Danny thought that Cal would be very pleased. He surveyed the contents of the trailer that had been backed up to the rear door of the house with no small amount of satisfaction. It was almost fully packed with more supply than Danny could remember ever having stripped from a single mirage. He held his torch up and watched as two men carrying either end of a large dresser appeared from the door and descended the back steps to load it onto the top of the pile.

  "I think that's about it from the two bedrooms." The one named Miguel said through heavy breaths. "Faiz is supposed to be clearing out the last of the stuff in the kitchen, and that will only leave us that room Cory called a 'study'. Lisa and the others are breaking up shelves and stuff in there right now."

  "Great." Danny grinned. "Can't wait to see the look on their faces when we haul all this shit into camp."

  Brian, the second of the two, grunted. "This place is huge. We could've easily spent another day or two emptying it completely. Maybe a week if we did the second floor, too."

  Danny's grin disappeared. "Cal said the second floor's off limits." He said. "That goes for everyone. I know there sure as hell isn't a way he would've told us to leave it alone if there wasn't a damned good reason. If anyone wants to go up there, he can wait 'til the rest of us've left and do it himself."

  The two men carried flashlights rather than torches, but even in the dim and shifting light from their beams Brian's eyes narrowed visibly. "I'm not saying I'm going up there, but if he's wrong about this that's one hell of a big waste. I haven't known him as long as either of you, but I think there's a good chance he's off on that call. I haven't heard anything from upstairs. I don't think there's anything up there that the eleven of us couldn't easily handle."

  Danny only shook his head. He had never taken a huge liking to Brian, and he wasn't exactly sure why. He thought maybe it was the man's clothes. Brian wore black Armani dress pants and a bedraggled white dress shirt complete with an Armani tie. Danny thought it very likely he had arrived in the darkness in a full suit and tie. He looked like the sort of man who thought too much of himself to take any opinion other than his own seriously, and Danny thought this was probably what would get him killed in the end.

  "If you want to go up there, you wait until we're gone." Danny said.

  Miguel had turned back to watch the back doorway thoughtfully. "I think maybe Faiz is taking a nap in there. He hasn't brought out anything the whole time we've been out here, and there isn't anything heavy left in the kitchen."

  Brian snorted. "He's not good for much. If he had ever worked for me, he would've been fired within the first day. Lazy, slow. Pretty much the definition of useless."

  Three torch lights seemed to materialize from nothing as their carriers rounded a back corner of the house and came into Danny's view. Sanchez, Cory, and John were returning from their break to help finish getting the last of the trailer packed.

As the lights approached, Danny turned to Brian. "Talk that kind of shit about Faiz around Sanchez and don't expect me to try to pull him off ya when he decides to beat the hell out of you." He said just loud enough for the other man to hear.

  Brian shrugged with a show of nonchalance, but Danny knew that, for all his confidence, the man would never consider crossing Sanchez. Brian wasn't suicidal. The faces of the three approaching men became visible as they met Danny and the others near the trailer.

  Sanchez spoke with his usual bluntness. "Break's over, guys. Let's get the rest of this mother loaded and get back."

  "Not meaning to slack." Danny said. "I was just thinkin' since everyone was doin' such a good job getting this place stripped and everything that I'd just watch from right here while you finish the job up. You know, try to stay out of the way."

  Sanchez eyed him strangely, and Danny laughed.

  "Or not."

  "Very funny." Sanchez said.

  Cory suddenly held up his hand as if for silence from where he stood. "Wait." He said. "Any ya'll hear that?"

  Miguel shrugged. "It's just the sound of them in there breaking that stuff up so we can move it out. No reason to get spooked, old man."

  Cory shook his head. "No. No, I heard somethin' else. Wasn't that."

  "Shit!" John was suddenly making his way towards the door to the house. "Lisa's in there."

  And then there was no mistaking the sound as a shrill, high-pitched scream ripped through the air. Danny was moving before he had even registered the noise for what it was. He entered the house behind John at a full run, the machete at his waste jumping to his hand in one seamless motion. Sanchez and the others followed closely, more than one of their torches extinguished by the sudden, fast movement.

  "Lisa! Where are you? Godammit!" John was half yelling, half screaming as he barreled through rooms at random, apparently not sure in what direction to run but determined to reach whatever destination before it was too late. Danny didn't have time to grab John as he turned towards the corridor that led to the large study.

