Part Four: End - h

Gunfire erupted in the hallway as bullets ripped into the vampires. They shouted and hissed in pain but kept coming. Foot by agonizingly slow foot, they made their way closer to the embattled crew of knights, mages, and wolves. Toasty tried to run ahead but Jenna tugged on his fur to hold him back. In such close quarters, his fire would be devastating not only to the vampires, but to Jenna and the others too.

Jenna took a step back and reloaded but as she did, another knight took her spot. He fired three times but the vampires had gotten too close. One of them grabbed his gun’s barrel and then yanked him out of formation and into the waiting horde. There was a high-pitched, heartbreaking scream from him as his throat was ripped out and blood spurted into the air. Before they could lose anyone else, Jenna shot Felix a look. He stared fixedly over at the vampires and gulped nervously but he gave her a shaky nod. Then he took a few steps forward. The other mages came with him, each one’s hands glowing with soft light. They came to stand at the front of the line with the vampires just a few feet in front of them.

As Felix moved toward the bloodsuckers, the fear in his eyes started to dwindle and was replaced with determination. He raised a hand and a shimmering wall of condensed air formed in front of him. The vampires kept pounding on it but had no luck getting through. Then, with a slight smirk, Felix cocked his hand back and then thrust it forward with all the speed he could. That wall of air suddenly rushed forward with amazing speed, crashing into the vampires and pushing them completely out of the hall. As soon as it was clear, Jenna and the other knights charged forward, the wolves right behind them with their massive bodies almost too big for the hall.

In moments, Jenna and the rest of Bravo Team burst into the main lobby of the hotel. Off to their immediate right was the front desk and to their left was where the bank of elevators were. Her head whirled around in every direction, trying to spot a vampire she could kill. She wasn’t disappointed. There were two that were trying to converge on one of the wolves not far from her. She shot one of the vamps in the head and the other through the neck. They both went down but were far from out of commission. She let her gun fall to her side and then pulled one of her short, silver swords out of its sheath. In two quick moves, she severed both their heads. The wolf nodded its big head in thanks and then ran to rejoin the battle.

Jenna looked around but the chaos of the fight made it nearly impossible to find who she was looking for. Then she heard a roar over by the mezzanine level and saw Kendra there. She was holding a struggling, red-haired vampire woman off the ground by the throat. There seemed to be some sort of exchange between them and then Kendra, apparently not getting what she wanted, proceeded to bash the vampire’s head into the floor. Then she leaped off the mezzanine level and landed squarely onto about half a dozen more vampires, flattening them into the ground.

“Converge on Kendra,” Jenna shouted, her voice rising above the myriad sounds of fighting, screams of pain, and shouts of anger.

Without hesitation, Bravo Team hastened to follow her orders. They positioned themselves into a tight formation behind her. The knights were in two rows, then the mages, and finally the wolves in front. The enemy, however, were scattered around the place in a disorganized mess. Their bloodlust was a clear disadvantage for them although Jenna doubted they took notice of that. It made it easy for Jenna and the rest of Bravo to sandwich them in between Kendra and the Alpha Team.

The vampires had nowhere to go.

“Keep pressing them!”

“Go, go, go, go!”

“We got these bloodsucking assholes now!”

The vampires were steadily being pushed back and their corpses were getting thick on the floor of the hotel. Blood was splattered almost everywhere and the battle was starting to take a decided turn against the vampires.

It was starting to look like they were going to win. Jenna didn’t want to believe it but despite that, she found herself actually beginning to hope.

In the very next instant, however, fate turned cruelly vicious on her because that’s when some dark, frightening power overtook her. It was a power so vast and ancient that Jenna could almost feel it reaching down her throat and choking off her air supply. Her whole body went cold and started shaking violently. Her eyes went wide and as she clawed at her neck, she saw with an explosion of even more fear that everyone else was experiencing the same thing as her. There was a pulse of dark, purple-black light and then the entire hotel just…exploded…and all anyone knew was pain. The force of the explosion was so powerful, it brought the entire hotel down in seconds. Smoke, dust, and debris fell on top of everyone and if it weren’t for the mages, nearly every member of the Order and wolves would have been instantly killed. Thanks to their innate ability to sense magical powers at work, most were able to erect barriers to protect those around them. Unfortunately, not every mage was sensitive to those energies and so were not as quick at erecting protection. Dozens of knights and mages were killed along with two wolves.

Although alive, the survivors of the explosion had a massive problem. They were currently buried underneath tons of rubble. Jenna could feel it above her, the crushing presence of it actually making an icy wash of fear slip through her body. Then there was a hard yanking sensation and she was suddenly standing on top of a broken slab of building with Felix next to her, his hand gripped painfully tight in hers and his face beaded with sweat. There were seven others that he brought out with him and Jenna couldn’t imagine the sheer amount of magical energy needed to do something like that. She stared at him and saw that he was breathing hard, practically gulping air down. Coming out of his left ear was a faint trickle of blood.

