The vamps realized that I was out of ammo, and they rose from behind their cars and took aim at me again—
Crack!
Crack! Crack!
Crack!
I tensed, expecting to feel more bullets slamming against my body, but this time, the vamps weren’t the ones shooting.
Xavier was.
The giant had finally arrived, zooming up the street and turning his car at an angle on the road. I saw him lean out the driver’s-side window and start firing at the vamps. One of them went down, then another one.
But it wasn’t going to enough.
Xavier was on the wrong side of the bridge, and there was no way we could get to the giant without going through Benson and all of his men. Some of the vamps whirled around to fire at Xavier, but the others eased out from behind their cars, guns in their hands, and started creeping in this direction.
“They’re coming!” I yelled, backing up. “We have to get off the bridge! Now!”
Bria nodded. She grabbed Catalina’s hand, pulled the younger woman to her feet, and started running.
I turned and followed them.
18
Bria, Catalina, and I raced toward my smashed-up car at this end of the bridge.
Crack!
Crack! Crack!
Crack! Crack! Crack!
The vampires kept firing, and bullets zipped through the air all around us. I kept my hold on my Stone magic, running directly behind Bria and Catalina and trying to use my body to screen them from the bullets as best I could.
Crack!
A bullet punched into the middle of my back. My vest caught it, but the hard, direct impact still made me stagger forward. My boots skidded through a patch of broken glass, and I had to windmill my arms to keep from falling flat on my ass. But I managed to regain my balance and keep going.
Catalina tried the passenger door of my car, but it wouldn’t budge, so she wrenched open the back door and threw herself inside. Bria followed her. I ran around and jumped into the driver’s seat. I’d left the engine running, so all I had to do was throw the car into gear, stomp down on the gas, and wrench the steering wheel.
The Aston fishtailed wildly at the sudden, sharp turn, with metal, glass, and more crunching under the tires, but I forced the wheel and the car in the direction I wanted to go—as far away from the vamps as I could get. The street ahead was still deserted, probably on Benson’s orders, but that was actually going to help us now. The car straightened out, and the engine started humming as we picked up speed.
For a moment, I thought that we were actually going to make it.
Crack!
But then a bullet sliced through one of the rear tires, the air escaping with a sad sigh. Still, I put my foot down on the gas, trying to make it as far as I could on the deflating rubber. The car thump-thump-thumped along for about a block, before white sparks started flying up from the undercarriage. I steered the car over to the curb, stopped, and jammed the gearshift into park.
“Out, out, out!” I yelled.
I grabbed my duffel bag with its supplies from the front passenger seat, then kicked open the driver’s-side door again and got out. Bria and Catalina were already waiting on the street. Catalina was holding her hand to her head, blood trickling out between her fingers from a nasty cut. Blood covered Bria’s face, hands, and arms, but she had her gun out and pointed at the street behind us, watching our backs.
And with good reason.
Four vamps had made it to the end of the bridge and were running in our direction. They must have all had a pint or two of blood recently, because they were closing faster than Olympic sprinters racing toward the finish line.
But the charging men didn’t worry me as much as the SUVs did.
In the distance, at the far end of the bridge, I could see the remaining vamps opening doors and climbing into the vehicles. One of the SUVs lurched forward and rammed into Bria’s sedan, trying to push it out of the way and cross the bridge. The tires screech-screech-screeched as the other SUVs whipped into U-turns, probably heading to the next bridge over so they could zoom across it and come at us from that direction too. If they got ahead of us, they could cut us off, then wait for the vamps to come up from the rear and box us in. We needed to be out of here before that happened, or we were dead.
“Now what?” Catalina asked, her panicked gaze flicking back and forth from the vamps to Bria to me.
I hefted my duffel bag a little higher on my shoulder. “We run.”
•
I darted onto the sidewalk, with Catalina and Bria beside me, and raced toward the closest alley. Catalina glanced back over her shoulder, shoving her hair out of her face so she could see the men still chasing us. But she wasn’t watching were she was going, so she banged into a mailbox and stumbled forward several feet before she regained her balance.
“Don’t look back!” I yelled. “Just follow me!”
Catalina swiped some more blood off her face and gave me a quick, frightened nod.
I veered into the alley and zoomed over the cracked asphalt, darting around the overflowing Dumpsters, my boots sending crushed soda cans and crumpled paper bags skittering off in every direction. Behind me, I could hear Catalina’s and Bria’s footsteps smacking against the jagged pavement. I sucked in a breath and almost choked on the overwhelming stench of old take-out and other rotting garbage.
I reached the end of that alley and slowed down long enough to make sure that Benson and his SUVs full of vamps hadn’t reached this area yet. But the street was clear, so I darted across it and turned into the next alley we came to. Catalina followed me, with Bria watching our backs.
We ran out the far side of that second alley, and the landscape shifted, as though we’d stepped into a completely different world. Gone were the brick storefronts and smooth sidewalks that lined the street near the river. In their places stood dilapidated row houses, potholes big enough to blow out your tires, and yards covered with more trash than grass. Many of the houses had been tagged with rune graffiti that flowed across the cinder-block walls, down the cracked concrete steps, and out onto the sidewalks and the street beyond. The red and black smears of spray paint ringed the potholes like crooked streaks of lipstick.
At first glance, the area seemed deserted. No one was strolling down the sidewalks. No kids were playing with toys in the yards. No old folks were sitting on their front stoops, shooting the breeze and sipping glasses of iced tea. But all around me, the stone of everything from the street to the sidewalks to the houses whispered of the danger, despair, and desperation of the people who called this place home.
This was the heart of Southtown.