It would be quick — she had no time for games here — but it would be thorough. Something that it would be impossible to recover from. Something that even vampire venom could not repair.

She’d have to stop my heart. Perhaps a hand shoved through my chest, crushing it. Something along those lines.

My heart beat furiously, loudly, as if to make her target more obvious.

An immense distance away, from far across the black forest, a wolf’s howl echoed in the still air. With Seth gone, there was no way to interpret the sound.

The blond boy looked at Victoria from the corner of his eye, waiting on her command.

He was young in more ways than one. I guessed from his brilliant crimson irises that he couldn’t have been a vampire for very long. He would be strong, but inept. Edward would know how to fight him. Edward would survive.

Victoria jerked her chin toward Edward, wordlessly ordering the boy forward.

“Riley,” Edward said in a soft, pleading voice.

The blond boy froze, his red eyes widening.

“She’s lying to you, Riley,” Edward told him. “Listen to me. She’s lying to you just like she lied to the others who are dying now in the clearing. You know that she’s lied to them, that she had you lie to them, that neither of you were ever going to help them. Is it so hard to believe that she’s lied to you, too?”

Confusion swept across Riley’s face.

Edward shifted a few inches to the side, and Riley automatically compensated with an adjustment of his own.

“She doesn’t love you, Riley.” Edward’s soft voice was compelling, almost hypnotic. “She never has. She loved someone named James, and you’re no more than a tool to her.”

When he said James’s name, Victoria’s lips pulled back in a teeth-baring grimace. Her eyes stayed locked on me.

Riley cast a frantic glance in her direction.

“Riley?” Edward said.

Riley automatically refocused on Edward.

“She knows that I will kill you, Riley. She wants you to die so that she doesn’t have to keep up the pretense anymore. Yes — you’ve seen that, haven’t you? You’ve read the reluctance in her eyes, suspected a false note in her promises. You were right. She’s never wanted you. Every kiss, every touch was a lie.”

Edward moved again, moved a few inches toward the boy, a few inches away from me.

Victoria’s gaze zeroed in on the gap between us. It would take her less than a second to kill me — she only needed the tiniest margin of opportunity.

Slower this time, Riley repositioned himself.

“You don’t have to die,” Edward promised, his eyes holding the boy’s. “There are other ways to live than the way she’s shown you. It’s not all lies and blood, Riley. You can walk away right now. You don’t have to die for her lies.”

Edward slid his feet forward and to the side. There was a foot of space between us now. Riley circled too far, overcompensating this time. Victoria leaned forward onto the balls of her feet.

“Last chance, Riley,” Edward whispered.

Riley’s face was desperate as he looked to Victoria for answers.

“He’s the liar, Riley,” Victoria said, and my mouth fell open in shock at the sound of her voice. “I told you about their mind tricks. You know I love only you.”

Her voice was not the strong, wild, catlike growl I would have put with her face and stance. It was soft, it was high — a babyish, soprano tinkling. The kind of voice that went with blond curls and pink bubble gum. It made no sense coming through her bared, glistening teeth.

Riley’s jaw tightened, and he squared his shoulders. His eyes emptied — there was no more confusion, no more suspicion. There was no thought at all. He tensed himself to attack.

Victoria’s body seemed to be trembling, she was so tightly wound. Her fingers were ready claws, waiting for Edward to move just one more inch away from me.

The snarl came from none of them.

A mammoth tan shape flew through the center of the opening, throwing Riley to the ground.

“No!” Victoria cried, her baby voice shrill with disbelief.

A yard and a half in front of me, the huge wolf ripped and tore at the blond vampire beneath him. Something white and hard smacked into the rocks by my feet. I cringed away from it.

Victoria did not spare one glance for the boy she’d just pledged her love to. Her eyes were still on me, filled with a disappointment so ferocious that she looked deranged.

“No,” she said again, through her teeth, as Edward started to move toward her, blocking her path to me.

