Robert sat on the edge of a bed in his quarters, looking at a photo in his hands despondently. He sat alone for a few moments until someone standing at the door tapped on the wall. Robert looked up to see Jamar.

“Hey,” said Jamar. “You okay?”

Robert hesitated to answer, “I’m thinking about dropping out.”

Jamar, concerned, walked over to stand by the bed and looked over Robert’s shoulder at the photo. It showed a woman and seven children of varying ages.

“Wife and kids?” asked Jamar.

Robert nodded, “It’s just…I’m worried that if things go wrong…I won’t be there for them.”

Jamar nodded, “I can’t tell you what to do, Robert. All I know is that we’ll need all the help we can get when all of this is done.”

Robert looked up.

“That being said,” said Jamar hesitantly. “I know exactly how you feel right now.”

Jamar clapped Robert on the shoulder and left. Robert watched him go and then looked over at the empty bed across from him. Among the belongings by that bed was another photo. This one was of Harry in a group with other soldiers. No one had come to take away Harry’s belongings now that he was dead, but the other side of the room felt empty to Robert, nonetheless.

###

“So, what made you change your mind about werewolves?” asked Hayden.

“We lost,” said Marcia. “And badly. Suddenly a giant wolf that can rip apart vampires for you seems like a pretty appealing partner.”

Marcia and Hayden sat in a werewolf training room surrounded by Night Hunters on guard. Marcia couldn’t help but feel a little intimidated by the idea that this woman was a werewolf. She’d seen the footage of these creatures and they were no laughing matter in wolf form. At this point, however, she was willing to try anything.

“Say,” said Marcia. “They told me that the last person they tried to partner you with was my previous roommate, Alice Hayes.”

Hayden nodded, “Yeah. She was really nice. We talked about our favorite romance movies.”

Marcia shrugged, “I’m more into historical dramas myself.”

“Oh, cool,” said Hayden before she sighed. “I heard that Alice…well…you know.” Hayden sighed and looked away. “I hope she’s okay.”

Yeah, thought Marcia, me too.

###

Alice lay alone on a bed in the mansion, feeling weak from a loss of blood. She had two new puncture marks on her neck from where Victor had bitten her, and she could barely feel the marks tingling as she tried to stay awake. Victor had already left to continue his business, and Alice felt a small morsel of relief that he was gone. She desperately wanted to think of an escape plan, but her head was swimming, and she almost nodded off a few times. She desperately didn’t want to fall asleep.

With sleep came dreams.

Around her the room was dark, but as exquisite as when Victor was present. The illusion hadn’t faded since he left, and Alice feared what that meant. Despite not wanting to see the illusory room, she wanted to close her eyes even less. No matter how hard Alice tried, however, she just couldn’t keep her eyes open, and inevitably slipped into a deep sleep.

In her dream, Alice found herself in the backyard of her old house. It was a hot summer day, and a bright blue sky was broken up only by a burning sun. Alice looked around curiously until she saw two people playing in the backyard. Little Arthur, catching a baseball before throwing it back to their father. The two figures threw the baseball back and forward for a moment or two, and Alice watched, a nostalgic tear running down her cheek. A moment later, Alice noticed someone else in the backyard with them.

An adult Arthur Hayes, covered in cross tattoos where skin showed, stood stoically watching his younger self throwing a baseball with his father.

“This was the memory that saved me,” said the adult Arthur. “The one memory she couldn’t completely get rid of.”

Alice swallowed, “You mean Jacqueline.”

“I’m afraid so,” said Arthur, turning to face her. “I’m sorry, but that’s what I was trying to tell before we were attacked.”

“Why didn’t you say anything before?”

“Jacqueline had already been working with the Night Hunters for a while when I joined,” said Arthur. “When I first found out that they were working with a vampire I lost my temper, yelling and screaming that they were all insane. I didn’t think a vampire could be trusted under any circumstances, let alone an elder vampire. They shut me down, of course, and it was later that I found out which vampire they were working with.

“By that point, however, I knew they weren’t going to listen to me, so I kept my mouth shut. I’d already made it unlikely that I’d be allowed in the same room as her, so I wasn’t going to remove the possibility entirely by telling them that she was the one who took me. Then I’d never get my chance to,” he hesitated. “Well…I’m sure you can guess.”

Alice could guess what he wanted to do to her, and he couldn’t blame him for it. After all this time, Alice had thought Jacqueline was a friend, but now all Alice could feel was an overwhelming sense of betrayal. Tears welled up in her eyes, and she buried her face in her hands. A moment later, she could feel Arthur embracing her, and she leaned into him.

