to reach out and grab the wall along the edge of the wide front door and she did it, she stopped herself again, but her feet flew out from their own momentum and smacked into the blackened glass and the door swung wide, wide open and the sunlight bathed them and exploded her body into deafening, howling, flames.
But she would not let go!
Felix did shoot her. He shot her again and again, but she wouldn't let go and except for the obvious concussion when a slug struck her body he wouldn't have believed he was hitting her and outside they could hear the strain of a motor and see her talons flexed into the wall and they knew she could do it again, wreck the cable or another Blazer or something, knew she could get free again.
Knew she was strong enough.
Cat clambered to his feet, planted his left foot, and drove his pike into her flaming back with every ounce of strength and fear he had left and the SCREAMING as it plunged into her, the SCREAMING... and for a half a second they all saw her claws lose their grip and by the time she had held fast again Deputy Thompson had stepped forward and thrown his pike and he was younger and stronger than Cat and when it hit it drove through the back of her flaming head and she SCREAMED that SCREAM again and her hands flew open and she was out the doorway and into the full sunlight and imploding with the flame, dead and gone at last, before the door had a chance to swing shut and cut off their view.
"One down," muttered Jack.
Felix eyed him a moment, then walked out the door and into the sunshine.
Part Two Chapter 18
By the time they were ready to go again, there were only ninety minutes left until sundown.
Not so good, thought Jack Crow. But he kept it to himself along with everything else and hurried them along.
The trouble was, they had had so much to do:
A portable generator for power to their spotlights.
Two extra spotlights to protect those that were smashed.
A new cable.
They had removed what was left of both elevator doors.
They had fixed the front door.
And of course they repaired the walking wounded. Cat's nose was broken. Jack had sutures on his cheek. Felix had a bandage on the edge of his forehead. And Carl Joplin had damn near lost all his teeth.
He hadn't lost a one yet. But he should have. Seems the first time he tried dragging the girl out, she had just torn the Blazer's rear bumper completely off. The second time he had used a police car, actually wrapping the cable around the engine block and getting a much faster start so that he was going almost twenty miles an hour when he ran out of slack.
But she had stopped the police car dead and Carl had gone right through the windshield and his face was cut in what looked like a hundred different places and his lips were split and all his front teeth were loose to the touch. Somehow he had managed to keep his lead foot on the throttle through the whole thing and, therefore, saved their lives.
Or at least kill her, which was what counted.
Cat still managed to bitch at him about being slow and Carl had angrily snarled back that he had changed cars and gotten moving again within thirty goddamn seconds and let's see Cat do it that fast and Cat had asked him if he knew how far a vampire could move in thirty seconds?
"How far?" he snorted.
"Nobody knows, Joplin," Cat shot back, "because there's so many oceans in the way!"
And it was meant to be funny but no one really laughed because they were all going to have to do it again two more times in an hour and a half and...
And nobody thought this was going to work.
Jack knew this, saw it in their faces, and didn't care, didn't give a shit because there was no other choice!
So, "Rock and roll," be barked and got his cast inside again, into the dusty glare of the spolights and the cool dryness Of the air conditioning, which had stayed working all along somehow. While the others got into their positions, Jack walked over and looked at the elevator car. Pig's blood and broken glass were all over the walls and ceiling. There was a large pool of it on the floor.