Driven by Dean Murray Page A

avoid the backstroke
from the first vampire which otherwise would have taken off my arm.
    The
second step was the proverbial straw that broke the camel's back. I
was far enough back into the junction now that the first vampire
started forward at an angle, anxious to flank me by getting into the
other hall so that they could pin me against the elevator.
    The smart thing to do, the thing they expected me to do, was to rush the first
vampire while they were spaced slightly further apart than they had
been. Failing that, I probably should have retreated more quickly,
angling backwards myself so that I ended up in the other corridor and
kept the fight from changing drastically one way or another by
denying them the room they'd been hoping for.
    I
did neither. Instead I retreated, but rather than heading towards the
other corridor I backed right up against the corner they'd hoped to
trap me in. It was suicide except for the fact that during one of our
last couple of exchanges I'd caught a glimpse of a heavy wooden chair
next to the elevator.
    It
was one of those chairs that you sit in rather than on ,
a huge monstrosity that weighed close to a hundred pounds. I hooked
it with the claws of my right hand and then hurled it at the first
vampire with all my might.
    The
vampires hadn't exactly become complacent, but they'd thought that
the parameters of the fight had been well established. They were
fast, skilled, and with their swords they had a reach that exceeded
even what I was capable of. They'd forgotten about the fact that I
was many, many times stronger than either of them.
    The
chair shot across the empty space between me and my target, a target
who had been so eager to box me in that he'd already made it to the
other corridor, a corridor that helped limit his options for evasion.
He tried to dodge the projectile, but I'd thrown it at waist level,
too high to jump, too low to duck. His sword couldn't deflect this
blow and his best efforts still ended with the chair clipping him in
the shoulder, splintering in a spray of wood and fabric as it knocked
him to the ground.
    The
second vampire pressed the attack in an effort to buy his companion
time to get back up and help him, but he was too used to me
retreating. A hybrid is capable of moving backwards with incredible
speed, but that's not what we are really built for.
    I
was done retreating. I shot forward with the kind of vision-blurring
speed that I'd always loved as a wolf. I checked his arm with my
right hand, stopping his sword as he tried to swing it, but it was
merely a safety precaution. I was already inside the arc of his
weapon and my jaws closed on his neck before he even realized just
how badly he'd misjudged me.
    I
let the body drop away and turned back to the vampire I'd hit with
the chair. He was back on his feet, sword at the ready, but it was
obvious that the chair or the fall had hurt his shoulder. He stepped
forward and slashed at me, but the attack had only a shadow of his
previous speed and grace. I stepped back out of range of the attack
and then darted forward before he could recover.
    He
was still trying to bring his sword back around at me again when I
grabbed his wrist and threw him into the wall behind me with enough
force to break even a vampire's neck. I made sure of him with a
couple well-placed slashes and then started down the dimly-lit hall.
    I
knew that there was at least one more vampire. I couldn't smell him,
but none of the vampires I'd killed yet had been the mentalist who
had come so close to incapacitating me just a few minutes earlier. I
continued down the hall on the left, the hall where the twin vampires
had been standing, and found the mentalist in one of the rooms in the
middle of the hall.
    I'd
expected the leader of the group to be a man. I'd had the feeling
that the mental intrusions I'd been dealing with had been too
heavy-handed to be the work of a woman, especially not a delicate,
thin woman with long blonde hair and large,