There was really only one direction for Eliza to choose, and though it would put her in a precarious position once the creatures caught on, she had no other choice. With a deep breath, she backed away from the building and then took her best vertical leap, landing on the slanted overhang above the window she’d just broken.
With no time to spare, she ran to the top of the building and down the other side where she could better see her teammates. Mila had creatures attached to both of her arms and was trying to kick them away while shouting directions, urging the rest of the team to leave her and get back to the SUV, but no one was going anywhere. All five of them were either surrounded by the enemy or in the process of being tugged to the ground by what seemed like thousands of spindly fingers.
Pulling the Beretta she wore on her back around, Eliza took careful aim at the creatures near Mila, avoiding the ones actually attached to the Leader for fear she may hit the woman instead, not that it would kill her, but shooting her boss didn’t seem like a good idea if she could avoid it. As soon as the concentrated silver light hit them, the creatures screeched and dropped to the ground, jerking about for a moment before becoming still. Eliza didn’t have time to admire her work as she did her best to clear the area around her teammates so that they could take out the monsters nearest them and get out of the yard.
Behind her, Eliza began to hear scratching and knew that she was running out of time. It seemed like, no matter how many she killed, others filled in, taking their place. Still, she kept her finger on the trigger, and after what couldn’t have been more than a minute, two at most, the rest of her team found themselves able to make some progress in heading toward the fence.
Glancing over her shoulder, Eliza saw the first black hand grasping for the shingles across the roof. She didn’t shoot at it, not yet. Hitting a hand would be a lot harder than the entire creature. But as that one made itself over the lip of the roof, dozens of more hands began to appear all around her.
Her team was across the fence now, everyone except Mila who was still trying to free herself of the last of the creatures. She was bleeding severely from both arms but somehow managed to pull a Glock from its holster and began to shoot at the three monsters still digging into her flesh. If Eliza could keep them off of her long enough for Mila to get over the fence, she could take a chance at leaping off of the building and following her Leader. But there were creatures on the roof now, so she had to make a choice. Keep covering Mila, or defend herself.
The old Eliza wouldn’t have hesitated for a moment. She would’ve never considered continuing to lay down covering fire for her boss when it was her own neck at stake. As far as she knew, these monsters couldn’t actually kill her, but who wanted to be slowly clawed into tiny bits only to have to put oneself back together if she could avoid it? There was no chance in hell the Eliza Wrath of old would’ve considered ignoring the monsters crawling her direction.
But she had changed, and now, watching Mila’s bleeding form take out the last of the black shadows latched onto her forearm, Eliza kept her weapon trained on the area between Mila and the undulating sea of black. As soon as she was free, Mila holstered her weapon and sprinted to the fence, leaping over it and running toward the rest of the team waiting for her in the middle of the street. There was nothing stopping the creatures from also crawling over the fence, but they hadn’t gotten there yet, thanks to Eliza, and now that Mila was with the rest of her team, their eyes turned toward the roof.
So did Eliza’s. She was surrounded, and they were closing in, their red eyes bearing down on her like a thousand supernovas exploding in a black sky. With no rhyme or reason to it, she swept the rooftop with her weapon, giving herself a few seconds, but there was no path to the edge of the roof, no way for her to jump down from where she was standing, and even if she could work her way to the closest edge, she’d be leaping into the same yard she’d just sprayed with silver so that her teammates could get out, which would do her no good. She needed to get to the front of the roof, the nearest to the fence and the rest of her team, but there had to be at least forty creatures coming at her from that direction alone.
“Where are they all coming from?” she asked no one in particular.
Cassidy answered, though it wasn’t enlightening. “I don’t know, but there are more coming. Could you jump to that tree? To your right?”
Eliza turned her head away from the advancing wave to survey the situation. “Even if I did, then what?” The tree was no closer to the fence than she was now. Her teammates were standing helplessly in the street, discussing what could be done. No one was coming up with a solution. Eliza knew Brit had gone back for the vehicle, so at least the rest of her team would have a means to get away even if the monsters should decide to cross the barrier and attack them again, but they didn’t seem to be abandoning Eliza—not yet anyway.
She continued to shoot until the clip was empty. Reloading would take time she didn’t have, and while her Glock was her most trusted weapon against Vampires, she couldn’t imagine it would do much at all against these beasts. With little choice, she pulled it out and began to fire, one bullet at a time, against a mass that didn’t seem to stop.
Until it did.
