Affliction (Anita Blake, Vampire Hunter) - Laurell K. Hamilton Page 0,203

in the lightning flashes of their guns I couldn’t see the vampire, but God, I could feel it like a pressured magic against my skin. Edward and I were moving, guns up, lights searching for what they’d seen to shoot. Where was it? Where the fuck was it? I could feel it all around in me in the dark, as if the air were turning into it. My chest tightened down, as if I didn’t want to breathe it inside me.

I felt movement in the dark and knew before Lisandro yelled, ‘Zombies!’ They’d been scattered among the dead like spies. The vampire’s power was animating them. He was a motherfucking necromancer, just like the Mother of All Darkness had been. Motherfucking son of a bitch!

I yelled, ‘Retreat! Daylight, get to daylight!’ Once we were out we could burn it all.

I retreated backward toward the stairs and hoped everyone would come with me, but they didn’t. It was too late for a clean retreat. Hatfield screamed and fired again. I could see Seamus like dark on dark, wrestling with a zombie that had knocked her to the floor. Edward and I moved toward them, because they were closer to us. Nicky’s and Lisandro’s guns sounded like thunder as they fired into what looked like a moving mass of zombies.

I peeled off to the right for Nicky and Lisandro. I didn’t have to tap Edward; we were aware of each other in combat the way you knew your partner on the dance floor. I did the shuffling, bent-legged walk that I’d learned with SWAT. My light showed a wall of zombies snarling and reaching. The snarling was the clue that these were flesh eaters; regular zombies were a lot deader. Three of them were headless already. Lisandro was a quick study: take out the mouth and they can’t bite, take the arms and they can’t grapple, take the legs and they can’t move. We weren’t going to stay here long enough to do it all like we had in the hospital, but Nicky was showing him the combat math of a zombie apocalypse, and Lisandro was learning it.

The three of us worked back toward the stairs, shooting zombies as we moved. Their heads exploded nicely, but they still kept coming, relentless as only the dead can be. We backed up until we touched shoulders with Edward. He and Hatfield were still firing with their rifles. Seamus was down to a handgun; something was wrong with his right arm, but I didn’t have time to see what. We formed a half-circle around the stairs and sent Seamus and Hatfield up first. Sending the wounded and the rookie up first made sense, but I didn’t want to go next, and Lisandro and Nicky wouldn’t go either.

Edward yelled, ‘Anita, go!’

I cursed, but I went, and there was no way to help them shoot zombies once I was in the covered area of the stairs; I had to go up and trust that they’d come after me.

I heard Hatfield scream, ‘Blake!’

Shit, what now? I thought, and ran up the last steps into the small bedroom. They weren’t there, so I ran out into the living room beyond, AR to my shoulder scanning for what had made her scream. Hatfield knelt on the far side of Seamus with a bare pillow in one hand and its pillow slip in the other. Seamus lay in the middle of the floor beside the bentwood rocking chair. There was already a pool of blood expanding out from the nice hooked rug, spreading dark and thick across the scrubbed wooden floor. His arm was a bloody mess where the zombie had torn at it with that more-than-human strength and the all-too-human teeth.

‘Tourniquet him,’ I told Hatfield, and turned to go back to Edward and the others.

‘He won’t let me touch him.’

‘A cut on her hand and my blood could bring her over,’ Seamus said.

I’d totally forgotten that, my bad. ‘He’s right. Hatfield, cover their retreat.’

She handed me the pillow slip. I let the AR hang by its strap and took it as she went for the bedroom. I turned to the big man on the floor. His skin was dark enough that the blood didn’t show as clearly, but the torn muscle and bone glistened surrounded by the darkness of his skin like some macabre art piece. So much of violence is both beautiful and horrible.

‘Shapeshift; it will heal at least part of the damage,’ I said.

‘I dare not,’ he said.

I