Chapter 14: Never Split Up

Grey couldn't reach the stairs in time, not after the sound of children laughing made him stumble. He caught himself and looked over his shoulder, to the source, but there was nothing. He looked back just in time to see Dave vanish. The stairs had collapsed, taking him down with them. He should have known the hotel itself would be so malicious. Clouds of dust rose tranquilly from the hole created, angels of decay ascending now that their task was complete. As he ran for the staircase Grey thought he saw, just for a moment, faces leering through the dust. It was gone by the time he reached the hole, leaving him with nothing but a clear view into the darkness below. He blinked, and what little light was available become more than adequate, allowing him to see Dave crawling to his feet amidst the splintered timbers. Grey cast a nervous look to the foyer around him, but all was quiet. The decorations remaining were still, giving not so much as a malevolent twitch as he regarded them. It wouldn't last, he was certain of that.

"I'm okay!" Dave called up to him.

Still something felt very off, as it had ever since they emerged from the sewers. The presence of the hotel, all the memories and tragedy trapped within the walls, pressed down upon Grey. His mind buzzed with it, the whisperings of guests decades departed joined with the voices that were always with him. Familiar mockery mingled with complaints of room service, all of it driving him to greater distraction than usual. It wasn't fair, he had almost gotten the knack of pushing it all aside, only to have it amplified. Had he still breathed he would have felt choked. He could only hope the effect extended only as far as the crumbling walls.

"I think I'm in the basement," he heard Dave say.

He looked away from the hole. The walls themselves rippled before his eyes, patches of decayed paper shivered into bright, new life, only to dissolve back to the sad reality. He saw people sitting on the couches along the balcony, a split second of laughter before they were gone again. Laughter, why was it always laughter? It was like being tuned between radio bands, hearing snatches of different stations, and there was nothing he could do to push one way or the other. He was trapped. Worse, there was something else at work, beyond the memories of the place itself. A third signal was the last thing he wanted, but it was there. He couldn't be sure which was giving him the odd feeling, evoking the nearly forgotten biological response that made his hairs stand on end. It wasn't the first time he'd felt it since he died, though it was the first opportunity he had to try and place its source. Grey titled his head up, trying to concentrate, trying desperately to block everything else out. It wasn't far, whatever it was. The palable angst that hung on the air had faded, giving him a chance to focus. Whatever presence had attacked them had either moved on or was gathering its strength to renew it's assault. There was no time to waste.

That was what the dust meant, what the faces meant. He and Dave weren't the only ones present who were still at least loosely attached to the mortal coil. He had to find out who, or what, it was.

"Grey?"

But then there was Dave, still stuck in the basement. Grey looked down to find him peering up at him helplessly, an ugly puppy trapped in a well.

"Do you see a way out?" he called down to him.

Dave looked around. "There's a lot of different hallways, and there's a sign for the elevator at the corner."

"It's not hard to revive it," Grey mused. "A simple switch, a few sparks, and this whole place may yet light up." He glanced around and saw nothing but the present. "It may yet live again, even if it still shambles."

That got a few seconds of silence before Dave called back, "But the elevator's broken on that floor!"

"Nothing you can't rise above." Grey pointed up to the second story's door, though its significance was likely lost on Dave.

He was right. Dave uttered an odd, frustrated grunt. "Then what are you gonna do?"

"I'm going to see who the other guests are. Same as us, they never signed."

"What? There's other people here? \How can you tell?"

It would take far too long to explain, so Grey said, "I'll catch up to you."

He turned and walked away from the stairs, towards the hallway they had neglected in their hurry.

Dave's voice followed him at least for the first few yards. "But it's really dark down here! Grey? Grey? Aw, fine..."

From there they were on their own. There was a part of Grey that felt terrible for not staying with him. He could have easily just jumped down. But those feelings, he was afraid, had more to do with the vitae he'd taken when they were both frenzied. Before that he fully intended to leave Dave to his fate once his task was finished. Too many years had passed, too much had changed, and as Kindred he didn't see how their friendship could be revived. Friendship wasn't exactly a concept that worked with their kind, in any case. In the end your friends were either food or competition for food. Now he wasn't sure he could walk away so easily. Thoughts of what Jeanette had done to him all those years ago, and what it had taken to break free of her, made Grey shudder. He didn't want to develop the same problem with Dave. Jeanette was at least easier on the eyes where unnatural fixations where concerned.

