“Back!” Vivienne shouted and gestured at the crowds of French officers. They all backed up hurriedly, creating an opening where we could stand and aim. We stood in a line, each of the weapons pointed at the ghoul. With a steady hand, I rested the butt of the launcher on my shoulder, peering through the sight. I aimed for her neck, presuming that at least in some respects she’d be similar to the rest of her species—only killable by dismemberment.
“Ready!” Vivienne shouted.
I clicked off the safety latch.
“Aim!”
Exhaling slowly, I lined up the aim of the vision cross bar with the tip of the missile.
“Fire!”
Five missiles shot through the air, trailing thin lines of quickly dispersing smoke. They all made their aim—two others hitting the neck along with mine, and one on each shoulder. For a split second nothing happened, then with an ear-splitting boom, the ghoul queen was lit up like a firework display. She screamed with rage before her cry was abruptly cut short. Black and grayish colored innards decorated the gardens, making horrid squelching sounds as they splattered against the trees and the once-smart buildings that surrounded the gates. The body started to tumble backward. I hoped that all the sentries would have had the good sense to have moved out of the way already…
The ground shook one last time, some of the windows breaking in the school behind us, as the ghoul queen landed on the ground—her body almost taking up the entire length of the Champ de Mars.
“That was a close one,” Lawrence breathed.
“I don’t think it’s over yet,” I replied, hearing the screams of an enraged ghoul army heading our way.
Before we could rush forward and attack, Ibrahim appeared out of nowhere, waving to get the attention of Shayla and the rest of us.
“Jenus—he’s in the In-Between—you need to move,” the warlock shouted.
“I need to tell the sentries they’re in charge,” Vivienne called out to Shayla. “Get ready to move us!”
She ran off toward the ministers that we’d left in the gardens, and then a few moments later returned, joining our group as Shayla got ready to move us. Ibrahim had already vanished.
“One down, one to go,” I muttered to Lawrence. “So much for our romantic dinner.”
Bastien
As we appeared in front of a large structure named the “Royal Festival Hall”, I took in our mundane human surroundings and was struck once again by how much my life had changed since I’d met Victoria. For the bulk of my years, I’d known almost nothing about lands beyond The Woodlands, and yet now here I was—a member of GASP who could be called to any end of the human or supernatural worlds at an hour’s notice. I’d learnt and seen so much of vastly different cultures in such a short space of time that I felt like a different person, and I guessed in many ways I was.
I didn’t have long to muse, and quickly focused on the task at hand. I noted that the weather was gloomy and grey, with no direct sunlight, which meant that the vampires could manage without shade. I glanced back to see Claudia and her daughter, safe behind me, her hand clasped in Ash’s. Micah and Kira looked ready for a fight, both of them casting their gaze across the river in anticipation. I could sense that the danger was already upon us. Families and groups of students were running alongside the embankment, pushing and shoving their way forward.
“Waterloo” bridge was covered in the dark, sprawling mass of the shadow. I could hear cars screeching and crashing into one another. A large truck, whose driver must have accelerated blindly through the shadow, spun out of control and went crashing down into the “Thames”.
Amid the mayhem, I turned to the group behind me.
“This is going to be a damage-limitation mission. We save as many as we can. The shadow is just going to keep coming until we find the entity, so focus on saving lives as much as battling his forces—understood?” They all agreed. The sentries looked slightly skeptical about my strategy, but I figured that human lives weren’t that high on their priority list. That was tough, because they were high on mine.
“Arwen, Eli, can you both get in the water and see about that truck driver?” I asked. Without a moment’s hesitation, they both started running toward the river. “Micah, Kira, I’m worried about the boats,” I continued, watching the tourist guide boats coming to a halt in the river. Their slow-moving engines were trying to pull back and turn around, but the river was starting to resemble a traffic jam. “The rest of us need to get up on that bridge.”
Yuri, Ash, Ruby, Claudia and I fought our way through the crowds, jumping up the steps that would lead us to the bridge. When we got there, the road was packed with abandoned cars. Flashing vehicles—ambulance and police—were trying to get through, but most of the medics had run on too, realizing that all the potential victims had run on ahead, surrounding the large movie theater and bringing more of the traffic to a standstill.