Chapter 19
Cologne. Perfume. Crab and brie phyllo. The high-ceilinged ballroom was even more dazzling than the lobby below. While the rest of the hotel that Ryan had seen so far had been consciously modern, this room cast it all aside in favor of overwhelming, although entirely artificial, old-world charm. Ryan felt as if he had stepped into Versailles itself, and he found himself wondering if this was the sort of place Daniel had spent time in, back in his early five hundreds.
Three of the walls around them were lily-white, with intricate gilt floral patterns covering much of the space. The fourth wall was made entirely of huge, floor-to-ceiling windows that gave a view of the city that almost rivaled that from the observatory. An immense crystal and gold chandelier hung from the ceiling and cast a thousand tiny glares on the polished wooden floors.
Two thirds of the room was covered in meticulously placed and set tables, covered with fine white linen and each bearing a small centerpiece of snow-white orchids. Along the near wall was a long, wooden bar, fully stocked with both drink and wealthy drunkard. The other third of the room was more open, with a string quartet in one corner and a few dozen couples dancing slowly in the center. Two hundred more guests milled about around the edges and amongst the tables or at the bar, talking, socializing, networking.
As he made a cursory assessment of the crowd, Ryan saw nothing that looked suspicious or paranormal, nor did he see Anthony Hess: the man whose face graced the newspaper above the fold at least a few times every month. In fact, everyone looked normal, at least on the outside. Ryan wasn’t sure if that made him more comfortable or much, much less.
Evelyn, however, was more observant. She led Ryan out of the entering throng of people and along the edge of the ballroom to an uninhabited section of wall.
“That’s the mayor.” She hissed.
“So?”
“Don’t you watch the news?”
“Not since they started they started rerunning Seinfeld on channel fourteen at the same time.”
“It’s an election year.” She began. “The mayor has been making a big deal about putting an end to the sale and distribution of Vain. He’s running the whole ‘clean up the city’ campaign.”
“Has it been working?” Ryan asked.
“Not really, but the city cops are definitely paying more attention to the drug trade, and that’s never a good thing for a drug dealer.” Evelyn replied.
“And what, you think Hess is going to do something about it? Evelyn, the mayor must go to these things all the time. It’d probably be more suspicious if he wasn’t here.”
“Maybe so, but I don’t like it. It’s too close. Keep an eye on him.”
“Sure.”
Evelyn tapped her ear and spoke a few hushed words into the hidden ear bud receiver.
“Come on.” She said after a moment. “Let’s mingle.”
They walked slowly around the room a few times before beginning to weave their way in between tables. Ryan was trying to keep one eye on where he was going, one eye on the portly mayor, and both ears on the conversations they were passing. So far, none of his senses had detected any red flags.
They stayed at it for almost an hour: taking seats within earshot of full tables, leaning against the bar, even striking up a few innocent conversations themselves. Their efforts, however, turned up nothing. They overheard a great deal of idle babble about the stock market, the mayoral campaign, and college football, but nothing even remotely sanguinary.
Tired and dispirited, Ryan and Evelyn made their way to a pair of seats at an unoccupied table near one corner of the dance floor. The quartet started up a slow waltz; a haunting tune that felt out of place in such a spirited atmosphere, but pleased the ears nonetheless.
“Do you want to dance?” Ryan asked.
“No.”
“Oh.”
“But I will.” Evelyn said after a moment.
“Please, don’t do me any favors.” Ryan replied.
“No, I mean it’s just that I can’t dance.” She said.
“Finally something the Amazon queen of Route 66 can’t do. Not a lot of waltzing going on at truck stops and bank vaults?”
“Your window’s closing pretty fast here.” She replied irritably.
Ryan smiled and grabbed her by the hand. They didn’t stray more than a few feet from the table; the center of the dance floor was the last place they wanted to be. Still, they had their corner and that was more than good enough.
