The gunfire began to taper off once the Vampires saw what happened when the silver nitrate spray from the grenades made contact with their flesh, and Paul knew they needed to move quickly if they were going to infiltrate the building before the Vampires regrouped. Some of the Guardians had already moved in, and without his IAC on, he had no way of knowing whether or not everyone was okay or how the attack was going. He hated moving blind but he had no alternative.
The upper floor of Larundel looked a lot different than the basement where Paul had been held, at least he assumed the concrete cell he’d been in was in the basement. The ground floor level almost looked welcoming, with newly refinished wood floors, white paint, and crown molding everywhere he looked. It was a stark contrast to the hellhole he remembered, one he hadn’t been prepared for.
Still dripping wet from his encounter with the moat, he started down the hallway with Becky behind him, Tanner on her tail so that she would be well protected. He had no way of knowing where anyone else had gone, but he didn’t hear anything at all except for the distant pounding of footsteps, and he assumed those were his own forces.
They came to an intersection, and Paul glanced both directions. Down the hall to his right, he saw a flash of black moving and decided one of his teams had already gone that way. To his left, he saw nothing at all and signaled to his team that they would move forward to investigate.
Somewhere further in the building, there was shouting and gunfire. Paul didn’t recognize the voices but occasionally, he’d hear a Vampire scream, which made him think his team was winning. He continued down the hall cautiously, trying not to become distracted by the noises from elsewhere in the building.
It was dark, and without their IACs, their vision was only slightly better than human. The deeper into the building they walked, the further away from the moonlight, the harder it became to navigate. Paul saw a door on his left and decided they should open it. He waited for Tanner to get into position on the other side of the door, gave a count of three and then burst through it. The room was empty, but behind them, another door opened, and something barreled across the narrow hallway, plowing into Tanner and knocking him against the wall.
Becky opened fire, careful not to hit the Guardian because she could kill him. The first three shots seemed to have no effect on the tall, male Vampire who had Tanner by the neck, but by the fourth shot, he was weakening, and Paul hooked his Beretta around his shoulder and grabbed ahold of the monster’s head, giving it a hard crank to the right. It came off a moment later, leaving a pile of ash in the hall.
“Well, that was an adventure,” Tanner muttered, brushing his hands off.
“Maybe we should open the doors to the rooms we think are empty, and the others will come out,” Becky added. She had her Glock by the side of her face, and when Paul glanced back to look at her, he could see she was nervous. He couldn’t blame her; he was too, and he couldn’t even die at the hand of these freaks, though he wasn’t all that sure that was a positive after his last trip to the asylum.
They turned another corner, and the hall grew even darker. A noise at the far end caught Paul’s attention and he hurried in that direction, but there were many doors along each side of the hall, so his other two team members did not rush to follow him. Instead, they spread out down the hallway.
By the time Paul reached the other end of the hall, whatever he had heard seemed to fade away. There were double doors at the end of the hallway which led to what looked like a kitchen, and from what he could tell by peering through the window, the large room was empty. Rather than push through it, he went back a few steps to the hall they’d just come from and slowly turned the knob to the door on the right.
The door creaked open, and inside, he saw the form of a woman sitting in a rocking chair. Dressed in a yellow-tinged gown, with long, flowing white hair, she only stared at him, unmoving, and for a moment, Paul thought perhaps this was actually a patient, long forgotten and left to rot. But as a smile spread across her face, he saw the fangs and raised his Glock.
Before he pulled the trigger, he heard a yelp to his right and turned to see Becky was gone. Catching Tanner’s eyes, he asked, “Where...?”
“I don’t know,” Tanner admitted. “She just disappeared.”
“Did she open one of the doors?”
Tanner took a few quick steps in the direction to where Becky had been standing, saying, “No. She literally disappeared.”
“Gone,” the woman in front of him said, and Paul turned back to look at her, anxiety building in his chest. Her smile was wide now, her eyes maniacal. “All gone.”
“What’s all gone?” he asked, though he assumed she meant Becky.
“Extinguish the lights,” she said, pushing down on the arms of the chair with her wrinkled, claw-like hands.
“It’s already dark, you crazy bitch.” He raised his Glock, needing to dispatch her so he could find Becky.
She took a few cautious steps forward. “No. Extinguish the LIGHTS!”
It registered, then, what she was saying, and as she came flying at him like a screaming banshee, he opened fire. It took several bullets to slow her at all, and she came crashing into him, pushing him across the hallway as he continued to fire, her wide mouth closing in on his face as she groaned and then exploded into black powder.
Paul turned back to see if Tanner had found Becky and realized he was gone, too. “What the hell?” Paul asked, spinning around. He rushed down the hall, opening all of the doors, but found nothing.
He had no choice now. He turned his IAC on and requested visuals from Tanner and Becky. Both of them immediately accepted, but as the pictures registered, Paul’s knees weakened and he slumped to the floor, sliding down the wall. “Oh, my God!”
