Blane Bloodworth wanted to kill the hunter who murdered his maker. The problem was simple and ugly: he had never seen his maker's face. Someone turned him in an alley three years ago, fast and from behind, and left him to wake up changed. He had followed two trails since then. Both led to the same answer, a hunter who worked these streets. Both times Blane stood close enough to strike, and both times he walked away. He could not swing at a ghost. He needed to know who his maker was before he could prove who killed them. Tonight he pushed through the doors of the vampire punk club, where the crowd thought his long fangs were just a good costume. He wasn't there for the music. He was there for the old green apple who ran the bar at the quiet end. Granny Smith served drinks and scared tourists, but he kept the town's longest memory. If anyone knew the vampires turned in this city, it was him. Blane slid onto a stool. Granny Smith set down a glossy red cocktail he hadn't ordered, a thorny sprig balanced on the rim. "Three years ago," Blane said. "A vampire made in the back alleys. Then hunted down and killed. Who was it?" Granny Smith wiped the same spot on the bar twice. "Lot of dead vampires in this town." "This one made me." Blane spread his hands. "I never saw their face." The bartender went quiet. He looked at Blane's teeth, longer and sharper than any costume. Something behind his eyes settled, the way a man recognizes an old debt. "Those fangs," Granny Smith said. "Only one maker in this city grew teeth like that. A woman. Kept to the alleys. Fed careful." He stopped wiping. "She wore a long coat. Came in once a month. Ordered water. Never touched it." Blane's chest went tight. "You knew her." "Knew the type." Granny Smith's voice dropped, final. "She died the same week a hunter started bragging. Bunny-faced shadow on his jacket. Painted it himself. Said it was a trophy." A woman. A long coat. A bunny-marked hunter. Blane finally had a face to hunt and a mark to match it to. He stood up. The bartender caught his wrist. His grip was stone. "One more thing," Granny Smith said. "Your maker didn't come here for drinks. She came to watch you. She sat where you're sitting. Every month. After she made you." The room tilted. His maker hadn't abandoned him. She had followed him, silent, until the hunter found her. Blane walked out into the night. He no longer searched blind. He searched for a man with a bunny on his coat, and now he knew exactly why he would not freeze again.

Blane had a mark now, a bunny on a hunter's coat. But a painted rabbit was not a face. He could not walk the city striking strangers. He needed someone who knew where the hunters drank. So he went to the cabin at the edge of the orchards, the one strung with guitars and bone charms, where the rock and roll witch kept her rituals. Starr Gaze opened the door before he knocked. She wore a torn black dress and silver bells in her ears. She looked at his fangs the way most people looked at a weapon, not a costume. "You want the bunny man," she said. Not a question. "Everyone who comes here wet-eyed wants the bunny man." Blane's chest tightened. "You know him." "I know where his den sits." She leaned on the doorframe. "Deep in the briars, past the sick apple trees. A stone house shaped like a rabbit, eyes that glow. Folks call it the hollow." She studied him. "You're not the first vampire to go looking. The others don't come back." "Take me." Starr laughed, short and hard. "I'll point. I won't walk you into that mouth." She stepped aside and poured him a glass from a dark bottle. The drink was blood-red, a thorn sprig on the rim. "Drink. The briars read fear. This keeps it off you." He drank. It tasted of iron and rot. Then he followed her finger into the twisted orchard, past apple trees with faces carved in their trunks, down a path choked with thorns. The hollow waited at the end. Stone ears. Two burning eyes. A green glow bled from its open door. Blane stepped inside. The thorns pulled at his coat like fingers. A man sat in the glow. Except he was not a man. Black fur. Long ears. Orange eyes like the stone ones outside. He wore a buttoned coat and a red tie. On his lapel, painted small and neat, sat a white rabbit. Blane stopped breathing. Here was the mark. The thing he had hunted for three years. "The teeth," the bunny man said. His smile showed small sharp teeth of his own. "I know those teeth. I put down a woman with teeth like that. Long coat. Fed careful." He tilted his head. "You're the one she made. She used to watch you sleep, you know. Sentimental. It got her killed." Blane did not freeze this time. He lunged. But Corvin Blackhare was fast. He twisted aside, and a chain snapped up from the floor, catching Blane's ankle. He crashed into cold stone. The thorns outside began to close over the door. "Wrong house to bare fangs in, vampire," Corvin said. He stood over Blane, calm, counting him like coin. "I keep what I catch." Blane had found his hunter at last. Now the hunter had found him, chained on the floor of the hollow, with the briars sealing shut behind.

The chain bit into Blane's ankle. He lay on the cold stone floor of the bunny-shaped den, and the thorns had sealed the door behind him. Corvin Blackhare stood over him, calm, flexing one clawed paw. This was the hunter who killed his maker. Now Blane was the catch. Corvin walked to a shelf and poured himself a drink. The glass filled blood-red, with a thorn sprig on the rim. He sipped it like a man with all night to spare. "They all fight the chain," he said. "The chain always wins." Blane yanked his leg. The links held. He twisted, pressed both hands to the floor, and pulled until his ankle burned. Nothing. Corvin chuckled and turned back to the shelf. That was the moment. Blane stopped pulling against the chain. He reached down and bit the chain instead. His fangs, longer and sharper than any true vampire's, closed on a single link. He ground down. Metal shrieked. The link bent, then split. Corvin spun around. "What—" Blane's foot came free. He rolled up fast. A small winged creature, fat and dark, darted from a rafter and flapped between them, startled by the noise. Corvin swatted at it. That half-second was all Blane needed. He drove forward and slammed the hunter into the stone wall. But Corvin was no soft thing. He kicked Blane off and snatched a blade from his belt. They circled. The green glow lit both their faces. Blane bared his teeth, the teeth that had chewed through steel. "You're the first," Corvin said. He almost smiled. "The first to break my chain." Blane feinted left. Corvin slashed. The blade caught Blane's shoulder and opened a cold line. Blane did not stop. He grabbed Corvin's coat, pulled him close, and sank his fangs toward the throat— Corvin jerked his head aside. The fangs caught his ear instead and tore it. He howled and shoved Blane into the shelf. Glass shattered. The red drink spilled and ran dark across the floor. For one breath they stared at each other, both bleeding. Then Corvin lunged for the door, slapped a hidden stone, and the thorns peeled open. He bolted into the briars, one ear ragged, coat flapping, and vanished down the dark path. Blane stood alone in the wrecked den. He had not finished it. The throat he wanted still ran loose in the night. But he was not chained anymore. He pressed a hand to his torn shoulder and looked at the open door. He thought of Starr Gaze, the witch who had pointed him here and warned him none came back. He had come back. And now he knew something new. His teeth could cut steel. Corvin could bleed. Next time there would be no chain to break, and no ear to settle for. Blane stepped over the broken glass and followed the hunter's trail into the thorns.

