Blood of The Rose
Chapter 18: A Spirited Adventure, Part II
Ocean House Hotel
With a groan, Ruby sat up and waved away the dust cloud hovering around her head. "Ow."
"Ruby!" her companion called out anxiously from above. "Are you alright?"
The brunette glanced around her surroundings dazedly. "Yeah, I'm just… well, shit. It's really dark down here, guess I'm in the basement. Why don't you stay up there and-"
She cut off at a soft thud as Weiss landed next to her.
"Orrr you could come join me," she finished humorously.
Weiss offered her a hand up, huffing in irritation. "Ruby Rose, you are not going to leave me alone up there. Besides which, you would get irrevocably lost without me."
Ruby nodded, suppressing her humor. "Well then, good thing you came down to keep me safe."
"Of course," the platinum-haired girl replied, quirking an eyebrow and giving nothing away.
The immediate area around them was cloaked in a black so thick Ruby felt as if she could grasp it in her hands, broken only in bits and pieces by shafts of dim light from above. What she could make out, however, indicated a wide room with a concrete floor and cinderblock walls.
They both carefully felt their way around until Weiss let out a soft cry of discovery, a passageway leading off to the side that was previously concealed. Following it, they came to another area, dimly-lit with pipes overhead and two doors flanking another hallway. Straight ahead from them was another hallway illuminated in a familiar soft red glow with another sign for the elevator.
Gulping reflexively, Ruby decided that, since they were down there anyway, she should check there first. Fortunately, the red glow turned out to be merely an emergency light, the elevator door there mostly closed and still powerless.
The pair headed back to examine the doors. The one on the left was missing a handle or lock, simply sealed shut, while the one on the right didn't seem to even have a lock on this side. Even though the handle on that door turned it would not budge. With a sigh, Ruby indicated the center passageway and Weiss gave her a nod of consent. They started forward, a cross-hallway barely visible just a little further ahead.
Suddenly, a figure flew across their vision and down the other hallway, sobbing and crying. Startled, Ruby stumbled back into Weiss and they both crashed together into a stunned heap on the floor
The brunette gazed wide-eyed towards where she'd just seen the apparition. The raven-haired woman, pale and dressed in a white linen shift, had been looking over her shoulder in terror as she ran, and her hands were covered in blood.
"Well, then…" Weiss breathed.
"Um, yeah." Ruby cleared her throat. "So. You wanna lead for awhile?"
"No, no, you're doing just fine, I'll stay back and make sure you don't get us lost."
"Thanks for the vote of confidence," Ruby scoffed weakly.
The platinum-haired fledgling got to her feet first, offering a hand to help Ruby up. Once again in the front, the brunette cautiously crept towards the intersection, stopping there to peer down both ways. Seeing nothing out of the ordinary, they both sighed in unison, giving each other small and abashed grins as they did so.
Ruby flipped a coin in her head and decided to head down the direction the woman was running from. At the end there was an unlocked door; opening it revealed a storage room with a shelf and a few rolling laundry carts, but nothing else of real interest. However, as soon as both Kindred were fully in the room, the lightbulb exploded, raining glass on their heads. Weiss gave a startled yelp and jumped back before letting out an irritated huff, picking the glass out of her hair.
"I did not know umbrellas were standard equipment for hunting down spirits," she grumbled mildly.
Ruby shrugged and offered her a grin. "Maybe helmets?"
"Ugh, no, that would do terrible things to my hair."
"Like these exploding light bulbs don't?"
"...Point."
Just then, on the shelf behind them, various paint cans and tool boxes and the like began to rattle and glow purple.
"Ruby?"
"Yeah, we should-"
Before she could finish her sentence, the door slammed shut behind them and they heard the click of a lock immediately thereafter.
Ruby groaned quietly. "Oh, fuckwaffles."
She looked around the room wildly. Now that the light was off she could see the outline of weakened cinder blocks at the base of the wall, indicating a possible room behind there. Ruby quickly ran over and kicked at the wall, collapsing the bricks. She ducked down and grabbed hold of Weiss' hand, pulling her through just as the objects hurled themselves wildly about the room.
