Matt made himself easily the most visible target in the room, surrounded by his white glow, and the bullets just seemed to bounce off harmlessly off of him. His light evidently acted as armor.

Brenda and Simon both ducked behind separate shelves. Anton and Chad did the same, while Liz sped off running at ridiculously inhuman speed around the perimeter of the room. Matt stood in the center of the room, a beacon of light, firing at their enemies from the open. He fell back as Sam swiped at him, claws extended, just barely grazing across his stomach.

Brenda fired at Sam and hit his shoulder, and he hardly flinched. One of Sam's men, apparently realizing the bullets were bouncing uselessly off of Matt's light, took aim at Brenda through the shelf she hid behind, and fired.

Instinct took over then, as Brenda moved to dodge the bullet, she summoned up speed she was not capable of as a human. It was nothing compared to what Liz was doing, but it was enough to keep herself from being hit by the bullet. The power was in her blood, she realized. Doing so drained her a bit, but it was easy to do. Like the way she'd healed herself when Simon had taken her from the sewers, it was innate; she didn't need to be taught.

Brenda continued aiming her fire at Sam, while he swiped at Matt with his claws. She continued using her blood to increase her speed so that she could continue to dodge bullets. One still managed to just hit the top of her shoulder. It hurt a bit, but hardly what she would normally have expected from a bullet wound. At least that part of the vampire movies was correct. Which made her wonder what good she was doing against Sam.

He did appear hurt. He was being fired upon from all directions, including Matt from point blank range. And his gun was much bigger than Brenda's. And the bullet did hurt a little. Perhaps they weren't entirely worthless. She hoped.

As she and her allies fired upon Sam, the other two fired upon them. As she kept fairly decent cover behind the shelf, one of them came out and aimed at Simon, unloading his full clip directly at him, despite the fact that Sam was partly in the way.

Brenda screamed as the torrent of bullets flew at her Sire, but a few months later, as Sam fell, Simon was only wincing a little. He looked a bit shaken, but not terribly hurt as far as Brenda could tell. She didn't have time to go to him to find out for certain.

It didn't take long to dispatch the other two. By the time it was over Brenda found herself tired and hungry. Sam and his allies lay on the floor, motionless, appearing utterly dead. She wondered if they really were. There was still so much she didn't know about their condition. But now wasn't the time. She ran to Simon and found that he had a couple of minor wounds that, had she not known better, she never would have thought they seemed like bullet wounds.

"Are you all right?" he asked her.

"Yeah. I'm okay."

Matt, Liz, Anton and Chad were lifting guns from the bodies. Matt then came and handed Brenda another pistol. "We better move. Which way?"

Brenda looked around. She had no idea. At this point, Grace could be anywhere. So could the Prince. She headed toward the door on her left, the others trailing behind her. Anton was closest to her heels as she stepped through the doorway. Just out of the corner of her eye she caught a glimpse of a tiny red dot of light, and she realized she'd made a mistake. "Stop!" She whirled around, but a metal door slammed shut, shutting her into the unexplored hallway along with Anton.

"Shit," he muttered.

The two of them began examining the door, but couldn't figure out a way to open it. There appeared to be a magnetic sensor. They probably needed a magnetic key card. Brenda weighed the notion of shouting to the others against keeping silent. After all the gunfire, it was hardly a secret that they were there. "Can you see a mechanism to open the door from that side?" Brenda called out. Maybe one of the bodies had an access card on it.

"No!" Simon yelled back. "I think we're gonna have to split up! You two see if you can find another exit!"

"Okay! Be careful!"

She squinted in the dark hallway, waiting as her eyes adjusted and she began to make it out. She wasn't comfortable left alone with a man she barely knew at all. She tried to tell herself that she'd only known any of them for a few days. But she at least felt like she knew Simon already. Despite his reluctance to tell her anything much about himself. This man was a stranger. A man loyal to someone who dealt in illegal weapons. A man loyal to someone who was taking great risk for Brenda when he didn't have to.

She crept down the hallway slowly. Anton was fairly quiet, but not as stealthy as her. She could hear his shoes faintly as he walked.

They eventually came to a stairway leading down. It came to a landing with a door at it, and then the stairs continued further down into darkness. They paused at the door. There was another magnetic sensor on the wall next to it. No handle. Brenda pushed on it just in case, to no avail, but as she stood examining it, she became aware of the sound of approaching footsteps. "Someone's coming this way," she whispered.