Normally, Ryan would never have suggested something like this. However, dancing was the one thing his bag of romantic tricks actually contained. Vanessa had taken a ballroom class a few years ago and demanded that Ryan practice with her, which he had dutifully done. The waltz was not difficult, and Ryan had managed to retain enough of what he learned. His hand slid around Evelyn’s silky waist. They stood still for a moment while Ryan found the beat, and then stepped gingerly into it. Soon Evelyn felt the flow of the dance and the two moved in harmony. For what felt like a very long time, neither of them spoke.
“You know, when I was a little girl-”
“Can I stop you right there? I feel like every time you start a story that way, it ends up being terrifying.”
She smiled. “What I was going to say was that I was kind of always looking forward to my high school prom: the pictures, the music, the…theater of it all.”
“Just because you don’t go to a high school doesn’t mean you couldn’t go to a high school prom. You’re still only seventeen.” He smiled. “It wouldn’t be that hard to arrange.”
Evelyn looked him dead in the eye with an expression somewhere between disbelief and nausea. “Are you joking? I said ‘when I was a little girl’. Not now, hell no. I’d rather be torn apart by a bunch of Hess’ goons.”
“Come to think of it, that’d probably be pretty easy to arrange too.”
“All I meant was that I’m glad tonight happened, even though we didn’t turn up any useful information.”
“Well I’m sorry I didn’t get you a corsage.”
“Don’t worry about it. The nine millimeter goes better with my outfit.”
Ryan smiled and let the music wash over him. He had forgotten just for a moment about vampires and werewolves and death and toil and pain. For a few blissful seconds, there was nothing in that room but him, Evelyn, and the music.
He felt her body grow warmer and her fingertips light up with heat in his hand. They pulled, ever so slightly, closer.
The quartet hit their final note and the dance was ended. The spell was broken. In fact, at the end of the number the quartet pulled their instruments from their shoulders and began to pack up. Ryan reluctantly broke contact with Evelyn and the two sat back down at their table. A number of hotel staff began to bustle about and haul into the ballroom a collection of strange parts, sections of a whole that Ryan did not recognize.
In a matter of moments however, the parts had come together to form a raised platform, with half a dozen chairs set upon it and a thin wooden podium at the center with a microphone at its top. The rest of the partygoers took the hint and then took their seats.
When everyone was settled and talking excitedly in hushed voices to one another, the far door to the ballroom swung open and Anthony Hess strode in, his brilliant white smile flashing in the sparkling light of the chandelier. He was tall and handsome and he walked with an easy gait.
He wore a classic black tuxedo that fit his thin frame perfectly. The roundness of the shawl collar was accentuated by the red cummerbund he wore. His hair was salt-and-pepper gray and his eyes were a very pale blue. Hess looked the absolute opposite of the vampires Ryan had seen previously, and he wondered why exactly that was. He wondered what was it about Hess that gave him the control that other vampires lacked. What made him different, and turned him into the master of the bloodlust rather than its slave?
The immortal approached the podium, put his hands on either side, and smiled a movie-star smile. His tone was pleasant and emot
ive, almost musical.
“My friends and colleagues. Tonight you honor me with your presence. But we are in turn honored by the presence of a few very distinguished guests, and I would be remiss if I did not recognize them as such. Mayor Peck, of course, please join me.”
There was a round of applause as the mayor extricated himself from his seat and took another seat on the podium. Hess called a few other noteworthy attendees to join him, each to applause, until one name caught Evelyn’s attention.
The man was short and thin and was bald except for the tufts of hair above either ear. He had a beak for a nose and small, thin lips.
“Why does that guy look familiar?” Evelyn whispered. “Galloway…Galloway…” She stared at him for a moment more as he took his seat on the podium. “Galloway…I’ve met him! He’s hospital administrator at Doc Webster’s hospital. Why would he be here?”
Hess recited a few more names until the seats behind him were full.
