I dragged Ghastek’s body over the doorstep and dropped him. Behind me, a woman screamed. I ran back, jumping over the dark-haired woman as she pulled herself through my doorway. In the street, the redheaded girl hugged the ground, clenching her thigh, her eyes huge as saucers. Blood stained the snow with painfully bright scarlet. Shot in the leg.
She was too far out in the street. I had to get her out of here before the vamp keyed on her or the PAD shot her again.
I dropped to the ground, crawled to her, grabbed her arm, and pulled with everything I had. She screamed, but slid a foot toward me across the pockmarked asphalt flooded with melting snow. I backed up and pulled again. Another scream, another foot to the door.
I pushed her inside, slammed the door shut, and barred it. It was a good door, metal, reinforced, with a four- inch bar. It would hold. It had to.
A wide red stain spread on the floor from the wounded woman’s leg. I knelt down and sliced her pant leg open. Blood spurted out of bullet-shredded muscle. The leg was ripped wide open. Bone shards glared at me, bathed in wet redness. Femoral artery cut, great saphenous vein cut, everything cut. Femur shattered.
Shit.
We would need a tourniquet.
“You! Put pressure here!”
The dark-haired girl stared at me with shocked glassy eyes. No intelligent life there. Every second counted.
I grabbed the redhead’s hand and put it over her femoral artery. “Hold or you’ll bleed out.”
She moaned but pressed down.
I ran to the storeroom to get the medical supplies.
Tourniquets were last resort devices. Mine was the C-A-T, military issue, but no matter how good it was, if you kept one on too long, you risked major nerve damage, loss of a limb, and death. And once it went on, it stayed on. Taking it off outside an emergency room would get you killed in a hurry.
I needed paramedics, but calling them would do nothing. Standard operating procedure said, when faced with a loose vampire, seal off the area. The ambulance wouldn’t come unless the cops gave the paramedics the all-clear. It was just me, the tourniquet, and a girl who would likely bleed her life out.
I knelt by the woman and pulled the C-A-T out of the bag.
“No!” The girl tried to push away from me. “No, I’ll lose my leg!”
“You’re bleeding to death.”
“No, it’s not that bad! It doesn’t hurt!”
I gripped her shoulders and propped her up. She saw the shredded mess of her thigh. “Oh God.”
“What’s your name?”
She sobbed.
“Your name?”
“Emily.”
“Emily, your leg has almost been amputated. If I put the tourniquet on it now, it will stop the bleeding and you might survive. If I don’t put it on, you’ll bleed to death in minutes.”
She clutched at me, crying into my shoulder. “I’ll be a cripple.”
“You’ll be alive. And with magic, your chances of keeping your leg are pretty good. You know, medmages heal all sorts of wounds. But we’ve got to keep you alive until the magic wave hits. Yes?”
She just cried, big tears rolling down her face.
“Yes, Emily?”
“Yes.”
“Good.”
I slipped the band under her leg, threaded it through the buckle, pulled it tight, and wound the windlass until the bleeding stopped.
Four minutes later the gunfire finally died. Ghastek was still out. His pulse was steady, his breathing even. Emily lay still, whimpering in pain, her leg cinched by the wide tourniquet cuff. Her friend hugged herself, rocking back and forth and mumbling over and over, “They shot at us, they shot at us.”
Peachy.
That was the problem with the People: most of them saw action only through the vampire’s eyes while they sat in a safe, well-armored room within the Casino, sipping coffee and indulging in an occasional sugary snack. Getting shot at while riding a vampire’s mind and dodging actual bullets were two different animals.
A loud bang resonated through the door. A male voice barked. “Atlanta Paranormal Squad. Open the door.”
The dark-haired girl froze. Her voice fell to a horrified whisper. “Don’t open it.”
“Don’t worry. I got it under control.” Sort of.
I slid a narrow panel aside, revealing a two-inch-by-four-inch peephole. A shadow shifted to my left—the officer had pressed against the wall so I couldn’t shoot him through the opening.
“Did you get the vamp?”
“We got it. Open the door.”
“Why?”
There was a small pause. “Open. The. Door.”
“No.” They were hot from killing the vampire and still trigger-happy. There was no telling what they would do if I let them in.
“What do you mean, ‘no’?”
He seemed genuinely puzzled.
“Why do you need me to open the door?”
“So we can apprehend the sonovabitch who dropped a loose vampire in the middle of the city.”
Great. “You just killed one member of the People in the cross fire, wounded another, and you want me to let you have the rest of the witnesses. I don’t know you well enough to do that.”
The PAD generally stuck to the straight and narrow, but there were certain things one didn’t do: you didn’t turn over a cop’s killer to his partner and you didn’t surrender a necromancer to the First Response Unit. They were all volunteer, and sanity was an optional requirement. If I gave Ghastek and his people to them, there was a good chance they would never make it to the hospital. The official term was “died of their injuries en route.”
The male voice huffed. “How about this: open the door or we’ll break it down.”
“You need a warrant for that.”
“I don’t need a warrant if I think you’re in immediate danger. Say, Charlie, do you think she’s in danger?”
“Oh, I think she’s in a lot of danger,” Charlie said.
“And would it be our duty as law enforcement officers to rescue her from said danger?”
“It would be a crime not to.”
One person dead, one painting the floor with her blood. I guess it was time for jokes.
“You heard Charlie. Open the door or we’ll open it for you.”
I leaned a touch farther from the peephole. If they tried to break in, I could probably take them, but I could also kiss any sort of future cooperation from the PAD good-bye.
“Stop.” A familiar female voice rang outside the door. It couldn’t be.
“Ma’am, step back,” the cop barked. “You’re interfering with a police matter.”
“I’m a knight of the Order. My name is Andrea Nash; here is my ID.”
Andrea was my best friend. I hadn’t seen her for two months, ever since my aunt trashed half of Atlanta. After the final fight with Erra, Andrea had disappeared. About two weeks later I got a letter that said,
