Authors: Jamie Wahl
Michael could see the little dips and detours of an earthly river as it swept past sticks and rocks, only there were no branches or boulders to be seen. It was as if only the water and the gravity that urged it onward had been transported from some mountain stream to this strange, vast white room. With no yellow sun to color it, nor any overhanging leaves or underlying sand to taint it, the water was clearer than the purest diamond as it curved into the distance, turning down slowly as it stretched forward out of Michael’s sight. Upstream, Michael saw that the river was flowing from nothing. Thirty feet from him, the river simply began, full speed and full strength, as though it had passed through an invisible portal.
Michael turned back to ask the librarian about it, but she had vanished, along with her library.
Michael was alone with the light and the river. Its babble filled the space with such a relaxing, lazy noise that Michael couldn’t help but close his eyes and breathe. His lungs filled with the purest air he’d ever experienced. He exhaled slowly. But when he inhaled again, he found the air thinner. He exhaled uneasily. When he tried the next breath, there was no air at all.
He looked around desperately, but there was nothing and no one to ask for help. His lungs began to burn. The sound of his own heartbeat became louder than the gentle gurgle of the stream. He staggered forward, into the water. It was shockingly cold; too cold not to be frozen. He could feel smooth stones under his feet, even though he could see nothing but the water. Black dots perforated his vision. He fell to his knees into the frigid stream. He gasped for air as a strong current pulled him beneath the surface of the water.
He struggled against the urge to breathe, flailing and fighting to get out of the riptide. He choked, the last reserved oxygen bubbling out of his mouth. He clawed his way upward even as his lungs inflated without his permission.
The chilling fluid filled his lungs. But instead of blacking out, his vision improved. Instead of pain and panic, his limbs felt light and his chest rose and fell comfortably. The moment the first breath left him, the water stopped. Suddenly, he was surrounded in a million perfect crystalline sparkles, suspended in time. Then everything rushed on again, but in the opposite direction.
Michael was sent crashing along with the raging rapids back the way he had come, in a torrent of water that carried him straight for the nothing from which the river came.
The pain returned. All the pain and the sound and the fear slammed back into him. He stared up at the dark rafters of the theater, choking on his own blood. Randy was still dangling from Joseph’s iron grip, his toes brushing the carpet.
Michael tried to sit up, but his middle was useless. He lifted his head and remembered the crater that had once been his chest.
Something dark shot over Michael’s body like a dart. Joseph vanished, leaving a hole in the drywall behind him. Randy crumpled to the ground, spluttering and coughing.
Michael struggled to lift a hand and point to the ladder. His mouth formed the word ‘Run!’ Randy stared in shock at the hollow wound in Michael’s chest. “Go!” Michael gasped. Randy darted forward, but a crash sent him diving under the desk.
Joseph fell through the ceiling and landed hard on his knees. A slender female figure came down on top of him. Everything was moving so fast, even Michael had trouble seeing any detail. He caught a glimpse of claws and razor teeth tearing at the vampire’s back. Joseph stood quickly and threw all of his weight against the wall, but she was far too quick. She slithered around to his front and tore a chunk of shoulder off with shining teeth. In a flash of leather, she kicked off of him, barely avoiding a wild punch, and landed gracefully on all fours, right next to Randy. Her slender body was coiled with energy and strength, lean muscle flexed and limber. Her nails were three-inch claws that cut into the carpet where she landed. Blood dripped from her many fangs. She spit the chunk of flesh she’d torn from Joseph out on the ground and smiled at Randy as calmly as though she was about to introduce herself.
Randy let out a terrified scream and pressed himself further beneath the desk, crying.
Joseph tackled her against the other wall. Buttons from Joseph’s coat peppered the room as she clawed at his front. They grappled and rolled across the carpet and then disappeared through their self-made door into the next room.
Michael’s senses had returned. The muted tones of death had been overtaken by life and reality again. But he fought to move; his limbs were like lead. He had to get Randy out of there before the fight came back to them. He reached a shaking hand to his chest and found his lungs had partially inflated, but something was wrong. His ribs weren’t pointing in the right direction. Michael remembered how his shoulder had only healed when it was back in place. Michael fumbled with the zipper that ran down the front of the costume, but his neck muscles gave out. His head fell back onto the sound board and he coughed bloody chunks of his insides involuntarily, his own blood landing warm and wet on his face
. Come on,
Michael urged himself,
you’ve got to get up!
