Vampire$

“Where’s Cat?” Jack wanted to know.

Father Adam shook his head. “Haven’t seen him. Do you think…”

Jack was at the front door, looking warily out into the night.

“Do I think what?” he barked.

Adam swallowed. “We haven’t seen any masters. Maybe they couldn’t come in here. Maybe they’re…”

And he gestured out the door.

“Oh, shit!” sighed Jack.

And the dead grasping hands began scratching at the sliding oak doors.

Jack looked at the doors, saw them start to lean inward with the weight and thirst of the dead.

“Well, we can’t stay here. Maybe…”

Bright headlights framed the door and there was a loud crunching noise as Cat vaulted the Blazer up the front steps and came to a skidding stop on the wide front landing of the great home.

“Whenever ya’all are ready!” he shouted through the driver’s window.

Jack herded everyone out and the Blazer doors were yanked open. Jack took the wheel. Annabelle sat in the passenger seat beside him. Felix sat in the back seat behind her, gun in hand.

And that’s where he was when they bounced down the steps and over the curb and onto the street and were racing half a block away and a streak of movement appeared from the right and something slammed into the side of the Blazer and breaking glass slashed through the interior and the Blazer tilted up crazily on two wheels before bouncing back down on all four wheels, skidding wildly on the slick pavement, side-swiping a parked car and coming to a stop in the middle of the road.

The grasping talons through Annabelle’s shattered passenger window finally woke Felix up. He lunged over the front seat and jammed the automatic into the Young Master’s face and jerked the trigger three times.

The monster’s face disappeared back out through the window and then reappeared, hissing and spitting and shivering, two holes in its moon-pale skin, the clear blood pulsing out with the black spitting mucus from the mouth and…

And Jack tried to move the Blazer but the engine had stalled and then it wouldn’t start in Drive, so he had to work the gearshift and…

And the fiend lunged back at them, back at Felix, the source of his pain, and Felix fired again and again and the head snapped back once more but…

But one of the talons still grasped the edge of the doorway and the whole damned Blazer shook with the monster’s pain and fury and Felix leaned way out over Annabelle’s seat and out the window and twisted his body around and saw the monster, hunched against the side of the vehicle, and it looked up at him, hissed and spat at him, and Felix shot it through the right eye and it vaulted back and lost its grip on the Blazer.

The engine roared to life, Jack tromped on the gas pedal, and they were off.

They could see the creature through the back windows jerking itself to its feet in the middle of the road. Felix, still hanging halfway out the window, managed to shoot one more time.

The Blazer didn’t slow for several blocks while Felix clambered past everyone to the rear of the truck bed to be ready to shoot again. But nothing came. No monster sprinted after them through the rain.

“Relax, Jack!” called Felix at last from the rear. “No one’s coming.”

But Jack kept his foot down hard.

“Where are you going?” yelled Felix, irritated by the careening car.

“Hospital,” said Crow without turning around.

And Adam took Felix by the arm and pointed. He looked where he was told and saw her, saw Annabelle, slumped across the Blazer’s console. Cat was frantically dabbing at her throat with a shirt. But the blood, from a dozen wounds of exploded safety glass, poured thick across her still features.

Chapter 27

“She cannot be moved.”

Jack was getting angry. “Look, doctor, I’m not sure you know what’s—”

But Cat grabbed his boss’s arm.

“Jack! Goddammit! He’s not just saying he’s against it! He’s saying she’ll die! Annabelle will die!”

Crow looked darkly at the two of them, then shrugged the hand off his arm and stepped away down the hail. The three policemen eyed him suspiciously but made no move. Jack had called in every chit and favor he had with the Dallas Police to keep from being arrested, even for questioning. But nobody had actually told the patrolmen just exactly why these heavily armed and obviously fresh-from-violence people weren’t to be touched. And they were wary.

“Dammit!” muttered Jack and looked at his watch. “Dammit!” he repeated when he saw the time.

Because they had already been here all night and most of the day. Because it was three o’clock in the afternoon. How many more hours until sunset?

Until night?

Until they came?

“Mr. Crow,” the doctor tried again, “it’s not just a matter of blood loss. It’s the trauma to the system. Her signs are very low, her heart has fluttered, she has a concussion, she—”

“Hell, doctor, she’s awake, for chrissakes!”

The doctor remained calm. He nodded. “Sometimes. Barely. She’s a strong woman. But she’s not strong enough to leave intensive care. Not for at least one more day. She must have constant monitoring. She must have the IVs. She must stay here.”

He stepped forward and said, more gently, “Don’t worry, Mr. Crow. We’ll take good care of her. She’ll be fine.”

Jack Crow looked at the man and knew he meant it and knew he didn’t know what he was dealing with and he knew something else: there was no way the Team could ever convince him otherwise in time.

Felix had been leaning against the corridor wall with his arms crossed in front of his chest, looking sinister with his bandaged head over the even dozen stitches they had had to give him. He uncrossed his arms and stepped away from the wall.

“Is there a place… a room, where we could talk?” he asked.

The doctor eyed him gratefully and led them around a corner to a small anteroom that, judging from the cigarette smoke, served as the break area for the Emergency Room staff. It had a couple of tables covered with soggy cardboard coffee cups and overflowing ashtrays, some plastic chairs, a vending machine, a pay phone.

The three men sat down and added to the smoke.

“Jack,” Cat all but whispered, “we’re going to have to risk it, you know.”

Crow didn’t look at him, didn’t respond, just puffed hard on his cigarette.

Cat exchanged a look with Felix before trying again.

“We can’t move her, Jack. And… well, we can put sensors outside, out in front, so we’ll know they’re coming. Hell, they might not even come.”

Crow glared at him. “They know she’s hurt, Cherry. Do you really believe they won’t come?”

Cat just looked at him.

Crow turned to Felix. “Do you?”

Felix met his gaze. “No.”

And it was quiet for a while.

“But we’ve got some options here,” Cat continued. “We don’t have to fight. They’ll probably come in the front — why wouldn’t they? And we’ll hear them and we can move her then!”

“Give us that again,” said Felix, interested.

“We move her out the back. Miles of hallways in this place. We’ll just wheel her down the hall and into an elevator and just pick a route out the back. Look, I’ve checked it out. I know just where to park the Blazer…

And he went on for a while in convincing style and much detail, like it was, really, a great opportunity