Page 274 of Golden Eagle

“Oh, well, so long as it’s justthat.”

The two kids were huddled in their midst, right in the center, the older one holding on to the younger one.

“Either of you know how to do the fire trick like your brother?” Lanny asked.

“They’re children,” Will reprimanded.

“Yeah, they’re about to be dead children if we don’t get out of here.”

“We’re coming,” Dante called from the room behind them, but it was too late, wasn’t it? Of course it was.

Val shifted his weight, ready and coiling with energy. Gave his sword a twirl; the blade parted the air audibly. “When the gunfire doesn’t stop them, be ready to draw your sword, Captain.”

Nikita grunted in response.

The sounds swelled, and the monsters came around the corner, straight toward them.

~*~

The important thing, Nikita thought, clinging to scraps of rationality, was that they not shoot or stab one another. There wouldn’t be time to bind up a wound and feed in the midst of the melee. And it would be a melee, he saw, as the dirty, ragged, uncooperating horde rolled down the hall toward them, a seething mass of tattered clothes, grimy skin, glowing eyes, and bared fangs.

He holstered his gun, and drew the sword Fulk had given him. It didn’t feel too heavy and awkward now, when he needed it. “See that corner they came around? We have to get past it. There’s another hallway after that one that leads down to the parking garage. That’s our goal. Kill as many of them as you can. Keep the kids in the center. Alexei, you back there?”

“Yes,” he called. “We’re here.”

“Does compulsion work on these things?” Nik asked.

Will said, “Not that we’ve seen.”

“Alright. Cut them down, then.”

And they were upon them.

Sasha was in the lead. He took off, running low and fast to the ground, leapt – and shifted in mid-air, the magic of the transformation shivering across his body, a sparkling distraction for one split-second as the lead vampire paused, his fellows bumping into him from behind. When he was human-shaped, Sasha hooked an arm around that vamp’s neck, and let his momentum carry them forward, down to the ground, amidst all the others.

Nikita’s heart leapt.

The vamp’s neck broke with an audible crack, and Sasha was on four legs again when he hit the ground, and turned to hamstring another with his fangs.

Nikita could only send up a quick prayer, and lift his sword to meet the vampire that rushed toward him.

The thing didn’t even try to shield itself. He reached out for Nik with both arms, hissing, dirty, chipped fingernails like claws. Nikita swung hard, and the sword carved a furrow through its face. A deep wound; he glimpsed bone and the gleaming pink of sinus cavities. Blood spurted, up the sword, across his hands, down the thing’s own body, unheeded. It staggered, his balance badly affected, but it didn’t stop trying to come for him. Its claws scrabbled at his jacket.

He swung again, at the neck. Arterial spray this time, a stark line of it up the white wall. And he must have severed the spinal cord, because it dropped, boneless, and growled wetly convulsing.

He didn’t have time towishfor time to kill it properly. Another was right behind it, tripping over its fallen kin, and this one did get a hold of Nikita’s jacket, scratching at his face with its other hand.

Hot, thin lines of pain bloomed down his cheek. He took a grip on oily hair, yanked the thing’s head back, and did an ugly job of slitting its throat with the edge of the sword.

The blood spray went into his face this time, blinding him a moment, getting in his mouth. The taste was awful, the usual copper-chocolate of blood tainted by rot. He spat, and pushed the vampire away. When it hit the ground, he hamstrung it, to keep it down, and it twitched and flopped in a puddle of its own blood.

He wiped his eyes with his sleeve, and when he blinked them mostly clear, it was in time to see another one lunging for him. It hit him before he could get his sword ready, slamming him back into the wall. Mouth wide and fangs dripping saliva; breath foul and stinking of past meals and rotted teeth. It ducked its head, too fast for Nik to even respond, going for his throat–

And threw its head back, howling – not with pain, but with rage. Val had run it through from the side, through its whole rib cage, through its lungs.

Blood bubbled out from between its lips.

Val withdrew his sword, and Nikita kicked the thing away. It staggered back a step, and Val took its head off with one powerful stroke.

---