He found the zipper and forced himself to look. A grenade might as well have gone off in his body. He could see the shiny white ends of his own bones glimmering in the half-light coming from the stage. Vomit rose in his throat. He choked and closed his eyes and forced himself to swallow.
Two vibrant blue eyes appeared above him. A halo of black hair surrounded a beautiful face. Plump lips curved up in a gorgeous smile. “Hello at last, dear Michael.”
“Randy!” Michael gurgled out, “Run!”
“Shh,” Callista said, surveying his gaping wound with interest, “I’m not going to hurt your friend.”
“What did you do to Charlotte?” Michael tried again to raise himself off the tech board, but Callista held him down with a slender hand.
She didn’t answer. She seemed too focused on his injuries to hear him. She reached out to touch the jagged pieces of bone that stuck out at odd angles. “I am so sorry, Michael.”
She looked like she meant it. Michael felt like he was working to fit together a puzzle with entirely disparate pieces. Was this the same woman that had chased him halfway across the city the night before?
“Okay,” she said calmly as she used one of her knife-like nails to tear cleanly through Michael’s blood-drenched t-shirt, “I’m going to need you to brace yourself. This can’t heal on its own.”
“What are you going to do?”
But before Michael could do anything, Callista had hooked two fingers under his detached sternum and yanked it up to meet his shattered ribcage. Michael let out an unearthly scream as the bones made a sickening scraping sound as they slid past each other. She pulled bits of ribs out of the mess and laid them where they belonged in the scattered puzzle that was his body.
The moment everything was in its place, his lungs inflated completely and the fog that lingered inside his brain cleared. Flesh covered over the mess, leaving only a massive, shiny white scar behind.
He sat up, air rushing to every limb and strength rejuvenating his body. He looked at Callista, who was smiling brightly in the orange stage light. Michael pressed a hand to his chest. “I don’t understand,” he said, “You killed that man in the alley. You killed all those cops.”
“Cops?” she asked. “Of course we didn’t.” She waved the thought away like it was nothing. “Why would we?”
“Because you’re blood thirsty sirens that live for the hunt.” Bell had appeared behind her, fangs bared behind a nasty smirk.
“Get your friend out of here,” Callista whispered before she turned to face Bell. She stood at ease in the face of Bell’s long claws and bared fangs.
“And what are you, my dear?” Callista asked, hands on her hips, “A half-breed abomination that doesn’t even know who she is.”
Bell shrieked and tackled Callista over the railing. Michael sat up in time to see them land in a tangle of black and white and red, and caught a glimpse of a spray of blood before they tore across the theater. There were more battles raging below. Michael spotted Jessica engaged with a nymph by the overturned dining cart, and several blurs of claws by the stage door.
What is going on?
A cat-like howl came from the next room.
Randy whimpered from the carpet beneath him. Michael jumped down and slid under the desk next to him.
“Aaaaaah!” Randy pressed himself into the corner, sweat pouring down his face.
Michael could hear Randy’s heart pounding violently in his chest.
“It’s okay,” Michael said, though he knew he didn’t sound convincing. “Come on. We’ve got to go.” Michael peered into the darkness, listening to the sounds of their battle crash and reverberate around the room next door. He reached for Randy’s arm, urging him out from his hiding place, but he was rooted to the spot.
His eyes were wide, staring at Michael’s unharmed chest. “It’s really real. You really are a…” Randy swallowed.
“Yes,” a crash sounded on the other side of the wall. Michael zipped the costume back up to break Randy’s mesmerized stare. “Randy, yes, it’s real. It’s all terrifying and horrible. And real. It took me days to accept that reality and days to calm down. But I need you to calm down right now, or we’re both going to die.”
Randy glared at him. “Nice pep talk.”
Joseph roared obscenities and a violent collision shook the floor.
