Then the vampire spotted the other people around him. “Aw, shit,” Francois blinked as five fingers squeezed their triggers. The vampire was fast, but not fast enough to outrun bullets.
Flying lead ripped through him from hip to shoulder. Flung against the wall as gunfire pulverized bones and shredded muscles, Francois held his mind together just long enough to wish he’d stayed on the other side of the room. He slumped against the wall, knowing well enough to play dead until his undead flesh mended.
Amber knew better. She took careful aim at his head from only a few yards away and fired-and then fired again and again until there was hardly anything left.
With the threat down, the other two tac officers swung around the doorway, one high and one low, fully prepared to fire on another threat. They had a target, but they also had a small, round object flying through the air at them-and then it exploded before landing. The tac officers barely got off a shot before the grenade blast sent both men tumbling to the floor.
Though shaken by the blast, Amber caught none of its shrapnel. Nguyen and Lanier were both down, too, though she couldn’t see blood or other obvious injury. In the darkened room, she couldn’t even tell if they might be moving. Amber shrugged off the fog in her head and the throbbing in her ears to scramble forward, staying low with her weapon at the ready. She moved off to the right, hoping to ambush anyone who came in the room.
Too much blood and gore covered the tac officers to hold out any hope for them. Their bodies still carried much better equipment than anything the agents had. Amber reached for Miguel’s tac vest, pulling open a Velcro pouch soaked with blood from his savaged chest.
Then the automatic gunfire started again, this time right over her head. The new threat came around the door to sweep the room with bullets. With every one of her comrades down, Amber had little time to think or plan. She simply acted. Amber raised her weapon and fired at point blank range, putting bullets into the gunman’s chest. He staggered and fell against the wall, still moving but momentarily stunned.
Run, said a voice in her head with all the speed of thought. You can’t defend your friends alone, but you might lead the enemy away from them. Run.
Amber heeded the advice, believing it to be her own idea. She pushed herself up and toward the door, coming to it just as another foe appeared. In a flash of memory, she recognized her as the sugar skull girl from the Halloween party, but that hardly mattered.
She didn’t feel her guardian angel’s hand on hers. She didn’t think about how quickly she moved, or that the vampire seemed ready for her. She simply pointed her weapon and fired. The bullet went straight through Rosario’s cheek, disorienting her and giving Amber the chance to shove her way past.
Rosario collapsed to her hands and knees on the floor. Her companion shook off the last effects of Amber’s shots, lurched back toward the doorway and over Rosario. He made it just in time for Amber’s flash bang grenade to land at his feet with a blinding white light and a deafening boom.
Amber ran for the stairs at the other end of the hall without looking back.
The effects of the grenade wore of faster on the undead than they would on the living. “Bloody hell,” the Englishman sputtered as he rubbed his eyes. “What was that thing?”
“I’mma fucking eat that bitch,” Rorsario seethed. She picked herself up off the floor and gave her companion a shove. “See if any of these assholes are alive and get ‘em back to Wentworth if they are. I want fucking blood.”
* * *
“Where the hell is your girlfriend?”
“Probably wherever you put her, douche. Look, uncuff me and I’ll help!”
Hauser ignored the offer. “Not her. The other one. How do you summon her? Is there a prayer or a spell or something like that? Do you just call out her name?”
Pushed along down the hallway by the agent behind him, Alex turned his head over his shoulder to throw a sour look. “Yeah, I point my magic sword in the air and I call out, ‘The power of Christ compels thee.’ Are you nuts?”
“Is it just straight-up danger?” demanded Hauser. “Is that it?” He shoved Alex toward an open doorway leading to a broad, old office. Long-abandoned desks and old chairs occupied the room, along with rolodexes, desktop phones and computer monitors that had been obsolete when Alex was in grade school. Along the far wall stretched a wide bay of windows.
“Hauser, people are in trouble down there!” Alex argued. “What the hell are we still doing up here? We’ve gotta help!”
“I am helping!” Hauser growled. “I have a plan!” He pressed up against the wall beside the window and looked out at the grounds below. “They’re all here. All the vampires hunting you. And now all we need is for your angel to show up and take them out for good.”
Alex looked at him like he’d grown another head. “Are you out of your fuckin’ mind? Did you want this?”
“How does it work? Dammit, tell me! Do you have to get hurt?” he fairly snarled, drawing back his gun as if to pistol-whip his captive. Alex made ready to kick Hauser away, but then Hauser stopped. “No, she’d probably just come after me, right? Stupid.” He looked around the forgotten office, then out the window again, and came to a frantic decision.
Hauser fired a shot through the glass, then smashed the rest out with his pistol and pointed down at the grounds. Dark shapes ran here and there, some human and some not. Hauser took only a second to draw a bead before he fired.
Return fire crashed through the rest of the window a second later. Hauser knew to duck in time. He looked at Alex expectantly, but the younger man just watched Hauser in shock.
“Where is she?” Hauser shouted at him. “She could destroy them all!”
“What the fuck is wrong with you?” Alex snapped back. He jerked free of Hauser’s grasp, backing away as best he could without stumbling. The more he saw and heard from the frantic agent, the surer he was that Hauser had somehow lost his mind. Alex reached for any way to reason with him, or some other plan to deal with Hauser.
Alex tripped over a large, heavy lump on the floor behind him. He rolled to his knees and came face to face with one of the tactical support officers-Alex thought his name was Theo-who lay with his lifeless eyes staring at the ceiling. The man’s M4 lay next to him, but with Alex’s hands bound behind his back the carbine would do him no good. “Oh, shit,” Alex breathed. Before he could act, a pair of strong hands grabbed his shoulders.
Inhumanly strong hands.
Alex flew off his feet, lifted like a rag doll and slammed down onto a desk by his assailant. He heard Hauser shout and fire off a couple more rounds, followed by a crash.
Even without the lights on, Alex recognized his assailant. He still had that same red beard and scraggly hair, the same towering figure and the same runes worked into his mail shirt. The leather jacket he wore over his armor made little difference. The blade in his hands was doubtlessly modern steel, but it held to a pattern set centuries ago.
A bullet burst through Unferth’s chest from behind, doing little more than causing him to jerk a bit and snapping some rings of his mail.
“Back off!” Hauser shouted.
“Bjorn,” grunted Unferth.
Alex saw another dark shape sweep by, heard another couple of shots from Hauser’s pistol and then a crash. Alex rolled off the desk out of Unferth’s reach. He dodged around the other vampire, rushing to get to Hauser. As he suspected, Bjorn already had the agent’s arms in a tangle. Bjorn’s mouth opened wide, fangs bared.
Throwing out a low, sweeping kick, Alex struck Bjorn right at the knee. The vampire’s leg buckled and he stumbled. Unferth’s hands grabbed Alex from behind again, throwing him backward onto the floor.
“Drink, brother,” Unferth told the other vampire. “I’ll finish this.”