Anton nodded, gesturing for her to move to the side of the door, just two steps down. He stood on the other side, and they both waited.

The door opened, and a middle-aged, uniformed, African-American man stepped out. He was holding a gun in his hand, finger right next to the trigger.

Brenda was just wondering if perhaps some alarm had been set when Anton leapt onto the security guard. The gun went off once before it was dropped to the floor and Anton, snarling, sank his fangs into the unfortunate guard's neck.

She watched as Anton drank the man's blood, wondering what she should do. She wasn't certain Anton was going to stop. Should she try to stop him? Could she even pull him off of the other man? And if she could, would Anton simply attack her for her blood?

She decided she couldn't run the risk of letting the man be killed. She took a step toward the two of them and reached for Anton. But her companion withdrew from the man, running his tongue over the wound. The security guard was limp in his arms as Anton lowered him to the floor and began rifling through his pockets, lifting a white card that Brenda hoped was a magnetic security card. "He'll be all right, once he's slept it off."

"Okay." She picked up the gun.

They continued down the stairs, and at the bottom of the next flight, there was another door. They could try the door or continue down into the darkness. There was faint light coming from the other side of the door, and the faint sound of music. "Let's try the door," she suggested to Anton. She wasn't sure what the most likely choice was, but she didn't like the look of the darkness below. Besides, perhaps if someone was in there, they could be questioned about Grace.

Anton waved the card in front of the sensor. There was an alarmingly loud beep and a tiny, impossibly bright green light appeared on it, invading the oppressive darkness. Brenda tried the door handle, and it turned. She opened it slowly. After they'd both stepped through, she closed it behind them as quietly as possible.

They moved down the hall. Aside from the music, it seemed fairly quiet and empty. They passed a door that had a window in it after peeking inside and finding it dark and empty. The source of the music seemed to be coming from a similar door. As they approached it, a bullet burst through the little window, shattering it. Brenda and Anton both dropped to the ground at first, and then both moved to either side of the door, reaching out with their guns to return fire through the small window.

Brenda and Anton both fired twice inside, and another bullet came out, but after Brenda's second shot she heard a cry. She met Anton's eyes for a moment, and then flung the door open, pointing her gun in at an elderly man in uniform. "Your gun. Kick it over here or I'll shoot again," she ordered.

He obeyed, and Brenda approached him warily, continuing to keep the gun trained on him. She examined him for other weapons, found one wedged beneath him, and slid it across the floor toward Anton. The wound was in his leg.

"I'm going to have to tourniquet this. You'll live," she told him. "Do you know if a little girl is being kept here?"

"Little girl? I don't know what you're talking about. Please just leave me alone! You already shot me!"

"You shot first!" she snapped as she worked to stave off the bleeding so that he might live long enough to get adequate medical attention. "I'm here looking for a little girl. Do you know where she is!"

"No!" He looked as if he was about to begin to sob.

Brenda found herself hardening in response to the man's want of pity. "Your employer is a kidnapper and a rapist. If you have any decency in you at all, you'll quit." The words came out like drops of acid, and only made her feel even angrier.

He shook his head. "No, he's a good man. You're wrong about him. He would never hurt anyone."

"Unless your employer is someone else's puppet, you're wrong," she snarled. "And what kind of man would have you shoot before you even see who's coming?"

"You're intruders!"

"Trying to find a missing child!"

"Please just go!"

"Fine. Remember what I told you. Find another job." She turned away from him and stalked out of the room. Anton wouldn't meet her eyes as she came out. And that was fine with her.

As they went out, Brenda could hear approaching footsteps, soft ones. She looked around, and there was nowhere to go except to duck back into the room they'd just come out of. For an instant she considered doing that, but doubted they'd be able to get to the guard and clap a hand to his mouth before he could shout.

Her concerns were alleviated when the figure of Liz rounded the corner. She sighed with relief upon seeing the two of them. Anton gestured for them to move back toward the stairs before anyone spoke.

"Where are the others?" Brenda asked.

"I don't know. I got cut off from them, the same way you two were. I was afraid I'd never find any of you." She swallowed. "I had to kill a man," she added in a thick, shaky voice.

Brenda nodded quietly. "I'm sorry."

"There was no choice. He was shooting at me. I didn't mean to, I only meant to stop him."