“Let’s go!” Michael urged Randy forward, “I’ll watch for them, you just go!” Randy crawled on his belly across the carpet, toward the ladder that led to the auditorium. He groaned in front of Michael. “Why is the carpet so wet?”
“Don’t think about it.” Michael sensed the two forms dart overhead before he saw them. He heard the tiniest clink of metal on metal, and scanned the darkness for the source of the sound. It was the chain to one of the massive lights that hung above the audience. Joseph and the nymph had taken their fight to the narrow alleyways that the tech people used to change the lights, and they had hit one on their way. It swung wildly on its chain, toward the stage and then back toward the sound booth. The tiny clink of metal was the sound of the chain slipping.
Michael was on his feet before he knew he’d decided to move. He leapt onto the tech board, catching the first bit of chain that he could as the fifty-pound fixture came careening toward Randy’s clueless body. He spun, using the light’s momentum to change its course, sending it straight toward Joseph. It caught the big man’s shoulder, and he screamed a curse of frustration as the nymph bit into his injured limb before the embattled pair disappeared again. The light smashed through the railing and landed with an enormous crash on the stage.
“Whoah!” Randy yelled, looking at Michael with intense awe, “
Do you have spidey sense
?”
Michael couldn’t help but smile.
A feral scream ripped through the air from somewhere above.
“We better hurry.” Michael bent as low as possible, guiding Randy toward the ladder. There was no telling where the fight would come from next. His only goal was to get Randy out of the theater alive. He scanned the open space above the audience, crouched and alert.
The scene when they reached the ladder was enough to make Randy glance back over at the desk’s shadows longingly. There were at least a dozen battles below them, all a blur of supernatural speed and strength. The noise alone was enough to send a chill down anyone’s spine. Shrieks and roars filled the theater more than the surround sound ever could. There was hardly a chair or table that hadn’t been overturned. Dishware and glass was shattered across the carpet, sparkling in the low orange lighting like a minefield of lacerations. The catwalk above them shook as two foes launched off of it. Michael heard several metallic pops, and the whole thing came crashing down, smashing chairs and tables and catching the end of the bed that sat on the stage. It flipped end-over-end off the stage and stuck a landing in the middle of twisted metal.
Michael glanced at Randy’s horrified expression. “How am I going to get out of here?”
I have no idea.
A particularly nasty scream rent the air around them. They looked to the stage to see Callista, her jacket torn to shreds, glaring at Bell, who was holding a fistful of Callista’s black curls in her hand, a good-sized section of scalp still attached, dripping blood onto the painted plywood floor.
“Come on,” Bell teased, tossing the handful of hair into the auditorium, “I thought you’d have more fight in you than this.”
Callista’s lip curled. “And I thought you’d have enough sense to know I’m not your enemy. We came to save you, child.”
Bell paced the stage like a boxer claiming the ring. “Save me from what? Tanish? He was bleeding on the pavement before you even got here.” Bell spat a mouthful of blood onto the plywood. “I left him to two of your girls so we could chat.” She launched across the space, claws first, but the nymph was too fast for her.
Callista shot her a pitying glance from across the stage, “Nobody likes a sore loser.”
“I didn’t lose,” Bell said. “You cheated.” Bell flipped a candelabra off the floor with her boot, snatched it out of the air, and threw it across the stage like a pocket knife.
Callista dodged. The candelabra crushed a large cardboard faux-book and stuck like a dart into the bookcase behind her. “Your man was coming here to kill Michael’s friend. We agreed you weren’t allowed to kill any of them.”
“Last I saw, the little shit was cowering under a desk, crying.” She smiled, her fangs bright white behind her red lips. “Still alive.”
Randy turned green. “I gave her my chili!”
Bell launched across the stage, catching Callista around the middle. They disappeared through the plywood bookcase with a crash.
Michael urged Randy toward the ladder, frowning.
What are they talking about?
He shook himself.
Just get Randy out alive
.
You can figure the rest out later.
“Let’s go while they’re busy.”
“I can’t go down there, man,” Randy shook his head in horror, “They’ll tear me to pieces!”