They both sank to the ground next to the wall, sighing in relief as the objects came to a rest.
"I'm gonna be one big bruise by the time we're done here," Ruby grumbled.
Weiss let out a soft snort of laughter but just shook her head wordlessly.
Peering about her surroundings, Ruby could ascertain they'd arrived into yet another storage room, only dimly lit by an emergency light. There were a couple of fallen shelves but at least there was nothing that could be thrown at them. She stood up and shuffled over to a metal desk in the middle of the room which had another newspaper. She picked it up and read the headline out loud. "Hotel Hell! Child's Severed Head Found in Hotel Laundry Room!"
"Oh, ewww…" the brunette groaned, flinging the paper to the table in disgust. The door at the other end of the room had a simple deadbolt, which she walked over to next as Weiss levered herself up from the floor. It lead them back out to the entryway where they were before.
Ruby turned to Weiss with a shrug. "Well, let's try this way, then." Together they backtracked to where the ghost had been running towards, and an open doorway on the side there revealed the hotel's laundry room.
The brunette immediately recoiled when she saw what was inside the room. "Oh, hell no! No, no, just… No!"
"Ruby…"
"No, I can tell you how this is gonna go, we're gonna walk in there, and some disembodied head is gonna fly at us and latch onto our faces!"
"I don't think-"
"I've seen the movies, Weiss!"
The platinum-haired fledgling sighed, her left eye twitching ever so slightly. "The clues lead to here."
Ruby paced out in the hallway, threading her fingers through her hair and pulling at her red-tipped brunette strands. "Oh, this just sucks all kinds of ass…" Turning, she gripped her bat determinedly before glancing at Weiss. "You could at least arm yourself."
"I really don't think it would be helpful."
"Fine, don't come complaining to me when a ghost baby is chewing on your brains."
Weiss glanced at her quizzically. "Are you sure you're not mixing your genres up? That sounds more like a zombie."
The brunette fledgling froze at the doorway, slowly turning back towards her companion with her silver eyes intent. "Weiss."
"Er… yes, Ruby?"
"Are zombies real?"
Weiss fidgeted uncomfortably. "...Yes?"
"Of course they are." Ruby just sighed and shook her head. "Right."
Together they carefully headed into the laundry room. Everything was powered down, of course, from the big industrial washers to the oversized dryers.
They almost made it past the row of dryers when one at the far end slowly crept open with an eerie creak of noise.
Ruby let out a shrill scream and set herself into a defensive stance, but after a half a minute it was apparent that nothing else was about to happen.
"Er, Ruby?"
"Yeah?" Ruby whispered harshly in reply.
"Are you going to check that?"
"I'm not gonna check that," she hissed frantically. "Why don't you go check that?"
Weiss' hand twitched towards her rapier, though she visibly fought it back down again. "No, you've been doing an admirable job leading us so far…"
"Well, yeah, but you've got seniority and all…"
"Oh, but I'm just advising, so really…"
"But I've been having all the fun so far, you should be included too…"
"It's quite alright, Ruby, I wouldn't want to deprive you-"
"No, I insist-"
"That's not necessary-"
"Weiss!"
The other girl blinked uncertainly at her. "Er, yes?"
Ruby gazed at her friend pleadingly. "Will you please go look into the creepy dryer for me and not make me witness yet another horrible thing that's gonna send me over the edge?"
Silver eyes, wide and panicked, stared back at the platinum-haired girl. She gave her friend a slow nod. "Alright, Ruby. Stay here."
Weiss walked calmly over to dryer but paused just outside of it, hand extended towards the partially-opened circular door. She swallowed hard and took a quick glance over her shoulder to see the brunette fledgling still standing there with bat raised at the ready. Resolutely, and keeping firm in her mind that she was a Ventrue and should exhibit a certain decorum at all times, regardless of spirits and the like, she turned, reached out, and pulled the door the rest of the way open. The hinges let out a tortured creak as it did, allowing her to look inside with only the barest hint of trepidation showing.