But the more he thought of it, the less he could stand the idea of just abandoning him. Maybe it wasn't the vitae. Maybe it was the dying gasps of his conscience. It wasn't any easier to ignore that, feeble as it may be. So long as he watched himself he'd been fine. They both would.

Down the hall and around the next corner, he wasn't surprised to find someone had gone to the trouble- very recently- to take down all the boards covering the doors. That same someone had left them open, saving Grey the worry of making any noise as he slipped past. If only they'd gone that way first. He emerged into a narrow hallway. There were few doors, but it made since there'd be nothing but restaurants and ballrooms on the first floor. Only one door was open, and a pale shaft of light, the kind recognizable as the cool glow of halogen, slashed across the hallway. It was too easy. Grey crept towards the light, his approach slower from the caution required with every picture he walked by. Nothing moved. He was beginning to wonder if what he had seen before had been an ordinary hallucination, but how could that be if Dave had seen it first? If they'd been hit by it? Grey was not excited by the prospect of a real ghost, though the chorus in his head babbled excitedly of storms and shadows. He couldn't bother to listen, not when he heard real voices down the hall. The walls around him appeared to ripple as he drew closer to the door. The changes were not so great as before, instead it looked as though the surface was a pool that a rock had been cast into. The source, unsurprisingly, was the door, but even then Grey could not be sure what it meant. He could cull no useful information from the tangle of his own mind, as the voices chose that moment to fall silent. Interference, that's what it was. For once Grey was annoyed to be without them, but if nothing else it allowed him to hear what was being said without overextending his senses.

"Dis ain't gonna work," a woman's voice said. "Not while Wesley is unconscious."

"Aw, c'mon," a man's voice sneered. "Four works just fine." Grey heard footsteps. "Tell her, Michael. All you really need is the cardinal points. Any idiot knows that."

The woman's cry of outrage was cut short by another man's voice, presumably Michael's. "Lucretia is in charge here, Eddie, as unfortunately there's little hope of shooting spirits. Don't argue with her."

"That's low, man, that's really low."

Grey heard someone groan.

"Um, guys?" Yet another voice, this one soft and feminine- a teenage girl's. "Something's wrong with Wes."

There was a flurry of footsteps. Grey slipped closer so that he was next to the door. All he had to do was lean over to look inside, but instead he pressed himself against the wall and listened. All the while he told himself that he was just imagination the sensation of it moving beneath him. This was no time to let his own psychosis run away with him, not when reality itself has suddenly become just as disconcerting.

"Dey invaded his dreams," Lucretia announced gravely.

"Are you fucking kidding me?" Eddie scoffed. "He's out cold, not sleeping."

"Just de same," Lucretia said.

"What do we do?" The young girl said, panic in her voice.

"We wait," Lucretia said. "Dey ain't powerful enough t' do more dan give him nightmares. I felt dat before."

"You've been wrong before," Eddie said. There was a moment of silence- enough, Grey imagined, for hard looks to be directed at the man. "What? It's true!"

Maybe he was right.

"This was a mistake," the girl said, now sounding close to tears. "We shouldn't have come here. You said there was only one."

"Katie, please," Michael said.

"See?" Eddie said. "The newbie's right. Voodoo Queen over here said all we had to do was go and kick one stupid ghost into the great beyond, and what do we find? A whole fuckin' family of dead people moanin' and wanderin' the halls. And the kids…Christ."

"Eddie!" Michael snapped.

"Christ-Christ-Christ," Eddie retorted. He waited a beat before adding, "Oh, damn, still no bolt of holy wrath, what am I doing wrong? Can we just get to work? I'm telling you, it's a simple fucking exorcism. Four is plenty."

"Tell me again why we brought him," Lucretia said.

"Because I'm a fuckin' wheel turner, cocoa bean," Eddie said. "And I believe in restorin' the natural order, same as any of you, just for different reasons."

"You kill people," Katie said softly.

"Only if they need to be killed, baby doll. Anyway, my point is that some of us know how to work with people a little. Y'know, accept that you don't have to chant and wave around chicken bones to get the job done."

"Why you dirty-" but she couldn't finish. The lights in the hallway flared to light as one. For a moment they all flared too brightly, making Grey afraid the bulbs would burst, but after the initial surge everything died down to normal, deceptively warm levels. The place appeared so much less desolate with the shadows pushed back, but to think that just turning on the lights could banish the spirit- or spirits- would be foolish. Still, Dave had succeeded. The thought made Grey smile, but that lovely proud feeling died when the voices resumed.

