For a moment Alex felt the room spinning as he surveyed his chances. Still holding the ax, he turned immediately, shouting to Minhi and Paul, “This way, through the back.” The two started to move, but they were still stiff and couldn’t go as fast as he’d like.

A hissing sound had enveloped the room and Alex looked behind him to see the great vampire roar, “You!”

Vampires were leaping past the ice tower toward the stage. Alex fired the Polibow, taking one out from twenty yards. “You’ll never get out of here alive!” Icemaker bellowed.

As Alex ran through the back, past tall wardrobe boxes, looking for a door, he heard Paul next to him.

“Where are we going, mate?”

“I have no idea. I’m making it up as I go along,” Alex said, before his eyes landed on a rear door. “There.”

Paul and Minhi were getting faster, spurred forward by the sound of vampire legs resounding behind them. The door was heavy and steel, and as he pushed down on the exit lever, Alex had an idea.

When they burst through and into the room beyond, Alex slammed the door shut. “Hold it!”

Paul put all his weight on the door as Alex stepped back, looking at the door. It had opened out and was made of metal. He still held the ax. “Step back,” Alex cried. Paul jumped away and Alex brought the ax down solid in the doorjamb, snarling the head of it deep between the door and the doorjamb. It would act as a doorstop, at least for a moment.

The room they were in was clearly intended to support dramatic performance—he saw enormous clothes racks with robes and doublets. Costume swords and knives lay on tables. There were footsteps at the door and Alex ran to an enormous wooden wardrobe and called to Paul and Minhi to help him push it.

The furniture piece was old, with rotting casters on the legs, but they shoved it rapidly and slammed it down before the door. On its side it covered about three and a half feet of the door. It started to wobble as something began slamming against it.

“Is there another door out of this room?” Alex called.

“I see one,” Minhi said. Alex looked in her direction. There was indeed another door in the rear of the room, next to a stack of paint supplies and backdrop canvases.

The wardrobe shook again. Alex looked at the ax, held there in the door, quivering. “See if they have any paint thinner,” he said. “Hurry.”

Minhi and Paul ran back to the paint supplies and appeared again with cans of paint thinner, about a gallon each.

“Minhi, find a screwdriver and get the cans open. Paul, help me drag this wardrobe lengthwise.” He started pulling the wardrobe away from the door.

Paul paused. “It won’t block the door anymore.”

“When they get the door open we’ll only have a second,” Alex said. “It wouldn’t stop them anyway. So I’m going to give it to them.” They turned the wardrobe so that it lay like a great battering ram on the tile floor, aimed at the door.

Minhi had found a screwdriver on a shelf and was twisting rapidly around the seam of a can as the pounding and yanking on the door increased. “Got it,” she said, handing him a can.

The smell of the paint thinner struck his nostrils and burned as Alex sloshed it along the top of the wardrobe and all around it. “Don’t let this get on you,” he said. For good measure he also sloshed it all over the door.

Then he grabbed the ax handle.

“Okay,” Alex said. “I’m gonna pull this ax out, and they’re gonna get the door open. And we’re gonna push this as far as we can through the doorway. Minhi, when that door opens, throw the other open can.”

They both nodded. Paul was studying the thinner. “Do we have a match?”

“We don’t need a match.”

The pounding increased, hissing audible and loud beyond the metal door. “Okay.”

Alex yanked the ax out of the door. He and Paul put their shoulders against the bottom of the wardrobe just as the door started to open. Beyond, in the backstage area, Alex could see hundreds of vampires.

“Minhi, now,” Alex said. He saw the other open can of thinner tumble through the air, sloshing backstage among the vampires. They were pushing toward him, stumbling over one another. With all their strength Paul and Alex shoved the wardrobe barely through the door, jamming it into the doorway.

“Step back,” Alex said, as he raised the Polibow. There was a vampire coming over the wardrobe, ready to leap at them. He aimed at the heart and fired.

As the vampire pounded his claws on the wardrobe, framed in the doorway, he erupted into flame.