  "Follow me!" He was shouting, but he could barely hear his own voice over the other man's. "John! Follow me, I know which way."

  The study loomed ahead of him and Danny struggled to keep his torch low as it fought to continue burning, but it was finally snuffed out as he dashed through the doorway. The darkness wasn't complete - there was light in the room already, and Danny stopped cold as his eyes took in the site presented to him. A hulking figure stood with its back to him. It held a torch in its left hand, and what looked to be the motionless body of a man wrapped tightly in its right arm. Smooth, pale white skin rippled over an impossibly muscular frame. The creature was tall enough so as to be forced to hunch slightly beneath the room's ceiling -- its long, black hair resting against the pine paneling above it. Although it resembled a man in many ways, Danny had no question that it wasn't human. Its back was far too wide, its bare feet and legs sporting far too many unknown striations and muscle groupings. The man wrapped in the thing's arm was completely limp as he dangled a foot above the floor. There was movement from a corner of the room only a few yards from where the creature stood, and Danny realized there was a second person crouched in the shadows. Judging from her size alone, he guessed it to be Lisa.

  Danny yelled wordlessly at the top of his lungs and raised the machete in his hand. The creature turned incredibly fast, the legs of the man it held swinging crazily in the air as it did so. It's eyes flashed pale red in the torchlight, and its face -- remarkably human in its features -- glistened wetly. Blood ran down the thing's cheeks and dripped thickly from its chin. It had been feeding.

  It spoke, and again Danny found himself hesitating. Stunned.

  "Why are you here?" It asked in an almost conversational tone. Its voice was low and somehow soothing, its face flawlessly chiseled in appearance. Danny struggled to fight a sudden urge to drop the weapon he held and simply attempt to talk with it. For a moment his mind was incapable of remembering why he had been ready to charge the creature, but some form of logic returned when Lisa sprang from the corner with an ear splitting shriek. A large knife flashed dully as she swung the blade into the thing's back with the full force of her weight thrown behind it, and the creature hissed, its mouth opening to reveal saliva-coated fangs. Danny had seen enough horror films to recognize the site of a vampire's maw. He threw the extinguished torch he held at the things head and charged across the room. He had time to swing his machete once and feel it hit flesh before he crashed headlong into the creature's chest. Then there was pain, and he was weightless as he felt his body lifted and swung effortlessly into a wall fully across the room in one incredibly fast blur.

Danny saw someone entering the study from the corner of his eye as he fell to the floor. He pulled himself up quickly, and turned to see Miguel charging the vampire in much the same manner as he himself had only moments earlier. Miguel had much less success. The tip of the sharpened wooden pike he carried missed widely as the creature turned with incredible speed to avoid it, then dropped the man it had been feeding upon to the floor and reached with one fluid motion to grab Miguel by one shoulder and lift him. Miguel struggled vainly to free himself from its grip, and Danny's eyes shifted to Lisa.

  She had backed away from the vampire, but seemed unable to pull her gaze from it.

  "Lisa!" Danny hoped his yell would reach her over the sound of Miguel's screams. "Run! Get out of the goddamned room now!"

  Lisa turned to him and seemed to have to shake herself from a type of semi-trance before finally moving. She bolted quickly across the room and passed Danny as she fled the study. He turned his attention back to the vampire, but it was too late for Miguel. The vampire's open mouth now rested against Miguel's neck. The man’s eyes stared emptily towards the ceiling, and his head lulled back limply. Danny realized that -- strangely -- the vampire still held out the torch it had taken from its previous victim, as if keeping the room lit purposely. Danny struggled with the idea of charging the creature a second time in some type of attempt at freeing Miguel, but instinctively knew it would be a vain, and possibly suicidal, gesture. The vampire had thrown him aside before with far too much ease, and even the cut Danny had sliced across the creature’s chest had already begun to close. The vampire was an immortal, and Miguel was too far gone.

  As if it understood Danny's choice, the vampire raised its head from feeding and spoke a second time. "Take those you came with and leave." It said - its gaze fastened intently on Danny. "Leave now or you will all die."

