Izzy held her breath as silence befell the hunters, a hope she dared not entertain quite yet that they would take the bait flashing in her eyes. Then, they simply continued to talk, as if she had never spoken.
	So much for her only saving grace.
	Realizing their speed far outmatched hers as they came in for the assault, she did the only thing she could in the split second she had; with a soft whimper, she fell to her knees, her wet eyes closed, head and back bent, and hands on her head in a vain attempt at a small amount of protection, and waited to feel cold metal biting into her.
	But the pain she expected never came.
	Thinking for a brief moment she had simply dropped dead on the spot from terror, she swallowed hard and dared to open her eyes. She looked up. A leg stretched across her immediate field of vision, the pant leg hovering so close that, a fraction of an inch nearer, it would have been brushing against her. She jerked her head back slightly as she heard a light laugh, her hands sliding from her head to the back of her neck, and followed the leg to the backside of the man who had thwarted the hunter’s attack. He stood so close to her, she was surprised he had not bumped into her.
	Though he looked normal enough from her limited view, the way he held each of the hunters at bay was enough to tell her that he was by no means human. Was he another hunter out to claim the bounty for her himself? Another vampire protecting his ilk? More importantly, with the hunters now preoccupied with the new arrival, did she dare take advantage of the situation and run to try and save herself, or wait to find out what fate her protector--if that was even what he was--had planned for her?
	With scarcely a moment’s debate, she shakily ducked beneath the man’s leg and crawled inelegantly out from the center of the ring of impending death, careful to not knock into his leg. Without so much as a glance back, she jumped unsteadily to her feet, one shoe slipping slightly on the concrete, then made to run toward the edge of town furthest from the condemned school.