The guns roared.
The first bullet sliced into the vampire’s chest, punched through dry muscle, and bit Ghastek’s journeyman in the shoulder. He spun from the impact, and the steady stream of rounds from the M240B punctured the vampire and cut across the journeyman’s spine, nearly severing him in two. Blood sprayed.
The women hit the ground.
The bullets chipped the pavement. Half a foot to the right, and Ghastek’s head would’ve exploded like a watermelon under a sledgehammer. I dived under the gunfire, grabbed Ghastek’s legs, and pulled him out of the line of fire, backing up to my office.
The women crawled toward me through the snow.
The vamp twisted around, shuddering under the barrage of bullets, leaped on to the fallen man, and tore into his back, flinging blood and flesh into the air.
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 the doorway of my office. In the street, the redheaded girl hugged the ground, clenching her thigh, her eyes huge as saucers. Blood stained the snow a painfully bright scarlet. Shot in the leg.
I had to get her out of here before the vamp keyed in on her or the PAD shot her.
I dropped on the pavement, 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.
Breathe, pull, scream, slide.
Breathe, pull, scream, slide.
Door.
I pushed her inside my office building, slammed the door shut, and barred it. It was a good door, metal, reinforced, with a four-inch bar. It would hold.
A wide red stain spread on the floor from the wounded woman’s leg. I knelt down and sliced the pant leg. 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 store room to get the medical supplies.
Tourniquets were last-resort devices. Mine was a 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 when faced with a loose vampire was to 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 the 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 is almost 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 of 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 a 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 the 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 pressed against the wall so I couldn’t shoot him through the opening. I did the same on the other end of the door.
“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 opened the door.
“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 vampire in the middle of the city.”