and they treat you like that - then, yeah, it's time to stop gigging before you wind up being a lounge lizard. But until then, boo, fuck their backward asses out here." Carlos looked around at the four clerics and then rubbed his jaw. "My bad... I mean, forget them, baby."
"Hey, at least Duke put some of his boys out here to watch the cars so they didn't get keyed or have the tires slit while we were in there. Now that was mighty hospitable," Rider said, trying to make jokes. "Still got all our headlights. That's a good sign." Damali looked around, counting heads in the lot. She jumped down out of the Hummer she'd been loading and be gan running. "Where's Dan? Where's Heather! Ohmigod, where's J.L. and Krissy?"
Carlos and Berkfield began running back toward the building. Marjorie gasped and flung the camera into the car, then rounded the cars, but Bobby caught her arm.
"Mom, it's all right. Dan and J.L. walked Heather and Krissy to the ladies' room, plus Duke's boys got their backs," Bobby said.
"No, it's not all right!" Marjorie shrieked. "It's never all right in a place like this - we move as a group! You never leave your sister, not even if she's married!" Rider sniffed the air, hocked, and spit. His eyes met Jose's as he did the same thing, then both Guardians drew weapons at the same time. Every Guardian went on vamp alert.
"Incoming!" Duke hollered, stumbling out of the back of the building shooting. Patrons screamed and flooded through the back doors into the lot, causing a potential civilian nightmare. Dan and J.L. got blown through the door Duke had just exited, but even flat on their backs on the ground and being dragged by something powerful and invisible, they held whatever they'd caught in their combined charges, refusing to let it go. Feet pressed against the dirt, wildly kicking up dust. J.L. and Dan struggled to hold on as Shabazz joined the tactical battle with Marjorie, Bobby, and Marlene, sending kinetic surges over the blue-white static that held the unseen. Rider and Tara took positions behind Hummers adjacent to Mike and Inez, Jose, Juanita, and Duke to be ready to shoot what ever came out of the tactical energy hold.
Carlos and Damali had rounded the building with Berkfield, swimming upstream against a flow of panicked bodies stampeding out the front doors. Using sheer force, guns raised above their heads, they jostled their way inside trying to get behind whatever Dan and J.L. were holding.
"Hold your fire!" Duke shouted as Guardians leveled weapons at the back door over Dan
and J.L. "It's got one of the ladies; the other one got pushed down and might be nicked."
"Cover it with prayer," Father Pat said. "Burn the bastard out!" Four clerics ran low and each took a side of the building and began shouting prayers at the tops of their lungs. Before they'd each gotten to the third stanza, a part of the back wall blew out, a high-turbine vampire funnel whirred out, and Damali and Carlos hit it with a combined pulse from behind. Fallon Nuit fell forward, his whirl temporarily interrupted. Heather hit the ground screaming, and Dan's dragnet immediately pulled her to him. J.L. was on his feet, had barreled into the back door, frantic, searching for Krissy. Dan was on his feet, Heather in his grasp, and he jumped back, narrowly avoiding a black charge as Guardians opened fire.
Nuit was on the roof, unable to go inside the prayer-stained building for cover. As Carlos and Damali drew blades into their hands and Carlos battle bulked, Nuit reached out and pulled at Heather's back. Dan whirled, feeling her slip away again, and reinforced his hold, sending a charge so furious and so direct that it blew Nuit back long enough for Carlos to scale the roof.
But Nuit's attention remained focused on Heather, and Dan saw it. Panicked, he jumped on Duke's Harley, pulling Heather with him, and took off. Nuit was gone in a flash of vapor. Berkfield came out of the building behind J.L. who had an unconscious Krissy in his arms. Carlos jumped down off the roof but not in time to catch Damali.
"He'll kill them both! Dan can't ride a bike!" Damali yelled, sliding into the Bugatti. The bike was a mile in front of her; a vampire cloud was downwind in the distance. Dan was eating up road at a speed where a wipeout for