“Thank you so much for joining me, and for indulging us in giving you a bit of very well-deserved recognition. We of this city owe you so very much, and I know that I personally do not thank you for that nearly as often as I should.” He took a breath and smiled again. “As the tabloids have been speculating and you have probably guessed, I do have an announcement to make, and it is fortunate that Doctor Nicholas Galloway is already on the podium with me. Ladies and gentlemen, my friends, Hess Holdings and the Kimble Health Care Group are announcing a partnership. In a matter of weeks, we break ground on a brand new, state-of-the-art healthcare facility, which will be one of the largest and most advanced in country. In the coming months, we’ll also be opening a series of free community clinics, bringing new life and accessible healthcare to the neighborhoods in our city that need it the most. These spaces represent a joint pro bono venture: by Hess Holdings providing the real estate and construction free of charge, we can lower operating costs and other overhead, and thereby provide free healthcare to those that might not have access to it otherwise. This is the first step down a path of progress and revitalization, and there is no one Hess Holdings would rather have with us on this path than the dedicated, hard-working men and women of the Kimble Group.”
The glamorous crowd broke into wild applause and Hess motioned for Galloway to join him at the podium. They shook hands and smiled and then allowed themselves to be congratulated by the others on the podium.
“What the hell does that mean?” Ryan asked as the vigorous hand-shaking continued.
“No idea.” Evelyn replied. “But I feel like we should probably get out while we can. Did you guys get all that?” She asked, tapping her ear piece.
Ryan stood up, ready to make his exit and get them back to the warehouse. As he did, he felt a pair of eyes on him from across the room.
Standing just inside the doorway to the ballroom was a man Ryan had never seen before. He wore a cheap, tattered suit with a sloppily tied tie that hung loose around his neck. He had long, stringy, brown hair with streaks of gray that hung limp around his face like a hood. It was the eyes however, that gave him away.
They were a sickly yellow color, made brighter by the dark circles beneath his eyelids. The man stared straight at him, unblinking, and in that moment there wasn’t a doubt in Ryan’s mind: Grayle.
Ryan watched as the werewolf drew his thin, colorless lips back from his yellow teeth in a sinister smile. His eyes narrowed and he began to breathe heavily as he initiated the transformation.
“Your gun.” Ryan whispered to Evelyn.
“What?!” She said, looking up.
“Give me your gun.” He replied through gritted teeth.
She looked cautiously around and then surreptitiously drew the tiny gun from its holster and pressed it into Ryan’s palm. His eyes never left Grayle’s as he raised the gun above his head and fired two deafening shots into the air.
The socialites scattered. They screamed and scrambled over each other in a desperate stampede for the door. A number of people however, a large number, stood their ground and locked their eyes on the unmoving teenagers. These were Hess’ people, and there were a lot of them.
“Back up?” Ryan asked through the corner of his mouth.
“Already on their way.”
“Take this.” He said, tossing the gun back to Evelyn. “You’re going to need it.”
The room cleared of bystanders and Grayle let out a throaty, human roar before ripping his collared shirt away and giving in to the beast. It was a jerky, violent transformation as dark brown fur sprouted all over the man’s body. Ryan shrugged off his dinner jacket and new shoes and lamented the imminent destruction of such a fine pair of pants.
The transformed Grayle charged across the ballroom, flinging tables and chairs out of his way as he went. The other Hess cronies knew enough to stay out of his way, and they scattered to avoid becoming collateral damage.
Ryan cleared his mind, concentrated on his singular purpose, and felt the gray fur ripple across his body. Grayle leapt from ten feet away and collided with Ryan just as the transformation completed. The two monsters skidded across the polished floor in a swirling mix of gray and brown.
Evelyn dove out of the way just as Ryan and Grayle blew past and collided with one of the huge picture windows with a sickening thud. It was Grayle who had made contact with the window, and he shook his shaggy brown head to clear it as the two werewolves tried to recover from the daze.
In a flash, Grayle was back on Ryan, and he used his superior strength and experience to bite and claw with everything he had. Their movements were lightning fast, a blur to the human eye, and it seemed like for every modest hit Ryan managed to land, Grayle struck back with a slash that was twice as painful and effective. The fight had just begun and Ryan was already losing.
Every time he went in for an attack, Grayle would nip at his exposed neck. Ryan snarled and tried to block and twist away, but maneuvering in Grayle’s grasp was like trying to worm his way out of a vice. He felt slash after slash and bite after bite penetrate his thick hide, and he felt himself beginning to tire quickly and weaken even faster. Grayle reared his head back and Ryan landed a satisfying slash across his opponent’s muzzle, but Grayle simply snarled in anger and retaliated by clamping his jaws into Ryan’s shoulder.