And then the whole wardrobe burst, and beyond the first vampire they could see the next vampire’s robes catching fire. A wall of flame shot up as thinner on the floor and curtains and boxes and vampires burst into a raging inferno.

“Let’s go,” Alex said, and they ran for the back door as the drama prep room itself began to catch fire. Smoke was filling the place. They reached the rear door.

It was locked. Alex brought the ax down on the handle, crushing the lock, and they poured through into a corridor, slamming the door behind them.

Alarms were erupting everywhere, but the corridor they found themselves in was empty. Alex looked back at the door into the drama room. “That fire might not keep them from coming this way; we gotta move.”

The three of them ran quickly in the direction Alex chose until they found a stairwell, then up. They headed down the next corridor, doubled back, and went up more stairs.

Paul slapped Alex’s shoulder as they came to a stop next to a door. “That was bloody fantastic.”

“What is all this?” Minhi indicated the Polibow and the stake. “I thought you said I was the action star, but you’re practically a manga character.”

Alex flushed, catching his breath. “What I lack are the very, very big eyes.” He peered out into a hall he recognized. It was the main corridor he’d come down from the cafeteria. As before, there were vampires everywhere, but with the clanging alarms ringing, many of them were looking around in confusion. Some of the Icemaker vampires ran past and disappeared into the distance.

“They’re looking for us,” Alex said. He pulled on his hood. “But most of them don’t know what they’re looking for. We’re gonna pretend I’m one of them and I’ve already got you. We’ll go out through the cafeteria. It’s not far.” Alex looked at his friends and said, “I’m going to need to tie you up.”

Paul and Minhi stared at him for a moment, but Alex felt instantly for the rope belt around his red tunic. He cut it in half with the sharp edge of one of the Polibow bolts.

“Put ’em out.”

“Relax.” Paul held out his hands as he looked at Minhi. “I think I know what he has in mind.”

Alex tied the ropes lightly around each of their wrists. “This is meaningless if anyone looks at it carefully,” Alex said. “So let’s hope no one does.” After a moment Alex had his red hood pulled up over his head, and he arranged the two humans in front of him.

“Let me see if I got this,” said Minhi as they started to walk. “The two of us are supposed to be your captives.”

Alex poked her in the elbow. “Just look morose and defeated. Maybe you were softened up already.”

He looked at them both and put his hand on the door. “We’re going back among them now. Remember that all people—even vampires, I’m betting—will play along with what seems to be right. So act confident.”

“We’re morose,” Paul said. “You act confident.”

Alex nodded and shoved the door open, moving steadily into the hall.

Once they were in the hall, Alex got behind Minhi and Paul and escorted them as though he did this all the time.

The alarms weren’t ringing in the cafeteria. Many vampires were still there, having lunch. Alex moved steadily with his captives. Most of the vampires barely looked as he moved past.

“This is the cafeteria,” he said. “We’re gonna take a left through there, out the glass doors on the other side, and onto the lawn.”

As they turned to move into the cafeteria, Alex saw two red-garbed vampires coming in their direction. He started shouting at Paul and Minhi and smacked Paul in the back of the head.

“None of thy lip, thou cattle!” Whack. “The Dark Lord demands your presence!”

They moved past the two vampires, past more tables. Alex whacked Paul again.

“Hey!” Paul whispered.

“Sorry,” Alex said, beneath his hood.

Minhi whispered, “I’m curious where you get this idea that vampires talk like Thor, God of Thunder.”

“SILENCE, FOUL COW!”

Minhi looked like she was about to laugh when she caught sight of the other captives, the sad humans in cages along the back wall of the cafeteria. “Oh my God.”

“Keep moving,” Alex said.

A loud PA system cut on and a woman began to speak.

“ATTENTION.”

Paul and Minhi looked back at Alex and he urged them on.

“TWO SACRIFICES HAVE ESCAPED WITH A HUMAN. A REVENANT TRACKER HAS BEEN RELEASED. DO NOT INTERFERE WITH ITS MISSION.”

Alex blinked. A revenant what?

They were halfway across the cafeteria when they heard a deep, inhuman growl. Alex turned to look at the glass door into the corridor.

