And we tried. We really did. I got Claire into the van, piled in after, slid the door shut, and Eve gunned it in a tight, gravel-spewing circle to head for the exit.

Another van accelerated forward to block us in.

She backed up, yelled, ‘Hang on,’ and busted through the white rail fence next to the barn, bumping and churning through the dry furrows of a field and heading at an angle for the farm road that had led us here.

We didn’t get far before the van – no off-roader – bogged down. The tyres spun dirt but couldn’t find purchase, and as Eve rocked it back and forth, she just dug us in deeper.

Stuck.

We had a grand total of four guns, one half-empty, one almost gone, two nearly full. We had a vampire who was looking a little more himself, but still operating at about a quarter speed, at best.

We had me, who was shaking with the need to shoot his best friend and rip his dead body apart, for absolutely no logical reason that I could think of … and it terrified me. It was as if I was possessed.

I looked at Claire, hoping that she had some miracle up her sleeve, some genius move that would get us out of this.

But Claire looked, in that moment, like a vulnerable eighteen-year-old girl, scared and numbed and overwhelmed, and I dragged her into my arms and held her because that seemed like the only thing I could do, hold her. Try, in that last desperate moment, to keep her safe. Because any second now, they were going to surround this van and riddle it with enough bullets to make us look like a drug cartel piñata. They had nothing to lose. We’d proved we weren’t going to be useful to them, and Dr Anderson didn’t need Claire any more if she’d just destroyed their vampire stock of lab rats.

And Michael would live through that. Sadly.

‘I killed them,’ she whispered to me. Her voice was shaking, and I felt hot tears wet against my skin. ‘Oh God, Shane, I killed them …’

I couldn’t do anything but hold her. I don’t know if it helped her, but it helped me push back the violent impulses inside of me that said I ought to take out the only remaining vampire among us, before it was too late.

The gunfire started, and I flinched and threw Claire to the van floor, covering her. I heard the others hitting the deck, too. I waited for the sound of metal punching in, glass breaking … but it didn’t come.

Whatever they were firing at, it wasn’t us.