Ryan felt each tooth break the skin and he howled in pain and frustration. Instinct took over and he worked his massive feet beneath Grayle’s sternum and kicked with savage force.
Grayle slid away across the cold floor and he came to a stop in the clearing of the abandoned dance floor, near the windows. Faster than Ryan would have believed, he was back on his feet and ready to charge again. Ryan wasn’t ready. He was too weak and bleeding too much. He doubted he could weather another attack.
Then something happened that no one on either side was expecting: a streak of black, an obsidian shadow against an inky sky, rocketed towards the building. No one could quite tell what the shadow was, but it grew nearer and nearer with no sign of slowing down.
Then, when it was perhaps ten feet from the glass side of the skyscraper, Ryan realized what was happening. Black feathers were sucked into ebony skin as the shadow grew in size and contorted in shape. In an instant, it was Daniel hurtling feet-first toward the building. Ryan watched as if the entire sequence were happening before him in slow motion: Daniel’s hands flew to a large black shotgun, which he leveled at the ballroom window milliseconds before impact. The gun fired and the window exploded inward in a thousand tiny shards as Daniel’s considerable momentum carried him through the broken window and he crashed feet-first into the stunned Grayle. The werewolf was smashed brutally to the floor as Daniel rolled to recover from the landing. He popped up and in one fluid motion had the twelve-gauge trained steadily on Hess. Grayle remained motionless on the ground and the form of the wolf faded from him.
Hess hadn’t flinched through any of it; instead he merely smiled his same, sincere smile. “Daniel.” He began, and spread his a
rms warmly. “It is truly wonderful to see you again. And if memory serves, this little situation is a great deal similar to the last time you and I saw each other face-to-face. Of course the weapon you’re pointing at my head has changed a bit…back then it was a…” Hess paused and stared afar off, trying to vocalize something on the edge of his brain. “Ah! It was that rapier that Swetnam himself had made for you. I remember now, beautiful blade. Whatever happened to it?”
“The top six inches broke off in Vincent’s stomach.” Daniel replied calmly.
“Ah yes, Vincent. I knew that damned belly of his would get him into trouble some day. I told him only so many orphans could go missing before someone would put twelve and twelve together, but alas.” Hess took a casual sip of wine before he continued. “Don’t get me wrong old friend, the rapier was beautiful but this,” he gestured to the gun, “this is quite nice as well. Saiga 12, unless I’m mistaken? I suppose it was about time the Russians got something right, eh?” He winked. “Now, as lovely as that weapon is, and as fantastic as it is to see you again, physical combat holds absolutely no allure for me anymore, so I will be on my way.”
He stepped down from the podium and he motioned to a large man standing near him. Hess strode towards the door and the large man grabbed the unconscious Grayle and dragged him towards the exit.
Daniel kept the gun barrel trained on the exiting vampire’s head.
“Do it.” Evelyn whispered.
“I cannot. Not if you wish to survive this encounter. I have twelve rounds in this magazine and I will need each of them.” He replied as the men and women who had remained behind began to close ranks around the three of them. “Hess poses no immediate threat. These gentlemen, on the other hand…”
Ryan bristled his fur and showed his teeth, and it seemed to work. A few of their soon-to-be attackers seemed to appreciate just what a werewolf could do to them, and their step faltered. Many more however, gave no quarter.
It was then that Ryan’s improved hearing picked up a group of sounds making their way down the deserted hallway. Footfalls and a great deal of scraping and scuffling.
He released his grip on the wolf and felt his body shrink back into human form. Ryan was more than aware of the fact that he was now standing in the middle of a very posh, very well-lit hotel ballroom wearing nothing but tattered tuxedo pants, but he had more important things on his mind.
“He’s sent vampires after us. A lot of vampires.”
