The gathering people parted with one look at me, long coat charred from the fire, blood and cuts from the fight, and if that wasn’t enough the look anyone received who stood in my way did. I found the break in the guardrail a little over a quarter mile back on the highway. The trail of destruction was so obvious it made tracking the car down simple. It had rolled across the southbound lanes of the road and down a small embankment of trees. The twisted piece of modern technology looked more like a crumpled piece of tin foil than a car.

I ran down the slope as quickly as I was able, the doors had been crushed into the car. I had no idea how long I had been out but for at least that long Lisa and Mara had both been trapped in the car. I could hear voices from inside the wreckage so they were at least still alive but I had no concept of what injuries, if any, they had sustained. I examined the car from every angle and could see Mara, with her strength, had tried to force their way out but with no luck. I needed to get emergency rescue to cut their way out of the car.

“At least try, Hunter…” Holly’s voice was a quiet whisper in the back of my mind. The second after I heard it I convinced myself it was my imagination but still, I heeded its advice. I tried the passenger door, but it had been folded into the car and taken up where the seat inside normally would have been found. I pulled with all my might, calling to those still left inside that I was there so they would know that rescue was on the way.

I ran to the other side and the driver’s door was in a similar shape, its handle was missing so it took me several tries to get a grip on it that would produce any kind of leverage. Time was passing quickly and the voices inside the vehicle had faded to whispers. With my desperation rising I reached for the door, intending to give it all I had one last time… and it popped open all on its own before I even touched it. The door fell away revealing Mara in a crunched-up position surrounded by a bluish glow. Lisa was within the same barrier behind her with a near-panicked look on her face. Mara herself seemed to struggle for breath, her face and forehead bleeding.

“Hunter! Back away from the car, get out of here… give her room!” I took a step back in surprise, I still wanted to help but… “It’s okay Mara, he’s safe, you’re safe, and we’re going to get you out of here now. Hunter BACK OFF!”

Against every instinct in my body, I left them, returning the short way to the highway to wait for them. I took a seat on the side of the road and took inventory of my injuries. All things considered, I was still in pretty good shape… I definitely didn’t feel at all like I had just been in a car accident. When we were partnered together Nate always would tell me the only reason I was still alive was because the devil kept using his Return to Sender stamp.

“But Hunter,” he would say after every close call. “Even his stamp will eventually wear out and you’ll be stuck there.”

I had been sitting there only a few minutes when Lisa came up to me from the wreck. I looked over to her and all the panic had left her face but she still looked a little haggard.

“We’re going to need a new car.” She took a seat next to me. “Twenty minutes talking down a trapped were an inch from wolfing out, not where I thought this day was going. Good times though… lotta… girl talk.”

“Hunter, the rest of the tankers have reached the dam, it’s not looking good for anybody there. You should hurry.” Holly prompted us on.

We had lost more time than we could afford and only stopped one of the trucks, lost our ride and many of our supplies were damaged in the crash. So far when it came to world saving we seemed woefully under-prepared. Still, we ‘borrowed’ a car from one of the gathered crowd and hurried on our way.

~ * ~

We arrived at Hillview Reservoir as fast as an angry werewolf with a lead foot could get us there. What we arrived at, however, was a slasher flick gone horribly wrong. A little side road led off the main road to the main building complexes with a small guard house barring the way. A few uneven piles around the area I could guess were from at least three guards. They were at least aware that something could potentially happen. It was beyond the entrance things got so very much worse.

The entire lot between the buildings was a slaughterhouse. Workers’ bodies were strewn about haphazardly but even worse… the vampires apparently wanted privacy since the pedestrian pathways all around the reservoir itself held the bodies of people that had been trying to get a walk before the sun went down.

People had been torn to pieces just for being present. We walked the last dozen yards to the building, thinking running over the bodies would be disrespectful not to mention noisy. As we approached the building we saw why so much viciousness was used… it was sending a message, in the blood of their many victims, written on the side of the building in blood was ‘Welcome Hunter’.

“I think I seen this movie before.” Lisa wandered among the remains. “It didn’t end well for the people playing us.”

