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.”