While Kanin, Jackal and I blocked the stairs, Zeke turned to open the doors. They rattled when he tried the handle, but didn’t budge.

“Locked,” he growled. “Someone’s already sealed the way in.” He bashed his shoulder into the doors, putting his considerable vampire strength behind the blows. The heavy doors shuddered violently, but didn’t move. “Dammit! It’s blocked off. Something is on the other side. I can’t move it.”

The rabids shrieked and pressed forward, as if sensing blood and knowing we were trapped. Kanin stabbed one through the eye and drew back a step, sheathing his blade. “Hold them off,” he ordered, and whirled around, joining Zeke at the entrance. Jackal snarled a curse and slid toward me, closing the gap. The rabids hissed and clawed at us, surging forward, and we desperately fended them off.

“You know,” Jackal said, kicking a rabid in the face, sending it reeling, “it seems that whenever I’m with you, I’m constantly fighting my way into places I really don’t want to be.

The sewers, the Prince’s tower, a bloody freaking church.” A rabid clawed at him from the side of the stairs, and he slammed its head into the railing. “If I ever need a favor, sister, I hope you’ll remember this shit. All these life-threatening situations?

Not really my thing. I should’ve cleared out a long time ago.”

“Why didn’t you, then?” I snapped back, dodging a rabid’s claws to my face. “No one was stopping you. You could’ve left anytime, just like that time in New Covington. Or are you waiting until you find the cure to jump ship?”

He snarled, whirled around, and smashed the rabid leaping at me to the concrete. “You are so bloody frustrating!”

he roared, back fisting another rabid with the axhead. “Do you really think the cure is worth this? You think I’d be here now if that’s all I wanted?” He turned and sliced his weapon through the air, beheading one rabid and sinking it into another. “Get your damn head out of your ass, sister!”

he seethed. “And give me a little f**king credit. That’s not why I’m here.”

A hollow boom interrupted anything I was going to say.

Kanin and Zeke both hit the doors at the same time, and the added strength of a Master vampire shattered whatever was on the other side. The doors flew open with a crash, the sound of rubble scattering across the floor.

“Go,” Jackal spat at me, and we swiftly backed toward the doors, where Zeke and Kanin stood just inside, ready to slam them shut. I crossed the threshold, and Jackal turned, flinging himself through the opening, his ax thudding against the floor as he rolled.

Screeching, the rabids surged forward. Zeke, Kanin and I slammed the doors, and the blows of the mob vibrated through the wood. But the wood was thick and reinforced with iron bands that could weather the relentless assault. Leaping forward, Jackal grabbed a snapped beam from the floor and shoved it between the handles, barring the doors shut.

They rattled, shaking violently, but held.

Backing away, I looked around the room. Wooden pews filled the interior, some overturned or broken, but most intact.

The windows were high and narrow, and had metal frames that once held stained glass, broken now, but too small for rabids to squeeze through. From the smell of death and the few rabid corpses littering the floor, it looked like people had tried to hole up here, just as we were doing, but hadn’t succeeded. Either someone inside had been bitten and Turned, or the rabids had gotten in another way. Dried blood streaked the walls, benches were in pieces, and bloody bones were scattered here and there. Several pews had been piled in the corner in what looked like a makeshift barricade, but in the end, it hadn’t helped.

“Well,” Jackal muttered, dusting off his hands, “here we are. In a church. Vampires taking refuge in a church—that’s gotta be the most ironic thing of the decade. Puppy, you’d better tell me this place has a back door.”

Zeke had started across the room but suddenly paused near the front, his gaze falling to an overturned pulpit. Bending down, he picked up a book from the wreckage, a small black book with a gold ribbon dangling between pages. The corner was soaked red, and he closed his eyes.

Behind us, the door boomed, making me jump. “That won’t hold them for long,” I said. My gaze fell on a pew lying a few feet away, and I started toward it. “Zeke, help me move this! We have to brace the door or they’ll break it down in a few minutes.”

Zeke blinked, then shook himself out of his trance. “No,”

he said, stopping me. Gently placing the book on a pew, he turned, eyes hard. “We can’t hole up. There’s no time. This was just to give us an out, to slow them a bit. Follow me.”

He turned and jogged across the room, weaving around pews and rabid bodies, toward the makeshift barricade in the corner. Puzzled, I followed, Kanin close behind. Jackal snatched an oil lamp that had been lying, remarkably unbroken, on a pew, before trailing after us.

A massive blow echoed through the church, and the door bowed inward. Rabid faces peered through the crack, vicious and snarling, their claws and fangs starting to rip the wood to pieces. I hurried after Zeke, hoping he knew what he was talking about, that there was another way out of here.

Behind the barricade, Zeke ducked into a short hall and opened the door at the end, revealing a set of narrow, wooden steps, twisting up into darkness. “This way,” he urged, and disappeared through the door. I was right behind him, following the stairs as they spiraled upward through a stone tower and ended at a wooden ceiling with a trapdoor. Zeke pushed it back, and we scrambled into a tiny open-air room. Above us, a large brass bell sat silent and dark, and through the curved stone windows, I could see all of Eden spread out below.

“There’s the power plant,” Zeke said, pointing to a scattering of lights beyond the city. A set of massive smokestacks rose skyward, looming over the buildings and billowing white clouds into the air. “The lab is right next to the—”

A crash from below warned us that we were out of time.

“Quickly,” Kanin said, taking command, and leaped from the tower into the branches of the single huge tree sitting beside the church.

“Go, Allie,” Zeke urged, and I went, getting a running start before flinging myself off the edge of the tower. For a second, I could see the church directly below my feet, and a huge horde of rabids surrounding it, swarming through the door. Then branches filled my vision, and I grabbed at the first one I saw, clinging desperately as it swayed and gave an ominous groan, but didn’t snap.

Pulling myself up, I looked back for the rest of our party.

Zeke was at the edge, preparing to jump, but Jackal hadn’t moved from the open trapdoor. He still held the oil lamp he’d picked up earlier, and as I watched, he raised it over his head and flung it through the opening. There was a faint crash, and Zeke whirled at the noise.

“Jackal, what are you doing? Come on!”

A hiss, and a tiny flame appeared between Jackal’s fingers.

For just a moment, it flickered over his sharp features and the evil grin spreading across his face, right before he dropped it through the hole. There was a sputter, and a bright orange glow flared to life through the trapdoor.

The shrieks and screams coming from within suddenly took on an alarmed note. I looked down to see several rabids shoot out the building, clawing frantically at the rest of the horde to get free, before skittering off into the darkness. Smiling, Jackal kicked the trapdoor shut and sauntered up to join Zeke, who was glaring at him with unmistakable menace.