Ryan had said it to his friends, but Hess’ minions had heard him as well, and they looked nervously at one another. They wanted to run and break ranks, but they knew disobeying a direct order from Hess was just as much of a death sentence as being trapped in a room full of vampires. A few seconds later, the arduous choice was taken out of their hands.
The vampires streamed into the ballroom like ants out of a hill. They were everywhere, clawing and scrambling over one another in a sickly-pale swarm. Hess’ other goons panicked and bolted for the door all at the same time. The vampires overtook them immediately as they flocked around the lackeys and then buried them under a feeding frenzy of skeletal bodies. It was a gruesome sight, but it gave Ryan and the others the precious few seconds they needed.
“I hope Miles made it down to the van. I haven’t heard anything from him.” Evelyn said as she readied the small pistol in one hand and drew the larger, stranger pistol in her other.
“Tell Ruby of what is happening. We could use her.” Daniel said.
“I tried contacting her when things first started to heat up. No one from the van is answering.” She replied.
Daniel’s face darkened. “We will deal with that when it comes time. Ryan, you will be the largest thing in their field of vision. They will focus on you. Lead them on a chase, fight when you can, and we will do our best to pick them off.”
“That’s fine.” Ryan said tersely. “But shouldn’t we be more worried about finding an exit?”
“Unless you want to go out the window, we’ve got to go through those doors.” Evelyn replied. “That means we’ve got to thin the herd at least a little.”
And then the herd attacked. Ryan couldn’t see what had happened to the other people that had been in the room, but knew he probably didn’t want to. The vampires had lost interest in the others and turned back to the three of them so quickly that Ryan barely had time to transform before they were on him.
They sprang up around him and suddenly he felt bony hands clawing at him from all directions. He snarled and swiped at the vampires but for every one he sent hurtling across the room, two more popped up in its place.
Daniel and Evelyn were behind him, firing their weapons in rapid staccato. There were small, loud snaps from Evelyn’s pocket-sized pistol, and ringing thunderclaps from Daniel’s shotgun.
One vampire jumped straight for Ryan’s head and together they crashed to the ground. In an instant, half a dozen more vampires were on top of him, and they bit and snapped their decaying jaws. He managed to fling one off his right arm and then clear a few more before being pinned back down. Ryan had the strength and the speed, but they had the numbers.
Dark, stale blood spattered over Ryan’s face and a clean red hole appeared in the forehead of the vampire attacking his face. The re-dead creature slumped down and then slid off Ryan’s torso and Evelyn leveled the smoking gun at yet another attacker.
With great difficulty Ryan managed to extricate himself and scramble back to his feet. He swatted away a vampire closing in on Daniel’s back, and caught another one by the throat as he slammed it into the ground and splintered the polished wood with its cracking skull.
The three regrouped as well as they could against the onslaught and Ryan heard both guns at the same time make an audible click. Daniel pulled a pair of matching black nine millimeters from his hips and began covering Evelyn, who fumbled with her second gun.
“Ryan!” Daniel roared between shots. “Make them chase you!”
In the heat of battle, Ryan had completely forgotten the job he had been given. He drove his broad, muscled shoulder into a few of the nearest vampires and then leapt over the heads of the horde, landing ten feet away and against the far wall.
The flying wall of fur had been enough to catch the attention of most of the monsters, and Ryan continued to make them chase him stupidly around the ballroom. He leapt from tables to chairs to walls, and then down the slick wooden bar that ran nearly the length of the room.
Evelyn had finished fumbling with her gun. She took careful aim with the pistol and fired. What emerged however, was not a bullet, but something else. It was far larger and moved far slower, and only when it made impact did Ryan realize why the gun looked as strange as it did: Evelyn was firing paintballs.
The ball exploded on the forehead of a vampire a few yards away. The thing recovered from the shot, confused that it was not dead. Ryan too, had no idea what the paintball was supposed to do against a once-human skull. Evelyn, however, never missed a beat.
She fired round after round into the crowd, seemingly with no effect. Soon, almost a dozen vampires had the dark, sticky contents of the paintballs trickling down their foreheads or chests. Ryan could tell it wasn’t actually paint that filled the capsules, but the dark sludge didn’t seem to be any more effective than real paint would have been. The vampires she hit were startled by the impact, but by no means were they stopped.
