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I yelled, “Get down, damn it, get down! Catch him, damn it!” He made the door, because I couldn’t risk the shot.
But there were two vampires just behind him. They were two of the ones that had been in the aisle. Had I done that when I said, catch him? Were they being good citizens, or was it my fault? Shit.
I started through the screaming crowd with Zerbrowski at my back, and Marconi and Smith just behind. My gun was pointed at the ceiling, as I tried to get through them. They screamed at the guns, they screamed at me. They screamed because they could.
I heard Zerbrowski behind me giving the uniforms at the back door a heads-up and a description of our bad vamp. We’d almost waded through the panicked civilians. I heard different yelling over the high-pitched screams. Men yelling, but not screaming. I brought my gun up as I cleared the side of the door, with as little of my body showing as possible. No, I did not stand in the fucking middle of the doorway and make myself a perfect target. That kind of shit is great for movies, but in real life, take cover, worry about looking like a hero later, after you’ve survived.
There was a fight at the end of the hallway. Our civvies, one dark and one blond, had caught up with the bad guy. They seemed to be wi
The civilians hesitated in the fight, because they were upstanding citizens. Upstanding citizens tend to listen to the cops. It wasn’t much of a hesitation, they just stopped fighting as hard, and they glanced at us. That was it, then they turned right back to the bad guy, but he was a bad guy, and he hadn’t looked at us, or hesitated in the fight. After all, he had nothing to lose. I already had a warrant that let us kill his ass.
The two vampires had him down, but when they hesitated, one of them must have loosened their grip, just a fraction. I saw something silver glint in the bad guy’s hand. I yelled, “Knife!” but it was too late. The blade hit the dark one in the chest. Something about that blow seemed to stagger the blond, because he went to his knees beside his friend. Maybe he thought we had the bad guy covered. He knelt and reached for his fallen friend, and if the bad guy had done the usual and stood up and run through the door, we’d have had clean shots at him. But he didn’t, he pushed the door wide with his hand, and half-crawled, half-rolled through the door. The two civilians were blocking our shots completely.
I yelled, “Fuck!” and started to run.