  Danny sidestepped to the doorway and backed from the room without taking his eyes from the creature until it was out of view. He felt a hand on his shoulder and turned as he heard Sanchez's voice behind him in the darkened hallway.

  "Miguel?" The man asked him.

  "No." Danny said. "Miguel's dead. Don't go in there. If there was any chance of savin' him I'd go with you, but there isn't. I saw him. There's a fuckin' vampire in there. It said to get everyone the hell out of this house. I don't think we can kill it. Me and Lisa sliced it up pretty bad and it was already healin'. We've got to get the hell out of this place now."

  Danny could feel the hesitation on Sanchez's part, could hear the big man breathing heavily with exertion and knew he was eyeing the dim light from the study.

  "Goddammit, Sanchez." Danny moved to sidestep him. "If you go in there you'll die. Miguel's already gone. There ain't no fuckin' point in it. We get everyone and we get the hell out of here and we keep anyone else from gettin' killed. Let's go!"

  Danny didn't wait for a response before he was running blindly down the hallway, but he heard Sanchez behind him. He could hear other voices, could hear other footsteps from nearly every direction.

  "Everyone get out of the house!" He was yelling as he navigated the darkness from memory. "Get out of the goddamned house!"

  He tore through the den and was finally able to see light as he entered the foyer; John stood just inside the front door with his torch still bright.

  "I don't know how many went out the back way, but Lisa 'n Brian are already out and running back towards camp." John said quickly. "I think Cory and a few of them are still in there, though. Lisa said it's a damned vampire. For all we know there could be a dozen of them. They could try to follow us. I've got to stay with her."

  John was looking to Danny and Sanchez as if for understanding.

  "Go with her." Danny encouraged him. "We'll stay long enough to get the others."

  John nodded and handed his torch to Sanchez before dashing from the house and into the blackness.

  Sanchez turned to Danny. "We have to ensure everyone makes it out. I'll meet you at the beacon. Stay alive, boy." And then the mountainous man was running from the foyer back into the bowels of the house before Danny could mount another objection.

Danny waited in the darkened foyer a moment as he listened for sound from the other rooms. He could hear yells and shouted curses as men without light attempted to find their way out of the stripped building, but his attention was strangely drawn towards something else. Danny could see a light from above the staircase at the foyer's opposite side. It seemed to him that it had brightened considerably since the time he first saw it, and somehow he knew.

  Someone had gone upstairs.

                      

  The sound was low at first - less audible even than the sound of his hand against the staircase banister as he climbed. Chris could make out only a continuous series of tones that slowly became stronger as he neared the top of the steps. He reached the second floor and paused as he held his torch to illuminate down both directions of the hallway that crossed him. The walls of the hallway were lined with more framed photographs, but it was the site of the floor that sped his heartbeat enough that it seemed he could feel each beat pulsing in his chest. The thick carpeting was piled with bones that had been pushed against the walls and railing leading to the stairs -- many unrecognizable to him, but some easily labeled as human. Skulls and rib cages were the simplest to pick out among them, and Chris fought to keep himself from trying to take count of how many he could see amongst the piles of remains. Beyond the bones he could see the source of the strange pink light at one end of the hallway. The light was escaping from a door that stood slightly cracked open, the room it led to seeming to also be the source of the tones he was hearing.

  Chris felt strangely detached from his surroundings as he began to walk towards the door. Bones snapped loudly beneath his feet as he picked his footing through them with lessening regard at the realization that there was no way to avoid them. The pictures that hung in neatly organized arrangements along the walls were of the same small family that he had seen in the den -- a set of perpetually smiling parents and their three children. He glanced at them only briefly, his attention rapt on the doorway framed in soft glow. He approached it and pushed the door in slowly.

  Chris shielded his eyes as light flooded out from the room to encase him. What had been only barely audible melodic tones to his ears before became a soft lullaby as the room was opened to him, and he recognized the tune.

  "Is she asleep?" Chris peered down into the darkened crib.

  Laura rested her hand on his back gently as he leaned over their daughter. "Shhh." She whispered. "I think so, but you're going to wake her up. If you do it's your turn to hold her until she goes back to sleep."

  She reached out and flipped the small switch on the baby mobile and it began to rotate slowly above the crib, emitting a simple melodic tune. Laura mouthed the first few verses beneath her breath. Less than a whisper, but Chris could still make out some of the words.