Daniel covered her as best he could, but soon the mob became too much. Evelyn dropped the pistol, delivered a brutal front kick to a vampire approaching on her left, and then she became still. The girl of Ryan’s dreams closed her eyes and extended a hand, the fingertips spread wide.
A few breathless seconds ticked by and then, without any warning, brilliant orange flames began to appear in the crowd. The affected vampires screamed and tried to brush the fire away but only succeeded in spreading it faster. One by one, each vampire that Evelyn had hit with a paintball found himself on fire, with the goo as the source. Litt
le by little, the fire spread: the dry, dying skin of the vampires burned like dead leaves. Vampires that were hit with the substance flailed into other vampires and more and more began to drop like flies.
Even so, it wasn’t nearly enough. A third of the vampires had fallen to the bullets or the burning or by Ryan’s hand, but there were a large number left unharmed. To make matters worse, the fire and the young woman psychically spreading it had turned the vampires’ attention away from Ryan and back to the others. Evelyn had resorted to fists and Daniel, in an effort to conserve what little ammo he had left, had been using his pistols as blunt clubs. They were being driven slowly into the center of the ballroom and the mob was closing in on all sides. Ryan wanted nothing more than to launch himself, jaws first, into the fray and fight side-by-side with his friends. Instead however, he began to formulate a ridiculous, half-cocked plan that he was almost certain he had seen in an episode of Tom and Jerry years ago.
Ryan sprang onto the bar and began to hurl bottle after bottle of top-shelf liquor at the perimeter of the vampire mass. He made his way around the group until the floor surrounding them was wet with a large circle of two hundred dollar alcohol. This was as far ahead in the plan as he had thought, so he took the only next step he could think of.
Ryan launched himself into the group of vampires and kicked and clawed his way to the center where Daniel and Evelyn were surrounded. He grabbed Evelyn around the waist and hurled her over the heads of the vampires, praying she didn’t crash into a table and break her spine. Daniel saw what Ryan had done and nodded. He jumped toward Ryan and used the werewolf’s hairy shoulder as a springboard to launch himself straight up into the air. In a flash, the black pants and brown skin had melted into the raven, which took flight up and around the room. The hole in the center of the ballroom was rapidly filling with vampires on all sides, and Ryan leapt out after Evelyn just as the hands began to rake his fur.
Evelyn had landed unharmed, but she glared at Ryan in annoyance anyway. He didn’t have time to apologize, so instead he pointed to the ring of splattered liquor and Evelyn immediately understood.
The vampires had watched Ryan’s escape and were scrambling over each other to chase after him. Evelyn stood and once again extended her hand.
A wall of flame shot up and encircled the bloodsuckers, trapping them in the center of the room. They wailed and screamed and Evelyn’s face shook with concentration as she kept the flames licking higher. Ryan caught the attention of the circling Daniel, and directed him to the final piece of the ridiculous mousetrap. Daniel seemed to understand. Ryan grabbed Evelyn’s hand in his gigantic, hairy paw and they stumbled across the room as far from the vampires as they could.
Evelyn’s concentration had been broken and the flames began to die down. The vampires saw the weakening barrier and began to push out against it. It was a matter of seconds before the flames would be low enough for them to step over.
The black bird flapped its wings furiously to gain altitude in the dead air of the ballroom. He flew up to the top of the massive chandelier and became human once again, perching precariously in his black boots on the uppermost part of the structure. He took careful aim at the large fixtures which held the chandelier to the ceiling and shot them away one by one. After a moment, the weight became too much for the remaining fixtures to bear, and the giant crystal behemoth snapped off its fasteners and began to plummet to the ground.
Daniel leapt off and transformed in midair while Ryan and Evelyn watched thousands of pounds of crystal and gold and wiring fall toward the struggling vampires beneath. Ryan couldn’t tell if they knew what was coming, but he felt another faint twinge of pity.
Evelyn kicked over a nearby table to use as a barrier between them and the coming crash, and Ryan threw his gigantic form over her body for protection as they crouched behind it. The noise was deafening. The screams were short.
