DISCLAIMER: Look around you. Look around you. Just look around you. Have you worked out what we're looking for? If you said "cliffhanger resolution," you're correct. Keep your holy water and crosses handy. Things are about to get ugly…
Shaun had picked up the sword that Sara had dropped in her earlier fight and was now holding it against Davrok's throat.
"Who the hell are you?" the vampire growled.
"I'm Shaun…Senior Sales Manager, Foree Electric…and vampire slayer. If you want a slayer's blood, take mine."
"No, Shaun," Sara pleaded.
Ryland moved quickly around the altar and placed his dagger at Shaun's throat. "Fine by me," he said.
"Leave him alone, Ryland," Sara warned. "It's my blood you want."
"One slayer's blood is just as good as another's," Ryland replied.
"Then maybe you should try and take mine?" Grayson inquired, pointing his crossbow at Ryland's throat.
Ryland threw a contemptible sideways glance at the new arrival. "In case you didn't get the memo, I'm not a vampire."
"Yeah, but I'm pretty sure if this arrow pierces your carotid artery and continues to propel violently through your brain and out of your skull, it'll probably kill you."
"Point taken."
"Look, why don't we all just take a moment and calm down?" Shaun suggested.
"Very easy to say when you don't have sharp fangs hovering over your jugular," Sara noted.
"I'm just trying to work out a plan," Shaun said.
"We don't have all night for a Mexican stand-off, Shaun. This is a time for action," Sara commented. With her hands still bound behind her back, she tried to remove a dagger from its holster on her belt without being noticed.
"Yes, Shaun, you should listen to your girlfriend," Ryland said.
"She's not my girlfriend," Shaun corrected.
"Then you won't mind if I slit her throat?"
"I would mind!" Sara cried. "Very much."
"Okay, okay, everybody, just keep your position until we can talk this out and get to the point."
"I'll get to the point." Sara rammed her dagger into Davrok's side. He recoiled in pain and released her. Grayson slammed the butt of his crossbow into Ryland's jaw and sent him stumbling to the side.
"Sara, get behind me!" Shaun shouted.
"Aim for the head, Shaun," she advised.
Shaun summoned all his strength and swung his sword, slashing and separating Davrok's head from his body. The severed head rolled into the shadows while the body sank to the floor, dark blood pouring out onto the seal, rapidly filling its intricate etched knots.
"Impressive," Sara praised. "Most impressive."
"Thanks," Shaun said, using the sword to cut the rope tied around her hands. Once they were free, she threw his arms around his neck and hugged him, almost suffocating him.
Ryland rose from the floor in time to see his master beheaded. Forcing himself to recover quickly from the shock, he muttered a few words of a counter-spell under his breath and scrambled for the other exit behind the altar.
Shaun and Sara stood together looking at the body. "How come he didn't go all…dusty?" he asked.
"I dunno. Maybe something to do with the way the Turks converted him into a vampire," she suggested. "At any rate, he's not moving, which is a good thing. What about the vamps outside?"
"Oh, we did a spell to uninvite them. So I figure we can just hang out here till dawn and then walk out through the piles of ashes. Back-up from the Council should be here by then to clear up the mess."
"Good thinking."
"Well, I learned from the best." He smiled at her, and she returned it.
"Handsome man saved me from the monsters…again," she mused. She placed her hand gently alongside his face and caressed his cheek. "I wasn't sure if you'd come back for me."
"You didn't think you'd get rid of me that easily, did you?" He placed his hand behind her neck and started to pull her in for a kiss.
Grayson rushed up. "Guys, where's Ryland?"
"I thought you had him," Shaun huffed.
"I did before, but I don't now."
"Is there an exit we don't know about?" Sara asked.
"Well, by definition, we wouldn't know about it," Grayson replied sarcastically.
A hesitant knock on the doors echoed through the silent chapel.
"They're not supposed to be able to do that," Grayson stated uneasily.
"You said you did a spell to uninvite them," she said to Shaun.
"I did!" Shaun insisted.
"Are you sure you said it correctly?"
"I might not have said every tiny little syllable, but yeah, I said them."
