LITMIR.BIZ

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at what appeared to be a bizarre act of surrender. Then the stake from Angela’s T-Bone blew clean through his chest, directly above where Shaun Turner was lying, and the vampire exploded in an expanding column of blood, the majority of which came crashing down on Shaun. The T-Bone’s stake whirred back into its barrel, as Angela appeared above him. She pushed her visor up, and gave him a mischievous smile.

      “Naughty boy,” she said, reaching down and hauling him to his feet. “Keep an eye on your six, Shaun. You can’t always rely on me to bail you out.”

      “Piss off,” he said, mildly, then smiled at his teammate.

      Jack Williams arrived beside them, his eyes wide with the thrill of the fight.

      “I staked the ones you torched,” he said. “Let’s help Jamie’s team.”

      Angela looked across the dock, towards Squad G-17.

      “I think they’re doing fine,” she said, the smile widening on her face.

      Kate ran forward, drawing the stake from her belt as she did so. Jamie ran with her, his MP5 in one hand, his stake in the other. They reached the trio of wailing vampires that Kate had blown the legs out from under, and staked them without a second glance. Then they were moving again, in the direction of Larissa.

      Three more vampires fell out of the sky, blood pouring from wounds that looked like the work of a wild animal, and Kate skidded to a halt.

      “Go on!” she shouted. “I’ll clear up!”

      Jamie nodded, sprinting after Larissa, who had dropped back to the ground and taken cover behind the nearest truck. Behind him, he heard three gargled screams and three thuds of changing air pressure, as Kate staked what was left of the vampires who had met Larissa in the air. A second later she was at their side, panting, her uniform splashed with blood.

      “How many left?” asked Jamie.

      Larissa lifted her visor back and sniffed the air. Her eyes were blazing red, the colour of boiling blood, and her fangs were gleaming white triangles beneath her upper lip.

      “Five,” she answered. “The one you T-Boned is still alive, but only just. The other four are between the trucks. The scents are too close together – I can’t separate them.”

      Don’t worry, thought Jamie. Four frightened vampires. Easy.

      A noise began to swell from the direction of the freighter, and Jamie peered round the corner of the truck. The woman who had been the second to leave the ship was standing at the bottom of the gangway, surrounded by a small group of emaciated men and women; she was still holding the little girl with one arm, but with the second she was waving frantically up at the deck of the freighter. As Jamie watched, an elderly woman nervously poked her head above the railing at the top of the gangway, then slowly started down it. Behind her, a crowd of men and women followed, the metal creaking beneath them as they made their way towards dry land.

      Movement blurred in the corner of Jamie’s eye, and he pulled back round the corner next to Kate and Larissa.

      “At least one is on the other side of this truck,” he whispered, his voice inaudible to anyone but them, the noise cancelled by the dampening contours of his helmet. “Kate, work your way round the other end. Larissa, go over the top. We’ll corner him.”

      The two girls nodded. Kate moved away silently down the length of the truck, as Larissa floated easily up into the air. Jamie took a deep breath, and stepped round the corner. The vampire who was standing between the two trucks looked almost pitifully frightened; he was twitching and turning in circles, nostrils flared, trying to look in every direction at once. Then Kate appeared beyond him, and the vampire saw her. He hissed, a low, terrified noise, and turned to run, only to find Jamie barring his escape route. He screeched, a look of pure dread on his middle-aged face, and turned his head to the sky, to the one way he might escape the fate that had befallen his colleagues.

      “Hi,” said Larissa, sweetly. She was sitting on the edge of the truck’s roof, staring down at the vampire with her red eyes glowing.

      The vampire let out a howl of despair, and ran towards Kate. Then the stakes from two T-Bones pulped his chest, and he exploded in a shower of blood. Larissa floated down, then suddenly accelerated past Jamie, a low snarl of pleasure emanating from her throat. One of the three remaining vampires, his instinct for self-preservation overwhelmed by the torrent of fresh blood that had been spilled on the other side of the truck, was careering round the corner, a look of primal hunger on his face.

      Larissa shot past him like a bullet, without even slowing, and tore his head from his shoulders without so much as a grunt of effort. The headless body took a couple of faltering steps, then fell face down in front of Jamie, who staked it, a grimace of disgust on his face. The head burst in Larissa’s hand like a water balloon, and she let out a yelp of annoyance.

      “Give me a chance to drop the head next time,” she said. “I nearly made it through this mission without getting any blood on me.” She laughed, and Jamie felt his stomach flip.

      Sometimes the awesome power that coursed through his girlfriend – is that what she is now? My girlfriend? – scared him more than he would ever have admitted to her, and made her take pleasure in things that even he, as battle-scarred as he was, found appalling. He knew it wasn’t really her, it was the vampire side of her; surrounded by blood, in a fight for her life, it took her over completely. But when it was over, she would be Larissa again, he knew.

      Or at least, he hoped he knew.

      Behind him, he heard the snarl of a vampire, but he didn’t even hurry to turn around. He trusted Kate completely; by the time he was facing her, the vampire was already staggering back against the side of the truck, a gaping hole in its chest. Kate turned her back as it burst, splashing blood and viscera against the backplate of her body armour.

      Three down. One to go.

      Squad G-17 regrouped at the front of the second truck, and walked slowly towards the third. They were careful, but not overly so; a single vampire was no match for them, and they knew it. As if on cue, the final vampire burst out from where he had been cowering as his friends died around him, took a single look at the three approaching figures, turned tail and ran for his life.

      He made it ten metres before he collided with the mass of men and women emerging from the freighter’s gangway.

      The first blow was struck by a tall Asian man with a metal fire extinguisher in his hand, crushing the vampire’s skull almost flat on one side. Blood pistoned into the air, and the vampire fell to the floor, his mouth working uselessly as he tried to form words, perhaps trying to beg them not to do it, to plead for mercy.

      There was no mercy.

      When it was over, the prisoners slumped to the ground, their heads in their hands, their arms wrapped round loved ones. Almost all of them were weeping, their narrow chests heaving up and down. The woman holding the little girl did not sit down, however; she had taken no part in the destruction of the vampire, but nor had she made any attempt to stop it. She looked at the six dark figures, their purple visors hiding their faces from view, and said two halting, uncertain words.

      “Thank. You.”

      “You’re welcome,” replied Jack Williams, and pointed at the ground. “Stay here. Help coming. Stay here.”

      The woman nodded, then lowered herself to the ground, keeping the little girl carefully cradled against her.

      Jack led the combined team away, and gathered them into a circle.

      “Good work,” he said, raising his visor. “Damn good work today. That was as clean as I’ve ever seen it done, and we got the leader alive. Great work, truly.” He smiled around at the five Operators, who raised their own visors and grinned back at him, grinned at the pleasure of a job done well as the adrenaline began to leave their systems. “Alert the Northumbrian Police; tell them they’ve got two hundred refugees on the banks of the Tyne. Then let’s take our survivor home and find out what he knows,” Jack

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