“Alice,” said Arthur. “I’m sorry. I should have told you the truth from the beginning. Jacqueline is just using us. I promise you that. I’m only thankful you were able to use her right back.”

He pulled away long enough to wipe the tears from Alice’s eyes.

“Alice, you saved our cousin,” said Arthur. “And gave the Night Hunters the vampires’ location. There’s still hope we can beat them.”

Alice shook her head, “I don’t know. It was Jacqueline who taught me to fight in the mental world, but I can’t reach that knowledge now. I just don’t know if I can hold on long enough for them to save us. And…and I know he has a hold on me, even in your memories.”

She could sense it, even now. A chain wrapped around her ankle that led out of Arthur’s mental world. Victor seemed distracted now, but she wasn’t free from him. He could pull her to him whenever he wanted.

“I didn’t have the knowledge you had,” said Arthur. “And I managed to resist it. You can too, you just need to have faith.”

“Faith?” said Alice skeptically. “Faith in what? That God will save me?”

Arthur shook his head, “No, Alice. God isn’t going to solve your problems for you. That’s just not how he works. If anything, he expects you to do the right thing even in the most dire of circumstances. At best he’ll point you in the right direction, but you have to make the choice to start walking. No matter how long and how difficult the road is, once you’re certain of what the right path is, you need the faith to keep following it. That’s what I mean by Faith, Alice, the strength to follow what you believe in no matter how difficult it may be.

“In this case, Alice, there’s no question what the right thing is. When that moment comes, when you are forced to choose between reclaiming your humanity or succumbing to the bloodlust, you know what you must do. These vampires will try to convince you that being human is nothing but pain and suffering, but you have to have faith that life is worth living in spite of it all. If you don’t, you’ll become something that causes pain and suffering.”

Alice felt herself tear up some more, “I don’t know if I can. What if I can’t remember anything?”

“You can,” said Arthur firmly. “I know you can.”

“How? How can you know that?”

“I grew up with you, remember?” said Arthur. “When you want to be, you’re every bit as stubborn as I am.”

Alice, even through her tears, couldn’t help but laugh, just a little. Arthur smiled at her for a moment, then his face grew serious.

“You can do this, Alice,” he said. “You just have to hold onto a memory. Any memory. The easiest ones to hold onto will be related to that symbol. You know the one.”

Alice looked over at the image of their father still throwing a baseball to Arthur. From around their father’s neck hung the silver cross. Alice almost instinctively reached for it around her own neck, but she found nothing. She remembered Victor throwing it away at the mansion, but of course this was a mental world. She probably didn’t have it because he didn’t want her to, yet there it was, right in Arthur’s memory, an image poisonous to vampires.

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“How well do you remember Dad?” she asked.

“Barely,” said Arthur. “Most of it’s just random flashes and images. This was the only clear memory I had left when…the vampire was through clearing out my mind. It was enough, though. It just knew that if I gave in and just accepted being a vampire then this memory would be gone, that I’d lose something I just knew was important to me.”

Alice looked at Arthur, a small glint of hope in her eye.

Suddenly the chain around her ankle started tugging. Alice felt herself pulled back.

“Arthur!” she said, trying to stand still.

“Alice!” said Arthur, grabbing her hand. “Hold onto any memory you can! It only takes one but hold onto any memory you can! You have to remember something! Anything! Alice! You have to remember!”

The chain constantly tugged, and Alice felt a tear escape her eye, “Arthur, I’m scared.”

“I know,” said Arthur. “I know. Be strong, Alice. You have to remember!”

Finally, Alice was ripped away from Arthur’s hand.

“You have to remember!” he called after her.

Alice soared through the air, passing into a tunnel of darkness. As she flew, her body spun around several times, making her dizzy, until it felt like she was falling. She fell further and further, and then finally landed, finding herself standing in the middle of a ballroom. The next thing she knew, Lord Victor was holding her close to him.

“How dare he steal you away like that,” said Victor sternly. “I’ll have to be extra vigilante to prevent that from happening again.”

Alice took a deep breath, “I’m not yours to be stolen from.”

“Yes, you are, Clara. You just don’t know it yet.”

###

At this point, Gary wasn’t certain how long he’d been in that mansion. The days just seemed to blur together in his mind. He was determined to stay strong, however. Out there, he knew Alice needed him to stay strong until these vampires could be defeated. In here, this woman Sierra seemed to need him, even if was just to give her some modicum of hope.