Blane followed the blood trail out of the briars, but it faded on the open road. Corvin had cut himself a head start. Blane's shoulder still bled, and his fangs, sharp as they were, had failed once at the throat. Next time Corvin would set a better trap. Blane needed more than teeth. He needed a weapon that bit deeper. So he went where blood and metal both gathered: the vampire punk club, its windows glowing green and red through the dark. Inside the Crimson Echo, the crowd thought his fangs were a costume. He pushed past them to a back booth where a werewolf sat tuning a guitar. Eddie Howlwood. Blane knew him by reputation. A rockabilly player whose hands got faster the closer the moon came to full. Right now his fingers trembled on the strings, and his orange eyes had a wild edge. "You're the one hunting the bunny man," Eddie said. He did not look up. "Word travels." "He'll kill me with the next chain," Blane said. "My teeth cut steel. They didn't cut him." Eddie set the guitar down. "Chains are his thing. You break his range, you break him." He reached under the booth and dragged out a long case. Inside lay a vehicle key and a folded map. "My grandfather's hot rod. The hunter in the orchards shot at me in it. He knows that car." Blane frowned. "Why give it to me?" "Because a car he fears is a car he watches," Eddie said, level. "Drive it near his briars and he comes to you. No trap set. He hunts hunters who drive what he hates. Then you've got him in the open, where no chain beats your speed." Blane took the key. They walked out back. The hot rod waited under a flickering bulb, battered and dark, green sap crawling across its dash like something alive. Fat green fireflies drifted off the hood when Blane opened the door. A small winged creature clung to the mirror, the same fat shape he'd seen in Corvin's den. It squeaked and flapped to his shoulder. "That thing follows blood," Eddie said. "Yours. His. It'll point you to him." Blane started the engine. It caught hard and loud. The headlights threw two cones of light down the road toward the briars. The winged creature settled against his neck, then stiffened and pointed its nose west. Toward the orchards. Toward the wounded hunter. "One more thing," Eddie said through the window. "Full moon's Friday. If you want backup, I won't be a man by then." He almost smiled. "So do it before." Blane drove. The car ate the road. His fangs had failed at the throat, but speed would not. Now he would not wait for Corvin to set a chain. He would run the hunter down before the next trap existed, and this time close the distance himself.

The hot rod died at the edge of the orchards. Blane rolled it into the trees and killed the lights. The winged creature on his neck stirred, then pointed its nose deeper in. Corvin was close. But Blane's teeth had already failed once at the throat. He needed steel that would finish what his fangs started. He had no such steel. The full moon was Friday. After that, Eddie would be a wolf, and Blane would be alone. He walked the rows until he found the thing the creature led him to. A wound in the ground. Someone had dug here and left tools behind. A whetstone. A broken knife. Green fireflies drifted over the pit, their bodies glowing like tiny lamps. By their light Blane saw what the digging had uncovered. Bones. A skeleton dog stood at the pit's edge, hollow sockets fixed on him, ribs lit orange from within. Beside it a skeleton cat arched its spine and hissed without a tongue. Blane froze. The bone animals did not attack. They watched. The dog lowered its skull toward the broken knife, then toward Blane, then back. A show. A lesson. Blane understood. The hunter killed things here and buried them. These bones were old kills, and they remembered steel. The winged creature left his neck and flapped down into the pit. It landed on a long shape half-buried in dirt. Blane dug with his hands. He pulled out a spear, iron-headed, the shaft bound in old leather. Hunter's work. A weapon built to pin a thing that bites back. The skeleton dog thumped its tail against the dirt, once, like approval. Blane tested the point against his palm. It drew blood fast and clean. This would reach past a throat. This would hold Corvin at range while his fangs did the rest. He wiped the head on his sleeve and stood. The fireflies scattered. The bone animals backed into the dark, their work done. A branch cracked behind him. Blane turned. Corvin stood in the trees, one ear torn ragged, a chain coiled in his fist. He saw the spear and stopped. His hand opened. The chain slid to the ground. "That's mine," Corvin said. "I buried that." "Then you knew it would kill you," Blane said. Corvin did not reach for the chain. He stepped back instead, and back again, into the dark where the hot rod could not follow. Blane raised the spear and threw it. The point caught Corvin's leg and dropped him. He screamed and crawled, bleeding, into the briars. Blane ran to pull the spear free, but the hunter was gone through a thorn gap too small to follow. Blane stood with the bloody spear in his hands. His teeth could finish it now. He had the reach he needed. But Corvin had crawled into the briars wounded, and the moon rose Friday. Blane had a weapon. He no longer had time.