  "Hush little baby, don't say a word, Mama's gonna buy you a mockingbird. If that mockingbird don't sing, Mama's going to buy you a diamond ring..."

  Chris lowered his hand as his eyes adjusted, and his breath caught.

  A small girl sat cross-legged on the floor near the room's center. She held a doll in one hand, and a tiny dress in the other. The girl seemed strangely unaware of the fact that he had opened the door to her room.

  Christ. He thought. Am I really seeing this?

  It was a bedroom clearly decorated with a very young girl in mind, its walls painted a light pink and detailed with childish paintings of clouds and rainbows. Chris stepped onto the white carpeting slowly, not wanting to frighten the child as he entered. A wide collection of toys lay scattered across the floor. He searched the room for the source of the odd pink light, but was puzzled to find that the main light fixture in the room appeared to have gone out where it hung at the ceiling's center.

  A small lamp in one corner was a limited source of soft light, but provided little else. The pink-hued luminescence appeared to emanate from everywhere, yet – inexplicably -- nowhere, within the room. A large, curtained window near a play kitchen that stood against one wall revealed how the light had been visible from outside the home. His eyes found a small jewelry box atop a dresser near the room's plushly covered bed, and Chris realized it was the source of the music he heard.

  You've totally lost it, old man. Senility's hit a little early, and it's hit hard. He thought. You can't be seeing this. You can't be seeing it because this entire scene doesn't make any kind of sense. The pink light from nowhere, the bones in the hallway outside the room. A girl left alone in a perfect room in a far less perfect house in the middle of a black abyss. If you ever wrote a story describing the things you’ve seen in just the past few hours you’d be locked away in a straight jacket.

  Chris realized the girl was talking, and walked gently to crouch near her. She seemed to be speaking to the doll where she had lain it in her lap.

  "You can wear this. It's pretty, see?" The girl held the small dress up to the doll as if showing it to her. Chris was surprised that she still seemed completely oblivious to his presence. He spoke gently.

  "Hi." He said simply.

  The girl looked up curiously, her face completely devoid of surprise at his voice. Chris recognized her. She was the younger of the two girls he had seen in the photographs on the walls in the house.

  "Hi." She said. And then she smiled at him. "Want to play?"

  Her smile was infectious, and Chris couldn't help but return it. He tried not to see his daughter's face when he looked at her, but it was impossible not to. She had the same sparkle in her eyes, the same baby fat on her cheeks. Chris guessed her to be about 4 or 5 years old - only slightly older than she had appeared in most of the pictures he had seen of her.

  "Sure." He found himself saying. "What are you playing?"

  The girl held out the doll in one small hand for him to see.

A case of theft: this story is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.

  "This is Kay-wee." She told him with no small amount of joy. Chris couldn't quite make out the pronunciation.

  "Carrie?" He asked.

  The girl shook her head cutely. "Noooo. Her name is Kay-wee." She stated earnestly.

  "Kaylei?" Chris asked.

  "Yep." The girl nodded.

  God, please don't do this to me. Chris thought. I don't know if I can take this. She's too much like Sarah. She's too much like my little girl.

  "Sorry. I meant Kaylei." He said. His voice had become softer; he was speaking the way he always had when playing with Sarah. "What's your name?"

  "Amber." She nearly shouted the name in her effort to pronounce the "m" in it correctly. "What's that?" She pointed to the torch Chris held, her eyebrows furrowed in puzzled curiosity.

  "It's - " Chris cut his sentence short as a scream pierced the air. He turned quickly to look back out the room's door as if it might have come from just behind him in the hallway, but he knew it had come from downstairs. Something had gone wrong. He turned back to the little girl he now knew to be named Amber, surprised again that she seemed unaffected by the sound. She walked her doll across the floor to sit in a small plastic chair, but seemed to become bored with the game and stood suddenly. She looked at him and threw her hands together as her face lit up.

  "Do you want to watch a moo-bie?" She asked excitedly.

  Chris remembered seeing the same hand gesture in the picture he had seen of her in the den, and a wave of indecisiveness hit him. He had to take her with him; he had to take her with him because he couldn't leave her alone in that room.

  But what would I be taking her to? He asked himself. A long walk in the dark? A camp full of people she doesn't know in the middle of nowhere?

