Realizing his mistake, he turned to catch a fire extinguisher ricochet off his shoulder and graze his cheek and eye. The vampire was a good height, six foot four, or six foot five but William had the height and weight advantage, and he suspected strength as well.
He ripped the fire extinguisher out of the vampire’s hands and tossed it out over the staircase into the rapidly growing orange lights of the fire below. Tendrils of smoke were beginning to fog his sight and fill his lungs. Not enough to stop him, though.
The vampire attacked again with rapid punches and he was able to match the vampire mostly, he got a few punches in but nothing serious. William caught one fist of the vampire, then the other. William wrenched the vampire’s wrists up at a sickening angle as he squeezed the bones. He felt them crack and splinter under the force of his grip and he pressed harder. The wrist bones of his opponent ground into one another; slivered pieces of bone shot up through the skin and into his own hand, but he didn’t care. The look of pain and panic on the vampire’s face was priceless.
He maneuvered the vampire into a low guard wall and threw the vampire out into space. He watched as the guy flew end over end, toward the bright warm orange glow of the fire that was consuming just about everything it touched. The thing disappeared in a billowing column of black smoke. William heard a crash, but it was softer than what he was expecting. If anything he knew about vampires was true he knew that the guy would probably survive. He hoped they would meet each other again. He hated leaving jobs unfinished.
He turned around to see Ryan standing over the body of the vampire he had fought. His light brown fur was highlighted by the orange glow of the fire. The vampire’s head had been ripped to the side and was barely attached to its neck by visible lines of muscle and tendons. When Ryan turned toward him there was a swath of deep black ichor over his muzzle.
Ryan didn’t wait to explain or question, he moved quickly to the door at the back of the hall. As he moved William saw dark shapes come up the stairs and into the hallway, their shadows danced ahead of them. Ghastly apparitions that made William’s body tense and screamed danger to his mind.
As the shadow forms made their way to him, they materialized into that of Efraim, still in human form, and Pepromene in werewolf form. William relaxed and then jerked around, startled, as the wrenching and screaming of twisting metal rang out through the silence behind him. He turned in time to see Ryan throw aside a thick metal door and step through the gaping hole it made. Caught in the wake of Efraim and Pepromene he followed the other werewolves through it.
“Ah, so you did bring others with you.” William saw the speaker and came to a surprised halt, but it was the number of people here that really gave him pause. The man who spoke was sitting calmly behind a massive wooden desk. There was a flat computer screen off to one side and the leather of a high-backed chair could be seen above his well-groomed brown hair. There were six others in the room, lounging on sofas with arms and legs flung over armrests or leaning casually along the walls. They seemed to be unperturbed at the commotion and their presence. What had they just walked into?
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“I’m relieved, actually. I was rather worried that the guards had been so inept that we had a made a mistake making them vampires in the first place. I’m glad to see that at least that last part is untrue.” The vampire smiled thinly at his own words.
There were three males and three females throughout the spacious office. The room felt more like a billiard hall than anything else. The females were wearing appropriately revealing outfits for the club atmosphere, but the males were dressed in casual business attire. There was an air of wealth and style about them, even though the women showed a lot of skin, they carried a kind of dignity about them that he hadn’t seen from any of the club patrons earlier.
His eyes were drawn back to man behind the desk. “My name is Brian, Brian Kemp. I’ll be killing you now.”
With that the chair behind the desk was empty and a hand was quickly tightening around William’s throat. He felt himself being lifted off the ground by one of the women. Her petite frame seemed incapable of lifting anything, much less his massive frame. Her eyes gleamed in the soft light of the office as the orange glow from outside steadily grew, throwing her pale features into a blur of white and hues of orange and red. She smiled up at him, her enlarged canines visible over blood red lips.
William kicked his legs up and around her arm and, using that as leverage, arched his back and jerked his whole weight over the woman’s arm. The sudden maneuver broke the girls grasp and William hit the ground, rolled and popped to his feet, only to be grabbed from behind by another set of arms. These were much thicker and the grip was harsher. He immediately threw his head back and felt the impact. The sound of the hit was quickly followed by a muffled cry of pain and he was free.
He looked around the room and found that it was a blur of chaos. Chairs exploded as vampires and werewolves danced. One or two hit the ground, only to be gone the next instant. William saw one of the vampires standing completely still for some reason. His eyes rolled like a frightened horse as Pepromene charged and clothes lined him into the wall. The wall gave a little, but not much, and the vampire fell to his knees; the wall bore his full body indent. Within the next second he was on his feet exchanging blows with the female werewolf.
He didn’t have time to study the scene further. The female vampire who had initially attacked him was moving towards him with a purpose. William turned and grabbed the reeling vampire who had attacked him. William’s claws ripped at his clothes as he hurled him toward the advancing female. Both vampires flew backwards and crashed into the heavy oak desk. A half a second later they were both back on their feet and moving toward him with sickeningly fluid electrified movements. He stood there watching their perfectly synced movements as they advanced on him. Their two bodies were hypnotic and he couldn’t tear his eyes away from their graceful forms. His feet were rooted to the ground and his body would not respond even though he was straining to move away.