Excerpt: Chasing Sunset (Redux)

Brandon heard the siren start wailing, even hundreds of yards away from the complex as he was. "Shit!" he breathed.

You got this drill when you were in training. You were told that you might never need it, but you practiced every month just in case you did. You were told where to go, what to do, what would happen if you didn't. And you listened. You fucking listened, because what the fuck else were you going to do? But this, this was bad.

This wasn't a scheduled test. Niels would have told him, and that blue fucking cloud would not have been there.

How had they gotten in? That's what he wanted to know. That's what he wanted to know more than anything. The Network main house was practically immune to renfields, unless they'd taken one at the last possible second and forced him or her across the threshhold, compelled them to invite them in.

It only took one. It only ever took one.

"Fuck!" he roared, and he raced towards the nearest door. The handle was hot to the touch, and he couldn't stop seeping ashes from his nose, and the door wouldn't open. It had welded itself shut automatically, trapping everyone and everything inside for when the fires opened up in the next ten minutes.

Nothing and no one was getting out of that with any remote semblance to life.

"SHIT!" he roared again, racing along the edge of the house. The Old Man's study was around here. He had a porch, a silver-screened porch. If he could get in there, he could get to Lief, he could get them out of there. He could stop this.

He ran until he felt like his lungs were consumed by the flames that would eat the mansion in minutes, and then he pressed himself to run faster. He had to. He didn't have a choice by this point. There was nothing else he could do.

They were bold, coming out during the day, but not unusual in that respect. Cloudy days didn't push them to sleep like sunlight did. But shit! SHIT!

He tore across the lawn, his boots dragging divots from the grass, until he saw what he was looking for. There was an entire wall of glass, and there was a silver-screened porch, complete with shuffleboard poles and discs, lounging around, waiting for the next game.

Brandon skidded to a stop, yanked open the gate to the porch, and pulled on the door handle, but it was to no avail. He slammed his fist into it, screaming, and again, and again, tears and rage rolling through him, his head splitting with pain from his sinuses and the Scent and the grief and the horror.

They were trapped in there. His first. His Old Man. His PEOPLE WERE STUCK IN THERE TO DIE!

He roared again, then tore out of the gate, and came around the corner, hoping, praying that they were safe, that this was a drill, even while he knew it wasn't.

He saw them, easily six of them, push through the door of the study, walking over what was unmistakeably Lief's white Coat in the hallway, the wall of which was irrevocably stained with blood. They were approaching him, the Old Man staring them all down, the lot of them walking with their Scents completely unattached to them, the holy-sigiled glass of the room keeping the Scent on the other side of him.

Brandon wept, staring at where the white Coat of his first lay in a puddle of blood, then stared in horror at the vampires who came to take Abrams. The Old Man wasn't without fight, and Brandon surged towards the glass, even as Mohammed finally caught him, grabbed him firmly in a bear hug, as he struggled and fought and kicked and screamed and pleaded with as much incoherance as he could muster, demanding that this wasn't what happened with the universe, insisting that this turn of events was wrong, even as the glass shook with the sound of a gunshot, even as one of them fell down into ashes, and another was swiftly behind him, and then there was a thud, and a smear, and the Old Man's head was smashed against the window, the glass spiderwebbing high up, and the body falling with a slump to the floor, even as the blood from his skull slid down the wall of glass.

Mohammed stared in horror, breathing words in Egyptian and whispering Muslim prayers as his grip on his third slackened, and Brandon threw himself at the window, slamming his fist into the glass, screaming for all he was worth.

"You fucking cowards!" he screamed. "Get out here! Get out here and fucking try that, you fucking leaches! You fucking cowards! You FUCKING BASTARDS!" he roared, weeping all the time as they laughed, then walked from the room, leaving it a mess of blood and gore and ashes.

Leaving Brandon to fall to his knees and weep.