At Edward's assured smile, Stefan heard himself laugh. He watched Edward in that next second, fascinated by the force and speed of his graceful movements, as deadly efficient as a vampire even two or three hundred years older than him. And the second was over, and Stefan was moving too, his face changing at the smell of blood in the air. He might not be as strong as any vampire fuelled by the normal diet, but a few rabid animals still posed no real threat.

They were, however, an unwelcome distraction. Even as Stefan fought off the dogs at Edward's back, dodging teeth and tearing limbs to make sure the beasts didn't rise again, he looked for an opening to escape. He had the sense that this wasn't random, that the animals were specifically targeting them, and each second they spent held up here meant another second they weren't protecting Elena and Bella.

The hunger drummed inside of him as Stefan turned to face the next animal, moving into kill before it could move against him, but the dog was unresisting when he grabbed it, and he was still too much of a ripper to not notice when his prey wasn't fighting back. Its mad red eyes drooped sleepily, and Stefan became aware of a girl's clear voice singing somewhere.

The pack now lay motionless around him and Edward, most of them dead, the rest asleep. Stefan wasn't going to question it. He touched Edward lightly on the shoulder — let's go — and ran before anything else decided to track them down.

[to here]