"Split," I say. "You take the east bank. I'll take the field."
She runs.
I run.
The first feral is forty meters out, closing on a man who has fallen on the course path near the boathouse. Runners are streaming past him, leaping over his body, nobody stopping. He's wearing a numbered bib and reflective tape. His leg is wrong, bent at an angle legs don't bend. The feral is fast. I'm faster.
I close the distance. The feral's teeth are bared, and its pupils are blown to contamination black, and there's nothing behind them.
I take its head off.
The man on the path is screaming. His leg is shattered. I can hear the bone fragments grinding when he moves. Blood on the pavement. A woman is running toward him, screaming his name.
I move to the next one.
The second feral has a wolf on it. The gray one. They're rolling on the grass near the pavilion, the wolf's jaws locked on the feral's arm, the feral clawing at the wolf's flank. Two officers are twenty yards back, weapons up, shouting at each other about which one to shoot. I reach them and pull the feral off and snap its neck before they decide. The wolf scrambles up, bleedingfrom three parallel cuts across its shoulder, and runs north without looking back. There are more.
Through comms, Celeste's voice. "East bank. Two down. One more heading toward the playground."
"Marcellus?"
"Midtown contained. Moving to your position."
I stop at the center of the field. Scan for the next one. The searchlight from the helicopter sweeps toward me, and I feel it on my skin like a brand. I move before it locks on, cutting left toward the fountain at a speed the pilot can't track.
A woman is lying in the grass near the fountain. Still. A feral crouched over her, feeding. I pull it off and kill it. The woman doesn't move. I kneel beside her. Press two fingers to her throat. Nothing.
Her bib number is 1847. Her running shoes are still laced. Glow stick bracelet on her left wrist, still bright green.
I count.
I've counted the dead I couldn't save since the first one, on a road outside Florence, when I was young in this and too slow. Every one since has a place. This woman, in her running shoes, with her hair spread across the grass. She has a place now too.
I close her eyes.
Through comms, Julian's voice. "Southern park perimeter clear. All ferals in the Piedmont zone are down."
"Confirm all sites," I say.
"Centennial Park, clear. Three ferals, three kills. Midtown, clear. Wolves have it. Piedmont, clearing now." A pause. "Two civilian casualties confirmed at the Piedmont location. More injured. EMTs are arriving."
Two.
"All sites," I say through comms. "Collect the feral remains before human authorities get to them. Every body out of the park. Nothing vampire ends up in a human morgue."
"On it," Julian says. "Wolves are already pulling the Centennial and Midtown bodies."
"Celeste."
"Playground is clear. The last one tried to climb the fence. I pulled it back." Her breathing is harder than it should be. "I'm fine."
The last feraldrops at the south end of the field. One of Erik's wolves stands over it, muzzle bloody, and howls once before loping back toward the tree line. Police are flooding the park now. SWAT arriving at the south entrance. Officers establishing a perimeter, pushing the remaining runners toward the parking lot. A woman is screaming for someone named David. A man is sitting on the course path holding his arm, blood running through his fingers.
Two more wolves drag the feral's body into the trees before the perimeter closes. Across the field, Marcellus's fighters are moving the other feral remains at vampire speed, clearing them between the sweep of the searchlight and the advancing police line. By the time the portable lights go up, there are no feral bodies left in the park. Only the human dead. Only the human injured.
The helicopter circles overhead but doesn't land.
The woman I couldn't save is being loaded onto a stretcher. A sheet pulled over bib number 1847.
