'Not mine,' she said. 'And it smells disgusting.'
'I wasn't going to mention it,' he said, and laughed a little, holding her close. 'I'm guessing it came courtesy of that thing there?'
'Yeah. Whatever it is.'
'Nasty. Did you kill it?'
'That would have been awesome, but Jesse did the honours ...' Claire's voice faded as she pulled back, and she glanced back at the tunnel. Jesse was out, and Myrnin was helping her pull Liz free. Michael, standing ready, grabbed Eve's reaching, flailing hand and yanked her out, too, and straight into his arms.
Nobody hugged Oliver. Not surprisingly. Although Michael did frown at the sight of him. 'What the hell happened to you?'
'What does it seem?' Oliver growled, as he settled his shirt back on over his silver-abraded arms. It must have hurt. 'Someone built a very nice rat trap with the girl as its cheese. And although it pains me to admit it, without Claire's cleverness we might have been stuck there.'
'Bad news, then, because we might be stuck here, too,' Pete said. He was farther back - covering their asses, Claire guessed. 'We've got company, folks. And I'm a little short on firepower up in here. Jesse?'
'Coming,' she said. She still sounded unruffled, a total contrast to the tension everyone else seemed to feel; it was as if none of this bothered her a bit.
And Myrnin seemed quite taken with that, Claire thought; she'd never seen him look at anyone with quite that much admiration. It surprised her that it made her feel a little ... what was that? Jealous? Couldn't be.
'What've we got?' Shane asked. He stepped forward, too, because if there was any kind of a fight, Shane Collins had to be on the front lines of it; Claire rolled her eyes and pulled him back. 'What? It was just a question!'
'Looks like six guys out there,' Pete said. 'Six I could spot, anyway. All armed. The four of you might be bulletproof, but I'm not in the mood to try dodging semi-auto rounds today. Any ideas?'
'It's the only way out,' Claire said. 'At least, that I know of. Eve, you take that wall, look for something we didn't see before. I'll go this way.'
But it was actually Shane who found the exit - a rusted iron grate just big enough for a person to fit through, set in the floor in the corner next to an equally rusty water main. Flood control, Claire guessed; it must go directly into a run-off tunnel. Well, that was a good thing. Run-off tunnels generally spilt out somewhere, and if they didn't, there would be other ways out. Maintenance crews regularly came down to clean out brush and debris that collected in them.
As Jesse pried up the grate - too heavy for anyone else except Oliver, and his hands were pretty much shot for the moment - Pete called back to them with a new, tense note in his voice. 'Okay, they heard that. They're on their way, I can hear them talking. Look, they're probably going to spray and pray, unless they've got some kind of anti-vamp devices.'
'Spray and pray?' Claire asked Shane, who shrugged and mimed firing an automatic weapon in a circle. 'Oh. Not good.'
'Nope.' He bent and added his muscles to Jesse's. Between the two of them, they managed to get it up and over, and it fell with a heavy, loud boom on the other side. 'Okay, Jesse, you first.'
'No,' she said. 'I'll stay. Michael, you go, make sure the way is clear. I'll help Eve down.'
He didn't protest; Michael jumped down, and Claire had no idea how far down it was, but it sounded like a long drop. No way any of them could make it without vampire help, or risk broken bones at the least. It'd be pretty dumb to die of a broken neck, after all this trouble.
'Ready,' Michael's voice echoed up. Jesse braced herself over the hole and held out her hands to Eve. Who hesitated.
'Maybe there's some other way,' she said.
'Maybe you'd like to see if you're bullet resistant,' Jesse said. 'But I believe your husband won't let you fall.'
'Yeah, but I don't know about you,' Eve said. She sighed and held out her hands. 'Fine. If I die, I'm coming back to haunt you.'
'That'll be fun.' Jesse took Eve's weight easily, even with her silver-wounded hand, and lowered her down, then released. Eve's surprised cry echoed back up, followed by a breathless laugh.
'All good,' she called up. 'Nice catch, handsome.'
'Anything for you,' Michael said. They may have even kissed. 'Ready, who's next?'