“So, there’s a group of vampire hunters out there trying to rescue us?” she asked.

“Yeah,” said Gary. “And my partner Alice is with them. The two of us solved a lot of missing persons cases and we...”

Gary had been about to say that they had reunited a lot of missing people with their families, but he was having trouble remembering those. The ones he clearly remembered were those when he found runaways that shouted that they hated their families. The worst ones were when he found that the missing person was dead, and he had to deliver bad news to the family.

Gary knew there were stories that ended happily, he was just having trouble remembering them.

“Anyway,” said Gary. “Alice is with the Night Hunters. We were able to rescue her cousin, and she’ll bring the Night Hunters here. I can promise you that.”

“I don’t know,” said Sierra. “You said you dreamed those meetings with your partner. Are you sure they actually happened?”

“Of course they did. We…” Gary blinked. “Were…were you always wearing a dress?”

As the two of them talked through the hole in the wall connecting their rooms, Gary was surprised to see her wearing a white dress.

“Yeah,” said Sierra. “I was. I was kidnapped after a dance. Didn’t I tell you?”

She had told him that. Gary was certain of it, though he could have sworn she wasn’t wearing a dress before.

As time passed, Sierra seemed to change, though the changes came slowly. First her dress seemed to turn pink, first a very light shade, then darker and darker shades. Her frizzy blonde hair turned a lighter shade, and she seemed cleaner than before. With each change, however, Gary kept having conflicting ideas on whether this was a change or if it had always been that way.

At one point, Gary noticed something about the vampires’ activity.

“They don’t seem to be paying as much attention to us as before,” he told Sierra. “I don’t know what’s going on, but this might be our best chance to escape.”

“I don’t know,” said Sierra. “It looks like more vampires are coming in from what I can tell. Something bad happened, I know it.”

Gary looked away. Now that he thought about it, there did seem to be more vampires around, so maybe she was right.

“You wouldn’t leave without me, would you?”

Gary looked up to see Sierra shaking.

“No,” said Gary, shaking his head as he leaned in to hug her. “No, of course not.”

They sat there, hugging for a few moments. No, of course he wouldn’t abandon her. He knew that Sara needed him.

Sara? Was that her name? Wasn’t her name…he couldn’t remember another name for her, so it must have been Sara. He had this little doubt in the back of his mind that something was wrong, but he dismissed it. He couldn’t afford any distractions now. After all…Sara needed him.

More time passed, and Gary wasn’t certain if it was a few hours, or a few days, but Sara’s appearance continued to change. Her dress eventually turned from pink to red, and her hair became a shiny platinum blonde. Her face also began to change gradually, but by now Gary had settled into a pattern of assuming that the changes were how it had always been.

From this point forward, Gary also found himself entering Sara’s room when he felt the vampires weren’t looking. They didn’t talk about much aside from the current situation. Sara seemed reluctant to talk about her life before this, and Gary didn’t press her. Mostly he just comforted her with his presence.

To make matters worse, he was having more and more trouble remembering happy endings to the various missing person’s cases he’d worked on over the years. He was getting desperate to think that his life had some sort of meaning. Even after all his failures, he was at least grateful he could act as a shoulder to cry on for Sara. It wasn’t much, but it was something.

Then, one day, Gary didn’t hear from Sara, and snuck into her room carefully. Though he moved slowly, he had a frantic look on his face. The walk to her bed was agonizingly slow, but he knew he couldn’t afford to attract the attention of the vampires outside the room. He found her lying on the bed, her face deathly pale. As he approached cautiously, she looked up at him.

“Gary,” she said, her voice hoarse. “They…they haven’t been feeding me.”

Gary eyes grew wide in horror, “Why?”

“I don’t know.”

This was bad. The vampires, or one of their thralls, brought food for them. It wasn’t particularly good food, just a rabbit, a deer or something that had been caught in the forest and lazily cooked on a fire, but it was food, nonetheless. If she wasn’t getting any…

“I’ll share my food with you,” said Gary without hesitation.

Sara began to cry, then reached up and pulled him into an embrace.

“I’m so hungry,” she said desperately.

“I know,” said Gary. “I’ll feed you. I promise. I’ll feed you, Fara.”

He didn’t even notice that he’d called her by a different name.

“I need you,” said Fara.

“I know, Fara.”

“I need you to feed me, William.”

