***
Barbara immediately went over and scooped up the nearest of her toddlers.
“Jerod, Honey,” she said as she moved. “Grab your sister!”
He quickly obeyed.
Vanessa just stood and watched.
“Come on, damn it!” Barbara yelled as she reached her friend. Using her free shoulder, Barbara shoved the woman forward through the doorway and pointed her down the hallway. Finally, she seemed to get the message and reluctantly let them lead the way.
4:48 a.m.
Vincent continued to stand unmoving against the glass front door, staring at the occupants of the room like that statue. Nathaniel studied him. The sunrise was about an hour away, but he did not seem to be concerned about the time. Perhaps he simply knew that he had more than enough time to accomplish whatever it was that he intended, which was no doubt as black as his shriveled heart.
He glanced briefly away as the phone rang, catching Michael as it made him jump. Michael took a peek at it but was either too far away to be able to read the display to see who was calling or didn’t care. Nathaniel could read the LED display of the phone number, but would obviously not know who was calling.
“Go back with the others!” Nathaniel ordered over the ringing telephone.
“No!” Michael replied and finally broke himself free from the figure at the door. He rushed to the phone, picked it up and then immediately slammed it back down. He just turned the handset upside down and flipped it over onto the counter so that it would not ring again. “I’m not going anywhere!”
“Not you.”
Nathaniel did not turn around, but could see as Michael did so to catch his partner who was now standing against the door frame at the mouth of the hall for support. It was Mark that Nathaniel had been addressing. He had sensed him join them.
“You are not yet ready,” Nathaniel said.
“Would you like me to come back tomorrow when I am, or the next day?” Mark replied.
Nathaniel heard him take a few more steps into the room, no doubt to get a better look at Vincent. He did not answer his sarcasm. It was true that it might take every one of them to subdue Vincent in order to destroy him once and for all.
As if on cue, Nathaniel saw Vincent begin to move. He was retrieving something from his right pants pocket. It took him no time to remove the set of objects and to begin to try each one until he had found the magic one which would do the trick.
Nathaniel saw Michael creep closer to the large front window which separated the Dispatching Center from the Lobby and strain his eyes to see what Vincent might be doing. The glass was five feet high from counter to ceiling and twelve feet across from north wall to the pedestrian door on the south. Michael stopped when he reached the counter. “What’s he doing?” he asked.
“He has keys,” the other two in the room answered in unison.
4:53 a.m.
In the heart of the police department was the soft room. Vanessa pushed the door open while Jerod and Barbara carried the toddlers in. The only light came from the two small table lamps in the room. It was enough. Barbara surveyed the room momentarily. It was a simple room. She wondered whether it would be strong enough to slow the vampire that would attempt to get through, but the answer to that question was clear. As she set her youngest son down at the back of the room, she did her best to visualize Vincent not even making it this far. And as she watched Jerod set his sister down beside her twin brother, she realized that the consolation was that, should they fail to make a stand, she and her husband would be dead long before the children.
“Vanessa,” she called her friend over as she closed the gap between them. Vanessa closed the door behind them and approached. Barbara took her by the hand. “I need you to stay with the kids,” she whispered.
“What?” Vanessa said, incredulously.
“I have seen what this monster can do. Him knocking you to the ground and dragging you across the house is nothing compared to what he can do when really motivated, and right now it’s pretty frigging motivated!”
Vanessa stared back at her life-long friend and studied the eyes that looked back at her. Barbara gave her a gaze that was purposeful and unflinching—hiding nothing. She saw eyes there that had seen something profound as well. They were eyes that had once beheld beauty and seen tenderness and peace, but had been driven to unyielding purpose by something terrible.
“I don’t understand any of this,” Vanessa confessed, dropping her hands like dead appendages at her side in tantrum. “What is this?” Tears quickly formed and poured down her cheeks as everything was just suddenly out of her control or manageability.
“Sweetheart.” Barbara took the woman in her arms and held her tightly. “Didn’t you read the papers? What has turned our world upside down is no serial killer and certainly no man!” Vanessa made a move as if to separate herself from her, but Barbara was not willing to let her go just yet. “It’s a vampire! Nathaniel is one, too, and I have seen them in action. Three nights ago the bad one came through the twins’ nursery window, intending on making my babies his dinner. Nathaniel stopped him. He’s been hunting us ever since.”
Barbara released her friend.
“What?” The tears were still coming.
“You have to stay here with the children.”
“But what about you?”
“I can’t wait a second longer and hope that Michael and Mark and Nathaniel have enough within them to kill it! I just can’t!”
Barbara never let go of Vanessa completely. She turned the woman, goading her in the direction that she must go. Then she turned her eyes to her three children. The great loves of her life. Jerod stood with a torn expression on his face—half standing guard over his brother and sister and half wanting to rejoin his mother, especially after what he had just heard her say. There were tears welling up in his eyes as well, but he seemed to be holding them back at the moment. Behind him on the carpeted floor, the twins continued to appear composed. It was Nathaniel’s doing, she knew. Somehow, that one tiny intervention had secured their comfort, their confidence, their everything. They would never be the same. They were still Robbie and Rebekah, would still grow up and laugh and play, and eventually become splendid adults. And it was in that last visualization that Barbara convinced herself that the task ahead of her could be accomplished.
“I love you guys,” she told them.
She quickly blew them a kiss and moved to the door. “Momma’s gonna be right back.” She paused one last time half in, half out of the door.
“Vanessa,” she said, addressing her with firm eye contact once again. “Lock the door…and pray.”
4:58 a.m.
At long last, Vincent had located the correct key, turned it in the lock and gained access. Before entering fully; however, he leaned toward the ground with his left hand and retrieved something. Michael could not make out just what it was. While Nathaniel held his ground beside him, Michael glanced nervously from door to door, deliberating and calculating in his head whether or not he believed that the last door between them and the vampire might hold. It seemed too much to hope for.
When Michael tore his mind away from the what if’s and what might happen, Vincent had reached the other side of the large lobby window.
“What’d he just drag in here?” Michael whispered the question. He waited for the reply, but none came. “Nathaniel?”
“You may wish to turn away.”
With still surprising little effort, Vincent reached up and slammed an object against the glass. Michael cursed in horror as the lifeless body of Lainie Bishop struck the glass with her back and head. The blow did nothing to the thick bulletproof glass, but it collapsed several of the plates that had once made up her beautiful skull. There was a sickening squashing sound as some of the contents insi
de were loosed. Yet, there was very little blood.
For good measure, Vincent pulled her down and slammed her three more times in some sick, twisted rhythm as if she were simply the door knocker of an even larger castle.
“She did not seem pleased that she was being sent away,” Vincent broke the silence between them. “So I decided to invite her back inside.”
“My God!” Barbara cried as she entered the room just in time to witness the carnage. “What kind of monster are you?” she screamed, unable to hold back her outrage at the sight of the dead woman’s hanging limbs. Whatever blood she had remaining stained the glass in dark splattered rivulets.
All three in the room turned to look at her as she did so. Michael wondered just the same thing. Though he and Mark had already seen and tasted some of what the vampire had been capable of, only Nathaniel really knew what the monster was like.
Michael swallowed hard.
For it was all there—the proof of the monster Nathaniel considered Vincent to be—written so clearly in the stark horror on Nathaniel’s face.