"I'm dying, Holly." Three simple words, a mere five syllables. Each acting as an emotional equivalent of the guillotine. It was almost a minute before she spoke.
Her voice carefully neutral. "How long?"
"Who knows? Maybe a day. A week. A month. Seventy or a hundred years. Possibly centuries, millenia even, but I'm still dying."
"And you're mentioning this existential crisis now?" If a tone could cut steel then this one would have been a bank robber's best friend.
"Why, is it a bad time?"
"Some people would view it as a bit of a poorly chosen moment. Yes." Holly replied before hacking off a shapeshifter's arm.
"Can't possibly think why." Shadow countered, verbally and physically, as he managed to hold off four vampires, arms almost a blur as he struggled to parry the eight blades. Against normal vampires it wouldn't have been a problem but these guys ,even Shadow had to admit were good.
"Wish your bloody team would hurry up." Holly riposted then lunged at a new foe, her rapier, already slick with unnatural blood impaled a witch through the throat, the fireball in her hand dying with her.
"Hardly their fault. More ours I think. I mean what on Earth were we thinking." He dropped his blades by his feet, and drew a handgun. The automatic pistol emptied it's clip in less than a second. A vampire fell back, the impact alone enough to knock her off her feet and the many bullets too much for even supernatural healing to be of use. The other three however capitalised on the moment. Shadow was forced to lean backwards to sway out of the way of a blade intended to remove his head, and then turn it into a full backflip to avoid a naginata to the ankles. On the other hand the flip did allow him to pick his katanas back up, which allowed him to block the sword about to pierce his kidneys. His blades and balance back Shadow went back on the offence, spinning to avoid a rather sudden amputation of the arm, he brought both blades against one of the vampire's, the double strike forcing a blade from it's hand, a quick sweep of the ankles and the vampire went down. Still spinning he transformed the sweep into a high kick catching another opponent in the head sending him down as well. With only a single foe left and mere seconds to capitalise on that fact Shadow locked his blades against the vampire with the naginata.
According to the usual rules this ranked as one of the dumbest moves in the book, entirely reliant of strength to overpower the opponent. The usual rules however had never included the headbutt as a follow up. Or using the moment their head arched back to get past their guard and remove it.
Only two vampires left now. And two vampires were easy.
Holly on the other hand was struggling with her shapeshifter, every limb she removed was proving rather useless with it merely shifting to have another, despite controlling the fight there was no doubt that in the long run she'd end up losing, the only way this one would die is a fatal strike to the brain and with an abundant supply of arms none of her attacks had got through. The shapeshifter shifted again and this time Holly knew there would be no stopping it, Claws the size of a gladius glistened in the weak lamplight as saliva dripped from teeth that wouldn't have been out of place on a great white. She was too tired to put up much of a fight and although it had morphed into a werewolf it was larger than any werewolf had a right to be. Tiredly she parried an oversized paw. The blade digging into the forearm but that did nothing to stop the attack. The other claw came down, the impact alone would be enough to shatter her skull as well as drive it halfway down her spine. And she couldn't stop it, out the corner of her eye she saw Shadow behead his last opponent and dive to knock her out of the way. But he would never get there in time.
The shapeshifter's skull disintegrated and the paw fell lifeless, mere inches from Holly's head. From a quarter of a mile away Sally punched the air before peering back down her scope.
"What happened?" Ash asked, surprised by the vampire hunter's brief show of happiness.
"I think I just saved the Boss's girlfriend from having her head caved in."
"Cool."
Meanwhile Holly and Shadow were busy collecting up the various weapons their opponents had dropped. Shadow seemed particularly taken by the naginata, the long swordspear ideal for the multi-combat Shadow regularly revelled in.
It had been intended to be a simple recon, not a bloodbath. Just scope out a couple of closed casinos which a tip – anonymous naturally – had said was a meeting place for the NWIP. They'd been cautious at first, but when an ambush failed to appear they'd split up, and then the ambush struck. The rest was history. So was the ambush.
Nevertheless it had been a chilling harbinger of things to come, if the NWIP could contact them it could track them. Las Vegas was lost to the world, it had been lost since The Fall. Out of options they fled.
Only Shadow looked back.
Author's Note: This arc is reaching a conclusion, not sure what the conclusion is yet but I know it's reaching a conclusion. In the next chapter (providing I remember): Force fields, plasma weapons,fusion and... Terminators? And Shadows birthday leads to difficult choices for some.