Through her IAC, Eliza could see the situation shifting outside. Andor was proud of himself, his head tilted up at the sky as he laughed, Sylvester’s ashes raining through is fingertips, and two more newbies were going down at the hands of Sergio and Mila, but around them, those shadows Eliza had found suspect earlier began to move. It was difficult to focus on what was happening in the yard and still pursue the bloodsucker in front of her, but it seemed her team was about to have company.
Mila saw it, too, and called for her team to turn their attention to the black creatures that began to scurry in their direction from every place the light didn’t touch. They emerged from beneath piles of discarded metal, from a stack of old tires; the bushes and shrubbery moved and quaked as the darkness took on a life of its own and began to creep across the yard. The team opened fire.
Eliza cleared the last pallet between her and a clear stretch to the door as Lukas’s hand fell on the knob that would lead to an expanse of night that could take him anywhere. If he escaped, she could still follow, but her chances of ending him were better here than out there where he could run any of a thousand different directions. If he got out the door, she’d likely lose him, and Eliza wasn’t in the mood to lose. She pulled her Glock.
“Stop! If you open that door, I’ll shoot you!” The Guardian screeched to a halt ten feet behind the Vampire, her Glock trained on the back of his head.
Remarkably, he did as he was told. Eliza was surprised. Normally, a Vampire wouldn’t pay her orders any mind at all. In fact, his hands were up as he turned slowly to look at her.
Eliza blinked, not sure what she was looking at. His eyes weren’t gray—not exactly. They were more of a stormy blue. No red rimmed beneath his eyes, and his skin was still relatively dark compared to the pale white hue she was used to looking at when it came to the undead. There was an almost human quality about him still, despite the fact that she was certain he was, in fact, a Vampire, and when he spoke to her with his thick Hungarian accent, his voice was gentle. “You should go. You are in danger if you stay here a moment longer.”
“I’m in danger?” Eliza questioned, almost laughing. “You do realize I’m pointing a gun at your head, right?”
He smiled, the easy gentle sort of gesture one might make on a first date when a question is slightly too personal. “I do. But you will not have time to kill me right now. And you are too beautiful to be torn apart. I don’t know what you are, or if they can end you, but they are coming. You should go.”
The second time he stated the phrase was just as calm as the first, and Eliza stood trapped by her own confusion. Her training told her to fire, to destroy him, but inside, other emotions stirred, the deep kind that would need sorting out some other time when she had time to think. Nudged toward following her own instincts instead of heeding his warning, Eliza’s finger brushed against the trigger as Lukas shook his head slowly and reached behind him for the door handle.
Eliza never got the chance to send a bullet his way. In front of her, both large window panes exploded inward, raining shards of glass down across the floor as she covered her face and turned away from thousands of projectiles. Caught by surprise, her heart thundered in her chest as she heard Cassidy’s voice in her head. “It’s the creatures, Eliza. Hundreds of them. The rest of your team is already fighting their way out of the back yard. You need to find a way out!”
Uncovering her face, Eliza took a look around. They were already scurrying in through the broken windows, their long nails scratching across the concrete floor and piles of broken glass. As they moved, thin trails of dark red marked their paths. None of them so much as winced as shards dug into knees and palms.
The Guardian spun around, looking for the quickest way out. The door in front of her was still open, though Lukas was long gone. Even as she pondered sprinting through it, shadows filled the space, cutting off that means of escape.
Eliza sprayed the ground with her Glock, taking out many of the front line of creatures, but all it did was slow down the next wave momentarily as they crawled over top of their dead brethren. Shooting every single one of them was an impossibility, and she knew the back door wasn’t an option.
“There’s a window on your right they haven’t gotten to yet,” Cassidy said in her head. “I saw it when Lukas ran past it a moment ago. Hurry!”
Eliza turned her head and saw it as well. Without hesitating, she took off, leaping over pallets and around crowded shelves, tripping over some sort of metal machinery, with the sound of claws on concrete grating in her mind and the sense that those same talons were millimeters from nipping her heels.
The Guardian didn’t slow to consider what might be on the other side of the glass or how difficult it might be to burst through. Instead, she lifted her lead leg like a hurdler and kicked straight out, splintering the barrier and landing among the shards on the other side.
Brushing a few remaining pieces of glass from her hair and shoulders, Eliza surveyed the situation. She was still near the front of the building, and she could hear the creatures approaching from that direction, to her left. They were also beginning to scale the wall behind her. To her right, the back yard of the facility was a swarming, writhing black sea. Through her IAC, she could see that her teammates were doing their best to shoot the monsters down, attempting to make their way to the fences, but they were outnumbered so severely, the going was slow, and all of them were covered with scratches and bite marks.