"What de hell was dat?" Lucretia said.

"Is it the ghosts?" Katie asked.

"Maybe it's daddy dearest," Eddie said.

"That doesn't make sense," Michael said. "If they- or he- wanted to rile us they wouldn't turn the lights on."

"I'm pretty riled," Katie said. Her tone had progressed to border on hysteria.

Michael sighed. "Alright, Lucretia, you and Katie stay with Wesley. See if you can't bring him around."

Grey took that as his cue to move away from the door. He could still hear Michael, "Eddie and I will investigate."

"But, but," Katie sputtered. "Horror movies! You know what always happens when people split up in horror movies!"

"You'll be fine," Michael said. "This isn't a movie."

Grey hoped the girl's whining would keep them in the room a little bit longer. He'd moved back enough that their voices were getting fainter. He stopped creeping backwards and turned to walk towards the doors. If he was lucky, the other stair case would hold his weight better than its twin did with Dave. He should have done that in the first place, but such was the sweet siren song of curiosity, forever luring the unwary towards the rocks.

"Hey, you!" Eddie's voice, calling to him. Damn it.

Grey froze. The rocks loomed very near, dangerously near. He was, he knew, just a moment away from being dashed upon them. He could hear the pounding of waves in his ears. When he turned to face the man, when he drew a breath to offer some horrible excuse, he could smell salt water. He was beyond caring whether it was the hotel or his own mind. If he had any delusions of trying to ponder the difference there in the hallway, the sight of Eddie chased them away.

He wasn't at all what Grey expected. The man was tall and broad shouldered. He looked like the motion picture ideal of an assassin, dark eyes, dark hair and all. His voice had hinted as much, but Grey could never have imagined he would be so pale. Eddie was almost as pallid as a corpse. As pallid, Grey thought, as he must have looked himself. He should have checked in the mirror at Dave's apartment. For that matter, he should have taken into consideration the state his clothes were in after the trek through the sewers. They were still damp, as was his hair, and he bad feeling that any trace of blood on him would be far too noticeable. He stared at Eddie, Eddie stared at him. Grey had never in his unlife, even in his life, seen a human that looked so cold.

"Who are you?" Eddie asked. He was still looking at Grey far too closely. "What are you doing here?"

"I, uh," Grey stumbled over his words. In the same moment he opened his mouth, his other self had stepped out from behind Eddie. Paul's normal skin tone looked incredibly tan by comparison. He grinned smugly.

"Here's the funny thing," Paul said. "In case you haven't already guessed it, your life pretty much depends on acting like a sane person for a least three seconds."

He had to be lying. Grey's mind seized upon one word, and that word tripped past his lips before he could stop himself. "Life?"

Confusion swept over Eddie's killer's face. Paul threw his hands up. "I can't do a thing with you, can I?"

He vanished with those words, leaving Grey alone with Eddie until another man stepped out. Where Eddie was cold, the newcomer radiated equally unnerving warmth. He was too pure and wholesome looking to be believed. This was the father seen only in sitcoms, the calm hearted soul who brimmed with sage advice for the naïve little children. He couldn't have been much over forty. His hair was immaculate even if it was receding. The warmth and calm was so much more pervasive than what Eddie gave off that for a moment Grey felt, actually believed, that everything would be fine. People, especially humans, shouldn't resonate anything so strongly. Grey wanted very badly to run, but then how would that look? For that matter, what would they do?

"I was just leaving," Grey said. The words were wrong, but he had to say something. "My friends, we-" his tongue, treacherous thing that it was, refused to keep helping with his lies. "Sorry!"

He turned and moved for the doors as quickly as he could. A strange feeling washed over him when he was just a few feet away. He didn't look back. When he reached the doors he leapt over the threshold as though it were a gaping chasm between rooms. He stepped back into the main hall just in time to hear Eddie yell, "Vampire!"

Grey ran for the stairs.

"How can they know?" he cried. He hadn't meant to say it out loud, but in response one of pictures left on the wall flung itself at him. It missed by a foot, but inspired Grey to run faster.