A metallic crunch ripped through the air as something blew the door clear off its hinges, sending it clattering across tables.

Amid a wave of glass and ice, a dog the size of a horse burst into the cafeteria. It stopped beyond the door, locking on to Alex and his captives.

No, more than a dog: Its muscular forelegs and haunches were bunched and spiked with shards of what looked like ice instead of fur, and it had a triangular head, like a chow’s, allowing maximum leverage and room for teeth. As the dog roared and snapped, Alex saw rows of dripping fangs in its mouth.

The six or seven vampires in the cafeteria looked up and then at Alex, understanding now who he was. One of them, a male, started to run for Alex, and as Alex reached for his Polibow the dog tore right through the vampire in his way, biting it on the shoulder and sending it spinning off into the distance. The other vampires, learning their place, ran.

Alex let Paul and Minhi’s rope go, shouting, “Get behind some tables.”

With a growl, the dog headed for Alex. He grabbed a table and pushed it over on its side. Dishes and bottles clattered on the floor as he yanked the legs of the table and tried to raise it like a shield. The dog struck the table and sent Alex back, but he held on to the underside.

In his peripheral vision—thank God I fixed my contacts—Alex saw Paul and Minhi head for the back glass wall that looked out onto the white lawn. The dog was straddling the table, its paws reaching around it, and one of its claws plunged into the folds of Alex’s tunic. As the dog yanked its paw free, Alex felt himself come with it, and then he was flying.

He crashed against the metal roll-down curtain of the large window that separated the kitchen and the cafeteria. The curtain buckled, curling around him as he fell back into the kitchen.

Alex got unsteadily to his feet, looking through the window into the dining hall. Back among the tables, the dog stared at Minhi and Paul for a second, and then steered its head toward Alex. It started running.

Alex turned and slid over a long, stainless steel preparation table, landing next to an industrial convection oven. As he dropped his bow and whipped his tunic off and over his head to gain access to his pack, he caught a glimpse of himself in the oven door. In the glass, the dog cast no reflection. Life would be better in the glass.

He picked up the Polibow and the tunic, turned, and ran back toward the metal table just as the dog leapt across the back of the cafeteria and sailed halfway through the window, sticking there for a second. It started snapping wildly as it shoved with its hind legs to push itself through, crumbling and buckling the plaster tiles and the metal pane of the window.

Taking the tunic in his hands, Alex got up on the table and jumped, landing on the creature’s shoulders. Shards of ice drove into his leggings and thighs.

The revenant tracker growled angrily, bucking, coming through the window, as Alex brought the tunic down around its head. He wrapped the tunic several times and fell away as the dog burst free of the window. It lurched blindly into the kitchen, sending the table flying.

The dog’s triangular head was snapping under the cloth. Alex saw the cloth starting to give way, the creature’s harsh, snaking tongue trying to punch through. Alex brought up his bow and shot once at the breast of the creature, but the bolt barely connected as the dog started to run around the kitchen, sending utensils and tables flying. The steel food prep table nearly smashed into Alex’s head.

Alex dropped back to the corner and rifled through his pack. He had silver knives. He was going to have to make this personal.

Alex grabbed a pair of the knives and rose, heading to the back of the kitchen, near the oven. “Here,” he said, “here, boy!”

The dog’s covered head whipped toward him and it leapt, and as it hit the air Alex saw the cloth of the tunic tear free. Its mouth was open as it slammed into the oven, crushing the oven door inward and lodging its head there.

For a second the dog was trapped. As the creature began scrambling for footing on the stainless steel, Alex drew close.

He only had a moment. He watched the muscles underneath the shards of ice that made up its fur. He thrust the first knife deep between the grooves of its fur, up into its breast.

Then he took the other knife and slammed it home.

The dog yelped, and Alex pulled out a glass ball of holy water and smashed it up into the wound.

A hissing sound and bubbling fire began to churn beneath the icy skin. Alex didn’t wait to watch. He was running out of the kitchen as the dog erupted, sending splotches of ice and flame through the cafeteria.

