I stood up, my bare feet feeling the grime on the steps, but I didn’t slip as I followed Zerbrowski up. Still, I went up with my gun in a one-handed grip, the other hand on the wall, just in case. I smelled blood, a lot of it. I grabbed his arm and moved up beside him, our bodies almost pressed together by the narrow stone walls. I used two fingers to point not at my eyes, but at the tip of my nose. He knew that meant I’d smelled something, and that something was usually blood. He let me ease around him and go first. Zerbrowski also knew that I was harder to hurt than he was, and let me go forward as if I were the big bruiser of a guy, the meat shield. I was small, but I had become fucking tough thanks to the vampire marks.

Blood was drying on the steps in a thick, darkening pool; at the top of that pool was a uniformed officer I didn’t know on sight. I was glad I didn’t know him, and felt instantly bad about thinking it. His pale eyes stared wide and sightless, his face frozen in death. His throat was savaged on one side so there was no way to check for a pulse; it was gone, torn out.

Shoe prints marked up the sticky blood; Perry and Smith had gotten past this point. I tried not to step in the blood with my bare feet, but couldn’t avoid it all unless I wanted to climb over the dead officer. I wasn’t willing to do that, and the blood was thick and squishy. I forced myself not to think about it, but just to think about getting up the steps to help the others. There was at least one more officer on site, maybe two more, depending on whether he’d been riding with a partner. I concentrated on the living and left the dead for later, but it was hard to ignore the blood sticking to the stone with every step I took. Perry and Smith’s bloody footprints went up, too. There was no way not to track the crime scene up, no way to avoid the blood, no way… Another high-pitched scream sounded and this time I knew it was a girl, and I could hear words: “Don’t hurt them! Don’t hurt anyone else!”