Chapter 100

As Jo approached the door at the end of the hallway, she noticed on the IAC that there was a lot of activity going on with the other team. The noise that Heather had made bringing the concrete wall down had alerted the Vampires that something was going on, and now, Elliott and the others were in the middle of a shootout.
Jo wanted to go help them, but she realized that this might actually be a good thing for her own mission. If the Vampires were busy with Elliott’s squad, hers might be able to sneak in and find the prisoners.
“Well, my negotiations are over,” Margie said in her head. “Crimson Crotch was alerted that there was a breach, and now he’s off.”
“Copy,” Jo said. “That’s the other squad, though. Not us. We’re still undetected. For now.”
She opened the door to the hallway just a crack. She could hear the sound of pounding feet nearby, but the hall they were in was empty. “Let’s go,” she whispered, leaping out into the hallway. The rest of her team followed, shutting the door quietly.
She could see by the blueprints where she needed to go to reach a stairwell that would take her up to the top of the building where the gallows were located. The major stairwell would take them up to the thirty-seventh floor. Then, they’d have to take a short hallway to the roof. But she had a feeling the prisoners were not on the roof yet. Could they be on the thirty-seventh floor? If she was Crimson Crotch, that’s where she’d keep them.
With guns drawn, they moved down the hallway toward the staircase. The pounding of boots was louder the closer they got to the end of the hall. Jo signaled for the others to stay back and then stuck her head out. About twenty feet away, there was another hallway, and the Vampires were running down there, past them, through a parallel hallway. It made sense that the tunnel from the House Office Buildings would let out pretty closely to where they were standing.
They didn’t need to go that way, so Jo turned the other direction, sending Elliott a message that he had a lot more Vampires headed his way.
“Son of a bitch,” her uncle said. “We’re pinned down as it is. Heather can’t seem to knock them all back and keep up a shield to protect our Hunters from bullets.”
“Then leave the Hunters behind and do what you need to do,” Jo said. “We’re almost to the stairs. If you could lead them away from us, that would be helpful.”
“I’ll see what I can do.”
A door up on the right marked, “Exit,” told her that this was the stairwell they needed. It did go up to the top floor, but it also led down and out of the building. She wouldn’t be going that way.
They entered the stairwell and headed up the steps, keeping their feet as light as possible so as not to alert the Vampires of their presence.
It didn’t matter. They were about to be detected anyway. They’d only made it up two and a half flights of stairs when Jo heard footsteps coming fast above them. There was nowhere to hide. She just hoped there weren’t too many of them for her squad to handle.
The Vampires came around the corner from the story above them, running quickly, not expecting them at all. Jo and her team opened fire, taking out the first two rows quickly enough. There were four more that had a chance to react, opening fire. Cassidy caught their bullets and dropped them to the ground. Jo yanked her silver knife from her holder and jabbed it into the neck of the closest Vampire soldier in front of her. Gray smoke began to billow, dirtying his black uniform. She was able to pull the knife through his neck pretty quickly, and he burst into ash, like the other four they’d killed. At the same time, Brandon took out the Vampire on the other side of her while Grant and Daniel were engaged with the last two.
Daniel’s combatant was particularly feisty. As soon as Jo’s Vampire was gone, she swung her knife around and caught the large man in the gut. Daniel was hacking at his neck. With the rest of the Vampires gone, the squad stormed this last one, and in a few seconds, he was ash, too.
Jo’s heart was hammering in her chest as she labored to breathe, mostly from the adrenaline rush and not exertion. She hoped that this detail hadn’t managed to alert anyone else of their presence, but the chances of that were slim. They needed to move. Quickly.
“Up we go,” Jo said, her boots crunching through the ash on the stairs as some of the Vampire powder clung to them and came along for the ride. She took the steps two or three at a time, running as fast as she dared to go considering she could come around a corner and run into a Vampire. She could run over fifty miles per hour easily enough, but it wasn’t the best idea considering she was running up steps in a building she’d never been in before.
They made it up to the twentieth floor in a matter of minutes, but as they rounded the corner there, the door to the hallway opened, and a barrage of bullets came flying at them. Cassidy caught most of them before they could hit anyone, but Pamela caught one in the shoulder. It bounced off, which told Jo that she was a Guardian, thank goodness. She didn’t need to lose any Hunters if she could help it.
Once again, they were in a shootout that took out several assailants, and then they moved to knives. This time, they were greatly outnumbered. The Vampires just kept coming in, one after another. While her team could handle them, since clearly these were unskilled Vampires who weren’t used to fighting this way, time was ticking.
“Go!” Brandon shouted at Jo. “Take Scott and go.”
“But--” Jo argued. She didn’t want to take the only Healer they had with her. What if Daniel got hurt?
“Go!” Brandon said again.
Scott was already moving toward the next flight of stairs. He grabbed hold of Jo’s sleeve and yanked her after him. Brandon was right. They needed to go.
