Vampire$

And Carl did, the cable went immediately taut and she was flung past them toward the door but the angle was wrong, she was being jerked around a pillar and as she went past it her suddenly taloned hands reached out and her fingers sunk two inches into the plaster and she just stopped herself.

Which meant she must have stopped the goddamn Blazer, too! And there was this high-pitched ping and distant grinding of metal and the cable went slack and she smiled this ghastly smile at them and then she let got of the pillar and ran past them toward the booking counter and she leapt into the air like a missile and went right fucking through the iron grille above it with an ear-splitting shriek of tearing metal and then there was this hole in the grille and it was all torn loose from its bolts to the counter and there was more dust in the flickering light from where the ceiling had given way too and…

And Felix grabbed Jack Crow by the upper arm and spun him around and screamed, “You didn’t tell me they could do that!”

And Jack jerked angrily free and shouted back just as loud, “I didn’t know!”

And Felix believed him. “Let’s get out of here, then!”

Jack nodded. “Cat! Where are you?”

“Here, bwana,” came the shaky reply from the top of the elevator.

“C’mon, dammit!” ordered Jack, moving toward him. “While she’s out of range!”

Cat nodded, poised briefly at the top of the elevator, then dropped softly, like his namesake, to the floor.

“Everybody all right?” asked Crow to the others, who had gathered around Cat.

Each nodded, but Felix paid no attention. He was still moving toward the front door, toward the sunshine, toward safety, dammit! We’ll count our wounds outside, how ’bout?

But the others still stood there. Not for long — just a few seconds, really. And then the cable that stretched between them, from the front door to the busted grille, began to twitch.

“How much slack,” whispered the deputy, “does she really have?”

When she came bursting back through the grille toward them they all fell backward out of their huddle and Jack went in between Felix and the target and for just an instant the gunman almost fired anyway but he didn’t.

And that gave her the time to lunge at Cat.

Cat fell back on the floor holding the pike out in front of him but it happened too fast — he couldn’t get the sharpened end around toward her in time — and she got him.

Grabbed him around the waist and lifted him high in the air, one of the shafts that bisected her knocking loudly into his face — And Cat was dead and they all knew it.

Dead in front of them.

Dead in between them.

And the cable warped and zinged along the jailhouse floor and went taut and jerked her off her feet through the wooden stake in her chest and she hissed as she flew toward the sunlight, hissed and spat and dropped Cat to reach out and grab the wall along the edge of the wide front door and she did it, she stopped herself again, but her feet flew out from their own momentum and smacked into the blackened glass and the door swung wide, wide open and the sunlight bathed them and exploded her body into deafening, howling, flames.

But she would not let go!

Felix did shoot her. He shot her again and again, but she wouldn’t let go and except for the obvious concussion when a slug struck her body he wouldn’t have believed he was hitting her and outside they could hear the strain of a motor and see her talons flexed into the wall and they knew she could do it again, wreck the cable or another Blazer or something, knew she could get free again.

Knew she was strong enough.

Cat clambered to his feet, planted his left foot, and drove his pike into her flaming back with every ounce of strength and fear he had left and the SCREAMING as it plunged into her, the SCREAMING… and for a half a second they all saw her claws lose their grip and by the time she had held fast again Deputy Thompson had stepped forward and thrown his pike and he was younger and stronger than Cat and when it hit it drove through the back of her flaming head and she SCREAMED that SCREAM again and her hands flew open and she was out the doorway and into the full sunlight and imploding with the flame, dead and gone at last, before the door had a chance to swing shut and cut off their view.

“One down,” muttered Jack.

Felix eyed him a moment, then walked out the door and into the sunshine.

Chapter 18

By the time they were ready to go again, there were only ninety minutes left until sundown.

Not so good, thought Jack Crow. But he kept it to himself along with everything else and hurried them along.

The trouble was, they had had so much to do:

A portable generator for power to their spotlights.

Two extra spotlights to protect those that were smashed.

A new cable.

They had removed what was left of both elevator doors.

They had fixed the front door.

And of course they repaired the walking wounded. Cat’s nose was broken. Jack had sutures on his cheek. Felix had a bandage on the edge of his forehead. And Carl Joplin had damn near lost all his teeth.

He hadn’t lost a one yet. But he should have. Seems the first time he tried dragging the girl out, she had just torn the Blazer’s rear bumper completely off. The second time he had used a police car, actually wrapping the cable around the engine block and getting a much faster start so that he was going almost twenty miles an hour when he ran out of slack.

But she had stopped the police car dead and Carl had gone right through the windshield and his face was cut in what looked like a hundred different places and his lips were split and all his front teeth were loose to the touch. Somehow he had managed to keep his lead foot on the throttle through the whole thing and, therefore, saved their lives.

Or at least kill her, which was what counted.

Cat still managed to bitch at him about being slow and Carl had angrily snarled back that he had changed cars and gotten moving again within thirty goddamn seconds and let’s see Cat do it that fast and Cat had asked him if he knew how far a vampire could move in thirty seconds?

“How far?” he snorted.

“Nobody knows, Joplin,” Cat shot back, “because there’s so many oceans in the way!”

And it was meant to be funny but no one really laughed because they were all going to have to do it again two more times in an hour and a half and…

And nobody thought this was going to work.

Jack knew this, saw it in their faces, and didn’t care, didn’t give a shit because there was no other choice!

So, “Rock and roll,” be barked and got his cast inside again, into the dusty glare of the spolights and the cool dryness Of the air conditioning, which had stayed working all along somehow. While the others got into their positions, Jack walked over and looked at the elevator car. Pig’s blood and broken glass were all over the walls and ceiling. There was a large pool of it on the floor.

Jack had nothing to replace their bait. No more blood. No other aquarium. But he thought, from the memory of her feeding frenzy, that just that pool on the floor would be enough to entice.