Ambushed (4 page)

"Samuels,
go get the girl, Fiver and I will grab the briefcase."

I'd heard two
doors open, not three. That meant that the driver was still inside
the van. Alec and James were outnumbered at least four to two.

I looked down
and realized that I'd also pulled my clothes off sometime in the last
minute or two. My shirt, pants and shoes were all balled up in my
left hand.

We were going
to have to risk the two downstairs getting away. It was too dangerous
for Alec and James to take on four vampires by themselves. I took a
deep breath and started to loosen the chains on my beast as I looked
around the pillar.

The first
vampire was almost to the silver briefcase when Alec appeared as if
by magic from behind the car that had been sheltering him. The
vampire tried to get his weapon out, tried to step back out of the
range of Alec's claws, but he wasn't up against a normal human.
Reflexes that would have dealt with almost any other opponent weren't
enough to save him from Alec.

Vampires are so
fast that most normal humans wouldn't have even been able to follow
the vampire's dodge let alone compensate for it, but Alec was faster
still. The claws on Alec's right hand took the vampire through the
neck, and the bloodsucker collapsed to the ground in a spray of
blood.

James abandoned
his perch on the outside of the building, dropping down onto the
concrete floor with enough force that I could feel the tremors
underneath my bare feet. James' target, the vampire who had been
headed towards Jess, already had his weapon out, but James covered
the ground between them too quickly for him to set himself.

The vampire
sliced at James with a curved Japanese samurai sword, but James
slapped the weapon away and sank his claws into the vampire's chest
at the same time that Alec stepped forward to engage his second
opponent.

"Jas,
move!"

Alec's yell
startled me into motion and I realized that I'd allowed myself to
become so caught up in the fight that I'd frozen in place, not going
to help the boys and likewise not fulfilling my original assignment.

I turned away
from Alec and the others and sprinted towards the edge of the parking
garage. It only took me three steps to get up to full speed and then
I threw myself over the half wall and out into empty space. The
ground was only twenty feet below, but that was far enough to break
my legs if I didn't handle things just right. I was sturdier than a
normal human, but unlike Alec and James, I couldn't shift into hybrid
form at the last moment and absorb that kind of impact without risk.

Luckily I
managed to generate enough momentum to hit the wall of the building
next to the garage. I had a second as the rough brick tore my feet to
shreds to wish that I'd left my shoes on, and then I pushed off of
the wall, throwing myself into a backflip. It was like something
you'd see in a movie. I'd only tried stuff like that a couple of
times before and if I'd been thinking clearly I probably wouldn't
have tried such a chancy maneuver, but it worked. My collision with
the brick wall slowed me down and allowed me to angle my trajectory
so that I landed back inside of the parking garage, now on the
first
floor.

I still hit
hard enough that I had to roll to bleed off some of the force of my
landing, but I shifted to my wolf form before I completed the second
full rotation. The transformation tore through me with the familiar
shadow of pain—a kind of half-agony that was over before my
body could fully register what was going on.

The closest
vampire had been leaning against the concrete wall that encased the
stairwell. It wasn't a bad spot tactically speaking. Nobody would be
able to sneak up on him and it allowed him to watch as much of the
first floor as possible, but he shouldn't have leaned against the
wall like that. Under normal circumstances he probably would have
seen or heard any threats approaching with plenty of time to ready
himself, but he obviously hadn't anticipated someone dropping down
from the second story and I was on him as he was still pushing
himself away from the wall.

He was fast,
faster even than the vampires from up above, and his instincts were
good. He didn't waste time trying to get at the longer weapon I was
pretty sure he had concealed underneath his shirt. Instead he went
straight for the dagger up his left sleeve, but even that wasn't
something he could get into action fast enough, at least I didn't
think
he'd be able to get it out fast enough.

The truth was I
wasn't positive, but it was too late to do anything about it one way
or the other, I was already airborne, already arrowing towards his
throat. The collision as I knocked him back into the concrete behind
him, my jaws closing around his throat, was the most welcome thing
I'd felt in a long time because it meant that I'd beaten him to the
draw.

Being knocked
back into the wall should have messed up his draw, but all of the
stories agreed that vampires were tougher than normal humans, so I
didn't leave anything to chance. As soon as my feet touched down I
planted and whipped him to the right as hard as I could.

The violence of
the action probably would have broken the neck of a normal person, or
barring that ripped out their throat, but my opponent managed to get
his left hand up and grab a handful of fur around my neck. He
couldn't kill me with such a weak hold, but it was enough to let him
offset some of the force as I whipped him back the other direction.

It also let me
feel that there wasn't anything in his wrist sheath anymore, and I
hadn't heard the clatter of metal on concrete so that meant that he
still had ahold of his knife. I slammed him back into the wall hard
enough that
I
practically saw stars, but I wasn't rewarded
with the sound I was after.

The vampire
tried to get his feet underneath him at the same time that his left
arm tensed up, and I desperately tried to switch direction again. I
threw him to the right again, mustering every bit of strength I had,
but all I managed to do was throw off his aim a little.

Instead of
sinking home between my ribs, the knife skipped off the large bone in
my shoulder. It hurt, but it wasn't immediately life-threatening. A
part of me debated releasing his neck and trying for a better hold,
but that went against thousands of years of instincts, instincts that
it turned out were right in this case.

The snap as his
legs shattered against the bumper of an old Dodge pickup truck was
music to my ears. The pain was too much for him and he dropped his
knife at the same time that he relaxed his grip on my neck. A second
later his neck snapped and I dropped his lifeless body to the ground.

The entire
fight had taken no more than two seconds. The other vampire had drawn
his sword, a short stabbing weapon, and headed towards me, but he was
still more than a dozen yards away.