We walked in the doorway expecting more death but it was clean inside. It seemed like they intentionally pulled all the bodies outside before killing them. Mara pulled the Model 500 out from under her jacket, her face saying she most definitely had some stress to work off. Lisa, on the other hand, pulled out a pair of glistening karambit…her eyes grew slightly as a smile appeared on her face. Together, the three of us strode around the corner into a main area.

Inside there were three people, chatting amicably in some foreign language I didn’t recognize. They stopped mid-sentence as we stood there and one of the men… a tall, bald man with scars on his face and a smile that split his face in half. His teeth were filed to points giving him an evil visage even before his fangs extended.

“Well, well, well… Toussard said you might show up here so I couldn’t resist making an appearance.” He stepped towards us at a pace, his arms spread wide in a mockery of the gesture used by so many to show peaceful intent. “Though I have to admit a certain disappointment in the man whose exploits included the slaying of Simone Bellemere, Moldark, Virgil Devonshire, Angelique Du’Flame, and even my own master Godric Coldbane.”

“Those names ring a bell?” Mara glanced over at me with a playful grin.

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“Probably some blood bags I popped along the way, didn’t much stick around and do interviews with the mess they left on the floor. Pretty much as soon as the trigger’s pulled the person on the other end of the sights stops mattering pretty damn effectively.”

The vamp’s head cocked almost violently to the side, making me wonder if he had any neck bones supporting his head. His eyes widened as he seemed to let the madness truly wash over and engulf him. “They will rest easier once I have removed your foul presence from this world! Then they will remember my name, NYX!”

“I won’t even remember it in ten minutes.” I raised my shotgun but Mara was even faster than I was, she squeezed the trigger, and one of the vamp’s heads vanished in an explosion of blood. I fired at Nyx as he charged but he vanished right before my eyes. One second he was there and the next, just shadows.

“You don’t think Toussard would leave this important a job in the hands of so few of us?” The voice came from right behind me, claws with the strength of a pressurized clamp, and lifted me off the ground. “Come on out boys, though I doubt you’ll be needed.” I swung around leveling the butt of the shotgun at where I heard the voice but hit nothing but smoke. A scratching sound seemed to echo through the inside of the building. Lisa looked around from where she had cut down the last vamp that was talking with Nyx. Vampires, dozens of them, came pouring into the room. Some were running, some crawling on the walls and rooftops as they flooded in surrounding us. Lisa threw her head back with the loudest, wild laugh I had heard in my life.

“Told ya this wasn’t gunna end well!” With a shout she dashed into the approaching crowd, slashing left and right with her blades as she disappeared under the press of bodies. I fired, pumping shell after shell through the shotgun, dropping the bloodsuckers one after another until they overran me. I backed away from the rising tide of fangs and began swinging the shotgun wildly like a bat. With no warning, the onslaught ceased, the approaching vampires stopped in their tracks and didn’t move closer.

I didn’t know how long a rest I would get so I began reloading the gun. On looking back I should have known to expect something was up but in the moment all I could think about was my weapon. A claw dug deep into my back, I screamed in pain and swung the weapon desperately at the source. Nyx caught the stock of the weapon in one bloody claw, his grin gleaming in the light. With a vicious backhand, he sent me flying back through the watching vampires to the ground. As Nyx walked down to me, for all purposes seeming a royal about to raise up a pauper from the street I swiped at him with my knife once he was in range but passed through nothing but smoke as he vanished once more.

This time I felt him behind me before he grabbed me and tossed me into the wall. My head met the cement with a loud wet thunk and I heard a roar from nearby. Mara was trying to get to me in full warrior form but she was being weighed down by sheer numbers. I couldn’t help but grin as I stood up and wiped blood from my face. It may be simply the potential concussion but I think I sensed a pattern in his attack. I strode out to meet Nyx once again, taking a ready position. With a grin only a great white shark could love Nyx charged.

I slashed at him, knowing full well he would vanish so I avoided committing my whole body. Almost as soon as I began my strike I changed my momentum, pivoting on my foot and stabbing behind me. As the cocky bald vampire reappeared I drove the blade into his eye. He cried out in surprise clutching at the wound wrenching the knife from my hand. A second later he was gone, the knife clattering to the ground where he had stood. I didn’t have much time to enjoy my cleverness before he showed me just how little he appreciated being struck.

