Renea Mayhew found the hotel suite to be an all together adequate working space. It was clean. It was quiet, apart from Flapjack’s occasional bouts of gas and intermittent snoring. And it had a lovely view of the Gulf of Mexico. Despite being so far from her office, she had everything under control.
The time difference between the Mayhew residence in Portland and that of Veracruz was only 2 hours, so she maintained her typical schedule without great conflict. Just after Peter and his new boyfriend left for the ruins, she initiated a video conference with the other department heads.
Things had been weird at work since Kinsey’s “disappearance”. The only people in the world that knew for certain she hadn’t just taken an unannounced vacation and that she was, in fact, dead, were Renea, Peter, and Greg. When she stopped coming into work, the company’s CEO issued a company wide email asking everyone if they knew how to get ahold of her. After the mandatory 24 hour waiting period, a missing persons report was filed. Kinsey even made the news a few days after her demise. The company had yet to fill her position for various reasons, and the woman they pushed many of her job duties onto, Carol, was nearly as insufferable as Kinsey had been.
As usual, Renea opened the video call 10 minutes before its scheduled start time. Most of the other department heads joined the call within seconds of it beginning. Some, namely Marc in data integrity, often arrived a few minutes after the scheduled start time. For those reasons, Renea was surprised when Carol joined the call as soon as Renea opened it. She was a frumpy woman of middle age with bleached highlights on her thinning, dishwater blond hair. Her thick neck and weak jaw made for an unfortunate combination that made her face look as though it simply sat on a fat neck with wispy yellow hair.
“Renea,” Carol croaked.
“Afternoon, Carol. Thanks for joining the call early.”
“I knew I’d have a chance to go over some things with you if I did,” she said, smiling like a cat that had just cornered a mouse.
Renea schooled her expression but seethed on the inside. She was the cat. Carol had been poorly attempting to fill Kinsey’s shoes by pushing a good amount of the workload onto Renea’s plate. Renea’s department, administration, was the largest in the company and, as anyone who has worked in administration at a high level could tell you, it was the department that required the most from its director. Renea’s plate was already full.
“What’s on your mind?” Renea asked, smiling pleasantly.
Carol proceeded to spend the remaining time before the other department heads joined the call trying to pawn off tasks to Renea, all of which were professionally declined.
“I’m sorry, Carol, but the items you mentioned are outside my realm of delegation,” she explained. Carol opened her mouth to speak again, clearly about to disagree, and so Renea continued more directly. “If you don’t believe the workload you’ve been assigned is within your competency to manage then I have to suggest you bring it up to Dillon or Bob. Perhaps one of them will help you delegate your responsibilities to more appropriate parties.”
“We aren’t talking about my competency, Renea. We’re talking about responsibilities that should always have been yours. For whatever reason, be it a simple oversight or clear nepotism, I can only speculate.”
Renea’s head tilted slightly to one side, her professional smile masking the rage-monster within. She stayed that way for long seconds, not trusting herself to respond with the level of professionalism she expected of herself in every interaction.
Be beyond reproach, she reminded herself.
In those seconds, other department heads began joining the call. Biting back her annoyance, Renea brought the call to order.
It was a call just like dozens she’d had on Monday afternoons full of finger pointing, passive aggressive jabs, and political maneuvering. Renea was in her element. Just before the executives logged off of the call, she saw her moment to put Carol back into the cave she crawled out of. She was going to pass Carol’s demand that Renea do her job for her onto Dillon Carter and Bob Race, the company’s leading ‘C’s’, (CEO and COO respectively). She had the wording worked out perfectly to paint her concern in a positive and professional light. The floor was hers and the time was right. But the words never came out.
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A feeling took over Renea. A horrible feeling. The feeling that Peter was in a dire situation and desperately needed her help. And nothing else in the entire world mattered anymore.