Brenda put a hand awkwardly on the other woman's shoulder. She didn't know what else to say to her.

"Which way?" Anton asked.

Brenda eyed the darkness with trepidation. "Probably down," she said reluctantly.

The three slowly descended the dark staircase, passing a few landings on the way. The air began to smell mustier, and things looked a lot less finished and a lot less attended the further down they went. Eventually, Brenda thought she could hear a faint dripping sound. She felt a tightness in her chest, remembering the sound of dripping water when she'd been held captive. Were they nearing that place?

The bottom of the stairs was almost completely dark, but Liz held onto a small green light that was attached to her key chain. Brenda didn't like the light potentially alerting anyone to their whereabouts, but the only other option was to go blindly, and that simply would not work.

It smelled damp down there as they made their way down the dark hallway. Brenda's hand trembled, so she slipped her gun into her pocket. She feared they were getting close, and as much as she wanted to rescue Grace, she didn't want to confront the Nosferatu. She'd never felt fear like this before. Even greater than the fear of what he was doing to her then was the fear that she might suffer the same or worse again.

They reached a portion of wall that was broken away. Bricks and rubble littered the floor in piles, and there was a horrific smell on the other side. Brenda stepped over the rubble carefully, maneuvering to the other side of the broken wall, where her feet splashed in about a half an inch of water covering the ground.

She looked around herself. There was dried blood on the walls. A rat shied away from Liz's light, and there was a pile of something just a bit further in. Brenda approached, and put a shaking hand to her mouth as she realized the source of the smell. It was a broken, mangled body, small, with filthy clothes hanging from the rotting flesh in ribbons. It appeared that most of its face had been torn away. There were bite marks all over the rotting flesh where rats and perhaps worse, had gnawed at her. She had to have been dead for several days.

She made a choking sound as she stared at the body of what had to be Grace Simmons, her purpose, the one who would have redeemed her and made her pain worthwhile, tortured, dead and rotting.

And then she screamed in pain as something ripped through her chest. Suddenly before her she faced Axiom, his twisted, lipless face grimacing as he drove a sword straight into Brenda, running her through completely, and then tearing it out just as violently. The very instant he withdrew his blade, he vanished before her eyes.

From there, Brenda was lost within a frenzy of animalistic terror. She fled. All she knew was fleeing. She had to escape him, the horror worse than any horror she'd ever experienced or imagined in her life. Axiom was the one. The beast inside her had recognized him even though she herself had not. Her only option was to flee.

She collapsed at the bottom of the stairs, vaguely aware that she was sobbing. And she couldn't stop. She shuddered, forcing her blood to knit her injuries, trying to will herself to get up, to go back. Where were Liz and Anton?

Liz was there, then, her hands on Brenda's shoulders. "Are you all right? What happened? You just started screaming?"

"It was him. It was Axiom. He was the one," Brenda told her.

"What? When?"

"Didn't you see him?" she asked. Could Liz have failed to notice him? Where was he now? He could be anywhere, waiting to lunge at them again.

"I didn't see anyone."

"He could be around here right now," Brenda said, eyeing the shadows around them. "Where's Anton?"

"He fled the opposite direction. I didn't see what set the two of you off."

"We have to go find him."

"Are you nuts? Look at yourself! What did that to you?" Liz asked, touching Brenda's wound lightly.

"Axiom. I told you."

Liz nodded, but her gaze moved past Brenda, to the stairs behind her.

Brenda turned, and saw Matt and Simon coming downward.

"Are you all right? What happened?" Simon hurried down to crouch next to Brenda, taking her hand into one of his, and brushing her hair away from her face with the other.

"It was Axiom," Brenda told him. "He killed Grace. She's dead. And Anton's missing. We have to go after him."

Matt was shaking his head. "It's probably too late for Anton. We'll never find him in time if Axiom's disappeared. At any rate, the Prince is dead. It's time to get out of hear."

"Where's Chad?"

"Dead," Simon said softly, helping Brenda to her feet. "Can you stand?"

"Yes."

Liz followed behind Matt, while Brenda walked at his side with Simon's hand on her waist holding her steady.

"Anton and Chad were devoted to this cause. It's how they wanted to give their lives," Matt told her. "The city is free now. I'm left to wonder about the cost." Brenda could see that his eyes were rimmed with red, and he wouldn't meet anyone's gaze. "Let's go."