For a moment, just a moment, he hesitated. His name wasn’t…

“Please,” said Fara. “I’m so hungry. Please…feed me…”

After a moment of silence, he said, “Yes. I’ll feed you, Fara. I’ll give you all I can spare.”

After all, thought William, she needed him.

The human hadn’t even noticed, but now Fara lay on top of him, still hugging him close. He did notice when she bit into his neck and began to feed. It hurt, like a pair of knives being jammed into his neck, but that was fine. Fara needed him, and he was happy to feed her.

When she was done feeding, Fara Duval pulled away from his neck and whispered to his ear, “Thank you, my dear. Thank you so much.”

William closed his eyes and smiled, content. He couldn’t see her face, but when she was done whispering, Fara smirked in complete and absolute triumph.

###

Professor Halloway picked up the dice and threw them, getting two sixes. He threw the dice again and got two sixes again. He rolled two sixes one more time, and Director Farrow creased his brow upon seeing this.

“That’s impressive luck,” he said.

“And it wasn’t working yesterday,” said Halloway, pointing to a simple necklace around his neck made of clay beads. “But one by one certain magical artifacts started working again. I first noticed the crystal on the shelf behind you, and that’s little more than a magical lantern.”

The room they were in had shelves lined with various artifacts from every culture and period in human history. Farrow had noticed the lantern crystal when he came in, little more than a quartz crystal with a metal handle like a lantern. It now glowed with a pale white light. A weapon like Excalibur still had power of its own, but these lesser magical artifacts hadn’t functioned in over a hundred years.

“Why now?” asked Farrow.

“You’re guess is as good as mine,” said Halloway.

Farrow suspected they had the same guess but didn’t want to say it out loud. The vampires were preparing a ritual involving Agent Phoenix, and their actions were releasing more magic into the world. What that ritual entailed or what it would summon was anyone’s guess.

“Alright,” said Farrow. “Keep a catalog of any items that are working and keep me posted.”

Halloway nodded, and then Farrow turned to a birdcage sitting on a nearby table.

“Is that the bird they found by the dead warlock?” he asked.

“Yes,” said Halloway. “It no longer shows the red glow in its eyes from the security footage, and now seems to be showing signs of post traumatic stress disorder. I can feed it by hand, but it hasn’t moved from that birdcage since it was brought to me, and just keeps staring ahead.”

Farrow looked at the raven, and the creature was eerily still. Farrow only knew the basics of how a warlock’s familiar worked, but it was enough to draw a few conclusions. A warlock or witch gained power by making a deal with an evil spirit, and that spirit needed a medium to manifest in the world. The familiar was that medium, and it made perfect sense that being possessed by an evil spirit would be traumatic.

Soon after this, Farrow was back in his office, rubbing his temples from a headache. He really wanted a stiff drink but knew he couldn’t afford it right now. He’d cleaned up this mess as best he could, but there was still work to do. He did give himself a moment to rest, however. He couldn’t afford to burn himself out. This whole ordeal had gone south in a big way, and the signs just seemed to suggest that it was all about to get worse. He had to be in top form for this.

After a moment or two, his phone started ringing.

He answered, “This is Director Farrow.”

“This is the council,” said an electronically distorted voice. “Are you ready to test the magic weapons from the silver armory on the displacement spell?”

“Almost,” said Farrow. “We should be ready to move by tomorrow.”

“Very well,” said the council representative. “Once that’s done, be prepared to widen the radius of your men around the site.”

“Acknowledged,” said Farrow, surprised. “May I ask why?”

“The council has decided that it’s time for drastic measures to be taken. Our contacts have informed the U.S. Government of the situation and recommended a missile strike at the vampires’ hideout.”

Director Farrow frowned, “What if we can’t take down the displacement spell?

“The council has decided that it’s worth it to try whether we can break the displacement spell or not,” said the representative. “If it works, then our problems are over. It not, then we’ve lost nothing. By our historical records, vampires only participate in arcane rituals during a new moon, so you have time to find a way around the displacement spell. If all else fails, we will strike the location five days before the next new moon. The council will forward you the details of the blast radius. Make certain our hunters are outside of that radius on the appointed date.”

“Understood.”

Farrow hung up the phone and sat back in deep thought. Maybe a missile would solve all their problems, and maybe it wouldn’t. All he knew was that if that missile landed before Alice Hayes and Agent Phoenix found a way to escape, and it worked, they would lose a valuable agent and a promising recruit, not to mention all the other human captives they wouldn’t be able to rescue.

God help them.