It took Aaron a half-second to answer, and she imagined that was because he was directing the other teams as well. None of them should be merging here as the other tunnels and passages they were using to ferret out similar gangs of docile Vampires didn’t connect, but they were all in close enough proximity that Aaron was able to direct them from a parking garage a few miles from where Cadence was—and a few hundred yards above her head. She didn’t want to think about that, though, being underground. She wondered for a moment if it reminded Elliott of the time he’d been dead for eight months. Even though he had been cremated, she imagined if she’d been the one to die, anything remotely like being buried would make her uneasy. But then, this made her uneasy, and she’d been alive her entire life.

“Ready, kid?” Elliott whispered aloud, likely seeing the look on her face, thinking she was either on the verge of panic or about to be lost to the world.

“Ready,” Cadence nodded, sure of herself. This should be quick. Their intel said all four of the Vampires were hanging out in their little hovel presently, and Cadence hoped to take them out with four bullets. There was no point in messing around under the circumstances, even though she generally did appreciate a good decapitation.

A close inspection of the grate above her showed that it was loosely screwed into the crumbling concrete around the hole. She thought she could likely push the entire barrier up and out of her way on her own, and since she was now wedged in underneath it with only about a foot of empty space around her, she figured Elliott couldn’t reach over to help her, but as she gave it a good shove, he somehow managed to stretch his long arms and help, resulting in the metal shooting up out of its brackets a good three feet into the air above them, crashing against the far wall of the tunnel. She didn’t have a lot of time to think now. The noise surely must’ve gotten the attention of the Vampires, so without even a casual glance at what she was projecting herself into, she grabbed ahold of the lip of the now empty entry point and slung herself through to standing.

The moment her feet hit the concrete floor on either side of the grate casing, she pulled her Glock from her holster and flipped the after-market safety off. Four pale faces stared at her in confusion. They were stretched out on the tunnel floor, as if they had been about to call it a night, or maybe some of them had been sleeping already; it was hard to say, but as she stepped to the side so that Elliott could follow her, Cadence tried not to give too much thought to what the Vampires had been doing, what they were about to do, what they would never do again.

The two women went down with bullet holes through their chests quickly enough as the men scurried, confusion all over their faces. It was clear they didn’t spend a lot of time above ground since their complexions practically glowed in the dark, which made them even easier targets. She didn’t stop to contemplate how old they might’ve been, who they were before they were Vampires, or how long they might’ve been undead. As the men took off in different directions, Cadence tracked the one closest to her with her Glock, hitting him in the back of the head first before lowering her aim and shooting him through the back where his heart was. The other one took several titanium bullets to the midsection as he dodged around, trying to escape her trajectory, falling at last once she made direct contact with his heart. Like the rest, he didn’t stay down for long as his body turned almost immediately to ash. With no wind down here, however, they stayed where they’d fallen.

Cadence gave a satisfactory nod and then turned to see Elliott still stuck in the grate hole, half in half out, sort of like Winnie the Pooh in the honey hole. Despite the adrenaline still coursing through her veins she began to giggle.

“I could get through. If I wanted to,” he argued. His broad shoulders had already crested the opening, which made her think what he said was likely true. That was probably the widest part of his ample frame. “But really… what’s the point?”

Cadence tried not to think about how easy it had been. Even though her entire team had agreed that annihilation was their best bet, before Holland was able to sink her proverbial fangs into these docile groups and get them on the run, too, it still seemed a little too much like shooting fish in a barrel. Maybe that was because so far every clan of Vampires they’d taken out hadn’t really been a threat to begin with.

“They had moved locations recently,” Elliott reminded her. “We did have cause.” He worked his way back through the opening to the narrow tunnel, and she realized now she’d have to crawl back out the way she came, which literally stunk.

“I know,” she replied after he’d dropped through and started army crawling out of her way. This group of Vampires had taken part in a meeting not long ago where she was certain an attack on the Houston LIGHTS headquarters had been discussed, even though they seemed disinterested and had come back to their lair, the same as the other groups of Vampires her team was taking out at the very moment. She made sure the after-market safety was in place and slipped her Glock back into the holster before dropping through the hole. She was glad they could see so well in the dark since carrying a flashlight while crawling out of there would’ve been difficult.

“Oh, no,” Elliott whispered in front of her, the soles of his boots stopping directly in front of her face.