Blood Lines

step, he made his decision and squeezed the trigger.
    The ceiling tile exploded, throwing compressed foam and sound insulation down over the chanting crowd. Ignoring the echos battering the inside of his skull, Celluci lowered the gun.
    Some instinct of self-preservation seemed to kick in and they stopped advancing, but the living barrier between him and Tawfik remained.
    Okay. Now what?
    A single man shuffled forward out of the front rank. In spite of the bad light, Celluci had no trouble recognizing…
    'Inspector Cantree."
    His hand grew sweaty around the pistol grip as his immediate superior shuffled closer. While there were any number of high-ranking police officers Celluci could've cheerfully shot, Cantree wasn't one of them. He'd been a black man on the force long before affirmative action programs and, in spite of all the bullshit thrown at him, he'd risen through the ranks with both his belief in the law and his sense of humor intact. That Tawfik could take a decent man, who had survived so much, and strip him of free will and honor twisted Celluci into knots, and to his horror he felt his eyes grow damp.
    'Inspector, I don't want to shoot you."
    One massive hand came up, palm outstretched, miming, "Give me the gun," very clearly over the continuing chant.
    The roaring in his ears made it nearly impossible to think. "Inspector, don't make me do this."
    Vicki heard the gunshot as she fell out of the stairwell and onto her knees, forehead pressed against the pale gray carpet. Shooting should've been over ages ago. What the hell's going on up here ?
    She had very little memory of how she'd managed to climb the last few flights of stairs although she knew that every movement had been imprinted on muscle and sinew and that her body would collect payment later, with interest, for the layers of abuse. She'd fallen twice and the second time, sprawled writhing on a concrete landing, only the thought of Celluci, already at the top, had given her the strength to move again. Her howl of desperate denial still echoed up and down the length of the tower.
    Teeth clenched against the agony in her calves, she crawled to the wall and inched her way along it, not bothering, not able, to stand. Having been the native guide for her mother on numerous occasions, she ignored the disco's main entrance and continued around the curve of the hall as quickly as tortured muscles and bones could take her. All she could hear was her own labored breathing-in with the taste of blood, out with the taste of defeat.
    You can't have won, you antique son of a bitch. I won't allow it.

    Almost a quarter of the way around the arc of the tower was a window, designed so tourists could stand and watch the gyrations inside on the dance floor. The disco side of the window had been heavily tinted-apparently the management assumed the dancers had no interest in watching the tourists.
    Just beyond, a dark line of shadows advanced toward Celluci.
    Backing carefully away from the window, one hand still clamped to the frame for support, Vicki jammed her glasses back onto the bridge of her nose. Looks like it's time for plan B .
    Close by, tucked discreetly into an angle in the wall, was an emergency exit; beside it, a glass-fronted cabinet of fire-fighting equipment. Vicki fell toward the cabinet, hung off the latch for a heartbeat, and finally managed to get it open.
    Clamping the nozzle under her arm, she turned the water on full force, then let her weight drop against the bar-latch on the door. She figured she had between five and ten seconds before the water reached the end of the hose and the pressure blew her off her feet.
    Three seconds to drag the door toward her far enough to let her pass.
    There's got to be a light here. You can't deal with emergencies in the dark . Two further seconds while logic actually answered and groping fingers closed on a familiar plastic switch.
    One final second for her to take in Celluci backed against the wall, gun out; Inspector Can tree crawling on his stomach toward him, dragging blood across the parquet from a wounded thigh; a crowd of two dozen terrifyingly blank-faced men and women shuffling forward, fingers curled into claws.
    For the first time, she could hear the chanting over the protests of her own body.
    And then the water exploding from the nozzle nearly jerked the hose out of her hands. Knuckles white, thrown against the wall and held upright between the irresistible force and the immovable object, Vicki