Lore sighted down his firearm and searched the roofline of the building opposite the doorway. It was the most likely spot for a marksman to hide, but with no moon, all was inky shadows. Hellhound sight was good in the dark, but not good enough.
He listened instead, trying to catch the sound of a boot scraping tile, a window sliding closed. He was far away, but sound carried oddly in the cold, dark silence. All he heard was the hiss of blowing snow and the rustle of his own clothes as he breathed.
Then, out of the corner of his eye, he saw the door swing open again. No, stay inside!
Perry threw something just as the rifle cracked once more. The object flew upward in an arc worthy of a professional pitcher, heading straight for where the gunman hid. It started small, no bigger than a baseball, but it grew as it spun through the air, blooming into a ball of light that drowned the campus in an eerie blue-green light. Lore shielded his eyes with his arm, squinting through the glare. He saw a man on the roof leap to his feet, falling back into the shadows. Lore squeezed off a shot, but the angle was bad. He got a glimpse of dark clothes, but nothing more.
The ball exploded, fountaining sparks like a Roman candle. The campus fluttered with plumes of blue-green light, the falling stars hissing as they hit the snow. Sorcery or chemistry? Lore wasn’t sure—Perry was adept at both—but it had bought him a glimpse of the suspect.
He blinked away the last afterimages from the exploding ball. Scanning the building again, he saw nothing—no shooter, no sign of movement. Crouching low, Lore crossed the distance to the other building. A bullet whined past his ear. He ducked and rolled, floundering a little in the heavy snow, but came up close to the building wall.
That shot had come from a different angle. The shooter was on the move. He got to the end of the building and, gun at the ready, rounded the corner. There was a door, open just a little because the heavy, wet snow had jammed it.
Lore slipped inside. With the power out, it was dark. The door led straight to a large spiral staircase that wound around a huge, hanging metal sculpture. A mental calculation said the last shot had probably come from the third floor. Lore started up the stairs, hoping the shooter wasn’t simultaneously descending somewhere else in the building. It was the best he could do. There were too many exits to cover, so a fighting chance was all he had.
Just enough light came in the stairwell windows to find his way. Stopping at the second floor, he strained to catch any sound of movement. A cold breeze stirred the metal shards of the sculpture, making them turn on their long, thin chains. Nerves chattered at the edge of Lore’s mind, but he tuned them out.
Instead, he started up the stairs again. He’d gone three steps when he heard a single scuff. He froze. Overhead, two of the metal shapes bumped together in the air currents with a sepulchral clang.
Lore backed down the stairs, gun aimed at the second-floor landing. An electricity-deprived soft drink machine dripped softly, ice giving up the ghost. Lore peered down the hallway leading from the stairwell to the classrooms. A shadow flickered across the far window so fast it seemed a trick of the eye. A ping of grim satisfaction ran through him.
Quarry spotted. Now the real work began.
He slipped out of the stairwell, picking up speed. When he reached the window where he’d seen the figure, a wet footprint glistened on the tile floor, just visible in the light from the window. Lore crouched, squinting at the mark. He could tell it was the right size for an adult human male, but not much else. He followed the direction of the print, heading for the south side of the building.
There were fewer windows there. There seemed to be no emergency lights in that part the building, or else something had malfunctioned. All Lore could see was the outline of an intersecting hallway ahead. He moved cautiously, aware he could easily run into an open door or bit of wall. He’d survive that, but perhaps not the noise he’d make.
But then he noticed light creeping along the floor. It was coming from the left, up ahead, where he guessed the shooter had gone. As he drew nearer, Lore raised his weapon, focused on the south corridor as it slowly came into view.
He stopped midstride. The shooter was walking casually down the hall, his rifle—a box-type semiautomatic—slung over one shoulder. He had a flashlight in the other hand. Lore got an impression of someone fit and tall with collar-length hair—but not Belenos. Lore remembered the vampire king as a bigger man. Who was this guy? Lore took aim.
“On your knees! Now!” he roared.
The light vanished. The figure didn’t turn or even flinch, but bolted like a flushed rabbit. Lore fired, hoping to scare the guy into stopping, but no such luck. Lore ran after him, afraid to stop and change to his hound form. The seconds it would take would be enough to lose his prey.
He’d gone about fifty steps when he lost sight of his quarry. He stopped, listening, but there was nothing to hear. Instinct made him fall to the ground a second before another bullet zinged through the air. Lore saw the muzzle flash. The guy was using a classroom door for cover. Lore returned fire, the bullet striking sparks off the door handle.
The guy dove for the emergency exit a few feet away. They had traveled a nearly complete loop back to the main stairwell. Lore cut down a side hall and aimed for that instead, hoping to head the shooter off when they reached the main-floor landing. Firefights in a stairwell weren’t pretty, and he’d as soon have the element of surprise on his side.
He galloped down the stairs and jumped the last steps, dashing to the fire exit door across the building foyer and ripping it open. He was late. The shooter was already two flights below, heading for the basement. Thankfully, the emergency lights were working here. Lore charged after him, stripping off his suffocating coat along the way.
Closing the gap between them, Lore followed the shooter into the subterranean warren of language labs, lockers, and bare concrete. Lore got a few more details—the guy was wearing a watch cap and black clothes. Caucasian. Human? Graffiti snaked along the walls as they streaked past. The runner turned, crashing through the fire doors that passed into a tunnel that ran between this building and the computer lab.
This is what Lore had been hoping for: an easy shot in an area where there was nowhere to hide. The runner had gone straight into a perfect kill zone.
“Freeze!” he bellowed, the walls ringing with the word.
Without stopping, the shooter turned to his right and opened a door in the side of the tunnel.
What the fuck? Lore charged toward him. He’d been in this underground passageway before. There was no door.
But the shooter passed through it.
Lore slowed, fighting momentum, ready to grab this unexpected doorknob.
But there wasn’t one. No knob. No door. No seam where the door might have been. There was only grubby concrete wall, and a tingling sensation when he touched his hand to the concrete blocks. Magic. Magic not even a hellhound’s power over doorways could break.
Fury shocked him, leaving his skin tingling and raw. It took him beyond swearing. He simply backed away, turned, and walked quickly to the end of the tunnel to the Cambridge underground entrance. His jaw clenched, and eerie, cold anger gripped him like an invisible beast.
Sorcery. Hate. Prey. Escape. Tear. Bite.
As he stalked into the basement computer lab, he could smell damp concrete. A mop and bucket in one corner reminded him there’d been a burst pipe. He walked up the wheelchair ramp to the main floor, wondering where Perry was. Lore pulled out his cell and pushed the speed dial to Perry’s number, but it went to voice mail.
The ramp ended near the door. Lore looked around, noticing a red smear on the wall. Blood? Automatically, he looked down. There was more spatter on the floor.