If he’d been human his breathing would have been fast, his heart racing. He’d been dead for twenty years; he shouldn’t have been showing this many signs of stress, unless he was distracting me from something else?
I looked past him and caught a glimpse of the grandmother vamp, as Smith and Urlrich and another uniform led her out. I looked back at Blondie. “Don’t do anything stupid,” I said.
“Who are you talking to?” Stevens asked.
We all moved forward, sort of herding the vampires in front of us. “Him,” I said.
Blondie smiled. I didn’t like the smile, at all.
I grabbed him by the arm and hurried him out of the elevator to catch up with the others, but shackles mean you have to go slow. I didn’t want to leave Stevens alone with the last of the vamps in the elevator, but… I had a bad feeling.
We got out into the last bit of the warehouse, as Smith and others opened the main doors and started easing the chained vampires out into the thicker darkness outside. They were outside; only Urlrich was left in the doorway. Stevens moved forward with the last of them. I came at the rear, with Blondie going even slower than he needed to be ahead of me.
The grandmother looked back. I looked into her eyes, and I saw it, saw what she was about to do, but I was yards away from her, from the door. I met her frightened eyes, watched her gather her courage. Urlrich had to catch a vampire that fell in his shackles; he helped them out the door, and it was just Stevens and me with the last few. He was closer than I was.
I called out, “Stevens, watch Grandma.”
He turned and did what I said, but he didn’t bring his gun up, only his eyes. Smith hadn’t dealt with enough vampires.
“Don’t do it, Grandma,” I said, “Don’t move.”
“Or you’ll kill me,” she said.
“Escape attempts allow us to use deadly force; don’t do it.”
Stevens was looking from her to me. “What’s going on?”
“She’s considering,” I said.
“Considering what?” he asked.
“Running,” I said.
“How can you tell?” he asked.
“I just can.” I wasn’t being psychic; it was just years of doing this shit. I just knew.
“What?” Stevens asked.
“Just don’t let her run, Stevens,” Urlrich said. He’d come back inside, and he hit the slide on his shotgun. It made that thick, meaty sound that raises the hair on your arms, and makes your shoulder blades tighten in anticipation of something bad. The vampires flinched, except for her.
“Don’t,” I said.
“Stevens,” Urlrich said.
Stevens put his gun point-blank against the woman’s back. She smiled at me, and the fear was gone. Shit. She turned that smile up to Stevens, and she was suddenly your favorite grandmother. She radiated good cheer; you could almost smell the cookies baking.
“No one move!” Urlrich said, and his voice had that drill sergeant bite to it.
She smiled at Stevens. I would have liked to say it was vampire mind tricks, but she looked so harmless, so human, so like the storybook grandmother. His gun lowered. I think the rookie just didn’t have it in him to shoot, point-blank, into a handcuffed elderly woman. She looked so human.
She turned and ran, and Stevens didn’t shoot her. Urlrich was blocked by other vampires that weren’t running. He couldn’t use the shotgun.
I yelled, “Fuck!” and started to run. I yelled for Smith as I went. Guns exploded outside-lots of them.
I yelled, “No!” I don’t know what I was saying no to, but I knew that whatever was happening outside, the vampires had wanted it to happen, and if they wanted it, it was bad.
I felt the vampires. Felt their power. They were going all vampire apeshit. I ran to the door, AR up and ready; the darkness blazed with holy fire. Every holy object in the courtyard was glowing with white, cool fire, like stars had fallen to the earth and just kept shining, but stars are just suns, distant, burning suns; they burned now.
There were bodies on the ground. The vampires were screaming, falling to the ground, trying to hide their eyes from the glow. It was so bright that I couldn’t look directly at any of it, so everyone was shadows and shapes in the bright, bright lights.
My own cross burst into light. I put my back against the wall on the side of the open door and wheeled around to point my AR at the few vampires left inside. Urlrich was doing the same thing on the other side of the door. His tie-tack cross was blazing. We were both squinting against the light, trying to aim past it. It was the serious downside to the holy objects. If the vampires fell over and huddled from the light, you were fine, but if they didn’t, it was hard to shoot at them. Somehow I knew what vampire I’d be looking at.
Blondie had Stevens in front of him, using him as a shield. They were both on their knees. The broken chain from his cuffs to his shackles dangled near Stevens’s face.
The vampire’s eyes glowed like gray ice with moonlight behind it. “The young officer has no faith in his cross.”
Stevens’s cross-shaped lapel pin wasn’t glowing.
“Stevens,” Urlrich said. He had his shotgun to his shoulder, but he didn’t dare use it, not with the two of them so close together. If there was a shot to be had, it would have to be mine. I was good enough, if the range was any judge, to hit Blondie’s head where it peeked out from around Stevens, but that was at the range. If I didn’t hit inside the seven ring, I just adjusted my aim. If I missed this shot, I’d hit Stevens. It would be a head shot, and there would be no second chance for Stevens. But I couldn’t aim past the damn glow of my cross. I tore it off and threw it into the corner.
“Blake,” Urlrich said, voice low and urgent.
I ignored him and let my eyes adjust to the dimness.
Blondie tucked his head even tighter against Stevens so that it was just the barest sliver of his face, and that one glowing eye half lost in Stevens’s short hair. “Don’t do it,” the vampire said.
I slowed my breathing first, it all begins with the breathing, and then I slowed my heartbeat, timed it. I thought softly, in time to that slowing beat, “Fuck… fuck… fuck… fuck…”
“Even if you can make the shot, you can’t make it fast enough.”
I kept my voice even, my vision on that edge of face. “Let… him… go.” I stopped looking at Stevens’s wide eyes and tried to just see my target.
He ducked completely behind Stevens so that I had no head shot except Stevens. I kept my aim on where his head had been last. He’d peek back out. He wouldn’t be able to resist-probably.
He spoke, hidden. “You’re talking in time to your heartbeat.”
“Yes,” I said softly.
“Don’t,” Stevens said, voice strained with the pressure of the vampire’s hand against his throat.
“If I tear his throat out now, you don’t have a shot.”
Urlrich said, “You kill him, and I’ll shoot you through his body.”
“I’m already dead; you can’t scare me.”
“You’re… not… dead,” I said. I was having trouble focusing where I thought his head would pop out. You can’t focus like that forever; you have to take the shot, or rest your eyes. They give out before your arms give out on holding the shooting stance.
“I am dead,” the vampire said.
“Not… yet…” I said.
I saw an edge of blond hair. My breathing just stopped, everything stopped. I pulled the trigger in a well of silence, where the emptiness waited for my heartbeat.
The blond hair fell back behind Stevens, and I thought I’d missed. I waited for the vampire to tear his throat out as I ran forward, gun to shoulder, yelling, “Fuck!”
Urlrich yelled, “Stevens!”
Stevens fell forward on all fours. I waited for his throat to spill crimson. He got to his feet and stumbled away from the vampire. The vampire stayed on the floor, on his back. I had the AR snugged tight, and suddenly I thought