The foyer looked much different lighted, though without the chandelier great patches of shadow still remained. Grey had no time to acknowledge the threat posed by the shadows themselves. He was more concerned that every piece of furniture around him was very likely to become a projectile. A vase clipped him on the leg as he passed the staircase Dave had fallen through. He grabbed the railing of the intact staircase and scrambled up. The stairs groaned loudly in complaint, but held. Fate was laughing at him somewhere, taunting him with the simple fact he and Dave would not be separated if they had only chosen that one first. Grey was almost at the top of the stairs when he heard a crash below, followed by a cry of pain. He could not tell if it was Michael or Eddie who was hit. Either way, he was immensely grateful the ghosts did not discriminate. Grey hesitated at the top of the stairs. Left or right? Would either way be open to him? There was no time to wonder or wait for a sign. There was a cheerful ding just as he bolted right, perhaps a belated sign that he was correct.

If that wasn't enough for him, colliding with Dave was. The doors of the elevator he'd just stepped out of slid closed while they were still getting to their feet.

Grey tried to look back to the stairs to see if the others had caught up, but Dave grabbing him by the shoulders forced his attention away.

"Do you have any idea what I had to go through to get the power back on?" Dave hissed. There was, Grey noticed, a gash on his cheek that still had yet to close.

"I hear the faintest of whispers, telling me it was exciting," Grey said. He wished he had the capacity to be breathless after so much running; it would have kept him from saying as such.

"The whole boiler room went nuts as soon as I flipped the switch!" Dave threw his hands up to demonstrate, or perhaps it was just exasperation. "And there was this guy who-"

Grey heard footsteps rushing up the stairs, more crashes as the ghosts focused their ire on the more easily hurt creatures. He grabbed Dave by the arm and ran, cutting his story short. "Complain later!" Grey said, and by the time they reached the balcony that wound around the rooms Dave was keeping pace with him. The sound of breaking glass behind them was nothing knew, but Grey stumbled as he heard a gunshot. The metal railing pinged loudly as a bullet meant for either of them ricocheted off it.

"What the hell?" Dave cried, and stopped. Grey, still holding on to him, nearly fell over.

"Moving targets get fewer holes," Grey said desperately. He grabbed the railing to steady himself.

"You never said anything about them being armed!" Dave said.

"It never crossed my mind," Grey said.

Their argument was interrupted as the doors they were standing by very slowly opened of their own accord. Another gunshot from the stairs was all it took to drive the two of them inside, no matter how eerie the invitation might have been.

"This is really too much, Grey," Dave said. "Poltergeists, now crazy people with guns? What the fuck, Grey? Oh god, what if they saw me?"

"It makes no difference," Grey said, glancing around the room. It was, as far as he could see, a perfectly normal hotel bedroom, aside from the fact it lacked a bathroom. He moved toward the bed, following the odd scratching noise coming from nearby.

"What do you mean?" Dave asked. Grey realized, even as he looked at the nightstand, that he hadn't finished what he was saying.

Grey opened the drawer and found an old key. "They know what we are," he said as he picked it up.

"How could they-" the lights in the room went out, cutting Dave off yet again. The scratching returned, louder and faster than before, and when the lights flickered back to life Grey at last saw what it meant.

GET OUT was scratched in jagged letters over the bed.

"Oh god," Dave said.

"We're working on it," Grey said. He started back towards the door. He noticed the Slinky dog on the floor just in time to step over it as it was pushed towards him. "Why don't you focus on the breathers!" he yelled at it, hoping whatever was responsible could hear him. He saw why once they stepped back into the foyer. Every bit of décor that could be lifted, the same pieces that Grey had been wary of before, were gone. There were pale squares on the wall to mark where pictures had hung just moments ago. The coffee tables placed before the moldering couches were bare of vases or statuettes. The remains of what had been thrown were scattered everywhere, from broken glass to fragments of porceline. All attention had indeed been focused on the two living men, which Grey hoped explained the feeble effort made with the toy. The effort made in the foyer had no been wasted, it seemed. Eddie was sprawled one of the couches near the staircase, his face covered in blood. One hand was pressed to his forehead. The other, Grey was happy to see, had nothing in it. The gun Eddie had been such a terrible shot with was lying closer to their end of the hall. Never had he seen a more beautiful sight. Michael was sitting next to him on the couch, surveying the damage. Grey too the opportunity to creep forward and grab the gun while they were both distracted.

