The Damned Read Free Page A

reported to her. “And Skye. They’ve taken on the vampires.”
    “Is Holgar ahead of us?” she shouted.
    “I don’t know.”
    The two were swept along in the stampede, in as much danger of being trampled by humans as they were of death dealt out by the vampires. It was a stupid place for the team leader to be. Blood dripped into her field of vision, and she was already starting to get woozy from the loss of blood.
    “They’re driving us to the Plaza de Toros,” Antonio shouted to her.
    The bullring. Once locked inside, the humans would be cows ripe for the slaughter rather than the fierce fighting bulls that gave Pamplona its bullfighting reputation.
    Jenn glanced at the buildings on either side of the street, desperately looking for an open door. They were all shut. Through balcony windows she could see people watching, faces white with fear and shock. It was New Orleans all over again. The majority of the local populace was too afraid to do anything. Safer to watch the slaughter of friends and neighbors than to chance a brutal death themselves.
    When the Cursed Ones had made their presence known six years earlier, the world had been lulled by the vampires’ assurances that they wanted only peaceful coexistence. Solomon, their leader, was rock-star handsome, charismatic, and suave. But soon the world learned what some had always known—that vampires were monsters. Too late, nation after nation declared war on them. But the vampires were as savage as they were cunning. One by one, countries rapidly capitulated, adopting the fiction—the he—that a truce had been negotiated. There was no truce; it was surrender, and it was wrong.
    Spain was the final holdout. But the Spanish government was showing signs of capitulating. It was futile to resist an enemy so powerful, so difficult to kill.
    So it fell to the hunters, the few who had been especially trained to fight vampires, to save the world. As Jenn raced beside Antonio, she realized she’d be lucky if she could save herself for another hour, let alone anyone else.
    In front of her a man tripped, crashing to the ground and knocking over two others. Jenn leaped over the bodies on the cobblestones, hating herself for not stopping to help. But with a half-crazed mob around her and rampaging vampires behind her, to stop would be to die by trampling or bloodletting.
    “We have to get clear!” she told Antonio.
    “¡Sí!” he yelled back. “I’m looking.”
    Her heart thundered, and the hard rhythm of blood filled her ears, louder even than the pounding feet around her. Suddenly Antonio grabbed her around the waist, looked up at a low-hanging balcony just above their heads, and shouted, “On three! Jump!”
    She placed her hands on his shoulders. “One, two, three,” she yelled, bending her knees and pushing up through the soles of her feet. She sprang; he tossed her up onto the balcony, leaping up after her.
    Jenn landed in a martial arts roll, then pushed up to a standing position. She forced herself to take several deep, slow breaths as she scanned the sea of humanity beneath her, searching for her teammates. At least three hundred people streamed past, nearly all of them screaming.
    There was no sign of Holgar, but after a moment Antonio pointed toward the rear of the mob. There, barely ahead of the Cursed Ones, bobbed Jamie’s and Eriko’s heads. Eriko, very short, was nearly swallowed up.
    “She’s hurt,” Antonio said.
    Fear pricked Jenn’s heart. Antonio leaned over the rail and whistled loudly. Miraculously, Jamie heard; his head swiveled toward them, and he tapped his partner on the shoulder. Jenn and Antonio angled their way toward them. Eriko’s left arm was hanging at an odd angle, with bone jutting out of the skin. Though she had drunk the sacred elixir reserved for the Hunter of Salamanca, which gave her speed, strength, and the ability to heal quickly, she looked to be in terrible pain.
    As they approached, Antonio leaned down low,