77.

They had a moment’s downtime, maybe no more than that. Still there were priorities to consider. Caxton placed her patrol rifle on the floor and plopped down to roll up her pant leg. Dozens of red chevrons dotted her calf, places where vampire teeth had just touched her flesh. The wounds weren’t deep and though the leg felt like it was stiffening up it still held her weight just fine. She’d been lucky—incredibly lucky.

When Glauer took his uniform jacket off she saw he’d gotten it a lot worse. He was a big guy and he could take a lot of punishment, but the wound looked very bad. A chunk of flesh was missing from his bicep and he could move his left arm only with halting pain. There was surprisingly little blood in the wound.

Caxton was afraid she knew what that meant. He was breathing heavily, he complained of excessive thirst, and his face was pale—the symptoms of anemia. The vampire that bit his arm had sucked out some of his blood. Maybe too much. Someone passed him a canteen and he sucked at it greedily. Caxton took off her tie and made a tourniquet above the wound. It would help keep the rest of his blood in his body and it would also help stave off infection. He needed more help than she could give, though. He needed a doctor. He needed to be taken to a hospital.

That wasn’t going to happen. Not yet, anyway.

He wasn’t in shock, she could at least be thankful for that. One of the guardsmen had a bandage and some surgical tape. She wrapped it around Glauer’s arm and then helped him shrug back into his jacket. It hurt him to put the garment back on, but it would keep him warm—crucial in a case of massive blood loss.

When she was finished she stared into his eyes. “The one who did this—”

“I got him,” Glauer insisted.

Caxton bit her lip and nodded. There would be others, though. Other vampires who had drunk hot human blood. It didn’t just feed them. It made them stronger and tougher. She passed the word around, through Lieutenant Peters. The next wave they faced would be harder to kill. A single shot to the heart might not be enough to take down a well-fed vampire.

“Jesus,” one of the guardsmen said when he heard the news. “What’s today, my birthday? I didn’t want this. I wanted a pony.”

A few of the soldiers—far too few—laughed. The tension in the Cyclorama Center was thicker than road tar. Everyone knew the vampires were coming, but they were taking their damned time about it.

Caxton’s radio crackled but before she could answer it Lieutenant Peters stood up straight, without warning, and every eye in the room turned to look at her. The guardswoman touched the earpiece of her radio set. “Report,” she said. Caxton guessed she was talking to the pilot of one of the helicopters. The Cyclorama building had no windows, so that was the only way they had to know what was happening outside without poking their heads out the door and taking a personal look. Nobody was about to volunteer for that duty. “Okay, received,” the lieutenant said a moment later. She turned to look at Caxton. “Definite signs of movement. Under light enhancement these things show up pretty good, and—”

The doors of the Cyclorama Center slammed open before she could finish her thought. A single vampire strode through them, his arms wide, his mouth open in a wicked grin. He was shirtless and Caxton could make out his ribs below his tight white skin, but his cheeks were glowing pink. He must have just fed, moments before.

The guardsmen were ready, had been ready since they’d taken shelter in the building. They opened up with single shots, peppering both sides of his chest. White meat splattered from the impacts and a thin black tendril of blood oozed from a wound in his cheek. He took a step forward and new holes opened all over his body, but the older wounds were already healing over.

Another step forward—and then white shapes burst out from behind him, flashing left and right, other vampires coming in right behind him.

No, Caxton thought, but yes—they were that well organized. They had planned this attack, they had gorged one of their number on blood until he was nearly bulletproof and they had sent him in first. While he drew fire the weaker vampires had crept inside without resistance.

The round room’s weird acoustics made every rifle shot echo and repeat, and the muzzle flashes fractured Caxton’s vision as she jumped to her feet. She grabbed Glauer and shoved him toward the rear exit, a fire door at the northern side of the building. She felt a cold breeze on the back of her neck and spun around. It felt as if her Beretta jumped into her hand. Before she’d even registered the pale shape looming at her shoulder she lifted and fired three quick shots. The vampire there curled around his emaciated limbs and tumbled at her feet. Had she hit the heart? She doubted it—she’d been firing blind. Hurriedly she brought up her rifle and shoved the stock into the crook of her shoulder. The vampire struggled to get his knees under him, then one foot. She waited, holding as long as she could, until his pale body loomed up and over her again.

Then she pressed the muzzle of her weapon against his chest and fired a .50-caliber round right through his heart. He died before he could even look surprised.

Safe—for the moment—she spun around to see what was happening.

Elsewhere in the room the guardsmen were dying faster than they could acquire targets. She saw one screaming and pounding at the floor as a vampire tore into his back with razor-sharp teeth. His legs had already been torn off by another. She saw Lieutenant Peters wrestling with a vampire that could have bench-pressed her, body armor and all, smacking the monster across the head again and again with the heat shield of her patrol rifle.

“Break contact,” Caxton shouted, and a few of the guardsmen heard her and ran for the fire door. Those few who weren’t already in the process of dying. She tried to line up a shot on the vampire wrestling with Peters, but there was no way to avoid hitting the lieutenant as well. A moment later it didn’t matter—the vampire got his face into her throat. The guardswoman tried to spit out one last curse, but it came out as a gurgling, plaintive moan. In moments she was dead, and her vampire assailant was that much stronger.