  Amber had walked over to a nightstand and turned on a small white television with a built-in VCR that sat facing the bed. She pushed a button below the screen and clapped again as the screen suddenly lit up to display the opening to a cartoon.

  "See?" She looked back to Chris. "Come on, you can see the moo-bie too."

  Amber walked back to him, grabbed one hand, and began tugging him in the direction of the bed. Chris was able to hear more yelling and loud movement from downstairs, but was unable to make out anything that was being said. He knew something was wrong. He knew he needed to move. He needed to get the girl and himself to someplace safe, but it seemed almost cruel to take her from her small sanctuary. She seemed unaware of the insanity that surrounded her -- that lay just outside her bedroom door - and Chris didn't want to be the one to force her to have to see it. He allowed himself to be dragged across the bedroom as he struggled with badly limited options. Amber climbed up onto the bed and patted the space beside her as she watched the small TV.

  "This moo-bie is good, huh?" She asked him.

  Chris nodded distractedly as he watched her. Time seemed to have slowed for him as he sat in deadlock, unable to force himself to move. Amber had begun to sing along softly with a song in the cartoon that she seemed to have memorized most of the words to. There was noise from the hallway outside the bedroom and Chris turned as the sound of bones being crushed under foot became unmistakable. He stood quickly and, for the first time since being handed it, found himself considering his torch as a weapon. Something was coming towards the room. It was impossible to make out anything from the darkness beyond the door until only a few brief moments before a shape emerged into the room's light.

  Danny held his arm up to shield his eyes. "Chris?" He asked. "Chris, man, we have to go. We've got to get the hell out of this house. We don't have any time."

  He stepped into the room cautiously, almost as if he didn't trust what he was seeing. Chris realized he had been holding his breath and exhaled unsteadily.

  "You scared the-" Chris caught himself and looked down at Amber. She was still completely engrossed in the bright colors flashing across the screen in front of her. "You scared the crap out of me."

  "I don't really have any time to explain." There was urgency in Danny's voice, and for the first time Chris noticed the blotches of red that spotted the front of the man’s shirt. They hadn't been there when the two parted after entering the house.

  "We just have to go." Danny said, his eyes finding the girl as he lowered his arm. "We have to get out of this place. Now."

  "This is Amber." Chris said. "We have to take her with us. We can't leave her."

  Danny watched the girl for a moment, thoughtfully. "What if she ain't supposed to go?" He asked.

  Chris frowned, his eyebrows narrowing. "What do you mean?"

  "I mean what if she's supposed to stay right here?" Danny met his stare evenly. "What if she's been here a long time, and ain't meant to go anywhere else? We've got to hurry and get out of here, but I don't think we'll make it out of this house alive if we try to take her. You haven't been in this world very long, so I know you might not believe me if I told you what was downstairs, but I think you should trust me on this one, man. There's something in this house that's protecting her. I think Cal knew it. He told us not to come up here, and I think it was 'cause of her -- Amber there." He nodded at the girl.

  Chris was shaking his head. "No. I don't think I'm getting you, but I know we can't just leave her here. That's insane."

  "Man, you've got to just trust me on this." There was a look of understanding on Danny's face, but also of urgent resolve. "Looks to me like she's been left where she'll be happy. I don't know if she's real or not, but I think someone took the time to leave this room for her. We don't need to take her away from it - she'll be fine here. Just trust me on this and let's go. You've got to listen to me. We won't be able to take her with us. We'd die tryin'."

  Chris couldn't believe what he was hearing. "What do you mean you don't know if she's real? We have to take her with us. Who's going to feed her and take care of her here?"

  Danny was shaking his head. "You haven't seen enough to understand what I'm saying." He said. "Do you need to be fed? When was the last time you got hungry in this place?"

  There was another piercing scream from another part of the house. The urgency in Danny's voice took on an almost pleading tone.

  "There's already something here to protect her." He said. "We have to leave her if we want to make it out of here alive."

  Chris watched Amber for a moment. The girl still didn't seem to have realized that Danny was even in the room, didn't seem to be bothered by the noises coming from the rest of the house. Chris knew he was seeing things he didn't understand; somehow knew there was more to the little girl and her impossible room than he was able to see. The music box on the dresser still played its tune flawlessly. Somehow there was no doubt in his mind that the box never needed to be wound up. He made the hardest choice he had ever made.

