Chapter 43

The girl in the lead hit my radius and skidded to a stop, looking bewildered. I’d never actually had a just-turned vampire in my radius before, but I imagined it had to be confusing. “Kill her!” roared Oskar’s voice from the back. Though she was currently a human again, something in the girl’s overloaded brain told her she was supposed to listen to Oskar. She raised her handgun and shot me again. Luckily her aim was shitty, and the bullet just grazed my arm. Unluckily, it was pretty much exactly where I’d already been fucking shot.

I screeched with pain and dropped low, pulling Molly’s table over sideways. Feeling the pain in my ribs, trying to ignore it. The table landed with a crash. Inspired, I pushed it as fast as I could toward the attacking vampires. It was a small room, and the legs of the table hit the lead girl in the ankle, sending her stumbling back into the girl behind her. It must have caused a chain effect, because I heard Oskar shouting obscenities.

“Time to go, Molls,” I said, fingers scrabbling at the belts. “Can you wiggle out?” Behind me, Shadow had climbed to her feet and shaken herself vigorously. I’d known intellectually that she would be fine, but I still felt something tight in my chest release. “Shadow!” I yelled. “Can you buy us some time without killing those girls?”

Shadow walked—limping only for the first few steps—across the room to the doorway, where the lead girl was just pointing the gun at me again.

“You don’t want to shoot me,” I said conversationally. “I’m just trying to help your friend Molly. Remember her?”

The girl peered over the side of the table, confirming that yes, the girl strapped to it was familiar. “Molly?” she said tentatively. “I don’t understand—”

“I know, Harper,” Molly said, as Oskar continued to shout orders from behind the girl. I dropped the belt I was working on and scrambled to grab knives, throwing one at the girl right behind Harper, who still had a gun pointed at me. I hit the upper arm of her gun hand just before it fired. I felt the bullet whiz harmlessly past my face. Shadow stopped worrying at Oskar’s legs and turned on the shooter, sinking her teeth into the girl’s ankle. She yowled.

Molly had managed to wriggle her lower body out of the remaining belts, which had to hurt like hell with the bullet in her leg. “We gotta go,” I yelled over the chaos.

“Not without them!” Molly cried.

“What do you want me to do?”

“Get them out of here!”

There was fresh fire in her voice, and I suddenly understood. She wanted to take Oskar out herself, a sentiment that I could appreciate, even if she wasn’t exactly instilling confidence in me. Molly still looked like hell.

But how was I going to convince four armed, completely disoriented college kids to follow me out of this joint? “Tell them to trust me, then!”

“Hailey! Taylor! Louisa! Harper!” Molly roared, in such a commanding tone that all four girls froze. “Forget what this asshole told you. Drop the guns and follow my friend Scarlett to safety. You can trust her!”

The girls were crowded around the bottleneck I’d made with the hallway, and they were obviously about to lose it. Two were already crying, and the other two had trembling lips. Behind them, Oskar was trying to scream a new set of orders. They were currently human, so they had no biological imperative to obey him, but it contributed to the overall chaos.

Molly snatched the gun out of Harper’s hand and pointed it at Oskar, which made his mouth click shut as he realized that he was currently human. Suddenly, the whole room was dead silent. Shadow looked at me, whining uncertainly. I was busy looking at the four girls.

They were all pretty, and bedraggled, and nearly naked. Their clothes had been half-burned away, and hung in charred, smelly tatters at their shoulders and waistlines. Each girl had blood near her mouth, which meant Oskar had at least fed them when they woke up. But they’d been through a hell of a lot of trauma, not the least of which was being turned into fucking vampires without warning. If anyone deserved to be wigging out, it was them.

But we just didn’t have time.

I stood up, raising my hands to show they were empty. Then I stepped slowly over the table, gently took Harper’s hand, and picked up the hand of the next girl in line. I joined them together, and both women tightened their grip. I went down the line, linking the four of them together. Then I went back to Harper and took her free hand. “I’m getting you out of here,” I said as gently as I could. “Come on.”

They came along with me, docile as lambs. I honestly couldn’t believe it. When I looked over my shoulder, the four women were still holding hands in a chain, looking like toddlers on a field trip. As we moved past the downed table, Molly and Oskar stayed exactly where they were, guns pointed at one another. Oskar was breathing hard from the knife wounds, but Molly didn’t look so great, either. “Molls, you sure?” I called over my shoulder.

“Get them safe,” was her grim reply.

I extended my radius so that Molly and Oskar stayed human until all four women could get through the door. When the last girl in line was a few feet away, I couldn’t hold it any longer. I felt the two vampires pop out of my radius. Inside the building, things began to crash.

I picked up the pace. We went down the block to my van, and I opened the back so all four girls could climb up. At my gesture, Shadow hopped up behind them. I climbed in and closed the door partway.

When I turned to face them, the four women were crowded together, shivering. I’d been so busy running around that I hadn’t felt the temperature drop. It had to be in the high forties now.

Well, at least that gave me somewhere to start. “There are blankets in that compartment,” I said, pointing behind Harper. She turned and began unpacking them. “Okay, guys,” I went on, “I don’t have a lot of time, so here’s the deal. Molly, who is your friend, is actually a vampire. She has been all along, but she’s a nice vampire who wouldn’t willingly hurt you. Except that blond guy, Oskar”—I pointed a thumb over my shoulder—“forced her to. Did he at least explain that you’re vampires now?”

The girl farthest from me, a redhead with smudges of ash on her cheeks and a short, curvy figure, said, “Yeah. He gave us blood to drink. It was . . .” she shivered. “It was good. But I don’t want any now.” Tears began to roll down her face. “I kind of want a hamburger. And I want my mom.”

“That’s because I’m close to you,” I said, trying to sound kind. Scarlett is not a good candidate for group therapy leader. Scarlett does not play well with others. “That’s what I do, I’m a null. As soon as I move away from you, you guys are going to be vampires again, and that means you’re going to be . . . mmm . . . emotionally connected to Oskar. You’re going to want to get out of this van and go help him, but if you do, he’s just going to force you to sell yourselves for him. He’s a pimp, a murderer, and just an all-around evil guy. Okay?”

Three of the girls nodded. The one who wanted her mom was still sniffling, which I decided to accept as a yes.

I was itching to go look for Jesse, not to mention help Molly, but first I pointed to the bargest. “Shadow here has superpowers. I’m going to leave, and you guys are going to be vampires again, but if you try to get out of this van to help Oskar, Shadow will hurt you. A lot.” I made eye contact with each of them. “If she absolutely has to, she will kill you. So just wait here until either Molly or I come for you.” I reached for the door handle, but remembered just in time. “Oh, and there’s an ex-cop named Jesse here, too. Latino, about six feet tall, insanely good-looking for a mortal. He’s with the good guys. You can trust him.”

None of them spoke, but I didn’t have time to sit there, hold hands, and sing “Kumbaya” until I was sure everyone understood. I looked at Shadow, who licked the air in front of her face. “Good girl,” I said, and then I was out of the van and running around the building to find Jesse.

Chapter 44

Jesse had actually thought a lot about what it would be like to fight a vampire. Years ago, Jesse had had a . . . mild disagreement with Dashiell, and the vampire had used just a little bit of his strength to mess with Jesse. After that, he’d thought a lot about what he’d need to do if he ever went up against a vampire for real. And yet here he was, in that exact situation, and his mind went completely blank.