And I was feeling something new now. Not better, exactly, but stronger. Faster. And with it, I felt a nearly uncontrollable need to rip Michael’s head clean off his body. As if he was the only real enemy in the room.

I was pretty sure that last part was wrong.

I shook my head to try to clear it, and blood drops flew like sweat after a good workout. The cut in my head was still bleeding freely. I saw Michael sense it, felt him sense it, and something inside me grinned in anticipation, and roared for him to try it.

Michael didn’t come at me, and somehow, I managed to stuff down that impulse to go at him. Liz, I reminded myself. The girl was clueless and in danger, and neither one of us needed the distraction right now of whatever weird thing was going on inside me.

‘I’ll kill her,’ Dr Davis said, and backed up toward the door; he was dragging her with him. I realised that we were in a bottleneck, and his guys would come boiling out of the clean-room behind us any second; I backed up, grabbed the steel door and muscled it shut. No way to lock it now that Michael had busted us out, but at least it would slow them down. Not for long, though. I heard them sliding metal tables out of the way.

Eve stepped forward toward Dr Douche Bag, and she looked like an ice cold warrior princess, if warrior princesses came armed with semi-autos this season. ‘Go ahead,’ she said. ‘As soon as you do, you’re dead.’

He licked his lips, and I saw the doubt in his face. I didn’t think Eve would pull the trigger in cold blood, but I wasn’t really sure, either.

Neither was he. Stand-off. It couldn’t last, because his reinforcements were coming at speed, and ours – well. We didn’t actually have any that I knew about. Our only chance was to make it outside to the van, hope the car keys were on the ring Eve had appropriated, and drive like holy hell.

That also meant leaving Claire behind, though. And while I wouldn’t shed much of a tear for the vampires with her, there was no way I was leaving this damned farm without my girl.

I didn’t have to, as it turned out.

The front door opened behind Dr Douche Bag, and Claire stepped inside. She looked tired, stressed, roughed up, and anxious, and her eyes skimmed over us, cataloguing the situation and resting for a long second on mine. I couldn’t tell what she was thinking or feeling, but my God, I loved her when she took one long step forward, pressed the gun in her hand into Dr Davis’s back, and said, very calmly, ‘Let her go.’