  "Goodbye, Amber." He whispered the words beneath his breath so they wouldn't carry. They were more for him than her.

  The girl was completely engrossed in the cartoon she watched. She didn't notice as Chris turned to follow Danny out of the room. He closed the door behind him without allowing himself to look back, and paused as his eyes struggled to adjust to the sudden return to darkness.

  "She'll be ok." Danny said softly.

  "God help us if we're wrong." Chris followed him as he navigated the hallway back to the staircase, bones crunching loudly with protest as his boots crushed them beneath. "I sure as hell don't know that I have anything better to take her to."

  The two men descended the stairs quickly. The house had gone silent once again, and Danny stopped to listen only briefly before exiting the house through the front door, muttering something beneath his breath about it being too late. The site of the familiar light in the distance was a sort of comfort as they began to run again. Smaller points of light were visible in small groupings as well, and Chris guessed them to be the lights of the others who had left the house ahead of him and Danny.

  "Looks like they got a head start on us." Chris said through heavy breaths as he quickened his pace to keep up with the bigger man.

  "The ones that made it out." Danny answered grimly.

  "What happened?" Chris asked.

  "We just need to hurry." Danny said. "We've got to move fast in case we're being followed. You wouldn't believe me unless you'd seen it yourself."

  Chris found he didn't doubt the man.

  They were greeted by voices as they approached the fire that had served so well as a beacon but was once again dimming as it slowly burned through its fuel.

  "Danny!" John greeted Danny with a fast bear hug. "Fuck, man. You had me worried."

  "You know better than to worry about me." Danny chided. "We need to hurry, though. Get as far from that damned house as we can as quick as we can."

  "I'm with Danny on that one." Sanchez's voice boomed from where he stood near the trailer. "It's bad enough we lost everything we had loaded up back there, but I don't want to lose this shit. Let's get this mother moving. No way Sanchez is going back to camp empty handed."

  Danny scanned the camp and turned back to John. "Who isn't here?"

  The question was weighted, and John paused before answering. "Cory didn't make it out. Sanchez got here with Brian, Jean, and Terrance. Looks like we might've lost everyone else."

  Danny looked as if he had been delivered a blow. "Cory's still not here?" He turned as if ready to return to the house, but John grabbed one arm to slow him.

  "He's gone, Danny." He said. "Sanchez told us so. You can't save him."

  Danny twisted suddenly from John's grip with a loud, wordless yell. He threw his torch to the ground.

  "Goddamnit!" He spat. "Goddamn it to hell."

  "Danny?" Lisa approached him with one hand held out as if to soothe him. "Danny, it's going to be ok."

  Danny dropped to both knees and Chris wasn't certain, but it appeared as if he had begun to sob.

  Lisa rested a hand on one large, shaking shoulder. "It's going to be ok. I'm so sorry, Danny."

  Chris turned as Sanchez spoke loudly. "We need to go." He hopped down from where he had been securing items atop the trailer and walked over to where Danny knelt. "I need your help. We need you, boy. I lost a friend, too. Faiz didn't make it out. Cory and him will be missed by all of us, but we have no choice but to let them rest. As always, we keep going. There's no other choice, at least not for us. We'll die before we give up our fight."

  He grabbed one of Danny's hands and helped pull him to his feet. "I'm sorry, boy. I was there, and I fought for him. But I couldn't protect him."

  Danny only nodded silently. He followed Sanchez to the front of the trailer. Sanchez removed his shoes -- tossing them into the trailer -- and Danny followed suit, removing his boots.

  "Let's go." Sanchez said. He had grabbed two of the four straps that were tied to the front end of the trailer and was securing them around his waist and chest. Danny did the same with the other two straps. Lisa, John, and the other remaining three men mounted two torches on either side of the trailer and extinguished the rest. They took up positions behind the trailer, and Chris joined them as he realized that they intended to push while Danny and Sanchez pulled. He put out his light reluctantly to free up his hands. It seemed an almost laughable idea that they would be able to move the trailer in that manner. It was stacked with as much as they had been able to pack onto it, but as the two large men yelled and strained against their straps the wheels reluctantly began to turn. Those pushing at the back needed to work less and less as the trailer picked up speed.