“You can’t stay here.” Michael looked around for another way out, but there was none. Michael pushed off the carpet and crouched as low as could over to the desk. There was a sturdy metal support underneath. He got a firm grip, and gave it a pull. It tore away easily, scattering bolts and washers across the carpet.
“Here,” he said, crawling back toward Randy, “you can use this as a shield.”
Randy didn’t look impressed. “Plus one to defense?” He tried to smile.
“I’ll be your vampire familiar,” Michael said, “That’s got to count for something.”
“Can’t I just have my character sheet back?”
“Only if I can, too,” Michael smirked, helping Randy up by the arm.
Randy gave him a strange look. “Hey…” He looked down at the carnage below “…I’m sorry about the way I reacted earlier.”
“You weren’t wrong,” Michael shrugged, scanning the battles below for a path through the property damage to the exit. “Let’s just get you out of here in one piece. Go on down,” he said, “I’ll make sure you make it down okay and then join you.”
Just as Randy’s foot set down on the first rung, his knuckles white as he clutched the shield in his pudgy fist, a distinctive whistle sounded in three short bursts. Randy looked up at Michael questioningly. For a moment, Michael wasn’t sure what it meant. Nothing seemed to change. But then each vampire was thrown from battle, and each nymph combatant shot across the carnage of the theater to stand together on the stage. They were still for a moment, breathing heavily as their many scars healed, grouped in a protective circle.
The vampires wiped blood from their faces and eyed their enemies eagerly.
Randy shivered on the ladder. Even he could sense the impending violence like an angry, tangible cloud.
But just before they could attack, Callista appeared in the center of the nymphs, her blue eyes darting around the group as if taking a roll call. She smiled. Michael knew Randy could not have even seen what happened next; it happened too fast. One moment they were there, and the next they were gone. If it hadn’t been for the blast of wind that forced Randy against the rungs of the ladder so hard that he dropped his shield, Michael would have sworn they had teleported.
Bell appeared on the stage a fraction of a moment later, her hair a disheveled flame and her eyes burning with frustration. She cursed, and threw the severed broom handle she’d been holding down in a rage.
She stared around the space, her green eyes livid with rage.
“I see we finally have your attention,” Tanish’s voice came from above. Michael squinted up into the rafters just as Tanish hopped over the railing to land in front of Bell on the stage.
Bell’s voice came out like gravel. “You are out of your depth, Tanish.”
Tanish smirked at her glare. “You ordered us to locate Callista the moment we discovered her coven had come to town. We spent a month on their trail, just catching glimpses.”
Bell’s eyes narrowed. Michael saw the clan move to form a circle around the stage.
“And when we finally pin them down and hand them to you on a platter”—He gestured around to the theater—“you decide to play a game with them instead.”
Randy was frozen halfway down the ladder, scared to move and draw attention to himself. He whispered up at Michael, “What are they talking about?”
Michael shook his head and motioned for Randy to keep going. If they were ever going to have a moment of distraction, this was it.
“And then,” Tanish laughed, “you become utterly obsessed with the worst new turn the clan has ever seen.” There was a murmur of agreement from the room.
“You’re making a mistake,” Bell said with a confident smile, “and you’re going to regret it.” She shot across the stage at Tanish and clawed around to his back. A disgusting pop elicited a scream of pain as she yanked his shoulder out of socket. The waiting clan members swarmed the stage, but not before she planted both her feet on the stage and grabbed Tanish’s dangling limb, throwing him like a ragdoll. He soared over the overturned dining area and straight for Randy.
Michael didn’t have a second to react. He reached for his hand. “Randy!” he yelled, but it was too late. Tanish’s body hurtled into Randy’s shoulders. His head slammed into the metal ladder, a sickening crack vibrating the floor beneath Michael’s feet.
Tanish fell backward, pulling Randy with him. For a moment Randy simply looked startled, then his eyes rolled back in his head. Tanish twisted in mid-air when he saw he was tangled up under the momentum of Randy’s heavy body. He grabbed the nearest seat and spun out of the way, landing on his feet next to the foot of the ladder. Randy fell the rest of way to the ground alone. His eyes were closed before he hit the floor.