Alex found Minhi and Paul and ran up to them, pushing open the glass cafeteria doors. There were footsteps coming from the corridor, but smoke kept them from seeing how many might be coming.

“Across the lawn,” Alex shouted. They made it out onto the white grass and ran for the wall.

There was a crashing sound as the glass doors of the cafeteria burst open again. A tall, bald vampire in red burst out, followed by three security guards. The bald vampire was pointing at Alex and the captives.

“That’s the human, he’s taking the sacrifices!”

Alex, Minhi, and Paul ran faster, Alex pulling in front. “Follow me,” he shouted. As he ran, he extracted the Polibow.

They made a beeline for the vehicles near the wall, but just as they were nearing them, two red-clad vampires came bounding fast toward the trio.

Alex waited until the first one was practically at his throat before firing, shooting a bolt into its chest and sending it fwooshing off. The other went straight for Minhi, but Alex saw her meet it, prepared. As the creature went for her throat, she feinted to the side, striking it in the shoulder and sending it flying past her. Paul and Minhi kept moving, but Alex stopped and aimed, catching the vampire in the back—not deep enough. The creature turned and kept pursuing them.

“There, there, that vehicle,” Alex said, whipping his arm around as he, Minhi, and Paul ran toward an armored personnel carrier about the size of a school bus.

There was a driver in the front who looked at them and hissed. Alex brought up his weapon and pumped a silver bolt into the creature’s chest. Dust and flame erupted and evaporated.

Alex climbed in, dropping his backpack into the passenger seat. Looking out the windshield, he saw it was heavy and threaded with a grid of shining metal. As Minhi and Paul piled in, Alex turned the key and the truck rumbled to life. Minhi came forward, leaning on the driver’s seat. “Do you drive?”

Alex put the APC in reverse and started backing up. The pursuing vampires were up on them and Alex grabbed a large, bulbous handle, slamming the side doors closed. “We had a farm in Oklahoma for a while; I’ve done a little driving there.”

“Driving what?”

“Hay, bales of hay,” Alex said, and now he put the vehicle in drive and hit the gas, lurching forward.

They pulled out and Alex aimed right for the vampires, led by the tall bald one. One went under the wheels, the vehicle lurching and shaking as it went over the creature.

“Paul! Minhi!” Alex shouted as he got a handle on the enormous steering wheel. His legs were just long enough to allow him to work the pedals.

“What?” Paul called.

“Look around for what we have in this thing, weapons, rope, anything.”

“Alex,” Minhi said.

“Yep.”

“Why are we driving toward the castle?”

“We’re not driving toward the castle,” Alex corrected. They rounded the corner of the castle and now were hurtling along the wall. “We’re driving toward the cafeteria.”

“What?” Paul cried. “Are you bloody insane? We just got out of there.”

Alex took a second to check himself. Nope, not insane. “I’m not leaving those people.”

There were vampires running alongside the APC, jumping up on the side of the vehicle, but it was designed not to let anyone, human or demon, simply burst in. The APC hit the front steps of the cafeteria and plowed through glass doors and metal frame as well as a handful of vampires in self-consciously ironic MEAT IS MURDER T-shirts as it ripped into the building.

Inside the cafeteria, Alex jerked the steering wheel hard to the right, spinning the vehicle on linoleum tiles and sending cafeteria tables flying. He threw the vehicle in reverse and backed it up.

“What did you find back there, Paul?” Alex shouted.

Paul came forward. “Lead batons and an ax.” He held up a couple of police-style batons, red in color, and a fire ax.

“No guns?”

“I’m thinking these guys prefer to fight up close and personal.”

Alex hit the brakes as the vehicle came near the cages that hung in the back of the cafeteria.

“Okay, opening the back,” he said, flipping a switch on the dashboard. There was a metallic groan as the rear of the vehicle began to roll up like a garage door.

Alex took the ax, handing Minhi his Polibow. “You have about six shots left.”

There was a loud growl and Alex looked forward. In front of the vehicle, vampires were climbing up on the hood, heading for the glass.