After always teleporting to the exact same place several times in a row and allowing me an opening he wouldn’t make the same mistake. Strikes came in from every direction even above and below, I tried to mitigate the damage but the speed was simply incredible. I considered every block a small victory that was drowned in a rapid series of defeats. I had fought multiple opponents several times before but even then I still felt as if I gave as good as I got, this was just so one-sided it ceased being funny. I let myself run on instinct; reacting to things I couldn’t even identify… dodge, block, duck, move, strike. My fist connected with something, I’ve no idea what… several hits to the head kept me from dwelling on the question.

My vision swam, and blood filled my mouth but I refused to let the bloodsucker knock me down. Then my savior finally arrived in the form of a small, laughing black girl. Lisa kicked Nyx right in the face in the middle of a hit, the surprise on his face was nearly priceless. Two more quick hits from her sent him sailing into a stack of containers, she glanced at me with a grim smile. Her eyes were slitted like a cat’s, and glowing auras encased her legs and hands as she suddenly threw up a peace sign in my direction.

“I told ya before, I can handle shadow thingies by now.” Nyx was getting up from where she had deposited him, he did not look happy. “I’ll take care of Nightcrawler, you help Mara! This is gonna make one ‘ellova story if we live to tell it.”

As she ran to meet baldy I searched quickly for Mara, a dozen vampires were literally climbing her just trying to overwhelm her. Body parts lay twitching all over around her, but it seemed like the vampire’s numbers hadn’t diminished at all. I checked what weapons I had left, just a pistol and a pair of machetes to clear my way through more than a dozen vamps. Now that Nyx was busy with Lisa the ban on fighting me seemed to have been dropped as the monsters advanced once again towards me.

I pulled out the pistol; I had had it specially loaded with hollow-tip silver rounds. It might not kill the vamps outright but they would find it difficult enough fighting us without arms.. or legs. I fired, aiming more to wound than to kill, the bullets would shred internals tearing through limbs and making them unusable. I emptied the entire magazine into the heads and legs of the approaching crowd and only barely thinned it with even more coming. I swung the empty pistol into the face of a vampire, breaking its fangs and thumbing the magazine release as I did. My free hand grabbed the last magazine I had and used it as fist filler for a nasty uppercut to a sucker on the other side of me. I leveled a front kick into the chest of another creature in front of me, kicking it back far enough to slam the magazine into place and put two bullets in it before it hit the ground.

I charged into the thick of the vamps hissing for my blood, rushing towards Mara and shooting anything that got in my way. Once my ammo was exhausted I pulled out the machetes, becoming a whirlwind of blades as I cut into neck after neck. My arms were getting tired from all the fighting but one glance at Mara, bleeding and being the focus of more and more vampires crawling over her. She roared as she peeled one off and broke it like pasta to fit in the pot. She tossed it aside with disdain but another quickly took its place.

Only a few feet away from being able to help her a newly turned kid stepped into my view. You could tell he was new since he wielded a katana-like blade instead of relying on his much more lethal natural weapons like claw and fang. He made a cut towards me, his face beaming with a cocky grin he had done nothing to deserve. I blocked the down strike with one blade and severed the arm holding it with the next. Another strike sent his head to the ground and I plunged both blades into the next target behind him. I cut bloodsuckers down like weeds until I finally reached where Mara struggled.

I cut into one of the vamps, prying it off Mara and slicing into another’s arm. Mara hugged her arms tightly to herself crushing two more in the process. Their numbers finally dwindling we continued to destroy the leeches attached to her. Meanwhile, Lisa continued to duel Nyx, both of them moving at speeds I thought impossible. Lisa would slice at one area and fire at another, many times managing to outmaneuver the teleporting creep. The shadowy vamp was certainly taking the worse of the fight but Lisa was only human. Her guard faltered slightly and in an instant he was behind her, leaning into her ear.

“I’ll bet you smell like strawberries…” He was gone again before she could turn and slash at him once more.