Keen's Turn: Descent & Depravation

Chapter 6: Wooden Stairs (fourth quarter)

Jared reached for his bag for his flashlight. A noise from in front. He raised the Seal and poured his focus into it. Hearing the vampire hiss, he turned blindly in the opposite direction, stumbling forward. As his eyes adjusted, he could make out the white of a doorframe ahead. He bolted toward it, one hand scrabbling in his satchel.

"Running already, Red? Be a man, and let me finish this!"

His fingers curled around the flashlight and clicked it on, tugging it free and sweeping it in front of him—he was in the left of the two matching wings, a cavernous sick bay supported by central columns. The vampire was right behind him.

He made a hard right for the stairwell. His opponent seemed to be faster tonight—a few steps up the staircase and he was almost on top of him. Jared wheeled, brandishing the Seal of Solomon, and the vampire lost his footing and slipped, falling headlong back to the floor. Jared was already at the second-floor landing, tearing through the first room off it—but this wasn't where he needed to go.

Shit-shit-shit—

He raced through the room and down the murky hallway running parallel the one below. Tearing past boarded windows for the twin room at the other end, no footsteps behind, but as he reached the far staircase, it was to find the vampire already bounding up it.

Jared raised the Seal to blast him back, but this time he had hold of the handrail. He caught his impending fall, pushing off the banister onto the wall opposite and driving his claws through the whitewash. Hefting himself up off the steps, the vampire began climbing toward him, fingers punching through the rotting wall with puffs of dust and paint. Jared spun around, sprinting down the hall as the vampire dropped to the floor behind him. But he didn't follow him far. The pounding footsteps diverting into one of the side rooms. Jared hesitated, twisting back to look—all of these rooms were fairly small; if he could corner him in there with the Seal—

He doubled back and swept the flashlight beam into the room, advancing with the Seal raised. The vampire blanched and raised a hand to shield his eyes but didn't turn, intent on the wall before him, which supported a chipped sink. A bathroom, with a broken mirror, in whose gloom the room's occupant cast no reflection. The flashlight glinting off the glass lit on a worn metal panel installed in the wall below—a panel reading: "DROP USED RAZOR BLADES HERE."

The vampire squatted and plunged his claws into the plaster, ripping out the thin planks behind. Out cascaded a century's worth of rusted blades.

Oh, shit—!

The vampire rose to face him, fully armed. Jared dropped to a crouch, a pair of blades slicing through the spot where his neck had just been, and found himself at eye level with a small trash can. He lunged for it, sacrificing the flashlight to seize it one-handed. As he moved to raise the Seal, a blade nicked his knuckles. He pulled back behind the can, which caught two more in its metal belly. Shooting to his feet he flew into reverse, jolting out of the bathroom. Razors cut the air around him and embedded in the wall behind. He turned and ran, swinging around a doorframe into a dark room—the large room at the end of the hall, bare save a gurney in one corner.

"Come out, come out, Red!" the vampire called from the hallway. "All ye, all ye outs in free, as the children say! How about a close shave? I won't be too barberous."

He dived for the stairwell door, but it was too late—the vampire was in the room. Clutching the trash can before his face and chest he weaved backward, feeling the metal's shivering vibration with each blade that zinged off it. A razor sheared through the fabric of his pant leg, and another, stinging his skin. His back hit the wall—he looked left—he was too far from the door—he looked front—

The vampire stood silhouetted before a half-boarded window, one hand full of blades, the other on the gurney. He took hold of the edges of the cot, angled it at Jared, and, with superhuman speed, launched it forward.

Jared froze.

The gurney hurtled toward him.

Before he could move, the rim had struck him in the stomach and bludgeoned him back into the wall. He folded over, winded. The trash can clattered to the floor; the Seal slipped from his fingers. Movement in front, dashing at him. He leaned on the metal lattice supporting him, gasping for breath, then, with all his might, kicked off at an angle from the wall, his belly sliding onto the gurney, his fingers clamped to the cool sides. And he was off, careening across the room toward the doorway. Slipping back to kick at the floor, correcting his course and propelling the wheels faster, to breakneck speed, sounds of pursuit behind—something touched his legs and he pulled them in, now fully on top of the table as it barreled out the door and tipped over the edge of the stairs.

Down it shot, joggling over the steps, skipping and jumping, threatening to buck him off as he clung to it for dear life. Then crashing onto the ground floor, bouncing out into the open sick bay and across the dusty tiles. The air whistled in his ears. His vision tunneled on his collision course with an upcoming support column. He hurled himself sideways off the gurney, hitting the ground, tucking in his arms and rolling rockily. The metal missile bashed into the pillar, bouncing back with a clang and smashing into his pursuer, knocking him backward onto the tile floor with a crack.

Jared clambered to his feet, head spinning, to see the vampire's dark form also rising, unsteadily, blocking his path back to the Seal. And he was running, stumbling, and running again, tearing toward the nearest doorway and back into the main hall. Coming up on the door to the room he'd been trying to get to earlier, he slowed—but without the Seal, if his plan didn't pan out, he was done for. He ran on, down the length of the hall to the stairwell in the opposite wing, and here again, he slowed. He hadn't tried these stairs in his earlier exploration, as they didn't look like they could hold his weight, but the vampire must have fifty pounds on him, and he'd just flown up them without so much as a creak.

Jared started up the stairs at a sprint. He was nearly to the top when there was an ominous groaning of timber—the stairs leaned sickeningly, warping his sense of balance. Fumbling for his footing, he pitched sideways. His shoe hit a rotten plank and punctured the board, tearing through decayed wood and rusty nails, plunging him into the step up to his knee. He went rigid, panting, as the entire staircase swayed, then made to pull himself free. A thick splinter had pierced his calf and lodged deeper when he tried to move. Biting back a cry, he tried another angle, but more splinters, bent down by the entry of his leg, now formed a ring of spikes, and stabbed through his flesh when he ventured to pull up past them.

Rapid footsteps from above.

The vampire's shadow fell over him.

He stood at the top of the stairs in the sickly glow of the skylight, regarding Jared's plight with a languid amusement.

"Astir on a stair...the first step to remove a pest."

Jared braced for the razor blades, but the vampire's hands were empty. Instead, he set a foot on the first step down and gave an experimental push. The staircase dipped, paint peeling back as it sagged under the pressure. He withdrew his foot.

"Dear me. What possessed you to put weight on this?" He settled into a squat on the landing, and, with a sudden, manic grin, shot down a hand to seize a fistful of Jared's hair.

Jared sucked in his breath in a hiss as his hair was pulled taut, pulling back until his eyes watered. But for all his effort, the vampire began to reel him in.

He reached for his bag, in the slightest hope there was anything there that could save him, but as his weight shifted the staircase lurched abruptly down, sending his stomach to his mouth. Just as quickly it jammed to a halt, and the fingers in his hair gave a vicious wrench upward.

He screamed, his body stretched to its limits, the splintered wood ripping at his calf while his hair strained from its roots. The vampire's other hand reached for him. He felt it groping for purchase on his skull, fingers pressing about it as if to squash it like a grape.

Hoisted just an inch higher, and he'd be dead.