THE GUNS ROARED.

The first bullet sliced into the vampire's chest, punched through dry muscle, and bit Ghastek's journeyman in the shoulder. He spun from the impact, and the steady stream of rounds from the M240B punctured the vampire and cut across the journeyman's spine, nearly severing him in two. Blood sprayed.

The women hit the ground.

The bullets chipped the pavement. Half a foot to the right and Ghastek's head would've exploded like a watermelon under a sledgehammer. I ped under gunfire, grabbed Ghastek's legs, and pulled him out of the line of fire, backing up to my office.

The women crawled toward me across the pavement.

The vamp twisted around, shuddering under the barrage of bullets, leaped onto the fallen man, and tore into his back, flinging blood and flesh into the air.

I dragged Ghastek's body over the doorstep and dropped him. Behind me, a woman screamed. I ran back, jumping over the dark-haired woman as she pulled herself through my doorway. In the street, the redheaded girl hugged the ground, clenching her thigh, her eyes huge as saucers. Blood stained the snow with painfully bright scarlet. Shot in the leg.

She was too far out in the street. I had to get her out of here before the vamp keyed on her or the PAD shot her again.

I dropped to the ground, crawled to her, grabbed her arm, and pulled with everything I had. She screamed, but slid a foot toward me across the pockmarked asphalt flooded with melting snow. I backed up and pulled again. Another scream, another foot to the door.

Breathe, pull, slide.

Breathe, pull, slide.

Door.

I pushed her inside, slammed the door shut, and barred it. It was a good door, metal, reinforced, with a four-inch bar. It would hold. It had to.

A wide red stain spread on the floor from the wounded woman's leg. I knelt down and sliced her pant leg open. Blood spurted out of bullet-shredded muscle. The leg was ripped wide open. Bone shards glared at me, bathed in wet redness. Femoral artery cut, great saphenous vein cut, everything cut. Femur shattered.

Shit.

We would need a tourniquet.

"You! Put pressure here!"

The dark-haired girl stared at me with shocked glassy eyes. No intelligent life there. Every second counted.

I grabbed the redhead's hand and put it over her femoral artery. "Hold or you'll bleed out."

She moaned but pressed down.

I ran to the storeroom to get the medical supplies.

Tourniquets were last resort devices. Mine was the C-A-T, military issue, but no matter how good it was, if you kept one on too long, you risked major nerve damage, loss of a limb, and death. And once it went on, it stayed on. Taking it off outside an emergency room would get you killed in a hurry.

I needed paramedics, but calling them would do nothing. Standard operating procedure said, when faced with a loose vampire, seal off the area. The ambulance wouldn't come unless the cops gave the paramedics the all-clear. It was just me, the tourniquet, and a girl who would likely bleed her life out.

I knelt by the woman and pulled the C-A-T out of the bag.

"No!" The girl tried to push away from me. "No, I'll lose my leg!"

"You're bleeding to death."

"No, it's not that bad! It doesn't hurt!"

I gripped her shoulders and propped her up. She saw the shredded mess of her thigh. "Oh God."

"What's your name?"

She sobbed.

"Your name?"

"Emily."

"Emily, your leg has almost been amputated. If I put the tourniquet on it now, it will stop the bleeding and you might survive. If I don't put it on, you'll bleed to death in minutes."

She clutched at me, crying into my shoulder. "I'll be a cripple." "You'll be alive. And with magic, your chances of keeping your leg are pretty good. You know, medmages heal all sorts of wounds. But we've got to keep you alive until the magic wave hits. Yes?"

She just cried, big tears rolling down her face.

"Yes, Emily?"

"Yes."

"Good."

I slipped the band under her leg, threaded it through the buckle, pulled it tight, and wound the windlass until the bleeding stopped.

Four minutes later the gunfire finally died. Ghastek was still out. His pulse was steady, his breathing even. Emily lay still, whimpering in pain, her leg cinched by the wide tourniquet cuff. Her friend hugged herself, rocking back and forth and mumbling over and over, "They shot at us, they shot at us."

Peachy.

That was the problem with the People: most of them saw action only through the vampire's eyes while they sat in a safe, well-armored room within the Casino, sipping coffee and indulging in an occasional sugary snack. Getting shot at while riding a vampire's mind and dodging actual bullets were two different animals.

A loud bang resonated through the door. A male voice barked. "Atlanta Paranormal Squad. Open the door."

The dark-haired girl froze. Her voice fell to a horrified whisper. "Don't open it."

"Don't worry. I got it under control." Sort of.

I slid a narrow panel aside, revealing a two-inch-by-four-inch peephole. A shadow shifted to my left--the officer had pressed against the wall so I couldn't shoot him through the opening.

"Did you get the vamp?"

"We got it. Open the door."

"Why?"

There was a small pause. "Open. The. Door."

"No." They were hot from killing the vampire and still trigger-happy. There was no telling what they would do if I let them in.

"What do you mean, `no'?" He seemed genuinely puzzled.

"Why do you need me to open the door?"

"So we can apprehend the sonovabitch who dropped a loose vampire in the middle of the city."