"Weiss?" a voice squeaked from behind her. "What do you see?"
Sighing, Weiss reached inside and pulled out a key. "Just this. The fob on it says it's to the boiler room."
Ruby shook her head in confusion. "Boiler room? Why would we need to go there?"
"Perhaps to turn the power on?"
The brunette frowned and chewed on her bottom lip, wincing slightly as she caught it yet again.
"That's a poor habit to have as a Kindred," her white-clad companion snarked.
"Yes, I noticed that, thank you… Okay, well, I guess we head for the boiler room? Um… Any ideas where it is?"
Weiss tapped her chin thoughtfully. "Perhaps back around the corner where the red emergency lighting was?"
"That was the elevator."
"No, the other corner."
"What other corner?"
"The… Oh, just follow me, you dolt."
Ruby grinned slightly, her mood buoyed by the familiar exasperated tone in her friend's voice. "Lead on, Weiss!"
At the other end of the laundry room was another open doorway. Past that Ruby could see a red glow coming from down the hall.
"How did you see that?" the brunette asked.
Weiss shrugged nonchalantly. "I noticed it from the other side, I believe the hallway makes a circuit around these rooms."
"Oh, gotcha."
The pair headed down and around the corner to spy another red emergency light above a door labeled as the boiler room. Sighing in resignation, Ruby inserted the key and opened the door cautiously. As soon as she did so, an eerie, low cackling sounded, deep and gravelly.
"Ass," Ruby muttered irritably, already fed up with the hostile spirit occupying the Ocean House.
They carefully trod down the concrete steps, lit by more red light bulbs and taking a few turns until they entered the boiler room in the subbasement. Machinery stretched before them, surrounded by a myriad of pipes above and across, creating what seemed to be a winding course towards the rear where another red light could be seen. Weiss gripped her shoulder and pointed silently past a set of pipes where the lower half of a man could be seen, again gripping a fireaxe.
Ruby let out a rather animalistic growl. "Oh, fine, you wanna play? You're mine, asshole!"
She took off with her bat in hand, racing around the corner caused by the machinery, but by the time she arrived there was nothing to be seen, the apparition vanished once more.
Weiss strolled around the corner, peeking first to be sure. "It would appear he cannot assume a corporeal form, merely… illusions. And telekinesis."
"Tele-k-what?" Ruby frowned.
The other fledgling smirked slightly. "Throw shit at us."
Ruby barked out a laugh. "Oh, right, gotcha."
The pair of young vampires wove their way through the machinery, looking for something to turn everything back on and hoping that it would still be functional after all of these years. At the far end, lit by another red bulb and cordoned off by a chain-link gate, stood a power relay box set into the wall. Ruby nodded and stepped inside with her fingers mentally crossed.
Well, here goes…
She swung the box open and flipped the breaker switch. Suddenly, the floor began to vibrate. Overhead lights started to flicker on and off, steam hissed from the pipes, and the popping sounds of rivets as they impacted the walls around the pair of fledglings echoed throughout the sub-basement.
The brunette turned with a startled yelp as Weiss grabbed hold of her hand and started to drag her back. They stumbled slightly, ducking their heads as rivets flew overhead.
"What did you do?" Weiss screamed.
"I just turned it on! Honest, that's all I did!" Ruby shouted back in a panic.
"If we blow up I am blaming you!"
"That is so unfair! Blame the fucking ghost!"
"Fine, I'll blame him, too!"
Ruby grunted as she was hit in the side by a blast of hot steam, but then screamed as it washed over her shoulder, bared by the stylish red hoodie. Her companion didn't let her fall, though, and kept dragging her out of the room until they were in the hallway back upstairs in the main basement. The rumbling behind them subsided and all the lights come on without further fanfare.
"Ow, owie ow ow ow," Ruby wailed quietly, leaning up against the wall with her good shoulder. "Ohhh fucking hell this hurts!"
