I waited for a few more seconds, then carefully rose to a crouch. I couldn’t see a thing out the front windows, because we were pointed the wrong way, but if nobody was firing at us, it was giving us a chance we couldn’t waste.

I opened the van’s side door. ‘Out! Everybody out! Run for it!’

I didn’t even know where we’d go, but staying where we were wasn’t an option. Being out in the sun was going to be hell for Michael, though, and I looked around for something to help him. I found a plastic tarp rolled up in a bin behind the driver’s seat, and I tossed it to him; he broke the rope that held it closed and draped the thing around him like a portable tent.

‘I’ll go first,’ he said. ‘Watch Eve.’

I nodded. With him so close to me, it was hard not to do something violent. The conflict inside was tearing me apart, but I tried not to let it show; even so, Michael gave me a weird look before he bailed out, blue tarp flapping around him like the world’s most heavily waterproofed cloak. Pete and Liz followed, then Eve.

Claire and I were the last ones out.

‘What are you doing?’ I yelled. ‘Move—’ Because the rest had stopped dead where they were, only a few feet from the van.

And then I saw why.

The guards were down. Well, one was still running and firing wildly, but as I watched, Jesse – Lady Grey – took a running leap that crossed at least twenty feet of space. She landed flat-footed in front of him, grabbed him by the throat, and tossed him twenty feet back, to Oliver, who caught him and – well, broke him. I tried not to see more of that than I had to.

Myrnin was up, too, although all I saw of him was a flicker of motion as he disappeared into the barn. Oliver finished up with the guard, nodded to Jesse, and he followed Myrnin.

She went into the farmhouse. And then there was screaming.

There was a lot of screaming.

‘Jesus,’ Eve whispered. She crossed herself, an involuntary motion dragged up from childhood habit; what we were seeing was something that not even I had seen before: vampires let loose from all their inhibitions. The purest expression of predator.

It was bloody terrifying.

‘They’re – they’re killing—’ Claire was shaking now, and her face was blank. ‘They’re killing everyone.’

I put my arms around her and didn’t say anything. I concentrated on breathing, on trying to cool the fire in my blood; it wasn’t getting easier. In fact, now that the three older vamps were back in the game – and sweeping the table clean – it was actually worse. These instincts were screaming at me to do something.

Kill them. Kill them all.