the wall. Alfonzo marched in, in a long white coat emblazoned with a gold cross on the front. He carried a sword. An honest-to-God broadsword. The monsters turned to face him.
More gunfire, and another broken window.
The room descended into chaos.
“Stay safe!” Bella pulled a knife from her purse and ripped a slit down the side of her dress, yanking the tulle underskirt off. Maxine knew her gown would be ruined, and she hadn’t cared. They had planned for this. Hidden in the skirt had been a dozen blades. They flew up from the fabric and began to dash through the room at the woman’s command, tearing open throats and punching through ribcages. Monsters screamed as they died. “Stay safe, Maxine. Run and find somewhere to hide!”
She did not need to hear the instruction twice. Maxine went to run but found a hand had snatched her ankle. She looked down at the French vampire who had grabbed her.
Zadok was gurgling, coughing up blood that pooled around him. But he was not dead. In fact, the wound on his neck seemed to be…closing itself. She raised her gun and pointed it at his head, intending to put a few bullets through his brain to see if that could kill a vampire.
She wasn’t quite sure if it could, but she was eager to find out.
Zadok vanished in an explosion of rats. Maxine jumped back, startled as the sea of scrambling animals screeched and fled out the door to the foyer.
Now she had one task ahead of her. One goal. Escape.
If only she could be so lucky.
Walter sighed as he heard the mayhem from inside the building. The hunters were formidable. He had sent a pack of ghouls to distract the gunman on the roof, but they all now lay as dust on the street. “Master?”
“Keep the hunters at bay. No one is to touch Miss Parker. She is mine. They may threaten and draw close, but none are to lay a claw on her.”
“Yes, my Lord.”
“Good. Now…if you’ll excuse me.”
And with that, Walter summoned his rapier to his side and entered the fray.
Her progress out of the building was harrowing but eventually successful. She had emptied her revolver in the directions of monsters and had ducked into a nook to reload. Her fingers shook as she put the bullets into the chambers of the cylinder and clicked it back into place. The door was a dozen or so feet away. The monsters seemed intent on killing Bella and Alfonzo. They hardly glanced at her.
They know I’m not a threat.
“Do not run, Miss Parker.” Walter, the tall vampire, stood in the foyer with a long silver rapier in his hand. “It will only make matters worse for you.”
She aimed and fired at him, and he vanished into fog before the bullets could land. Like Hell she was going to listen to him! She made it outside and, without stopping to look around her, ran up the sidewalk as fast as she could in her heels. She turned and fled, leaving the chaos of the fight behind her.
She had made it one city block before the fog came.
Fog the likes of which she had never seen before. It was thick, impenetrable, and she could barely see the crimson moon overhead through its opacity. It rolled in like a cloud, pouring around the buildings like liquid.
She couldn’t debate its sudden arrival for long. A snarl came from the darkness. She held her gun high, pointing it into the murky shadows. Two eyes glinted back at her, thin, animalistic slits. Something crawled from the shadows. Something that was not vampire…and was not human. Something that seemed lesser than both. She took a staggering step backward at what she saw.
This must be a ghoul.
It appeared to have once been human and vampire but had befallen some great misfortune. It was gaunt and gangly, the flesh around its bones sunken and rotted away. All its teeth were far too long and pointed as if filed or worn to dangerous tips.
It snarled at her. She watched as blood, thick and black, drooled from its maw.
She screamed. She turned and ran into the fog, not caring what direction she headed. Simply away—away from the thing that looked as though it would eat her flesh from her bones. Walter had warned her that running would only exacerbate the situation. He had not been lying.
She tore through the fog in a wild panic, turning this way and that, barely able to see a