend scrambled up onto his seat. The ponies shuffled their hooves when he caught up the reins.

Evis and a pair of halfdead were just entering the yellow ring of lantern light. Evis’s clothes were torn and stained and ragged. His hat was gone, and his jacket hung in tatters. His pale skin, like that of his companions, was stained and spotted with the dark black blood of the thing from under the floor.

Evis and another halfdead supported a third between them. I squinted, recognized the limp, injured vampire as Sara, the one who’d tried to take me outside.

It was only in that light, with her jacket gone, that I realized Sara had once been a woman. She’d been halfdead so long it was hard to tell, since they all wear their hair short, and she’d perhaps been tall and thin before she changed. Now her head lolled, and her arms twitched spasmodically, and though she moved her feet she did little more than shuffle them across the cobbles while Evis and the other halfdead hauled her toward the carriage. Evis and his upright companion looked grim. Sara, too, was slathered in old black blood-but a wound in her chest, right over her heart, oozed and glistened with blood of her own.

I pushed myself back out of the way. Evis said something to the driver, and suddenly Sara and the other vampire scrambled inside.

Evis popped his head in the door.

“Bertram will take you home, Mr. Markhat,” he said. “You and I must speak tomorrow, the sooner the better.” He lifted his hand, cutting off my reply. “There is no time. You must not be seen here, and I must stay. Go. We talk tomorrow.”

He shut the door, and the carriage rolled on.

An awkward silence fell. Sara shifted and mumbled and pawed the air with her hands, as if caught in a deep and troubled sleep. Her companion held her close and tried to hold her hands and stroke her face and keep her from leaping out of her seat. He didn’t have enough hands, and even vampire-quick was nearly not quick enough, but he managed, somehow.

She cried out, high and airy, and he began to speak to her, soothing and soft. And only then did it dawn on me-Sara and her companion were married.