Riley was on his feet again, looking misshapen and haggard, but he was able to fling a vicious kick into Seth’s shoulder. I heard the bone crunch. Seth backed off and started to circle, limping. Riley had his arms out, ready, though he seemed to be missing part of one hand. . . .

Only a few yards away from that fight, Edward and Victoria were dancing.

Not quite circling, because Edward was not allowing her to position herself closer to me. She sashayed back, moving from side to side, trying to find a hole in his defense. He shadowed her footwork lithely, stalking her with perfect concentration. He began to move just a fraction of a second before she moved, reading her intentions in her thoughts.

Seth lunged at Riley from the side, and something tore with a hideous, grating screech. Another heavy white chunk flew into the forest with a thud. Riley roared in fury, and Seth skipped back — amazingly light on his feet for his size — as Riley took a swipe at him with one mangled hand.

Victoria was weaving through the tree trunks at the far end of the little opening now. She was torn, her feet pulling her toward safety while her eyes yearned toward me as if I were a magnet, reeling her in. I could see the burning desire to kill warring with her survival instinct.

Edward could see that, too.

“Don’t go, Victoria,” he murmured in that same hypnotic tone as before. “You’ll never get another chance like this.”

She showed her teeth and hissed at him, but she seemed unable to move farther away from me.

“You can always run later,” Edward purred. “Plenty of time for that. It’s what you do, isn’t it? It’s why James kept you around. Useful, if you like to play deadly games. A partner with an uncanny instinct for escaping. He shouldn’t have left you — he could have used your skills when we caught up to him in Phoenix.”

A snarl ripped from between her lips.

“That’s all you ever were to him, though. Silly to waste so much energy avenging someone who had less affection for you than a hunter for his mount. You were never more than a convenience to him. I would know.”

Edward’s lips pulled up on one side as he tapped his temple.

With a strangled screech, Victoria darted out of the trees again, feinting to the side. Edward responded, and the dance began again.

Just then, Riley’s fist caught Seth’s flank, and a low yelp coughed out of Seth’s throat. Seth backed away, his shoulders twitching as if he were trying to shake off the pain.

Please, I wanted to plead with Riley, but I couldn’t find the muscles to make my mouth open, to pull the air up from my lungs. Please, he’s just a child!

Why hadn’t Seth run away? Why didn’t he run now?

Riley was closing the distance between them again, driving Seth toward the cliff face beside me. Victoria was suddenly interested in her partner’s fate. I could see her, from the corner of her eyes, judge the distance between Riley and me. Seth snapped at Riley, forcing him back again, and Victoria hissed.

Seth wasn’t limping anymore. His circling took him within inches of Edward; his tail brushed Edward’s back, and Victoria’s eyes bulged.

“No, he won’t turn on me,” Edward said, answering the question in Victoria’s head. He used her distraction to slide closer. “You provided us with a common enemy. You allied us.”

She clenched her teeth, trying to keep her focus on Edward alone.

“Look more closely, Victoria,” he murmured, pulling at the threads of her concentration. “Is he really so much like the monster James tracked across Siberia?”

Her eyes popped wide open, and then began flickering wildly from Edward to Seth to me, around and around. “Not the same?” she snarled in her little girl’s soprano. “Impossible!”

“Nothing is impossible,” Edward murmured, voice velvet soft as he moved another inch closer to her. “Except what you want. You’ll never touch her.”

She shook her head, fast and jerky, fighting his diversions, and tried to duck around him, but he was in place to block her as soon as she’d thought of the plan. Her face contorted in frustration, and then she shifted lower into her crouch, a lioness again, and stalked deliberately forward.

Victoria was no inexperienced, instinct-driven newborn. She was lethal. Even I could tell the difference between her and Riley, and I knew that Seth wouldn’t have lasted so long if he’d been fighting this vampire.

Edward shifted, too, as they closed on each other, and it was lion versus lioness.

The dance increased in tempo.

