The hair was pale, but not as pale as the face. The face was young and probably female, but it didn't matter, and honestly I tried not to think about it. Hill snapped a picture of the face with a point-and-shoot camera; I sighted between those blessedly closed eyes, and pulled the trigger. The impact rocked me back a little, but it turned the vampire's face into a red ruin. It wasn't decapitation, but it was damn close, and with just one shot. Jung's rifle echoed mine. Sounds of distant rifles came from farther into the house: Brice and the others clearing the back bedrooms where the rest of the vampires were nesting.
Hill and I moved down to the next bag. Dark hair, pale skin; bang! African American, bigger, male; bang! Long blond hair, female; bang! Bald, older male; bang! The cartoon sheets were next.
Hill tried to just pull them back, but they were wrapped too tight. Jung was to his own sheet-wrapped figure, and Killian knelt beside Hill as they both tried to unwrap the little undead bundles.
Hill got ours unwrapped first, and the face was so young. No more than eight or nine when he died. Vampires that young are illegal; it's treated as child molesting, and bringing over someone that young will earn a vampire a death sentence. Most vampires would kill anyone that brought over a child this young themselves; no human laws were needed to tell them how wrong it was to do this shit. I had to believe this body had been dead for decades, long before the new laws, but as Hill snapped the picture, we didn't know that. This could be someone's missing child. Some little boy on a milk carton somewhere right there under my gun. Vampires are still the people they were before they died, for good or ill, so if this was someone's lost child, then they could have him back, but he'd never age, never grow... I'd never met a vampire that was under twelve at death that didn't eventually go mad.
Hill said, "Blake."
I blinked, and I pulled the trigger on that dewy, fresh, dead face. It exploded in a red ruin, as if it had been an overly ripe melon, except melons didn't bleed, or leak skull and brains. Jung's vampire was older, at least in its teens. He pulled the trigger, and her head just became a fine red mist.
I prayed that both the kids had been the oldest vampires in the room. I did not want the photos we just snapped to be the last image the parents had of their darlings.
I looked down the line and every one of them was bloody. The sunlight behind us was fragile, and almost gone. We could go back down the line and put a bullet in each chest, but if they rose early now none of them had eyes to do vampire gaze shit with, or mouths to bite with, and just like that the vampires' main weapons were gone.
Jung and I started where we were, Hill and Killian peeling back the sheets and bags so we could see what we were aiming at. I was pretty secure with the heads blown to hell that they were dead enough, but when you're taking out a vampire's heart, it's better to see exactly what you're aiming at. It's always better to see what you're aiming at.
We went body by body outward, taking out the hearts this time. Even through the special earplugs my ears were ringing by the time we finished. The sun went down a breath later; I felt it go, like a hand through my heart, and a second after that I felt a vampire. I felt it wake.
"We've missed one!" I yelled.
Hill looked at the bodies. "They're dead."
"Not this room."
Killian got on the radio and said, "Blake says you missed one."
"Everything's dead over here but us," Derry said.
Then the yelling started, and fresh gunshots. We fell back into formation, Hill first, me, Jung, Killian, Saville. We did it without asking, or needing to question each other. We fell back into the plan, except now we ran for the other rooms, our other men, toward the sound of guns and screaming, because that was our job, to run toward the trouble.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
HILL DUCKED INTO the first small bedroom but was barely in the door before he yelled, "Clear!" which meant we all did our best to back up, turn on a dime, and go for the last bedroom. The yelling was coming from there anyway, and if SWAT hadn't been with me I might have just gone for it, but there was method to the madness of not leaving the chance of a bad guy behind us. If Hill said the first room was clear, it was, and we just had the mess in the second room. I'd have still gone for the second room first; right, wrong, truth.