“How do I keep them from coming through the windshield?” Alex asked aloud, scanning the dashboard. Think.

They were vampires. If they traveled in these vans, they couldn’t have big glass windshields; the sun might burn them alive. Unless they kept these vehicles inside all day. He was betting vampires planned better than that.

Alex looked around at his controls and found a switch that said SUN SHIELD. He hit it, and suddenly thin, metallic sheets slammed into place across the windshield, severing two of the bald vampire’s fingers at the knuckles. The vampire howled in pain.

An image flickered on, projected against the windshield—a video feed of the outside. Of course there were no vampires on it because vampires were invisible to cameras. But at least Alex could see the room.

“Let’s get those other captives,” he said, running through to the back of the APC.

Alex jumped out the back door, swinging at a vampire that rose up in front of him, bringing the ax against its head. The creature fell back, stunned. Alex hit the first cage and broke the lock.

Some of the captives were struggling to their feet, agitated, grasping. As he got the first cage open, Alex looked at Minhi and Paul. “Look alive, help them in.”

The first captive, the woman, was barely strong enough to move, but Paul and Minhi put their arms under her shoulders and dragged her into the vehicle.

There were seven cages in all, and Alex moved fast. Even with Minhi and Paul’s help he had to alternate between hacking at the locks and turning to slash at the vampires as they crowded around.

Paul punched one of the vampires in the head with a baton, and it went down but quickly rose again. Alex hit the last lock and began to drag out the final captive, a man in his thirties. Shoving the man into the rear of the APC, Alex saw Minhi strike one vampire across the face with her foot, then raise the Polibow and punch a hole in its chest with a silver bolt. It went up in a flash.

Alex realized they were surrounded—growls coming fast.

A bony white hand caught him by the shoulder. He heard a laugh and turned as a vampire bared her fangs. Alex’s heart sank. It was the yellow-haired vampire again. Her shoulder was already healed and she was back for more.

“We’re not done,” she said. Alex swept at her with the ax but she dodged him—and started to leap for his throat.

An explosion ripped through the air, and suddenly her neck and the side of her face were on fire. The female snarled in pain and fell back as other vampires shrank from the vehicle, their skin burnt.

“What the heck was that?” Alex said.

Paul held up a glass ball of holy water. He must have found it in the backpack. “These things are like antivampire hand grenades.”

“Let’s go,” Alex shouted, climbing up into the APC; he had lost track of the yellow hair. He flipped the door switch and they were already moving as the rear door descended. Minhi brought the ax down on the head of another vampire who was trying to get through the closing door. The creature fell away.

The APC lurched and jumped as Alex steered it through the same hole he had created, and they churned out onto the white grass.

“Is everyone all right?” Alex asked, glancing back. Minhi and Paul were still okay, but the other captives—he had no idea what it would take to help them. Their help would have to come later, from more able hands.

He gritted his teeth as the APC rumbled over a couple of vampires who were trying to jump up on the hood.

Suddenly the APC slid hard to the left. Alex cursed, turning the wheel. There was a powerful sound of something striking the outside and he looked around. They were still barely halfway across the courtyard. “What was that?”

Paul tapped the screen on the windshield. “He’s icing the road.”

Ice. “This is one of his vans, Paul. They gotta have chains.”

“What?”

“Chains, automatic tire chains—if these guys travel with Icemaker, they’ll have to have a way to drive these vehicles when he ices the place up.”

Alex scanned the dashboard and spotted a switch that said ICE CHAINS, and hit it. Up ahead, toward the iron gate, he could see white layers of ice and snow building up on the ground. Suddenly the APC jumped a bit as the wheels gained traction again.

Heavy staccato sounds came pounding against the hull as Alex aimed for the closed gate. “They’re surrounding us,” he said flatly. He looked back, scanning the ceiling of the van. “Paul—reach into the pack where you found the glass balls.”

“Okay?” Paul was listening.

“Grab a cartridge for my bow and reload it.”

Paul was rummaging through the pack and found the cartridges, and took a moment to eject the Polibow’s cartridge and pop in a new one. He looked back in the bag and held up a small device the size of a pager. A red light was blinking and making a barely audible beeping sound. “Hey, this thing is beeping, Alex, is this a bomb?”

