The bullet hit the vampire in the neck and slammed him sideways across the corridor, thick, red blood so dark it was almost black streaming from the wound. The hiss the creature let out as it turned its dead eyes toward her was enough to send shivers up and down her spine.
Harley pulled the trigger again and again, stepping closer and closer as she continued aiming for the junction of the creature’s head and shoulder. She remembered clearly what Jake had said about how to kill a vampire. Behead it or rip out its heart. Ripping out this thing’s heart didn’t seem like an option, but blowing his head off his shoulders? That seemed like a reasonable possibility.
She was three feet away from the vampire when she fired the next round straight into the center of the thing’s neck, hoping the large bullets coming out of the weapon would snap its spine. The mess it made was horrendous, but the vampire barely seemed to notice the damage.
The next round from the AK sent the thing stumbling back another few steps and tore away enough flesh from its throat, Harley could easily make out part of its cracked and chipped spine. Another couple shots and this thing would be dead. Then they’d be safe.
But when she pulled the trigger again, nothing happened.
Harley only had half a second to realize the weapon was empty before the vampire backhanded her across the corridor.
She hit the floor so hard she bounced, coming to a painful halt against the concrete a few feet away. Pain throbbed through her face and neck from the slap, through her back and head from hitting the floor, and from every part of her still dealing with the previous gunshot wounds. Her vision wavered, black specks floating in front of her, and in the few seconds it took for that to clear, she completely missed the vampire scooping up a handgun and advancing on her. By the time she was functional again, the thing was pointing the weapon at Harley. There was a smile on its face even as blood continued to pour out of its neck, deep and dark. A bullet through the head wouldn’t do a thing to a vampire, but it would kill her for sure.
Behind the vampire, Sawyer scrambled to his knees and reached for one of the AK’s lying on the ground. But his movements were clumsy and uncoordinated, and she knew he’d never get the weapon up in time.
Harley tried to push herself to her feet even as she heard the vampire’s finger tighten on the trigger. She lifted her head in time to see the little girl on the floor reaching up one lone, timid finger toward the vampire.
Crap.
Harley opened her mouth even though she had no idea what to say. She couldn’t let the little girl get involved in this. But before she could get a word out, that tiny finger touched the vampire’s left hand.
There was a thud that Harley felt more than heard, like a rumble of thunder vibrating through the air and into her chest. At the same time the nearly inaudible sound washed over her, a pulse of light filled the corridor, and Harley couldn’t help but notice that the silvery-gray light was the exact same color as the girl’s eyes.
Time seemed to stop, then the weapon fell from the vampire’s hand as the creature slowly crumpled to the floor. A second later, the little girl collapsed limply back into the boy’s arms.
Harley was up and running for the girl at the same time Sawyer staggered to the vampire’s side. She breathed a sigh of relief when she discovered the girl was still breathing and had a strong pulse. The little boy was holding her close, looking at Harley curiously.
“I think she’s going to be okay,” Harley told him.
The boy nodded and held the girl closer, his gaze filling with hatred as he looked at the vampire stretched out on the floor.
Harley stood and moved to Sawyer’s side as he knelt beside the vampire, checking to see if the thing was still alive. Sawyer had a bad gash on the back of his head, but otherwise he seemed okay. It was impossible to put into words how good that made her feel.
“Um,” Sawyer started slowly, taking his fingers away from the thing’s neck after a long delay. “I think I felt a pulse, but it’s really slow…like two beats a minute. I don’t know if that’s normal for a vampire or if it means it’s dying.”
Harley was about to tell him to check for breathing, then remembered reading something in the STAT files that said while vampires breathe, they breathe extremely slowly, so that probably wouldn’t help. Before she could say that, the little boy spoke.
“It’s as alive as it ever was,” the boy said in a voice barely above a whisper. “Maya doesn’t kill people when she touches them. She just makes them sleep.”
Without another word, the boy went back to holding Maya, no longer interested in what the rest of them were doing.
Sawyer stood a little unsteadily and gazed down at the creature on the floor. “Any idea what we do with an unconscious vampire?”
Harley didn’t have a clue, but as the vampire’s neck began to heal itself, she wondered if it would be wrong to rip the thing’s head off.
Chapter 8
Sawyer sat across the table from the unconscious vampire, counting the creature’s insanely slow heartbeats. It was freaky to think that something could be alive when its heart only beat once or twice a minute. Then again, he’d always assumed that if vampires were real, they’d have no heartbeat at all. So really, was one beat a minute any freakier than no beats a minute?
A quick glance at his watch confirmed that they were approaching six hours since the fight had ended down in the depths of that underground maze, and there
