A male creature tackled me from the side and knocked me forcefully to the ground. The instant I fell on my shoulder, a loud crack echoed through my body as a bone snapped. Pain registered instantly. When I tried to catch my breath, he pounced, striking me across the face with his razor-sharp claws, leaving bloody lacerations in their wake. But before I could gasp for air or push him off me, he had an ironclad grip on my throat.
I couldn’t move my left shoulder, but I reached for the dagger on my right leg, yanked it from the sheath, and drove it into his neck.
Blood spurted out and onto me, mixing with the rain pouring down.
He let out a guttural roar as he fell off me. Choking and gasping to fill my lungs with oxygen, I rolled over onto my left side despite the pain, then sliced the fucker’s throat before I scrambled to my feet. I wiped blood and rain from my face as I scanned the area.
Burnt and dead creatures lay on the ground while Steven and Webb were fighting off what looked to be vampires now.
One man with stark black eyes trudged toward me.
“Come on, motherfucker,” I said as I dug deep for that magic I was supposed to have.
Belief, desire, will, and visualization.
I could certainly see this asshole with a broken neck. I rolled my broken shoulder back. It clicked into place, and the pain disappeared. Got to love being a vampire.
Okay, little witch inside me. Don’t fail me again.
Anger and determination had my arms loose, my wrists ready to do the damage I was born to do.
I met him head-on, igniting my magic to pinpoint sharpness. Baring my fangs, I flicked my wrists. “Strecta.”
His neck snapped, and as he fell, I heard Adam’s voice.
“We need to go,” Adam said.
I looked up to the roof and caught sight of Adam leaving.
I ran past Steven, who was fighting off a vampire. “I’m going to find my uncle.”
“Webb, go with Layla!” Steven shouted. “I got the rest of these assholes.”
Webb tore off the head of a creature as I ran by him and to the front entrance.
I pulled on the handle, but the door was locked. No matter. I kicked the glass with all the vampire strength I had, and the door shattered. Once I was inside the lobby, that decaying and cloying dead-dog aroma made me wince.
Webb rushed up behind me, and I hurried through the lobby and into an enormous space filled with mostly empty cots and IV poles from one end to the other. Suddenly, a macabre thought slammed into me. What if Adam had injected my uncle Jack with the serum? I was about to run around the outer perimeter when Webb caught my arm.
“Not so fast,” he said. “Listen first. What do you hear?”
I lowered my head, breathing through my panic, and sharpened my hearing. “Four heartbeats.”
“Good,” he said. “The way to tell a vampire from a human is by their heart rate. Given the odors in here, you won’t always be able to distinguish one from the other. Our hearts beat much slower than a human’s—anywhere from twenty and fewer beats per minute.” He was looking around as he was talking to me.
I was stoked he was schooling me and also keeping me from acting before thinking.
“Listen, and tell me what species are in here,” he said.
Inhaling, I zeroed in on the sounds. “There’s a body on a bed, but the victim’s pulse is over a hundred beats per minute.” I suspected it was a creature. “There’s one human and one vampire through that door in the distance directly ahead and one human in the last room on the right side.”
“Excellent,” he said, scanning the room while walking along the edges of the beds to our left with his gun at the ready. “First, we rule out the body on the bed. Adam might have used Jack as one of his subjects.”
Bile crept into my throat at the thought as I followed his lead, my gaze roaming around the room, my magic teetering on the edge.
The female in the first bed had open blue eyes and no heartbeat. The young man next to her was still alive, and when Webb sidled up to the blond man, he sat up.
I jumped. Webb stabbed a dagger through the man’s heart before I had a chance to blink.