Weiss, still holding her hand, pulled her to the ground and leaned over her, brow furrowed in concern. "Here, let me see…"
Ruby winced in pain, biting down hard on her lip to keep from screaming as Weiss probed her shoulder. The fledgling tasted the bitter copper of her own blood as her tooth punctured straight through her bottom lip.
Weiss sighed softly as she leaned back again. "It's a pretty bad burn, but you should be able to heal it for the most part…"
The brunette gasped in agony as she tried to move her arm. "Why does this hurt so much?"
"Steam is very close to fire in how it affects Kindred." The platinum-haired girl shook her head solemnly. "It takes longer to heal as well."
"Right," she grunted. Ruby closed her eyes and tried to concentrate, focusing on the pain in her shoulder to push it away, thrust it out of her. Eventually, it was reduced to a dull throbbing pain instead of the searing agony that set her nerve endings aflame.
Weiss nodded in approval when she opened her eyes back up. "Well done, Ruby, it looks more like a sunburn now instead of… Well. It was fairly bad."
"Bad like how?"
Her friend winced. "Bad like third-degree burns, most of your skin was missing."
Ruby peered over at her now-pink shoulder. "Well, shit. Glad I didn't look."
The other fledgling helped the brunette up. Together they headed back around the corner once more and towards the elevator, which opened on its own once they reached it.
"Yeah, I got another bad feeling," Ruby sighed. "Do we really wanna get into an enclosed space like this with a vengeful asshole of a spirit?"
Weiss raised one elegant eyebrow. "Do we have a choice at this point?"
"I suppose not."
They cautiously entered the elevator, looking around as they did. A worn carpeted floor and nice striped paneling on the walls spoke of the timeless luxury of the old hotel. As the doors closed and it began to move up they heard the dark, manic chuckle again.
"Oh, shut the fuck up already," Ruby grumbled irritably.
Weiss offered her a smirk. "Grumpy, are we?"
"I got scalded. I'm not happy with this ass."
A short while later, with surprisingly smooth and noiseless actions, the elevator came to a stop at the middle floor and the doors slid open.
Weiss poked her head out. "I suppose this is our stop."
"Guess so," Ruby shrugged.
The pale fledgling gestured forward politely. "After you."
"Why thank you, kind madam."
As the duo exited the elevator, a brief rattling preceded a small barrage of picture frames that flew off of the wall and towards them. Ruby absentmindedly batted them away with only a trace of irritation.
"Yeah, screw you too."
Around the corner from the elevator was the balcony that stretched across the foyer in a half-circle. Across the way they glimpsed the ghostly form of the woman once more, her hands unbloodied this time, though her flickering form seemed to stare mournfully at something at a table next to her, pointing to it forlornly before vanishing. The pair of fledglings shared a quick look before carefully treading around the balcony.
Barely a half dozen steps across they heard a phone ring, causing the both of them to jump around. An old-fashioned rotary telephone sailed out to catch Weiss in the stomach just as a vase smashed into Ruby's back.
Hunched over, Weiss was a bit breathless from the impact. "Right. He's beginning to piss me off as well."
Ruby just chuckled, rubbing her sore back as they continued past an old grandfather clock that stopped working long ago. Several elegant couches with rich green upholstery, faded and dusty, lined the balcony.
The pair of fledglings reached the far side where the more friendly spirit, or so they still hoped, had been standing. Another newspaper, this one slightly singed on the edges, lay on the table. Only the headline was intact enough to read. "Another Body Found At Ocean House! Police Say Second Child Was 'Chopped Up Like Firewood'"
Ruby let out an explosive sigh. "Shit."
"Definitely our axe-wielding ghost," Weiss nodded.
"Yeah, well, we figured that. Let's see what's around the corner here."
They passed the collapsed staircase and headed down the near hallway. A double set of doors on the side creaked slowly open as they approached.
"Okay," Ruby whispered, "is this the friendly ghost wanting us to go in, or the angry assfuck ghost luring us into a trap?"