As much as Jo hated leaving most of her squad behind, she had to press on. It was up to her and Scott now to reach his dad and the other prisoners before the Vampires could execute them.
“I think it’s time we called my dad on the IAC,” Scott said as the two of them continued to take the stairs as fast as possible, praying they didn’t run into any more Vampires until they reached the top floor.
“All right,” Jo said, seeing no problem with it now. It wasn’t like they could do anything more to alert the Vampires of their presence. Obviously, they already knew that they’d been infiltrated.
Over her IAC, Jo saw that Scott was trying to contact his dad. Nothing was happening, though. It seemed like Jamie’s IAC was either completely off or had been removed from his eye, a ghastly process Jo didn’t wish on anyone, especially if it was being done by a Vampire who wouldn’t be gentle. “He’s not answering,” Scott said, his voice showing how impatient he was feeling.
“Give him a second,” Jo said, but she couldn’t blame Scott for being anxious. She was as worried as he was that they simply wouldn’t be able to reach the hostages.
“Cass!” Jo shouted through the IAC, excluding Scott.
“Yeah? What do you want? I’m a little busy trying to keep people from dying.”
“Can you put a message through to Jamie to see if he can turn on his IAC using your telepathy? We can’t reach him.”
“I’m kind of preoccupied with the other two things you asked me to do, but I’ll see if I can get him when I get a sec.”
“Thanks,” Jo said, knowing that was the best she could do.
Behind her, she heard footsteps and then the pew pew of bullets flying at them. Most of the time, Vampires didn’t use guns, but these assholes didn’t seem to know that. Jo and Scott both whirled around and started shooting. Luckily, these four were also new recruits who went down like dominoes getting hit by a pickup truck.
The moment Jo turned back around, noting that they were at the exit for the twenty-eight floor, her IAC crackled, and then, a new voice was in her head.
“Scott? Son? Are you really here?”
“Dad!” Scott shouted, both aloud and through the IAC. “Yes. Do you know what floor you’re on?”
“Scott, I really think you should leave. I don’t see how you can do this. We are surrounded by a few hundred Vampires at the moment, and Cassidy said it’s just you and Jo. You’ll never make it.”
“Dad, we are coming for you. Where are you?” Scott’s determination was evident in his voice.
“We’re going to get you out, Jamie,” Jo told him. “Are you on the thirty-seventh floor?”
“Jo, Scott will get captured, and you will be killed. Hundreds. There are hundreds of them,” Jamie said, his tone conveying that he really wanted them to turn back.
“What floor?” Jo knew it sounded impossible, but she had a few tools in her belt, literally, that might help them, and she wasn’t willing to give up so easily. Besides, once she got the hostages free, they’d be able to help.
“I’m right behind you!” Cassidy shouted, also through the IAC, making Jo feel even more confident.
“Jamie, Cass is coming. You know she can handle anything. Where are you?”
“Goddamit,” he murmured, probably not meaning for them to pick it up. “We are on the top floor. I guess that’s the thirty-seventh. They’re moving us, though. We’re being herded up onto the rooftop. That’s where the firing squad is already situated. They’re Hunters, Jo. Hunters and Vampires--to take all of us out.”
“Assassin Hunters,” Jo said, letting everyone on the IAC know that their suspicions were correct. “We’ve got titanium,” Jo told Jamie. “We’ll be fine.”
“Titanium is not foolproof,” Jamie reminded her.
“We’ll be fine.”
They were already at the door to the thirty-seventh floor, but Jo was waiting for Cassidy who was a few floors behind them. While she was waiting, she contacted Elliott. “How are you doing?”
“Peachy. Every time we kill a row of bloodsuckers, they send another row in.”
“So no one’s getting free from your squad to help us?”
“Negatory,” Elliott replied, which she took to mean that no one else was coming.
“Damn. All right. We’ll make it work.”
Cassidy caught up to them, and the three of them went bursting through the stairwell door, ready to fire.
There was no one on the other side of the door. From where they stood, the entire floor was still and quiet.
“Are we too late?” Scott asked.
“No, I’ve still got your dad on the IAC. Let’s go.” Jo beckoned for them to follow, and they all ran toward the other side of the floor, thinking that they must be using a stairwell on the other side to reach the roof. She knew exactly where it was, according to the blueprints, and they should be able to reach it in a few minutes.
“Wait!” Cassidy said, reaching out and pulling Jo back by the shoulder. “Listen, they are using that stairwell you’re headed to. We need to find a different way to the roof.”
“There isn’t another way.” Jo reminded her.
“Yes, there is.” Cassidy looked confident. “This way.”
Jo exchanged a look with Scott, and then they both nodded, and Cassidy led the way, not toward the other staircase that led to the roof but in a completely different direction.
Jo didn’t know where they were going, but she trusted her aunt, and she had to hope that whatever this new plan was, it would work out, and the prisoners would be free in the next few minutes.
Because if they weren’t, they’d all be dead.