'Claire,' Shane said, and Myrnin nodded. She didn't like it, but nobody looked like they were going to take no for an answer this time. She held out her hands, and Jesse took hold, winked at her and gave her a reassuring smile, and swung her out over nothing. Claire had a dizzying moment of terror, because even though she knew intellectually that Michael was down below her in the dark, ready to catch her, it didn't much matter. Humans feared the dark, and they feared falling into it, and wow, it was scary.
Before Jesse could let go, Pete yelled, 'Down!' and Claire felt herself being swung away from the hole, thrown toward cover, and a lot of things happened all at once. A deafening, ear-shredding burst of gunfire in the enclosed space. Bright flashes. Yelling and screaming. Bodies moving against the bursts of light.
The only thing Claire could do was curl up and try to make herself small.
Shane fell on top of her, driving her breath away, but he wasn't hurt, just shielding her from the chaos; she could feel the hot press of his breath against her neck. 'Are you hit?' he yelled, and she said no, but she wasn't sure he could hear her.
A sudden, ominous silence fell. The smell of burnt metal and gunpowder was choking, and Claire coughed a little, even as she tried not to draw attention. Stay small, stay safe, her instincts were telling her. Don't move.
And then Shane moved, rolling away and up to his feet, because Pete was shouting and tossing him something that Claire recognised seconds later as a large gun. Some kind of assault rifle, she guessed. Shane held it like he'd fired something like it before - and he probably had, knowing his dad's paramilitary training - and fell in beside Pete. 'Call out!' he yelled. 'Let me know you're okay!'
'Fine,' Claire heard Oliver say. Then Jesse, in a clipped, tight way, affirming that she and Liz were both fine. Pete was all right. Claire said the same.
But Myrnin didn't answer.
Claire found him lying still on the ground, eyes shut, and she thought she might have actually screamed; he was lying like Derrick, pale and still and bloodied, and the blood that was on his face dripped to the concrete.
Then he opened his eyes and said, in a small, annoyed voice, 'Ouch. I haven't had that happen in ages. I still don't favour it.' And a bullet literally pushed its way out of his forehead.
Claire fell to her knees. She watched the bullet tumble off the slope of his skin and hit the concrete in slow motion; it left a little splashed trail of blood as it went, until it made a loop and rolled to a stop against a wall. She saw it, but she didn't exactly believe it ... she'd seen vampires heal, but she'd never actually thought about bullets, and where they might have gone.
But they had to go somewhere, and that somewhere was out.
'Glad it was you and not me,' Shane said, and offered Myrnin a hand up. 'Any brain damage?'
'Since the bullet actually passed through his brain, then yes, idiot boy, there's certainly brain damage,' Oliver said. And sure enough, as Myrnin tried to rise, his left side didn't function properly, and he stumbled and pitched into a drunken fall on the floor. Oliver sighed in annoyance and helped him rise, again, and this time held on as Myrnin staggered. One foot didn't seem to be responding. 'It will pass. And his brain's the least fragile thing about him, in any case.'
'You say the nicest things,' Myrnin said. He was slurring his words, and he threw an arm around Oliver's neck. 'Marry me.'
'Exactly what part of the brain did that bullet hit?' Shane asked, hovering on the edge of manic laughter.
Oliver sighed. 'He means carry me. And no. I won't.'
Claire shook herself out of the strange fugue she seemed to be in, got up, and went to Pete, who was at the doorway. There were two dead men there. Both were wearing suits, and there were gold pins on their lapels - some kind of horizon, and a stylised sun rising over it. Pete was kneeling down with his eyes on the entrance while patting down the corpses - at least, Claire assumed they were corpses. They weren't moving, and there was a hell of a lot of blood. Or, in vampire terms, wasted dinner. She supposed she ought to feel shocked about it, but these same two men had been intent on killing her, and Shane, and if Myrnin hadn't been a vampire he'd have been lying just as dead.
She couldn't work up much emotion at the moment.
'Anything?' she asked. Pete shook his head.
'No ID,' he said. 'But I don't think it matters right now. Two down, and four more still out there. Those aren't bad odds, but the problem is that they have us exactly where they need us - we make any attempt to break out through the door, and they can just pick us off.'