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blackness. “We never disclose our secrets, even to those about to die.”
    â€œIn case they get the upper hand?”
    â€œAs the college kids like to say, dream on.”
    â€œAnd did you change Akiva?”
    Beaumont tilted his head sideways and blinked slowly. “Is that why you are here? You’re looking for Akiva?”
    â€œIt’s one reason.”
    â€œSo you’re multi-tasking.” Beaumont laughed. “Well, you’re way off track.”
    â€œWe’re about to find out.” Roc jerked the Glock upward, aiming and pulling the trigger all in one motion. In a fraction of a second, Beaumont vanished.
    Laughter surrounded Roc, embraced and confused him. He took a step back, tripped on something, then another step, looking behind and around and finally up. The curved edge of a wing stretched out along one outstretched limb of the chandelier. It wasn’t a fancy light fixture with crystals dangling or bulbs flickering like a flame. The solid black iron looked sturdy, as if forged by the resolute ideals during the Revolution. Eight arms branched outward off the main stem, arcing downward and ending with a cap of stained glass.
    He didn’t wait for the laughter to die down or for the wing to move again. He aimed and fired six bullets right into the light fixture. Roc immediately covered his eyes with his forearm, as a wild array of pops and sparks ignited above him. Glass rained down, striking the table and floor and shooting outward. Tiny shards of glass pierced Roc’s skin. Then the wing transformed into an arm, and the rest of the body took shape as it fell from above, pulling the chandelier out of the ceiling and crashing onto the table. One leg split, tilted the tabletop, which slanted downward, pouring glass and iron to the floor.
    Roc raced toward the body, which had three wounds: one each in the neck, shoulder, and leg. Wielding the stake, Roc opened a new one in the middle of the chest, driving the tip into the now scarred table. Before the professor could do anything other than flinch and convulse, Roc gripped Beaumont’s ankle and looped a leather strap around it and the table leg. By the time Roc rounded the table’s end, the vampire was sitting up and struggling with the stake centered in his chest. But Roc didn’t pause. He hooked another strap, which he’d pulled from his pocket, around Beaumont’s neck, jerked him back, looped the strap’s free end around another of the table’s legs, and knotted it tight.
    Just as Roberto had taught him, the bound vampire was now powerless. So began the waiting game. Waiting for the vampire to bleed out. At first, Beaumont thrashed about on the table, snarling and growling, but the wound in his throat made a gurgling sound as air bubbled up into the hole the bullet had made.
    â€œSaying your prayers?” Roc asked.
    With the knife Roc now always carried strapped to his calf, he slit the arteries as Roberto had shown him, which would speed the process of dying. As the blood drained, so did the life of the vampire. His movements slowed until he lay completely still. Only then did Roc lean back against the wall, sweat pouring from him, as he stared at the demolished room, too exhausted to consider what to do.

Chapter Five
    â€œ Rachel did not come home yesterday from the Troyers’.”
    Dumbfounded, Hannah Schmidt Fisher stared at her grandfather in the weak morning light. With his beard long and the lines in his face deep, Ephraim Hershberger stood tall and straight beside his daughter, Hannah’s mamm, who looked as if she was clinging to the porch railing for support.
    Each morning since she had married Levi last December, Hannah and Levi left the little cottage on the Huffstetlers’ farm and drove their gray-topped buggy to her parent’s farm, where Levi worked with her father and Hannah helped her mother. Arriving this morning to the news that her pregnant sister was