8

REVELATION 11:7

The beast that ascendeth out of the

bottomless pit shall make war against them. . . .

~ * ~

It had stopped snowing an hour ago, and now they stood at the stairs descending to the entrance they had used last night. Behind the group of nightwalkers the snow was like a freshly laid carpet of purity marred only by the measured dips of their footprints.

"Why can't we use the door by the auditorium, or the front entrance?" Rita complained. "Why get all filthy again?"

"She may be a human but she still has ears," Gregory said disdainfully. Rita resisted the urge to slap him, knowing Anyelet watched them both.

"This way is safer," Anyelet said quietly.

Gabriel stepped forward. "Let's go." After dribbling a little lubricant on the hinges, he and Vic removed the already-loosened metal door and set it aside, then motioned for the others to enter the dank storage room. It was easier than Rita had anticipated; she hadn't been pleased with the oil and grime caked on her hands the previous evening and would have preferred to leave the trip entirely to the others. On the other hand, they all stood to benefit from the capture of another human, and survival made sharp motivation. But something about their unseen prey still spooked her; if the woman left that kind of firepower behind, what did she carry with her?

The light in the storage room was as poor as before, though retracing their route through the jagged, shrouded piles was easy, the elevator doors heavy but not as difficult. When they reached the double glass doors leading to a long room filled with the moldering remains of ancient clothes and weapons, Rita finally voiced her doubts. "How do we know she's even here?" she demanded as she looked distastefully at her hands, once more covered in dirt and oil from the elevator cables.

"I can smell her," Gabriel said promptly.

"That's what you said last night," Rita snapped.

Gabriel smiled, unperturbed. "Yes, but look here." He pointed at the doors. "They've been relocked."

"It's a better job this time. It's going to make some noise getting through," Vic commented. He looked at Anyelet. "Faster to just break the glass."

"Do it."

Vic nodded and without further warning punched one panel with a lightning-fast thrust; the glass exploded and even Rita could admire the muscular vampire's strength and speed. They climbed through the frame, ignoring the fragments of glass that tugged at their clothes and tinkled to the floor, then they were in the midst of an array of medieval armor and weapons, swords, maces, other things with straps and chains like nothing Rita had ever seen. She paused as an idea occurred to her. "Why don't we take some weapons?" she proposed. "We know she has a gun." Gregory nodded in agreement.

Anyelet's glance was withering. "We shouldn't need weapons against a human, Rita. Must you always be so pampered?" She waved her hand. "There are five of us to one woman—isn't that enough of a challenge? None of you have the faintest idea of what it's like to hunt for yourselves or die." She scowled. "It's time you learned." The Mistress moved on and Rita looked to Gabriel pleadingly, but he only shrugged and kept going.

Another firmly locked door waited at the far end, more noise that Rita was convinced would warn the woman of their presence. Surely she had left by now—who in their right mind would stay? Even with Gabriel's so-called "nose" it would take hours to search just one wing of this monstrous building—unless they walked into an ambush first. Another room like the weapons gallery, filled with more of humanity's faded history: objets d'art from the Far East, the Orient and Islam, exotic figures with elongated eyes and brilliant colors. Rita barely glanced at them; they depicted nothing but more subcultures of a species that was already passing into extinction. They slid silently around the last display case and followed Gabriel to the left; he turned one hundred and eighty degrees at the final wall separating them from the Arthur Rubloff Auditorium and Rita immediately sensed the difference in the darkness as they crept to the closed doors that were the final barrier. It took only an instant to figure it out: beneath the line of the metal doors, a laser-thin light showed. Sudden nerves prickled at the base of Rita’s neck.

"What's that smell?" Vic whispered.

"Candle flame," came Gabriel's reply. "I don't like this."

"Let's do it," Gregory hissed eagerly. "I'll go first."

"No." Anyelet stopped him. The Mistress's gaze paused on Rita and she tensed, then Anyelet motioned to Vic, the movement a blur of India ink in the near-black shadows. "Vic will take us in." The two stared at each other for perhaps ten seconds as the rest of them watched, baffled, then Vic stepped forward and wrapped his massive hands around the door handles. He tugged gently but the doors didn't move; he tried again with a little more strength, and this time they made a quiet, drawn-out sound like the groan of an old man in uneasy sleep.

"Ready?" He didn’t bother to whisper.

They all nodded. The muscles in his arms and back swelled suddenly and he ripped the doors open in a scream of tormented metal and erupting plaster.

The light from dozens of candles placed around the door blinded them momentarily, and instead of the swift entrance they'd intended, all five hesitated. The woman stood center-stage, holding a large, strange-looking weapon that was nothing like the shotgun Gabriel had discovered under her bed. "Oh, fuck!" Gabriel screamed as a harsh ratcheting filled the air and the woman yelled something Rita couldn't quite hear.

Thunder filled the night.