Weiss simply shrugged wordlessly before they edged into the room side-by-side. There looked to have been a child staying there, with an old dollhouse and a dusty pink metal trike against the wall. In the middle of the carpeted room, next to some picture books and a small pull-toy shaped like a duck on wheels, was what seemed to be a child's drawing, somehow more preserved than anything they'd seen so far, as if it had just been colored in before they entered the room.
Weiss carefully bent to pick up the drawing, holding it for their inspection. Four stick figures on the paper were holding hands, a little girl in a pink dress, then a boy in a blue shirt and yellow shorts, a woman in a green dress, and then… Ruby and Weiss shared a dark look over the rather demonic-looking stick figure, complete with red eyes, sharp, gnashing teeth, and flames licking about his body. They each shook their heads, unable to summon up any sort of comment.
Crouching once more, Weiss carefully placed the paper back where it rested. Together they quickly searched the room but were unable to find anything else of relevance, and so exited without a backwards glance.
Down the hallway was another set of double doors, unblocked and unlocked. As they entered, the lights flickered off suddenly as a crashof thunder sounded. Shortly thereafter they came back on, but by that point, both Weiss and Ruby were tight in each other's embrace. They took a look at each other, startled, before quickly jumping back away from each other.
"Sorry!" Ruby squawked.
"No, quite alright," Weiss assured her in a rather squeaky voice. "I was just, er, making sure you were okay."
The brunette frowned momentarily. "Wait, is it even storming outside?"
Weiss pondered that briefly. "No, it shouldn't be. More tricks, I suppose."
A quick search of the room didn't turn up much. There was an endtable with what looked to be a wedding photo, blurred and faded. In the drawer below the picture was a room key with a fob that read Ocean House but no room number. As Ruby picked it up, turning to show it to her partner, a familiar rattling foretold the imminent barrage of objects that began to fly at them from all directions. With a yelp, the brunette fledgling followed Weiss as they beat a hasty retreat. Pausing outside of the room, Ruby's eyes went wide as she read the words now etched into the green wallpaper above the king-sized bed: "GET OUT".
She snorted as she recovered. "Yeah, no. Nice try, though."
They headed around the next corner only to be confronted by another boarded-up room. Backtracking, the pair passed the first room they'd entered, but immediately heard a ringing sound. Both of them crouched, prepared to defend themselves, but all that came towards them was the little duck pull-toy as it slowly rolled out of the room and across their path.
"Weiss?" the brunette whispered.
"Hmm?"
"What if it's not just two spirits?"
"The children as well?"
"Yeah."
"You may be right. Hopefully, we can help them also."
As they headed back across the balcony once more, they both jumped slightly as the grandfather clocks let out a loud bong when they passed it. Ruby just scowled at the clock, as if daring it to do more, but it was silent once again.
Continuing on, the duo passed the elevator they rode up on. The next set of doors opened into another room similar to the others in furnishings. Another brief search turned up nothing of interest that they could find. The second room, though, was locked. Acting on instinct, Ruby pulled out the room key in her pocket and it worked, allowing them to enter. It looked to have been damaged in the fire so many years ago, the floors and walls charred and the furniture, what was left, blackened and ruined.
Weiss stepped into the room just before the brunette, searching with her eyes though with obvious distaste at the prospect of getting her white outfit that dirty, when suddenly the floor beneath her creaked ominously. They faced each other, standing only a couple of feet apart.
Ruby let out a startled squawk as her footing shifted with another creak. "Oh shi-"
And then the floor beneath them gave way, sending the pair hurtling downwards once more into blackness.
A/N: This is becoming a bit of a habit, don't you think? They just don't make haunted hotels like they used to, poor structure all over the place… I keep giggling at the thought of these two badass vampires yelping and jumping into each other's arms. Entirely too adorable.
Bountiful appreciation for my lovely Beta and collaborator, Live to anger the World, and to all of you wonderful readers and reviewers! carpenter656, Sharkdude5, noone297, Blacsparrow, SixPerfections,TacoKing23, djjohns94, kinigget, Lavits Dragoon, amerdism, thanks as always for the continued support!
Stay shiny!