Another slam at the doors echoed through the torch-lit chamber. The knocking was getting heavier and more frequent. The creatures on the other side were starting to get ideas.
Sara, Shaun and Grayson ran to the doors. Shaun and Grayson grabbed a wooden pew and placed it in front of the door, and all three of them leaned their full weight against the wooden portal. The structure that had once seemed sturdy was now beginning to buckle under the incessant pounding.
"We have a situation!" Shaun nervously observed.
"I know!" Grayson snapped.
"Shaun, I've been meaning to say that I'm sorry!" Sara cried above the noise.
"For what?"
"Those awful things I said the other day. I didn't mean it, I was just upset and confused."
"It's fine. You were preoccupied with the whole end of the world thing."
"Exactly. It was a total emotional rollercoaster, and it was wrong of me to lash out at you."
"Don't worry about it, Sara. I understand."
"I'm so glad," she said with relief. "Okay, now it's your turn to apologize."
"For what?"
"Well, we can start with losing my car."
"You lost her car?" Grayson interjected.
"I didn't lose it, I just…misplaced it."
"Dude, I'm surprised you're still alive. This girl is psycho about her car."
"I am not psycho about my car," she protested. "Anyway, what Shaun did was an accident. You deliberately changed all the preset stations on my radio just to piss me off. I have a very precise system of choosing the preset stations on my radio."
"You see what I mean?" Grayson remarked to Shaun.
Just then, a hand burst through the splintered wood and clawed about wildly. Shaun grabbed a torch from the wall and thrust it at the hand, which retreated back through the hole.
"Look, I think there are slightly more pressing matters here than Sara's quirks," Grayson commented.
"I like my quirks," she declared.
"I like your quirks, too," Shaun concurred.
"Not here!" she snapped. There was a loud crash, and she turned to find herself staring at a statue that had been rammed through the newly-made hole, creating a bigger gap in the wood. "We should probably be moving."
Shaun grabbed another torch from the wall and tossed it to Sara, while Grayson loaded and readied his crossbow. "I say we head for the other exit," Grayson suggested. "I'm thinking it's somewhere behind the altar."
"I'm thinking you're right," Sara said, as a few vampires entered from behind the altar, followed quickly by dozens more. Behind them, the double doors were beginning to give way to another mass of vampires. The stained-glass windows arrayed around the chapel began to shatter violently as other vampires decided to find their own way in.
"Any other ideas, Captain Wow?" Shaun asked.
"Just stay close to me."
The three slayers stood back to back to back and moved slowly toward the center of the room, Sara and Shaun trying to keep the vampires at bay with the torches while Grayson looked for a clear shot.
"How many can you take out, Grayson?" Sara inquired.
"Eight, maybe 10, if I'm lucky," he replied. "And I'm not feeling particularly lucky."
The lone humans looked out on the dark turbulent sea swarming with yellow eyes, their fangs sharp and gleaming, clawed hands chancing a swipe at the warm-blooded prey before being burnt with a torch.
"Well," Sara began, "it's been nice knowing you."
"Which one of us?" Grayson asked.
"Both of you."
"Yeah, but which one more?" Shaun wondered.
"Oh, we don't have time for this," she groaned.
"We don't have time for much of anything," Grayson stated matter-of-factly.
Professor Ryland came running out of the corridor and into the night, where he was met by a throng of waiting vampires. Thankfully they recognized him as a familiar of Davrok and refrained from killing him. "They're in there," he said quickly, pointing back toward the door where he'd escaped. "The humans that killed your leader. You must kill them and avenge him."
The vampires weren't all that interested in vengeance but they weren't about to turn down a free meal. They started to enter the chapel. Ryland watched them with a satisfied smile and continued across the field. Up ahead, he saw a parked Range Rover. The authorities would be looking for his car. If he switched now, he could be out of there and on a beach in the Riviera before anyone was the wiser.
He opened the unlocked door and was immensely grateful to find the keys still in the ignition. As he went to adjust the rear-view mirror, he saw a strange-looking shape in the backseat. "What the—?"
The zombie Ed reached into the front seat and dragged him backward with surprising strength, biting into his neck. Ryland screamed and thrashed in pain as his blood splattered onto the windshield and the leather upholstery.