  It seemed an impossible effort, but Danny and Sanchez had actually begun a slow, labored jog within only a few minutes. They shouted back and forth between themselves, egging each other on, and at some point took the full weight of the trailer between them as the group behind the wagon quit one by one when they were unable to continue pushing. The light in the distance that marked the camp had become their goal, and somehow the weight to which they were tethered slowed them less and less as they neared it.

  Chris realized that, for them, it was almost as if they were going home.

                              

  The vampire, Gat, stood over his Creator and forced himself to relive his Mistake once again. His Sin, and more, his Failure.

  She lay motionless where she rested -- just as she had for countless decades. Her flesh had long since left her bones bare, but Gat could still see the full, vibrant features of her face in his mind's eye as clearly as when she had been alive. She had always been beautiful to him.

  Gat stood in the darkness, his red eyes needing no light to provide him with flawless vision of the scene before him . He saw that the book she had held for so long had been taken from her hand and placed on the recliner's cushioned armrest. One of the intruders had dared to move it. He worked his jaw in grinding circles as his anger built at the thought that his Creator's rest had been disturbed, and finally tilted his head back and roared aloud, his fangs spreading impossibly wide as he vented his rage. He hated what the intruders had done, but he hated himself more still. Gat hated himself because he had been weak. He had been weak and had given in to his bloodlust in his weakness. He had damned himself eternally, he had failed in his Purpose.

  He had killed his own Creator so long ago in a moment of frailty that he would be forced to remember again and again. He wouldn't allow himself to forget. Gat forced himself to see the break in her neck, forced himself to see where the bones had been snapped just as he had thousands of times before. He would never allow himself to forget. He had just feasted and blood still ran from the corners of his mouth. He had feasted -- no, gorged -- on the blood of the intruders for what they had done. A drained corpse hung limply from his left hand. He would take it upstairs as he always did. He would take them upstairs to add to his Collection. He would put back as much of what the intruders had attempted to steal as he could, and he would restore his Creator's home as well as he was able.

  Gat reached for the paperback that had been moved and gently raised one of his Creator's bony hands to rest the book beneath it just as it had been before. A tear ran down his cheek, and he caressed the hollow of her skull where he could still see the flesh of her cheek despite it having long ago disappeared. He whispered a prayer for her, and finally allowed himself to turn from her bones. Reaching down he lifted the television opposite her chair from the floor and placed it back atop its stand easily with one free hand. Gat switched it on. One of his Creator's favorite game shows was airing, and he allowed himself a small smile. She would be happy; it was on at just the right time. She had always been in the habit of falling asleep midway through it while the Child was taking her nap. He left his Creator there in the den and carried the corpse he held with him upstairs, his movements impossibly fast.

  Gat moved quietly upon reaching the second floor. He laid the corpse atop one of the smaller piles of bones in the corridor, and levitated himself above the floor so as not to disturb the other remains that littered the length of the carpet on his way to the Child's room. The hallway had become a type of shrine, the bones its sacred objects.

  The familiar sound of a lullaby greeted him as he pushed the door to her room open and entered to find her sitting atop her bed, her attention rapt on her small television set. He sat on the bed beside her and watched with her until the cartoon ended.

  "It's night-night time, Princess." He said softly. He called her Princess because it had been what her Creator -- their shared Creator -- had often called her. "It's time to get some sleep."

  "Ok." The girl said. She climbed down from the bed and stepped over to switch off the TV before climbing back up and resting her head on one large goose-down pillow. "Goodnight, Gat."

  A smile touched the corner of Gat's mouth upon hearing her say his name. He had chosen the name for himself because it had been the first syllable he had ever heard the girl speak. He watched her for a few minutes after she closed her eyes. Her breathing had slowed; she had fallen asleep quickly. Gat had taught himself how to read less than a dozen years after his Creator's death, and he had read her diary. It had spoken of a little girl named Amber, but not the same Amber that was asleep on the bed beside him – of this he was almost sure. The Creator had spoken of a little girl who had sometimes screamed and cried and thrown fits, but Amber had never done any of those things. The Creator had also spoken of having two other children, but she had only attempted to recreate the one. Gat thought that perhaps she hadn't realized that she had created Amber at all, that perhaps this had been the reason she wrote of not understanding why the little girl sometimes behaved strangely. She had written that sometimes she thought Amber seemed to be missing something -- something important. And so Gat often found himself watching her and wondering what that important something might have been. He sat and wondered for a few moments more then, but the mystery eluded him just as it always had. He reached down and pulled the covers up over the little girl, and lightly kissed her forehead in much the same way that he had done every other "night-night" time for nearly a hundred years.

