Somehow Nehemiah held onto the orb. “Won’t last much longer.” He grunted under the strain.

“Go Rob. Now!”

Turning into a cat, Rob the Hob ran from the protective invisible orb and lept atop the bar. He enacted the plan we formed before. It was really simple.

Cause mayhem.

The massive bartender let out an uncharacteristic screech that betrayed his outer appearance. Cat-Rob hissed and then climbed the shelving behind the bar and systematically toppled every expensive bottle of spirits. The ruckus caused everyone in the room to turn and watch as the bar was dismantled by an orange tabby cat.

Which provided the perfect distraction for us.

Though our cover was blown, the element of surprise was still our greatest weapon.

Nehemiah lost control of his invisibility orb, exposing us to everyone inside the warehouse. A gasp arose from the crowd once they noticed us standing right in their midst, where the space was empty a few milliseconds ago. I didn’t waste any time and hefted my AR-15.

California has a stupid law requiring the AR-15 to be nearly dismantled just to reload it. But luckily I had taken this AR-15 from a gangster who could care less about California laws. So this gun was essentially automatic from the get-go.

“Hey Dearg Due,” I yelled at the vampire queen. My voice echoed off the walls. “It’s reckoning day!”

The AR-15 sprang to life in my arms, chugging away as it unloaded a barrage of lead into the Dearg Due’s children.

She turned and acknowledged us with barely the bat of her eyelids, as if we were insignificant and meant nothing to her. But when the silver bullets ate away at the skin of three vampires like hyperactive leprosy, I caught the slightest twitch in her eyes, a hint of fear.

“Destroy the trespassers,” she commanded to the thugs near us. The remainder of her entourage retreated into a freight elevator.

The room transformed from a fight club into a war zone.

Charice’s amethyst wings exploded from her back and she took to the air, having just enough room to navigate in the high-roofed warehouse. Nehemiah and I moved behind two large cement pillars for cover.

The gang bangers turned their attention to me. For the first time I saw them up close enough to recognize them.

Looking from face-to-face, a cold chill crept over my heart.

I knew many of these faces from a few weeks ago at the Napa Soscol Bridge. Faces I never thought I’d see again, mostly because they fell beneath my blades that night at the river’s edge.

“No,” I uttered in disbelief, “I ended all of them.”

I recognized Oscar, the one who personally threw Gavin into the Napa River to drown to death, the one that I had pummeled beyond recognition under my bare fists and left him embedded in the side of a car. At the very least I’d crippled him for life. But there he was, good as new, but sickly ashen.

“The Dearg Due gave us new life, blanco,” he said, laughing at my disbelief.

My mind reeled at the revelation. I’d expected the gangs to be tied somehow to the Dearg Due. It had not crossed my mind that she was buying eternal servitude from dying thugs and mutating them into vampires.

I’d never expected to see these guys again. At best crippled maybe. But seeing them flexing with vampire strength was surreal.

But I needed to regain my composure. It sucked that I’d demolished these guys only to have to fight them again, but I agreed to trouble with a capital T the moment I set foot in this building.

Right at that moment the bartender caught cat-Rob by the tail and hurled him. The cat spun several times before turning into an owl. He soared through the air and collided with a gangster who lobbed lead at me.

Rob hit the gun, snapping it sideways. The gangbanger accidentally shot up a few of his homeboys with friendly fire. Before the guy realized what happened Rob changed into a salmon and slapped his face several times before landing on all four cat paws. He darted through the crowd biting ankles, clawing exposed torso’s, and simply adding to the madness.

From above, Charice sent wing blast attacks raining down, knocking many of the villains to their knees. When they tried to return fire they were caught off guard by a spray of bullets from my AR-15 and the well-placed shots from Nehemiah’s .357 Magnum.

In a matter of moments the crowd was either escaping outside to safety, writhing in pain on the floor, or going into a slumber that they would never awaken from. Doing a quick body count, I noticed that hardly any of the newly turned Raza del Norte homeboys slept on the ground. They’d retreated into the dark depths of the warehouse.

Goosebumps raced across my arms. “Great.”

We headed for the freight elevator but they shut it down. Charice landed next to me. “There’s a stairwell over there, by the door.”

Rob caught up with us and we all headed to where she pointed. We made it up two flights of stairs before they started returning fire from above. Nehemiah reloaded his revolver and I sent return AR-15 fire up towards the vampire goons. Owl-Rob flew to the top, then I heard a cat hissing followed by a man’s screaming. Then a vampire plunged down the middle of the stairwell past us with a sickening thud when he reached the bottom.

Round and round we raced, climbing the floors of the stairwell. All I could hear was our footsteps stomping on metal steps and my own heartbeat.

We were about halfway up when the lights flickered like a nightclub. They shut off completely and darkness enveloped us for an entire two seconds. Fear stabbed me in the heart. I gritted my teeth and gripped my rifle harder.

The lights came back on and a yell escaped my lips. Raza del Norte vampires converged on us from all sides.