Hill and I entered; he peeled off right, and I stayed with him. Jung and Killian tried to come in at our backs, but there wasn't room for anyone else in the bedroom. The three men had to stay outside, because every inch of floor space had an armed man already standing on it. Derry was actually kneeling on the bloody bed, on top of two gory body shapes, because there was no room. Brice was at the foot of the bed, in front of a pile of bloody sleeping bags. Hill had taken us right, because Montague's broad back was standing left, rifle to his shoulder. We aimed where they were aiming, but it was Hermes, standing in the corner between closet and nightstand, that everyone was pointing at, because he was aiming at everyone else. What the hell?
I caught movement behind the big guy, caught a glimpse of pale hand, and knew there was a vampire behind him. In the movies Hermes's face would have been bare so I could have seen his eyes and known he'd been mind-rolled by a vampire, but in real life the face is covered, and the helmet sits low. He had his rifle snugged up tight like the rest of us did, so his face was pretty much invisible, but he was aiming at his teammates; he'd been mind-fucked.
I wanted to ask what had gone wrong. How had this happened? But there'd be time later for questions; right now, we needed solutions. Solutions that didn't end with any of our people dead.
Montague was trying to talk calmly. "Hermes, I helped you build your kid's swing set. Do you remember?" Protocol was that you tried to help the bespelled person remember himself, on the idea that he was still in there somewhere and fighting to break free. It wasn't a bad idea.
"Why'd you shoot this woman, Monty?" Hermes asked, and he sounded genuinely puzzled.
"She's a vampire," Montague said, making his words slow, calm. The time for yelling was over; we needed to de-escalate the situation.
"No, you're wrong. She's human and you shot her." He sounded confused, which was good. Hermes knew something was wrong; maybe he was in there somewhere?
"Hermes, you know me, you know all of us, we would never shoot an innocent woman."
"No..." Hermes said slowly, "no, you wouldn't."
She spoke from behind the shield of him. "Please don't let them kill me! Please!"
"You wouldn't, but someone shot her," Hermes said, and his shoulders moved just a fraction. "I don't know him." He was aiming at Brice.
"He shot me," the woman said, and there were tears and trembling in her voice.
Brice's barrel wavered, and I heard him say, "I'm sorry..." and then the holy objects flared to life. She'd used her voice, and that was fresh vampire powers. The eye trick didn't always flare the holy objects except on the one being targeted, but voice, voice with ill intent did.
Brice's gun came back up, aimed solid, except that there was nothing we wanted to aim at. None of us wanted to shoot Hermes, and none of us had a shot at the vampire behind him. Shit.
My cross flared white and blue with that holy flame that was never really hot until vampire flesh touched it, but it was bright. I was glad the bedroom lights were on, because otherwise it could be blinding, but now it merged with the light in the room, and I could squint past it, except that the only thing I could really see was Hermes.
There was no holy glow from him. She'd persuaded him to take off his holy object, or torn it off of him before she mind-fucked him. If he'd still been wearing it, she wouldn't have been able to roll him, if he believed. Had Hermes had a moment of doubt? Later; I'd worry about his possible crisis of faith later.
The vampire was screaming now. "Help me!"
I had a moment to see Hermes tense; I moved, driving my body with everything I had. If I was supernaturally fast, I called it up and drove my body low into Brice. The rifle shot hit as Brice and I were still falling to the floor. I was on top of Brice's side, with him lying on the bloody sleeping bags. The bed hid us and the action from view.
Hill said, "Blake!"
I said the only thing that came to mind. "Here!"
"Same thing, to the front of me!"
It took me a second, and I hoped I understood the cryptic message, because if I didn't... I trusted Hill, he trusted me. I slid off Brice and crawled for the corner of the bed, got down on one knee, rifle held across my body, set my rear foot into the carpet the way you do on the track, fingertips of one hand down to help with the spring. I breathed a prayer, and visualized putting Hermes through the wall, the way you do in judo; you don't aim a throw at the mat, you aim it inches below the mat. I came up off the floor and launched myself at him, trusting that I was faster than Hermes could move to aim at me, or that the other men would shoot him before he could do it.