  The light in the room went out of its own accord, and Gat left the room quietly to the sound of a lullaby he knew every word to by heart.

                        

  They were greeted with smiles and unadulterated excitement by those who came out to meet them from the camp, despite the fact that they returned four men short of the number that had gone out. It was apparent to Chris that those who stayed behind and didn't venture out to the mirage seemed to have expected this, as if losing a small handful of their own was a common or accepted trade-off for a load of firewood and supplies. Cal approached Danny grimly. He was one of the few among them who -- if elated at the mere sight of the loaded-down trailer -- didn't show it.

  "What happened?" He asked. "Is this all who will be returning?"

  Danny held up his hand as if to ask for a moment to catch his breath and allowed Lisa to help him remove the straps that held him to the trailer.

  "We lost the others." He said through heavy breaths. "There was a vampire protecting the house."

  Cal took a moment to absorb this as Danny reached into the trailer and returned his boots to his feet. Chris struggled to determine if Danny was serious in his description of what had happened, but saw no reason to believe he was joking.

  A vampire? He thought. Are we all suffering from mass hallucinations of some kind? What the hell happened in that house?

  Cal finally nodded slowly. "Did anyone go upstairs?" He asked, his eyes locking then on Danny's with a strange intensity.

  There was no hesitation on Danny's part before he answered. "No. The vampire was downstairs."

  Cal said nothing, his stare remaining focused on Danny. The silence became uncomfortable until a boy of about ten or eleven walked out to join the group where they stood just outside the outer edge of the camp. He stopped beside Cal and eyed the others warily. The boy's hair was a matted and tangled mess that gave him a certain wild look when combined with his skittish, nervous movement.

  "Candy?" He asked quickly, the question almost barked rather than said. He looked up at Cal hopefully.

  Cal grimaced. "Get back near the fire, boy. When I have something for you I'll bring it to you."

  The boy's disappointment was obvious, but he returned to the camp after eyeing the others once more. Chris thought he might have imagined it, but it had seemed that the kid paused when his eyes came to Chris -- his nostrils flaring slightly and his mouth twitching as if with agitation. Chris recognized him. He had seen the boy before leaving the camp. The boy had been sitting near the fire not far from where Chris had first awakened and spoken with Cal.

  Cal looked apologetic. "I'm not sure if I've introduced you to Triht." He spoke to Chris in explanation. "He's traveled with me for a long time, now -- one of the only children I've ever found who was actually born within Nightscape and survived to be his age. His parents are gone, so I've kept him with me, but he has rather strange needs. No one is to give him anything. Food, water. Anything he receives must go through me."

  He directed the instructions to Chris, but was speaking to everyone in the group. "I'm sure everyone else is already aware of the importance of this." Cal suddenly smiled widely -- an expression that Chris found to fit him strangely -- and looked to Danny.

  "Let's get this bounty unloaded and celebrate a job well done." He said. "Our fallen companions would wish it."

  There was a low half-cheer from the rest of the group, and they began pulling items from the trailer and grouping them on the ground to be inventoried. Chris approached Danny.

  "A vampire?" He asked lowly enough that only Danny would be able to hear him. "What happened back there? And was I responsible for any of it?"

  Danny looked around nervously before answering under his breath. "Just don't bring that shit up again, man. You ain't been here long enough to know some of the things you should, and I told you you wouldn't believe me unless you had seen it. There's a lot you still ain't seen yet, but you'll get your chance soon enough. Just don't bring up that shit again - for your own sake. Don’t tell anyone you went upstairs in that damned house."

  He turned back to the task at hand, leaving Chris with his questions. Chris found that he was fast becoming used to the frustration he felt at being unable to answer the majority of them. He jumped up onto the trailer's railing and helped grab one end of a dresser that a few of the men were attempting to lift out. The work was welcome, and for a little while, at least, he allowed himself to forget the questions that lingered without answer.