The other three vampires emerging from the elevators had been concerned with Amber and Janiyah, but now they saw Roger, Dmitri, Thomas, and Josefina coming out of the stairwell.
Chaos erupted. Dmitri bolted for the exit, throwing one of the vampires Amber had shot out of the way. The other latched onto him and dragged him to a halt.
Josefina engaged with a vampire leaving the elevator and cracked bone with her truncheon, while Thomas fought with his short sword and enchanted dagger beside her.
A vampire almost slipped past Roger, but he buried one of his silver daggers into her heart and held her in place until her heart burned away. The grunts, snarls, and strikes of the others in the lobby were a constant noise. Underneath them, he heard the pounding of footsteps. More were coming down the staircase. Roger glanced over his shoulder to his companions.
Amber missed with her next shotgun blast, and the vampire who Dmitri had tossed closed the distance with her. The vampire Janiyah was fighting dodged her strike but also failed to hit her. Dmitri continued to struggle to throw off the vampire hanging on to him.
The mission was done. Staying and fighting would only mean they’d become overwhelmed.
“Run!” Roger ordered.
His companions started to make for the doorway as the next wave of security and office workers reached the lobby floor. Amber and Janiyah made it out into the night, and Josefina blurred across the lobby to rush out with them. Thomas and Dmitri were caught up in fights with vampires who crowded them.
With a snarl, Roger punched one of the vampires harassing Thomas and stabbed through the throat of the other. Freed, Thomas started for the door.
A dozen vampires poured out from the stairwell. And still, the thundering of feet told Roger that more were on the way. He snapped necks and sliced and stabbed as fast as he could, but three still caught up to Thomas, and more reached Dmitri. Oneoffice worker near Roger swung a stapler at him and caught him in the forehead with it. His skin healed and pushed the bit of metal out within an instant, but it wasn’t the only wound he had to heal. Roger could push off from them, outrun them. He might be able to slip into the shadows and escape that way.
But that would mean leaving Thomas and Dmitri to their fates.
No. Roger roared and punched through a vampire’s chest, taking its heart clean from its body. He threw the organ against the far wall and pushed another with all his might. Three vampires flew from the one shove, and he seized the opportunity to head for Thomas.
Before he could reach him, a vampire sank its fangs into Thomas’s neck.
Another was poised to plunge a broken chair leg through Dmitri’s heart.
I will not lose. A desperate storm struck lightning in Roger’s soul. The world tilted, the colors changing. A halo of color surrounded each person in the lobby, becoming a sea of dim red. Thomas had an orange aura, and though Dmitri’s was red like the other vampires, he had a rainbow sigil on his chest.
The light was not what Roger sought. With so many people in the lobby, the number of shadows had quadrupled and lengthened. He reached out into those cold spaces like he’d reached for his own shadow. They roiled and twisted, not answering with voice as much as a distant touch.
He could bring them forth.
As he’d seen Anton do so many times, Roger pictured those shadows wrapping around the attackers. He commanded them to form into ropes and bind his enemies to the floor. Then he gave them the tide in his soul to power them, to coax them further into his reality and obey.
For a heart-wrenching split second, he’d thought they were going to ignore him. He screamed in the terror of his doubt and redoubled the mental wave he felt.
Ten voices echoed his scream as the shadows tore up from the floor in ropey tendrils and wrapped around the ten vampires fighting in the lobby. All ten went to the floor, caught and bound by the shadow tendrils.
Thomas and Dmitri were spared and stumbled away from the vampires who had been hurting them. Both of their expressions were blank with shock.
Dmitri recovered quicker, motioning for Roger to follow them.
Elation tore through Roger. He ran for the van, feet barely touching the ground, and flung himself into the back of the vehicle behind Dmitri and Thomas. Vincent was taking off down the road before Josefina finished shutting the doors, but she managed to swing them shut. Everyone was ripping off their ski masks, except Amber and Vincent, who were in the front.
The back of the van was washed in a multitude of colored auras. Dmitri, Janiyah, and Josefina had faint red, while Thomas remained orange. Amber’s was a golden shade. White light poured out from Vincent, though shimmers of rainbow colors pulsed inside that light. The rainbow sigil on Dmitri’s chest was brighter than it had been in the lobby.
Roger had a fraction of a moment to admire it before Thomas grabbed him roughly by the shirt and hauled him up so they were face-to-face. The strangely colored vision faded away into his regular sight.
“What the hell was that?” Thomas demanded.
“How long have you been able to command the dark?” Dmitri asked.
“What the what?” Janiyah said.
“There was this shadow thing,” Amber replied. “Did you see it?”
“How could I see it back here?” Janiyah snapped.