Alex glanced at it and shook his head. “I have no idea, leave it,” Alex said. “Look for the escape hatch in the roof.”

Paul looked up and saw the fire-escape-like ladder in the roof. “Okay.”

“Bring it down, open the hatch, stick out your head, and shoot some vampires. Be careful; you only have twelve shots.”

“You’ve got to be kidding.”

“Paul!”

“Got it.” Paul leapt over the seat and grabbed the ladder that was attached by a hinge to the ceiling, yanking it down.

In the back, the other captives stared in disbelief as Paul climbed the ladder. He turned a handle at the roof of the vehicle and flipped open a huge, metal cover, sticking out his head, his arm, and the Polibow.

Paul pumped bolts as the Scholomance gate with its iron S came up fast. They hit the gate hard, sending the iron bars crashing back, and they were finally on the long road up to the top.

Paul was cursing and shooting as Alex steered, flooring it up the grade. Suddenly there was a slam and the image on the windshield went dark. Something must have hit the video camera.

Alex flipped the sun shield off and the metal shields fell back.

There were vampires all over the hood.

They were tearing at the windshield, baring their fangs as their fingers managed to punch out chunks of Plexiglas. They were yanking at the metal grid even as their fingers sizzled against it. The metal must be silver, Alex realized. To stop rival vampires. Alex couldn’t see the road at all; he scraped against the wall as he drove blind, and he heard Paul shout, “DO NOT CRASH!”

“Can you get these guys off the hood?”

Paul started firing away at the vampires up front, and at least two of them burst into ash and flame, but there were more.

Suddenly, a terrible thought occurred to Alex. They had no way out of the tunnel, or at least he didn’t know one. They could hit the edge and crash into the wall, surrounded by vampires. They would be torn apart while they tried to open the magic door. How would they get through the exit? When he had struck it with his fist it had felt like concrete.

Now they hit the last grade, vampires leaping around them, coming up fast on all sides. Alex tried to ignore the vampires on the hood, looking past their shoulders. He could see the end of the tunnel.

“Paul, come inside!” He had no choice. “Brace yourselves!”

Alex floored the accelerator and pounded the APC toward the end of the tunnel and the shimmer of moonlight that he could see showing through the invisible wall.

He looked up ahead as the end of the tunnel came fast. Out there beyond the shimmering wall, Alex saw great arcs of water flying.

Someone was spraying gallons of holy water.

All at once the entrance was sparking and opening up.

Beyond that, Alex saw what appeared to be a thick iron lattice, snapping out across the surface of the lake from the shore, glimmering brightly in the night.

The vehicle slammed through the wall of water with vampires still attached to the hood. Alex closed his eyes, waiting for the impact of the APC falling into the lake. He forced his eyes open in shock as the wheels came down on solid ground—or something solid, anyway.

“What is that?” Paul shouted.

They were driving toward the shore on a road that someone had laid from the lip of the tunnel to the land.

“It’s a bridge,” Alex shouted. He couldn’t believe it. But he was driving on it! Alex looked out at the iron road that had been rolled out across the water; it was actually floating on hundreds of glistening aluminum pontoons. And then he had another shock: the sight of a Black Hawk helicopter hanging over the shore, waiting to protect their exit.

Alex drove right under the Black Hawk, so close that the APC nearly struck the belly of the chopper as it passed.

Looking up, Alex saw none other than Sangster grin briefly from his place inside the door of the Black Hawk, next to a mounted, Gatling-style, six-barreled M134 Minigun.

Alex heard Sangster’s voice booming across the intercom.

“I got this, kid. Proceed out to the road.”

As they passed underneath, Sangster spun the Minigun around and tore the heads off the vampires crawling on the vehicle. Alex kept driving, up onto the shore and past the vineyards. In the rearview mirror he saw the helicopter hanging there as Sangster shot hundreds of rounds of wood-and-silver bullets, until the entrance to the Scholomance closed up and disappeared once more.