floors. See if anyone is trapped. Get everyone out you can.”
Nodding, Cliff and Joe took off down the hallway, zipping past humans in a blur. A never-ending river of employees flowed forth from the stairwell. So they forced the doors of the elevator open.
The bodies of four men lay crumpled on the floor, explaining the screams he’d heard earlier. The damn elevator cable had snapped and whatever explosion had caused it must have taken out half the ceiling as well as whatever safety mechanism was supposed to prevent the thing from free-falling to sublevel 5.
“Shit,” Joe muttered.
Nodding, Cliff leaped up through the hole. The mercenaries had wrought so much damage to the building that he could see stars twinkling in the sky far above him.
That sky was beginning to lighten with the approach of dawn, so he and Joe would have to work fast to keep from frying.
The two of them catapulted up from floor to floor until they reached sublevel 1.
Cliff stared. It looked like a damned war zone. Huge pieces of concrete and rubble formed jagged hills as employees coated in dust and blood limped toward the stairwell with expressions of panic, pain, and shock. Those in front stopped and stared when they saw Cliff and Joe. Most stumbled backward when Joe approached them, his blue eyes identifying him as a vampire, not an Immortal Guardian.
“It’s okay!” Cliff called. “We’re here to help.”
That appeared to do little in the way of assuaging their fear as Joe shot forward, tossed a man over his shoulder, and zipped back toward the elevator shaft.
Cliff would’ve taken another minute to calm their fear, but more crap fell from the ceiling with every blast. Dashing forward, he lifted a woman into his arms. Her shrieks pierced his sensitive ears, sparking a grimace as he raced for the elevator shaft.
“Hold on!” he ordered.
Her arms locked around his neck as he stepped off.
A longer shriek nearly deafened him as they plummeted toward the elevator at the bottom. Shortly after he had transformed, Cliff had delighted in testing his new strength and endurance by jumping off higher and higher buildings, enjoying the rush without suffering injuries. So he had no difficulty landing smoothly on the part of the elevator roof that was still intact while protecting his cargo from the jolt.
“Almost there,” he told her as he dropped through the hole in the ceiling.
Joe and Stuart zipped past them, going the opposite direction and disappearing up the shaft. The woman’s cries dwindled to whimpers as Cliff swept through the throng to deposit her at the entrance to the escape tunnel.
He returned to the elevator shaft and leapfrogged up the other floors to reach sublevel 1 again.
The other vampires raced by, already on their way down with more injured.
Sublevel 1 had taken a big hit in the short time he’d been gone. Part of the ceiling had buckled. Sheetrock continued fall like rain from the rest of it. At the far end of the corridor, through the chaos and dust and dim lighting, he saw a sister with a crown braid herding several others toward him, no doubt intending for them to use the stairs. But Cliff doubted the elderly woman in the front would be able to navigate them easily. She looked so skinny and frail a breeze could probably tip her over. And she moved with short, stiff steps.
Cliff started toward her.
Light and fire burst into life as the building shook with another explosion.
More of the ceiling collapsed. Furniture and debris from the ground floor fell with a rumble atop the evacuating men and women. Something heavy struck Cliff’s back with enough force to make him stagger.
Shaking it off, he lunged forward and began to yank office furniture from the top of the pile, then jagged flooring, insulation, and Sheetrock until he found the old woman tucked beneath a tilted stretch of granite that had probably topped a desk.
Blinking against the dust, she peered up at him.
“It’s okay,” Cliff told her, hoping she would think him an Immortal Guardian and not be afraid. Unlike Joe and Stuart, Cliff had brown eyes that glowed amber. “I’m here to help. Are you hurt?”
She tried to answer but coughed instead when dust entered her lungs.
He quickly went to work unburying her. “Are you okay?”
She managed a thumbs-up.
As soon as he could, Cliff reached down and gingerly helped her up out of the pile.
“Thank you,” she wheezed. “Where’s Emma? You have to find her.”