It was like Alice and Jasper in the meadow, a blurred spiraling of movement, only this dance was not as perfectly choreographed. Sharp crunches and crackings reverberated off the cliff face whenever someone slipped in their formation. But they were moving too fast for me to see who was making the mistakes. . . .

Riley was distracted by the violent ballet, his eyes anxious for his partner. Seth struck, crunching off another small piece of the vampire. Riley bellowed and launched a massive backhanded blow that caught Seth full in his broad chest. Seth’s huge body soared ten feet and crashed into the rocky wall over my head with a force that seemed to shake the whole peak. I heard the breath whoosh from his lungs, and I ducked out of the way as he rebounded off the stone and collapsed on the ground a few feet in front of me.

A low whimper escaped through Seth’s teeth.

Sharp fragments of gray stone showered down on my head, scratching my exposed skin. A jagged spike of rock rolled down my right arm and I caught it reflexively. My fingers clenched around the long shard as my own survival instincts kicked in; since there was no chance of flight, my body — not caring how ineffectual the gesture was — prepared for a fight.

Adrenaline jolted through my veins. I knew the brace was cutting into my palm. I knew the crack in my knuckle was protesting. I knew it, but I could not feel the pain.

Behind Riley, all I could see was the twisting flame of Victoria’s hair and a blur of white. The increasingly frequent metallic snaps and tears, the gasps and shocked hissings, made it clear that the dance was turning deadly for someone.

But which someone?

Riley lurched toward me, his red eyes brilliant with fury. He glared at the limp mountain of sand-colored fur between us, and his hands — mangled, broken hands — curled into talons. His mouth opened, widened, his teeth glistening, as he prepared to rip out Seth’s throat.

A second kick of adrenaline hit like an electric shock, and everything was suddenly very clear.

Both fights were too close. Seth was about to lose his, and I had no idea if Edward was winning or losing. They needed help. A distraction. Something to give them an edge.

My hand gripped the stone spike so tightly that a support in the brace snapped.

Was I strong enough? Was I brave enough? How hard could I shove the rough stone into my body? Would this buy Seth enough time to get back on his feet? Would he heal fast enough for my sacrifice to do him any good?

I raked the point of the shard up my arm, yanking my thick sweater back to expose the skin, and then pressed the sharp tip to the crease at my elbow. I already had a long scar there from my last birthday. That night, my flowing blood had been enough to catch every vampire’s attention, to freeze them all in place for an instant. I prayed it would work that way again. I steeled myself and sucked in one deep breath.

Victoria was distracted by the sound of my gasp. Her eyes, holding still for one tiny portion of a second, met mine. Fury and curiosity mingled strangely in her expression.

I wasn’t sure how I heard the low sound with all the other noises echoing off the stone wall and hammering inside my head. My own heartbeat should have been enough to drown it out. But, in the split second that I stared into Victoria’s eyes, I thought I heard a familiar, exasperated sigh.

In that same short second, the dance broke violently apart. It happened so quickly that it was over before I could follow the sequence of events. I tried to catch up in my head.

Victoria had flown out of the blurred formation and smashed into a tall spruce about halfway up the tree. She dropped back to the earth already crouched to spring.

Simultaneously, Edward — all but invisible with speed — had twisted backward and caught the unsuspecting Riley by the arm. It had looked like Edward planted his foot against Riley’s back, and heaved —

The little campsite was filled with Riley’s piercing shriek of agony.

At the same time, Seth leaped to his feet, cutting off most of my view.

But I could still see Victoria. And, though she looked oddly deformed — as if she were unable to straighten up completely — I could see the smile I’d been dreaming of flash across her wild face.

She coiled and sprang.

Something small and white whistled through the air and collided with her mid-flight. The impact sounded like an explosion, and it threw her against another tree — this one snapped in half. She landed on her feet again, crouched and ready, but Edward was already in place. Relief swelled in my heart when I saw that he stood straight and perfect.