She had always trusted what she considered to be her intuition. Recent developments, like Peter’s magical ability stating clearly that she was a witch, had made her begin to question that assumption. Perhaps it was a preternatural ability she had that gave her the ‘gut feelings’ she’d trusted all her life. It didn’t matter where this feeling came from. The only thing that mattered was Peter. She ended the call a touch abruptly, but nobody would complain about getting a few minutes of their Monday afternoon back. Renea closed her laptop and was out the door of the suite before Flapjack even lifted his head to see what the ruckus was about.
***
Greg had been entirely correct in assuming that Peter would not like the ability that was used on him. Moments before, Peter saw two ghost-white figures garbed in black ascending the tunnel with incredible, inhuman speed. He saw the bottle of Gregscellent shatter against the rock floor, the monster slayer having dropped it the instant he sensed the vampires. He saw Greg reach one hand out, palm up, in his direction and heard him uttering syllables in a language he was unfamiliar with. And then he was here, forced into the fetal position inside of what he had to assume was a box. A box that barely fit his entire body inside of it. A box that allowed no light to penetrate. A box that did not allow even the tiniest amount of fresh air into it, leaving Peter in a very sad state. He was inside of a box that seemed specifically designed as a torture device for anyone that suffered from claustrophobia.
His chest felt as though it were wrapped with a thick, constantly tightening rubber band, not helped at all by the position he’d been forced into. His heart was beating on overdrive. He couldn’t breath, not enough, only quick shallow breaths. His hands and feet were going numb.
Peter Mayhew was freaking the fuck out.
Calm, he thought the word to himself. Calm.
It did not help.
Forcing himself to only intake slow inhalations through his nose, Peter tried telling himself that Greg would let him out soon. That he was probably safer inside the box where the biggest threat to his health was passing out than he would be outside of the box, where Greg was throwing down with a pair of vampires.
It did not help.
He squeezed his eyes shut and forced images of Renea and Flapjack into his mind. He visualized standing atop a hill overlooking a serene valley and breathing in its sweet spring scent.
It did not help.
Peter’s breathing grew even more out of control with each passing second, chest tightening and his hands and feet completely numb. Idolly, he hoped Greg was okay. Actively, he made a promise to himself to revel in sweet revenge for this betrayal.
It could have been seconds or hours spent in the nothingness of the box before Peter splayed out on the ground, the box’s walls suddenly no longer there to support him. He heaved in breaths like a man lost in the desert may gulp freshwater. Greg was there, leaning up against the rock wall, blood spattered and sporting a self satisfied smile. He flashed Peter an apologetic look.
“Sorry about the box mate,” he said. “But it kept you out of harm’s way.”
“I’ll take the harm next time, please. I told you yesterday that I have severe claustrophobia. I was freaking the hell out in there, Greg.”
“Yeah,” Greg said, brushing what looked like a full set of long fingernails off of his leather jacket. They clattered to the ground. “But I’d rather deal with you being a little peeved than Mrs. Mayhew if you were injured.”
Peter, still glaring, considered that. There was certainly wisdom in his reasoning. “What happened?”
“Just a pair of blood suckers. Probably both Rank 1. They weren’t the ones I fought here before, but they did look similar. Maybe they’re related, hard to say. They were probably just some underlings sent here to investigate the alarm you set off yesterday.”
“First, the alarm that we set off.” Peter folded his arms over his chest. He looked around, noticing the blood splattered all over the walls and two vaguely human shaped piles of ash on the ground. “It looks like you won.”
“I did,” Greg agreed, pushing off from the wall. “But if these ones don’t check in soon, there’ll be more. We’ve got a solid eight hours of daylight before they can send anyone, though. Let’s take a look around.”
An ear shaking boom rang out behind them. They turned simultaneously to see that the door they used to enter the tunnel was now nothing but bare stone. Peter and Greg exchanged a look.
“Well…” Peter said, gulping nervously. “8 hours to plan our defense, I guess. Unless you’re stronger than you look and can just shove that block of stone out of the way.”