The doors flew open, and Vincent flung himself on the opportunity of which he had been patiently awaiting, sprang on it like a ravenous wolf on a wounded deer.
The explosive rounds tore through the House of Death's darkened silence with the roaring call of Vincent's gun as the rounds took on his demonic capacity and bored into the tall figure standing motionless in the open doorway. Vincent's firearm sounded again and again, thundering in the silence, roaring on and on, shattering the body of the first intruder. The man in the doorway smiled companionably at him as slug after slug embedded themselves in his dead flesh.
"Our roles seemed to be reversed, no matter," Riven's lips moved as his mind spoke, and as his lips moved, a slug shattered his lower jaw. But he still smiled a broken smile at Vincent through the gloom, bone fragments and shards of his teeth hanging from bloodless tatters of skin. "I can't allow you to hurt mother." Vincent heard the familiar voice of the Dead Man in his mind, worming in with fake kindness, masking a sinister emotion like a sleeve would hide a dagger. Vincent fired on as Riven walked slowly towards him. A great darkness filled the doorway behind the dead man, and the walking corpse took the majority of Vincent's rounds, leaving the ugly insectile creature relatively unscathed. Riven's eyeless sockets bled at Vincent, giving him the look like that of a wounded crying child, Vincent felt as if he would soon go mad at the prolonged visual contact of these two. Riven never stopped smiling, not as his body was being blown apart, not as his eyes bled, not as parts of his smiling face either fell or were blown off, and not as the Dread Child brought one of its' sharpened forelegs down through the top of his skull. Vincent's barrage faltered and stopped, he could see the claw in the gloom of Riven's eyeless sockets. Riven seemed to sniff once as if holding back a sob, then he crumpled slowly to the floor.
Sleep now, my son. Sleep and grow stronger. Vincent didn't hear her nor would he have understood her, but Riven did sleep, he slept in death. Vincent began to grow uneasy, and he could feel a primordial survival instinct rising in him, a feeling that only one other beast had been able to arouse in him. He did not enjoy the memories that that encounter awoke in him. Then he finally recognized the Dread Child for what she was, an experiment just like himself, his mind embraced fully the animalistic rage of the Galian Beast. He growled, his lips pulling into a morbid smile behind his high red collar as he holstered his gun.
"I thought I was rid of you." He snarled as he was ensnared in the transforming light. Vincent was again no more and the wolf like demon relished the dank air, had it been so long that this one fought and lived for Vincent? It had no understanding for time or existence, it lived for the red rage in Vincent's mind, the call of blood. It roared brandishing it's almost bovine horns in the darkened air, lightning revealing the disturbing scene in full. The flash of light illuminated, only for a moment, the Dread Child standing over Riven as he lay on the mansion's floor boards, his skin slowly turning a shade of yellow-green, and the Galian Beast advancing slowly on the thing which dwelled between life and death. Fire shot across the distance and seared the Dread Child's dry leather like skin, igniting it and causing her to cry a warped scream.