The Jeep's engine whined in protest, pushing through the humid, heavy air of the South Carolina lowcountry. They had been driving for five hours since the massacre at the gas station, the silence between them thick but no longer suffocating.Through the bug-splattered windshield, a massive green reflective board loomed out of the darkness ahead: Welcome to Charleston.Laura exhaled, a long, shaky breath that seemed to carry the weight of the last few days. Her grip on the steering wheel finally relaxed. "Finally, we're here," she murmured, glancing over at him. "Home sweet home."Ted met her gaze. The tension in his jaw softened, and for the first time since he had woken up with fangs, he offered a small, genuine smile. They were going to be okay.Then, Laura's smile vanished, replaced by a mask of sheer terror.Just a hundred yards ahead, positioned directly in front of the welcome sign, two patrol cars sat diagonally across the asphalt. The red and blue lights sliced through the dark, illuminating a pair of concrete barriers. Two men in state trooper uniforms stood casually in front of the blockade, their hands resting on their utility belts."Strap in," Laura hissed, her knuckles turning white on the wheel. "Tight.""What?" Ted blinked, confused. "Laura, they're just police. Maybe there's a detour—""No sane police officer would come anywhere near the Charleston borders at night," Laura snapped, slamming her foot down on the accelerator. The Jeep roared, the speedometer needle climbing rapidly. "They aren't cops!"The two men didn't flinch as the two-ton vehicle hurtled toward them at eighty miles an hour. Instead, they raised their hands in perfect, chilling unison. A signal."Brace!" Laura screamed.Before Ted could react, a mechanized clatter echoed from the asphalt. A strip of heavy-duty, titanium spikes violently deployed across the road. The Jeep's front tires hit them and instantly shredded.The vehicle violently jerked, the rims sparking against the road, but the momentum carried them forward. Then came the flash.From the tree line to their left, a streak of fire illuminated the night. A concussive boom shattered the air as a bazooka round slammed directly into the rear axle of the Jeep. The explosion lifted the back end of the vehicle clean off the ground.Gravity vanished. The world turned into a dizzying, violent blur of shattering glass, crushing metal, and deafening noise as the Jeep flipped end-over-end. Once. Twice. Three times.It finally slammed down onto the shoulder of the road, skidding upside down through the dirt and gravel before coming to a grinding, smoking halt.Ted hung upside down, his vampire physiology keeping the blunt force trauma from killing him, though his head rang like a struck bell. He blinked through the blood dripping into his eyes."Laura?" he rasped.She was slumped against her seatbelt, eyes closed, a nasty gash across her forehead. She was out cold.Panic, sharp and immediate, cut through Ted's daze. He punched the release button on his belt and dropped to the crushed roof. Moving with frantic speed, he sliced through Laura's jammed seatbelt with his claws, catching her dead weight. He kicked the shattered remnants of the passenger window out and dragged her into the humid night air.He had barely taken two steps away from the wreckage when a sharp, searing crack rang out.Agony exploded in Ted's right shoulder. The impact spun him around, dropping him to his knees. He gasped, looking down at his shoulder. A thick, wooden round was lodged deep in his muscle, burning like a branding iron. The wood seemed to poison his blood on contact, sapping his supernatural strength.He collapsed backward, pulling Laura against his chest with his good arm, clutching the burning wound with his left hand.Through the smoke and the flashing red and blue lights, boots crunched on the gravel. Six men now surrounded them. They weren't cops. They wore tactical gear, night-vision goggles pushed up on their helmets, and carried heavy, custom-built rifles.The leader, a man with a thick scar cutting through his beard, racked his weapon and stared down at Ted with a look of utter contempt."You really are rookies," the leader sneered, spitting a wad of tobacco onto the dirt. "Lucky for you, you're wanted alive. Let's round 'em up, boys."Two men stepped forward with heavy, runed shackles.They never got the chance to use them.A sharp whip-crack split the air, sounding like a sonic boom. Something small and impossibly fast—a river stone thrown with the velocity of a sniper bullet—tore through the darkness. It impacted the face of the mercenary closest to Ted.There was a sickening explosion of bone and gore. One-third of the man's head simply vanished, the kinetic force hollowing out his skull. Blood and brain matter splattered violently across the overturned Jeep and his surrounding squadmates. The man stood for a fraction of a second before crumbling like a puppet with cut strings."Contact!" the leader roared, stumbling backward. "Take cover!"The remaining five men scrambled behind the smoking ruins of the Jeep, raising their rifles toward the tree line. But the tree line was empty.The slaughter didn't come from the woods. It came from the shadows right beside them.A scream tore from one of the men as he was violently yanked upward, pulled over the chassis of the Jeep and out of sight. A wet tearing sound followed, and a severed head rolled out from under the car, bumping against the leader's boot."Open fire!" the leader yelled, firing blindly into the dark.The chaos lasted less than ten seconds. A blur of movement swept through the remaining mercenaries. One was pinned to a tree with his own combat knife, driven straight through his sternum. Another was lifted by his throat and decapitated with a single, brutal swipe of a bare hand.The leader fired wildly, but an unseen force shattered his wrists. He dropped to his knees, screaming, before a heel brought down on his neck snapped it with a dry crunch.The last surviving mercenary, a young man covered in his squad's blood, backed away from the Jeep, his rifle shaking violently. He spun in a circle, finally realizing what had stepped into the light.Three figures had materialized around him. Their eyes were pitch black, the veins under their eyes pulsing with dark, supernatural blood. Older, apex predators.The mercenary dropped his gun, his knees giving out. "Oh, shii—"Before he could finish the curse, the closest vampire casually backhanded him. The force lifted the man off his feet, sending him crashing into the concrete barrier where he slumped, utterly unconscious.Silence fell over the road, broken only by the hiss of the Jeep's ruptured radiator.Ted remained frozen on the ground, still bleeding, still clutching Laura tightly to his chest. He pressed his hand harder against the wooden bullet in his shoulder, staring up in shock at the three vampires who now turned their obsidian eyes toward him.
TO BE CONTINUED...