"What are you gonna do with that?" Dave whispered. It was nice that Grey didn't have to keep dragging him along, but rather than explain his intentions he smiled. Dave, unsurprisingly, looked worried. Grey stood back up and continued moving slowly towards the two men. It was safe to assume, even if the static in his mind was no help, that neither they nor their friends were ordinary kine. He gripped the gun tightly, like he'd always seen in the movies. It was a bad time to be thinking about the simple fact he'd never fired a gun before. With any luck, he wouldn't have to.

"I can't see!" Eddie cried.

"Would you relax?" Michael said. "The cut's on your forehead, not your eyes."

"There's blood in my fucking eyes!"

"There always is," Grey said. He grinned to himself. He always dreamed of being in such a situation, just like in the movies.

Both men looked up as he spoke, but only Michael was truly able to focus. Eddie was still desperately trying to keep his own blood out of his eyes. So much for the cold killer. Grey's grin split a little wider as he leveled the gun on him, but even as he did he knew Michael's look of shock was not directed at him. Dave, he knew was standing right next to him, and in all the excitement he doubted he had thought to do so much as put his hood up.

Dave ruined the moment by saying, "We don't wanna hurt you."

"He speaks for himself and no one else," Grey said, hissing the words through his teeth. The grin could not be wiped from his face. It would be so incredibly easy to end both of the lives before him. Guns were terrible things, but the made the simple act of killing someone so much easier. One bullet, then another, and then there were be two more ghosts in the hotel. It was so much cleaner than the usual method.

Dave put his hand on his shoulder and squeezed hard enough to make Grey wince. His finger tightened on the trigger, if not enough to fire.

"They know what we are, Dave," Grey said. His voice sounded odd, even to him.

"I don't care."

"They mean to kill us, Dave," Grey said. Strange that he couldn't put any emotion into the words. He kept his eyes on the two men as he said it. He let the gun waver back and forth between them as it pleased. The only question that remained was who would go first. He could see Michael understood. Eddie was a little harder to read.

"Would you cut it out the Stanley Kubrick bullshit already?" Dave said, shaking him a little. "We don't have time for this."

"It will only take a second," Grey said. "Two seconds."

Even as he spoke he focused on Eddie. His aura obediently flickered into view with but a thought, and from the corner of his eye he could see something of Michael's as well. The fear he desired was in Michael, but that wasn't so with Eddie. All he saw, etched in bright and vivid hues, was a terrible calm mixed with, of all things, pleasure. The strangeness of that overshadowed the desire to see all those colors obliterated.

"Let's just leave them alone," Dave said. Grey barely heard him. As he stared at the aura it changed. He lowered the gun as he stared, and in that same instant Eddie's aura changed. The calm remained, but the glee flooded through like an oil spill to push it aside.

"Grey?" Dave said.

Bright sparks erupted throughout Eddie's aura as Grey stood transfixed. The strange feeling from the hallway returned, much clearer now that he was standing right in front of the source. He didn't expect it to feel like a blast of cold air. Michael, apparently, felt it to.

"What are you doing?" Michael asked. Eddie's only reply was short chuckle.

There was a groan as the floorboards beneath Grey's feet began to sag. He took a step back and looked down to see that the wood was rotting before his very eyes, years of decay happening all at once, on top of what it had already suffered. He looked up and saw the same was happening to the couch, what color was left fading out before the fabric rotted away entirely. Michael leapt off it as through burnt, leaving Eddie sitting there in its midst. The rush of decay, it seemed, was not limited to what was around him. Wrinkles appeared on Eddie's face, wiping the sick grin from it as he realized what was happening. There was a strange, dry rustling noise as his skin shrink wrapped itself to his bones, while at the same time liver spots blossomed thirty years too soon. Eddie himself no longer looked thirty. "Shit," he wheezed.

Michael had apparently forgotten any misgivings he had about vampires while the scene unfolded. He had moved back along with the two of them so that he was standing right next to Dave. They all could do nothing more but stare as decay wrecked havoc on in a rough circle around the self proclaimed wheel-turner, whatever that meant. The floor at last collapsed, taking what was left of Eddie and the couch with it, sparing them all the sight of just how far the decay would spread. Another cloud of dust rose like a dying gasp from the basement. The railing that was left, no so rusted that it appeared to have been left to the elements for decades, remained for a few seconds more before it snapped and fell in to join the rest. Grey didn't dare creep forward to see what lay in the basement now. He had a feeling he already knew what he would see.

The shocked silence was broken by the sound of children laughing.

"That idiot," Michael whispered.

Grey found himself nodding, even if he wasn't exactly sure why.