Chapter 52

December Twenty-fifth Midnight E.S.T.

With hollow thumps, caustic smoke grenades were launched in an arc through the windows of the brownstone apartment complex. As the tear gas took effect, the heavy weapons fire that the occupants were raining down upon the street lessened dramatically. Above the roof tops, Maria could see shadows darting through the air as other members of her team, led by Adam, jumped from adjacent buildings to the roof of the target.

Similar scenes were being played out across the city as the vampires eliminated every sign of organized opposition. This one consisted of several different gangs working together and with the residents of the surrounding neighborhood. Just a few hours before, any meeting between the members of the disparate groups would have resulted in hostile words and perhaps even violence. In the face of adversity, however, they had pulled together to turn the apartment complex into a fortress. It made her sick to the stomach to reward the cooperative effort with death, but she had her orders.

She could see muzzle flashes through the broken glass of the darkened windows of the upper floors as those who had jumped to the roof started to work their way down. Her nose and sinuses burned from the tear gas until she remembered that she didn't have to breathe.

Waving toward a small group of vampires taking cover behind a car, Harris shouted, "You follow me. The rest of you lay down cover fire."

Harris' apathy had vanished when the time had come for action. He had been at the forefront of every battle that the team had fought that night, starting with the home executions and culminating here. His clothes hung in tatters, a testament to the number of bullets that had tried to take him down and failed. Maria had thought that she had known the depths of his savagery and brutality. She had been wrong.

Not among those commanded to join the charge, Maria rose to her knees to look over the edge of the car that was giving her shelter and placed the stock of her assault rifle against her shoulder. Immediately, she began to squeeze off rounds into the windows of the lower floors.

Leaping over and around parked and wrecked cars and downed utility poles and racing through the geyser spouting high into the air from a smashed hydrant, Harris, and the men following him, rapidly closed the distance to the building's main entrance.

As he threw open the bullet ridden door, Maria heard him shout in disbelief, "A claymore! What the fuck?! Where did these riff-raff get..."

His words were cut off by a deafening explosion. Maria fell backwards as a sickening hail of shrapnel and bloody gobbets of flesh, all that remained of Harris, struck the parts of her that were exposed above the hood of the car.

Shuddering with revulsion, she did her best to wipe the gore away. A task made far more difficult by the fact that some pieces were still recognizable: a detached but otherwise unmarked finger here, the lobe of an ear there. With a wince of pain, she pulled a piece of shrapnel from her cheek, and then hastily threw it from her as she realized that it was a shard of bone.

She raised a hand to her forehead with sudden realization and dawning hope. One of the bubbles of emotion in her head, the one that had always told her what Harris was feeling and where he was located, was gone. She didn't feel compelled to return to the side of the car and resume firing into the building. She was free.