Chapter 391
The people and cars thinned as they neared their destination. "Almost there," Jorick whispered, and led them up an alley, their backs against a building. It should have been a busy area, but the buildings around it stood dark and empty. Some showed stress damage; cracks and chips, broken windows, and flashes of soot. Katelina imagined that they'd been evacuated and forced to remain closed after the attack.
Jorick came to a stop and Katelina peered around him to see the Birlik, or what was left of it. A single, tiled wall and half of a tower stood. The rest was an elegant pile of rubble dusted with snow and lit with the flashing lights of a police barricade.
Her voice caught as she whispered, "My god, how did Cyprus do that?"
"They probably used explosives," Jorick said.
Micah grumbled from the back of the group, "I can't see shit. What's going on?"
Katelina pressed her back against the wall and peered out again. "There are fourno five police cars and several guys in uniforms. Some of them look like policemen but the others are dressed in gray. They don't have any guns- No, wait. The ones in blue do."
Micah made a noise of impatience. "Fuck it. We can take them."
"I'm sure we could," Jorick replied. "But we don't need to." He stepped forward and straightened his shirt. "Stay put, all of you. I'll find out what's going on."
Katelina peeked around the corner as Jorick stepped into the light and walked toward the policemen. His long dark hair flapped in the wind, and the purposeful set of his shoulders reminded her of an action hero.
She watched as he came to a stop before a barricade. "The police are challenging him."
Verchiel leaned around her, practically crushing her against the wall. "They're asking him for his papers and of course he's pulling his usual trickoh nice. He's doing all of them at once. I can never manage more than one."
Katelina shrugged loose of him and elbowed him back. "If you can hear then you can tell us what's going on."
"Nothing much," he said, which Katelina could already see. "He's probably probing their minds to find out where the survivors went. Ah, wait, look at that."
Two more policemen appeared from the rubble and marched toward Jorick. Their movements were too fluid to be human, which meant they were-
"Vampires," Verchiel muttered.
Katelina tensed as they confronted Jorick. Would they arrest him on orders from the Sodalitas?
"They want to know who he is- ha! He's lying. Either they aren't mind readers, or else they don't care about the truth because they're accepting it. They told him some of the Birlik is operational but most is in ruins. There's no power or water."
As if to prove their words, the streetlights flickered and winked out, leaving only the eerie blue lights of the cop cars to illuminate the scene.
Verchiel went on, "They told him that if he has business to go to the evacuation site. Some of the survivors remain there, though if he's looking for someone in particular they may have gone already- A group of them left together."
Jorick nodded and then turned back toward the alley. He'd only gone a couple of steps before he went rigid and spun back. Katelina flattened Verchiel against the wall to get a better view. The vampire policemen were also tensed, their eyes on a point too dark for her to see.
"What is it?" she demanded.
Verchiel squinted, then sniffed. His violet eyes went wide, and he grabbed Katelina by the shoulders and half threw her deeper into the alley. Ume caught her, and she'd just righted herself when she saw the flash of his sword.
Before she could ask what was going on, Verchiel disappeared. It took the other vampires a moment to process his actions, and then Micah and Loren took off around the corner. Ume dropped her backpack, jerked an ornate handled sickle from it, then followed at a run. Oren and Torina looked at one another, and finally the lion-maned vampire told his sister, "Stay with the humans," before he took off too.
"You're kidding!" Torina called after him. When she got no answer she fell into a pout and glared at the four of them. "Why can't you take care of yourselves?"
"I assure you we can, Torina-sama," Etsuko replied politely.
The Russians clung to one another, and Katelina moved past them to stick her head around the corner. The streetlights were on again and the rubble was crawling with vampires in black, complete with shiny bladed weapons, ninja style hoods, and blazing white emblems on their backs. It was the Children of Shadows.
Katelina gasped. "What are they doing here? Aren't they supposed to be blowing someone else up?"
"Obviously there was a change of plans," Torina replied disinterestedly.
The mortal policemen stood with mouths open, wide eyes fixed on the vampires swarming toward them. The two vampire policemen were on their radios, probably calling for back up.
Micah and the others reached Jorick as he leapt over the barricade and crashed into one of the ninja-style vampires. Micah gave a loud snarl and did the same. Verchiel disappeared and then seemed to reappear amidst the rubble, swinging his sword. Loren had the good sense not to bother with his silly pocket knife. Instead he heaved up a nearby chunk of rubble and flung it. Micah momentarily abandoned his attack to heft one that was four times the size. Katelina could imagine him saying, "This is how you do it!"
The chunk of stone smashed into the vampires and knocked them on their backs. While they were down Ume swooped in and slashed at their waving limbs with her sickle.
The spell of terror on the human policemen was broken, and they went for their guns. The air shook with the sharp report of rounds firing, one after another. Vampires on both sides jerked as the bullets impacted. Micah gave a furious roar and turned on one of them. The terrified cop dropped his empty magazine and popped a second in. He fired his rounds in quick succession, and Katelina saw blood flowers blossom on Micah's tank top.
The street lights flickered like a strobe then flashed on again to show the cop clicking the empty gun. Micah grabbed the man by the throat, his fangs flashing. Katelina looked away and then back in time to see Micah throw aside the man's head. It arced through the air, silhouetted against the street lights and the snow, a trail of blood flying behind it like the tail on a macabre shooting star.
Before Micah could go after any of the other policemen, the vampire officers turned their rifles on them. Katelina watched in horror as the humans' bodies jerked and crumbled to the ground in bloody heaps. One of them ran for his car, and a vampire policeman bounded after him. He grabbed him by the arm and flung him into what was left of the building with enough force to break his back. The policeman lay on the rubble, his head lolling from side to side, and the vampire paused long enough to shoot a bullet into his brain before he tossed aside the gun and went after the nearest enemy.