Off to their right, part of the debris started to shift and move. There was a horribly loud, scraping sound and then something punched its way out of the rubble. Something huge and covered in dusty fur.

Kendra.

Her massive alpha state form was covered head to foot in dust and bits of cement and rock. One of her arms was dangling limply, obviously broken, but in a couple of seconds it mended itself with a loud series of pops and cracks. She moved it gingerly at first, testing it, and then started looking around for the source of the explosion.

Her eyes immediately locked onto a pair of figures standing in the epicenter of the blast.

Drake.

And Bendis.

||| ||| ||| ||| |||

Elijah stared at the Hotel Lycaon from the office space across the street. He watched Kendra and her team head into the front of the building while Jenna moved around with her team to the back. When both were out of sight, he turned to Abraham.

“Ready?” he asked.

The earth mage gave a barely perceptible nod.

“Remember the plan. We flush out every bloodsucker in there. We either kill on sight or force them to retreat. Leave no room untouched. Mages will provide back up while the knights provide the assault. The wolves…”

He paused to glance at the two wolves in his company, Ye-Jun and Amara. The two of them looked at Elijah, both of them listening intently.

“You two will sniff out any vamps and force them into the open. I don’t need to remind any of you of how important it is that we not let a single one of them out alive. If that happens, they can make more and we’ll be in this exact situation again. They have to be eradicated. Fully. Right here. Right now.”

“Yes, sir!” the knights and mages shouted in perfect unison.

“All right. Mages, take us over.”

As soon as Elijah gave the order, the mages grasped the hand of their respective knight or wolf and then flashes of fire, swirls of wind, splashes of water, and more suddenly erupted in the empty space as each mage teleported to the roof of the Hotel Lycaon. Abraham and Elijah were the first to go and as the mage grasped his hand, Elijah felt the familiar pull and push sensation of being teleported. A minute or two later, they all reappeared on the rooftop. The mages were puffing slightly with the taxing effort of teleportation. Elijah gave them a minute to recoup and when they looked a little more refreshed, he motioned for everyone to head to the door leading down into the hotel. When they got there, they found it locked. Elijah gave a middle-aged water mage in the back a nod and she quickly came forward to place a hand on the doorknob. It immediately froze over and then broke apart into thousands of pieces. When she was done, she went back to her original position. Elijah held up a hand to hold everyone back. Next he motioned for a different mage to come forward. A wind mage.

“Is the other side clear, Carl?” he asked.

The wind mage placed his hand on the door. With a whispered, barely audible word, a faint glowing started emanating from it. Then it began to vibrate. Carl closed his eyes and his brow furrowed in concentration. Then his eyes opened wide in shock.

“Run!” Carl screamed. He tried to turn around but was too slow. The door suddenly flung open with murderous speed. It smacked into Carl with enough power to cave in the front of the man’s face and send him flying through the air. His limp corpse flew over the side of the building and disappeared.

Coming through the doorway was an alarmingly huge vampire. He looked around and let out a hissing scream. He smashed his fists into the ground several times and then lunged forward.

“Die! Die! Die you motherfucking fucker!” a woman screamed out. She was crying and it was clear her sanity had been completely broken. There was a blast of heat as a tightly controlled bar of fire lanced through the air and smacked into the vampire, causing it to instantly erupt into flames. Then the bar of fire whirled around its victim like a python and in less than a minute, the bloodsucker was completely incinerated. The fire mage that killed him raced to the pile of ash, yelled more obscenities at it, and proceeded to try and light that on fire too.

“Ronni,” Elijah yelled, rushing over to her. She was crying openly now as she torched the ashes. “That’s enough!”

She didn’t want to stop though.

“I know. I know how much it hurts but Carl is gone. You need to get hold of yourself now or you might not make it through. Do you think he would want that?” Elijah’s voice was soothing. Calm even.

Ronnie continued to cry for a few seconds, and no one there could blame her considering Carl was her brother. Her body shuddered as she tried to get hold of herself. Eventually, she was able to stop her cries and shut down the grief and sadness swelling up inside her. Her face suddenly went stony and her eyes filled with a hardness that was uncomfortable to look at.

“Are you ready?” Elijah asked her, his voice still calm and even.

She didn’t answer him but she nodded her head firmly. Those hard, unyielding eyes went to the stairwell. Faintly, sounds of hissing and running footsteps could be heard.

Elijah gave Ronni one last look and then addressed the rest of Charlie team.

“They’re coming,” he shouted. “Get into formation!”

The knights all ran forward and got into two rows. The first row went down on one knee while the second row stayed on their feet. The mages made up the third row and the two wolves stood on either side. The vampires were getting closer and from the sounds, it was a literal army of them. The hissing was probably the worst thing about them. It was an unnatural noise that grated against the nerves. It made the heart suddenly beat faster and the blood inside a person’s body turn icy and cold.

But not one knight turned away.

Not one mage flinched.

Both wolves growled low in their throats.

“Ready!” Elijah shouted.