Six Times Deadly: A Lawson Vampire Story Collection (The Lawson Vampire Series) by Jon F. Merz Read Free Book Online Page B

they were supposed to.
    When everything checked out, I reloaded them, slapped one home into the USP and racked the slide then set the safety.   All I had to do was draw, thumb the safety down and I was ready to shoot.
    Time to go.
    At 2:43 in the afternoon, the streets in Sendai weren't mobbed with the after work crowd, but there were school kids everywhere.   I passed by the entrance to the JR Sendai Station and nearly got swept away in the flood of uniformed kids streaming out of it.
    But the USP would stay tucked behind my right hip and the jacket I wore covered it well.
    Ahead of me on Hirose Dori, I saw more tourists.   The hotel was located near the shopping district.   I wondered if the Silencer was in town to assassinate someone working nearby?   Or maybe it was a tourist.
    Either way, it didn't matter.   She was here and after declaring open season on me, that made her a viable target.
    The trees swayed in the breeze and I looked up.   The city was full of green spaces and I appreciated the close proximity of so much nature.   I could smell it on the air, despite the cars streaming past.   Japan might have had a problem with pollution, but you could scarcely tell it here.
    I started to cross the street, but a line of traffic shot past me, keeping me on the sidewalk.
    And that's when I spotted the face that I'd burned into my memory all those years back.   She still wore her hair cropped close, although there was something vaguely stylish about it.   But what stood out were her non-Japanese features.   Her cheekbones were different from the Japanese swirling around her.   Asian she might be, but she wasn't Japanese.
    And she was headed directly for me.
    My heart hammered in my chest.   I stopped and tried to look casual as I presented my left side to her, checking my cell phone while my right hand strayed to the USP.   I moved slightly to allow the foot traffic to pass by me.
    Out of the corner of my eye, I kept track of her.   She was two hundred feet away.
    And then time seemed to slow down.
    She never actually stopped moving, and the change was so minute that someone less experienced would have missed it.
    But I wasn't the same rookie operative she'd met from all those years back.
    And even as she adjusted to change her direction and cross the street, I moved as well, drawing the USP and bringing it up.
    I felt everything moving then.
    People screamed.
    I assumed it was due to the sight of me drawing the pistol.   Guns are rare in Japan unless they're toys.
    But now something started to register in my awareness.
    The entire ground was shaking.
    The Silencer stopped, too.
    Stopped?
    Any other time she wouldn't have frozen like that.   I drew the gun in line with her chest, thumbed the safety down and squeezed the trigger-
    -but the ground beneath me lurched and the roar I heard then drowned out the missed shot.   The bullet splanged harmlessly against a road sign.
    I bent my knees, trying to compensate for the sudden shifting of the landscape.   Across the street, building facades crumbled and toppled to the ground, throwing up huge clouds of dust.
    The word earthquake finally rushed through my consciousness.   I'd never been in one before.
    And the effect was almost like being in combat again for the first time.   I felt my vision trying to tunnel, but I flushed more oxygen into my system and forced myself to remain calm.   I brought the USP down and holstered it.
    People were running everywhere, no one too certain of which direction to go.   The rumbling beneath my feet felt incredibly ferocious.   The roar as buildings swayed echoed in my ears.   Cars crashed up onto the sidewalks as the ground split apart.   I heard an explosion as another car slammed into the side of a fuel truck and sent up a massive fireball.
    It was total and complete chaos.
    I looked around me, trying to figure out where I should go.   I knew to head for a doorway, but was it safer to remain outside?
    As I whipped