The shattering of each tiny piece of crystal happened so rapidly that it sounded more like the crash of one massive ocean wave. The vampires howled in pain or fear but soon their cries were drowned out entirely by the crash that seemed to have no end. Fragments of chandelier, and vampire, pelted against the upturned table like rain on a tin roof and Ryan held Evelyn’s scorching body inside his own.
Finally, the sound ended. And there were no more sounds. Ryan felt Evelyn stirring and he gingerly raised his head over the table to survey the rubble.
In the center of the room was one giant pile of crystal, wood, and bodies. Some of the debris began to shift slightly and Ryan could tell that not all of the vampires had been killed. For the moment however, they seemed trapped.
Bits of crystal and debris had been shot like bullets into the walls and furniture for fifteen feet in every direction. Dust and drywall had taken the place of the orchids as the centerpiece of most of the tables, and the rest had collapsed or broken apart entirely. The once-beautiful walls were caked in dust and jagged holes, and any of the bottles behind the bar that had survived Ryan’s tossing were now shattered beyond recognition.
A wave of exhaustion washed over Ryan and he shrank back into human form.
“Holy crap.” Evelyn said simply.
Daniel landed next to them and resumed his human shape as well. “We need to leave.”
“Why, do you think this’ll go on our bill?” Ryan asked.
They made their way out into the deserted hallway and into a golden elevator. Ryan had never been quite so relieved to hear muzak.
His relief lasted exactly as long as the elevator ride: as soon as the doors opened on the basement parking level, a grisly scene met their eyes.
The white van was parked at a strange angle in front of the elevator. Both driver and passenger side doors were open, and leading away from the driver’s side was a sickening trail of fresh red blood.
Evelyn gasped, and they all ran to the vehicle as quickly as their tired, bruised bodies could take them. They found Ruby unconscious but alive, sprawled across the front seat. The back was empty and neither Miles nor Dr. Webster was anywhere to be found.
Evelyn ran to the aid of Ruby and tried to shake her awake while Daniel inspected the blood trail. “Fresh. A matter of minutes. Can you track it?”
Ryan nodded. “I think so.”
“I wouldn’t be so sure, mate.”
They whirled around and found Miles jogging up to them. “The trail ends around that corner, then they must’ve thrown him in a car.”
“Were you here?” Daniel demanded.
Miles shook his head. “I only got here a few minutes ago. Been tryin’ to wake Ruby, then I saw the trail. The doc is gone. Somebody’s got ‘im.”
“The boy ain’t wrong.” Ruby agreed as she pushed herself into a sitting position. “Coupla suits jumped us so fast we didn’t even see faces. Conked Robert over the head, then me.”
“Do you know why they took him and left you?” Daniel asked.
She shook her head. “We all know I’m the prettier one. Can’t imagine what they’d want the doc for.”
Evelyn had heard enough. “We’re wasting time, we need to find him. Now.” She began to march toward her father’s silver convertible which the valet had parked a few spaces away.
“Evelyn, wait.” Daniel called.
“No. You can stay here and talk and sit on your thumbs if you want to, but I’m going after him. The longer we wait the less chance we have of tracking him down.”
Miles piped up. “The sooner we run off after him without a plan, sooner we get ourselves killed.”
“He’s right.” Daniel said. “I know what the doctor means to you, but we have no information whatsoever. We do not know where he is, we do not know why they took him, we do not know if they are even keeping him alive or if they have killed him already.”
Evelyn began to shake with rage and Ryan thought he could feel the heat all the way from where he stood.
“We need to go back to the warehouse.” Daniel said. “At least to relo
ad. We need more weapons, more ammunition, and you will need more napalm.”
She looked down at the paintball pistol in her hand. The heat subsided and Evelyn began to breathe normally again. “I’m going to give you an hour.” She said. “Then I’m going after him. I don’t care if any of you come with me, but nobody better try and stop me.”
Daniel nodded in acceptance.
“We won’t need an hour.” Ryan interjected. “I think I’ve got this thing figured out.”