A multitude of
sounds washed over me as I started towards the second vampire,
angling myself so that by the time we met I'd have plenty of room. Up
on the second level weapons clashed against hybrid claws and metal
crunched as someone was thrown into a car with enough force to
crumple the hood. That was probably a good sign. None of the vampires
could possibly be strong enough to throw a hybrid like that and Jess
was probably fast enough to avoid coming to grips with anyone she
didn't want to fight.

Down here, on
the first level I could hear the steady drip of my blood onto the
concrete floor. It served as a kind of morbid counterpoint to our
paired footsteps as we slowly closed with each other. If I'd been a
normal human I would have been worried about leaving so much blood at
the scene of a double homicide, but shape shifter blood wasn't stable
in the same way that human blood was.

We can benefit
from human blood, I've had plenty of transfusions of human blood, but
our own blood breaks down incredibly quickly once it leaves our body.
Unless someone arrived to take samples of the blood on the pavement
in the next fifteen minutes, it was going to be virtually impossible
for them to get any usable DNA out of it.

The vampire
took another step towards me and I forced my mind back to the
situation at hand. My new opponent was obviously nervous. I'd hoped
he might think that I'd merely been lucky in taking down his friend,
but he wasn't acting the least bit over-confident. He feinted with
his sword, a lightning-fast jab that I had to honor as potentially
being a real attack.

I twisted to
one side as the blade passed within inches of me. I snapped at his
arm and apparently I was even faster than he'd expected because he
almost didn't get out of the way in time. I still got a piece of him
but I didn't get a good enough grip to turn it into anything useful.
I felt a slight tug against my fangs and then they tore through the
muscle of his arm and he was spinning away from me.

I expected the
vampire to renew his attack, but he backed away, buying himself room
to analyze what had just happened. That was a very bad sign. Normally
I would have said that the waiting game would favor me. He was
injured and the blood oozing out of his arm would eventually make its
way down to his hand and interfere with his grip. That all went out
the window though if I was fighting someone who was good enough to
adjust his tactics on the fly.

It was
unlikely—most people couldn't do much more than regurgitate the
blocks and strikes that they'd had drilled into them—but every
once in a while you ran into a true weapons master, someone who
understood how to improvise, someone capable of creating an entirely
new method of fighting if given enough time and a compelling reason
to do so.

I couldn't take
that chance. Besides, Alec and James might not survive without my
help. I needed to finish off this fight now.

I moved towards
the vampire and then planted and changed direction at the last
second. His blade missed me again, but this time I felt it disturb
the hair on my back. He was getting closer and my jaws snapped shut
on nothing more than air this time.

I charged him,
relying on speed to close before he could recover, but I almost
wasn't fast enough. I ducked down as his sword darted towards me
again. This time it skittered off of one of my ribs, tearing a long,
bloody furrow across my back.

If the tip of
his blade had been angled just a couple of degrees further down he
would have impaled me, but it hadn't been and I crashed into him with
enough speed to knock him over. He tried to roll back to his feet,
but I grabbed hold of his lower leg and whipped him to the side.

There wasn't
anything solid close enough to slam him into, which meant that it was
only a matter of time before he recovered enough to skewer me. He hit
the concrete floor hard, but he kept his chin tucked so that he
didn't lead with his head. I heaved, whipping him back the other
direction, but he was heavy and the concrete where we were standing
was smoother than where I'd fought the first vampire.

My front legs
started to slip out from underneath me, and I had to let go in order
to stop from being knocked over. It proved to be for the better
though because a second later his sword stabbed down through the
space where I'd been standing.

He was bleeding
from two places now, just like me, but none of our wounds were
serious enough to affect the balance of the fight, in the timeframe
that we were dealing with. He rolled back to his feet as I started
circling him.

I needed an
opening, but if anything I seemed to be losing ground to him. He was
getting better and better at anticipating my attacks. I feinted to
the left and then writhed away as his sword licked out again. He
obviously expected me to grab his arm again, but instead I launched
myself up over the top of his blade. He was good, but he'd let his
weight shift too far forward in an attempt to counter another of the
peripheral, low attacks that I'd been using until now.

My aim was true
and a split second later, my jaws closed around his throat. Alec was
the martial artist, he was the one that had told me that any punch
was supposed to stop two inches behind its true target. Some things
didn't transfer between fighting as a human and fighting as a wolf,
but that did.

I didn't jump
with the aim of just getting my fangs on the vampire's throat and
then dropping straight down, I jumped with enough force to carry
myself well past him. I hadn't been able to do that with the first
vampire because of the wall behind him, but I wasn't under that kind
of restraint this time. He was dead before he hit the ground.

Alec Graves
George Town Banking Sector
George Town, The Cayman Islands

It was done. The first batch of cash had been deposited at the Cayman
National Bank.

Everyone
but Jess had been bleeding from at least a couple of spots, but we'd
turned James' shirt into a set of improvised bandages and then gone
into a fast food restaurant a few blocks over and taken turns
cleaning up in the bathroom.

I
would have donated my shirt to the cause as well, but I didn't want
to draw any more attention to myself than I absolutely had to when it
came time to deposit a billion dollars into the account I'd just
finished setting up the day before.

Planning,
or possibly luck, had won out and nobody had given me any problems
when I'd asked to see the branch manager. Apparently my contacts
hadn't been kidding when they said that the Cayman banks were used to
having people in jeans and a t-shirt show up out of the blue and make
extremely large deposits.

James
and the girls had waited just outside of the bank as I was conducted
back to a private room. Once I pulled out the first
fifty-million-euro bond I was promptly taken down to the vault, and
fifteen minutes later the bonds were the bank's problem rather than
mine.