Three Immortals Walk Into A Bar...

Clyde

I’m more worried than I’m letting on. The Master of Shadows, and I’m stuck down here with fifty other people, my vault is being used by the crankiest vampire I’ve ever met, an incredibly friendly and dangerous Seer is standing nearby, and I am not entirely sure that this basement is tornado-proof. If a tornado large enough to do serious damage to the building above were to strike just right, there could be problems down here too. Some of these people could be hurt.

Blood could be spilled.

Never a good idea with vampires around. Or werewolves, either, honestly, they can be a little volatile and who knows what might provoke them.

I’m glad at least that at home the vault there is available, so I don’t have to worry about my people. Much.

I keep glancing at my phone, with zero bars and no connectivity, and keep being disappointed to fail to receive updates. I’m envious of Gregor right now, because I’m pretty sure that he’s got a steady flow of information directly to his mind.

Most people have finished moving as far into the basement as we can get, away from the open staircase. The children are eating cookies, and don’t seem too dismayed, but their parents are all looking grim. I wonder how much longer before people start arguing, or doing something rash like trying to go back upstairs.

Gregor has been trying to stay several feet away from me, unless he needs to tell me something. I think he wants to prevent himself from forgetting again and accidentally touching me.

I see him frown, and he steps over to me. Urgently, he whispers, “Wolk says that a tornado has spawned which looks very dangerous, and it is beginning to cut a path towards us. He thinks it is almost certain that it will come this direction within five or ten minutes, and unless it veers away, it will probably strike the Adabelle.”

“How bad will it be?” I ask.

“Bad.”

Is there anything else I can do? I wonder if I should warn everyone to brace for impact, or if that will just make them panic. I don’t think it will help them if they are terrified. I consider pounding on the door to the vault to get Levant to open up, but I doubt he would and, again, it would just scare everyone.

Gregor whispers, “Does the vault have a ventilation system?”

“What? Yes,” I say, wondering how that is relevant to anything.

“Well, could you just, you know, woosh yourself in there?” He gestures, his fingers wafting through the air towards the door at the back.

Oh fuck, why didn’t I think of that? “How long?” I ask.

A brief pause, then, “About five minutes.”

I don’t respond, I just rush to where there are some shelves I can duck behind, let myself dissolve into mist, and hope nobody is watching. My mist rises above the crowd, along the walls where the intake to the ventilation system is, and I infiltrate the ducts, trying to rush myself as fast as I can into the vent inside the vault.

It takes a minute, one of the precious minutes.

But it works. I rematerialize inside the vault, in the bathroom where the vent is, and quickly rush towards the front to disengage the security door and let everybody in.

I glance at the bed as I am doing so, and am both glad I did, and wish I hadn’t. If we get through this I might have to bleach my eyeballs later to try to get this image out of them. Levant is lying there, asleep, his giant brawny form sprawled out across the bed, writhing in his sleep.

And of course the vampire would have to sleep naked. I can see quite plainly from his enormous erection that he is still having dream sex with Maria.

This isn’t going to be pretty. “Levant!” I shout, and he jerks awake, immediately springing from the bed, his fists raised in a full combat position, his dick sticking out straight in front of him, ready to fight before he is even all the way awake.

I see his clothes on the floor at my feet, and I dip down quickly and throw them at him. He reflexively catches them. “Get dressed! Now! A tornado is coming in about two minutes and I have to get everyone in here. It’s the safest place.”

He growls, and glares, and ribbons of darkness start crawling up his naked body.

I wave my hand around in front of him, dispersing the shadows like smoke from a campfire. “We don’t have time for that!” I shout at him. “You have ten seconds before I let fifty humans in here, and you need to put some fucking pants on first!”

It finally seems to penetrate his thick skull what I am saying, and he hops into his pants, and has gotten one arm into his shirt when I unlock the door. From his expression he clearly wants nothing so much as to murder me. Fine, he can try, but later.

Levant

WHAT THE FUCK?!

Maria vanishes in a puff of smoke, right when -

But it doesn’t matter what was about to happen in the dream, because here is that fucking effete blond vampire screaming at me to get dressed while he throws my clothes at me.

WHAT THE FUCK?!

I’m going to murder him. He said I wouldn’t be disturbed in here, but here he is being the most disturbing fucking thing I have ever seen in my life. I am going to rip his blond head right off his shoulders. I growl, and glare, and start gathering the darkness to me, ready to slaughter him with my ribbons of shadow.

And he waves it away like somebody has vaped in his face.

WHAT THE FUCK?!

He’s still yelling about a tornado and letting everybody in here, and I have a flash of memory of the text that I read earlier, and I realize that there is nothing I can do to stop him, and that I would rather not be stark naked in front of everybody in the hotel.

So I put my clothes on as fast as I can, and before I am even finished he has wrenched the huge security door open and is standing there yelling, “In here! Everybody get in here! Now!”

What a nightmare. A nightmare would be better, I could try to control that. I can’t control this. A huge crowd of humans comes flooding into the vault, shoulder to shoulder, pressing against me, pushing me to the back of the room. There’s room for fifty people to stand in here, maybe, like cattle standing in the car on the way to slaughter.

I realize that over the sound of the crowd of humans stampeding into my formerly quiet chamber, I hear what sounds like a freight train, or a jet engine, and that shit, there really is a tornado. I can see over the heads of the crowd that wind is blowing down the staircase, debris already swirling around inside the basement, and the howling gale is clearly upon us.

I stay in the back corner, and am very glad I am as far away from the door as possible, because one of the last people in is that Gregor, and I sure as hell don’t want to be within touching distance of him.

But then I see the last two people coming in with Clyde, and I’d take Gregor over them.

“Oh fuck no!” I bellow. I am absolutely NOT sharing a shelter with a couple of werewolves. I am ready to pummel every human between me and the door to get out of here, rather than allow myself to be sealed up together with fucking werewolves.

They are taller than anyone else in the crowd, and they hear me, and look over at me, and they stop in the doorway, while Clyde tries to gesture for them to hurry and get inside.

One of them shakes his head, glaring at me. I think it’s the driver from the airport earlier, but I’m not completely sure. They all look the same to me, ugly dogs with creases in their foreheads. He tells Clyde. “I’d rather take my chances out here.”

Clyde follows his line of sight and sees that the werewolf is staring at me.

The other werewolf says. “Me too. Go in, we’ll wait here.”

“You have to close it now!” Gregor shouts, and the sound of the freight train sounds like it is running straight over our heads, and as Clyde pulls the security door shut, I think that I see the ceiling of the basement peeling back near the stairway across the room.

Shit.