Great. "You just killed one member of the People in the cross fire, wounded another, and you want me to let you have the rest of the witnesses. I don't know you well enough to do that."

The PAD generally stuck to the straight and narrow, but there were certain things one didn't do: you didn't turn over a cop's killer to his partner and you didn't surrender a necromancer to the First Response Unit. They were all volunteer, and sanity was an optional requirement. If I gave Ghastek and his people to them, there was a good chance they would never make it to the hospital. The official term was "died of their injuries en route."

The male voice huffed. "How about this: open the door or we'll break it down."

"You need a warrant for that."

"I don't need a warrant if I think you're in immediate danger. Say, Charlie, do you think she's in danger?"

"Oh, I think she's in a lot of danger," Charlie said.

"And would it be our duty as law enforcement officers to rescue her from said danger?"

"It would be a crime not to."

One person dead, one painting the floor with her blood. I guess it was time for jokes.

"You heard Charlie. Open the door or we'll open it for you."

I leaned a touch farther from the peephole. If they tried to break in, I could probably take them, but I could also kiss any sort of future cooperation from the PAD good-bye.

"Stop." A familiar female voice rang outside the door. It couldn't be.

"Ma'am, step back," the cop barked. "You're interfering with a police matter."

"I'm a knight of the Order. My name is Andrea Nash; here is my ID."

Andrea was my best friend. I hadn't seen her for two months, ever since my aunt trashed half of Atlanta. After the final fight with Erra, Andrea had disappeared. About two weeks later I got a letter that said, "Kate, I'm sorry about everything. I have to go away for a while, please don't look for me. Don't worry about Grendel, I'll take good care of him. Thank you for being my friend." Five minutes later I was on my way to the city to look for her, His Grumpiness the Beast Lord in tow. We found nothing. No sign of Andrea or my attack poodle, who had ended up in her care after the chaos of my aunt's demolition derby. Then I'd pestered Jim, the Pack Security Chief and my Mercenary Guild buddy, until he put one of his units on combing the city for her. They came back empty-handed. Andrea Nash had vanished into thin air.

Apparently she was still alive. If I got out of this siege, I'd punch her in the face.

The cop's voice gained a new edge. Knights of the Order didn't screw around. "That's nice, Miss Nash. Step back or we'll place you under arrest and you can call the Order from the station and have them bail you out."

"Look up above the door. You see a metal paw bolted to the wood?"

"And?"

"This business is the property of the Pack. If you break the door down, you'll have to appear before a judge and explain why you invaded these premises without a warrant, arrested guests of the Pack, and caused damage to Pack property."

"We can do that," the cop said.

"No, you can't--because I'll testify that you had no reasonable cause to enter said building. Unless you're planning on killing me, in which case, start praying now, because I'll put a bullet through the head of every man in your squad before you get off a single shot."

"I wouldn't call that bluff," I said. "I've seen her shoot. She's being modest."

"Whose side are you on anyway?" the cop growled.

"I'm on the side of serving and protecting," Andrea said. "Your squad killed a civilian in the cross fire."

"It was a justifiable kill," the cop said. "I'm not going to debate it with you."

Andrea's voice vibrated with steel. "One man is already dead. And judging by the blood trail on the pavement, somebody in that building is wounded. Someone either crawled or was dragged to that office and is probably bleeding out inside it. You now have a choice. You can either get the paramedics in there or you can let another civilian die of their injuries, break into an office owned by the Pack, assault the Beast Lord's wife, and shoot a knight of the Order. You can do it either way, but I promise that if you somehow survive, twenty years from now, when you're old and broken, you'll look back at this moment and wish you had taken two seconds and thought about what you were doing, because this is the point where it all went very wrong."

Wow. "What she said."

There was a long pause. They were thinking it over.

"Look, I worked with you guys before," I called. "Call Detective Michael Gray. He'll vouch for me. If you get paramedics here, I'll open the door. No fuss, no damage, everybody is happy, nobody gets hauled to court. We're going to need an ambulance pretty soon, too. I've got one of the girls in a tourniquet and if we don't hurry this along, she'll bleed to death."

"Tell you what," the cop said. "Open the door, let us take the wounded girl out, and then we'll call Gray."

Like I was born yesterday. "The moment I open the door, you'll rush me. I'll wait until the paramedics get here."

"Fine. I'll make the call, but you're playing with her life. She dies--it's on you, and I'll personally book you."

I slid the metal guard shut and went back to the women. The dark-haired woman stared at me with haunted eyes. "You're going to let them have us?"

"If it's a choice between your friend's life and your freedom, yes. For now, we'll wait. My best friend is on the other side, and she won't let them do anything stupid." I looked at the dark-haired woman. "When Ghastek fainted, why didn't either of you grab the vampire's mind?"

"I tried. It wasn't there."

"What do you mean, not there?" Vampire minds didn't just blink out of existence.

The dark-haired woman shook her head. "It wasn't there."

"She's right," Emily said. "I tried, too. It's like I couldn't navigate anymore." She shivered on the floor. "I'm cold."

I went into the storage room, pulled a spare cloak from the hook, and covered her with it.

Emily's lips had turned blue. "Am I going to die?"

"Not if I can help it."