Andre steps back, falling to his knees. He grips the broken chair leg protruding from his chest. Tyler rises in triumph, snickering. He kicks Andre until he is completely on the floor.
"And all traitors and snitches die."
"You first," a female voice matter-of-factly stated.
Before Tyler could completely assess who was behind him, Jade chops off the vampire's head with a long saw. The now headless body collapses onto the linoleum.
Jade drags the wounded Andre into the hallway. She leans him against the wall and studies the damage.
"It didn't…" Andre winced. "Go in all the way. One more hit and it would impale my heart."
"So what do I do?" Jade looking impatiently concerned.
"What do you think, pull it out!"
His sudden sarcasm intrigued Jade. She shrugs and gets a good grip on the chair leg. She yanks and easily removes the foreign object. Andre lifts up his shirt to see the entry wound in greater relief. Jade watches in fascination as the surface of the beating heart repairs itself and the chest cavity closes up, right down to the skin healing.
Jade helps Andre back up. They exchange an awkward silence.
"What?" Andre finally asked.
"How the hell did you do that?"
"As long as the heart still beats, you're still alive. I just had to concentrate on healing; save all my strength." He suddenly goes limp and Jade catches him in her arms.
"I think you got a ways to go yet."
She carries him back into the room and lays him on the table beside the open cases.
"There you go. Help yourself to some contraband. Should do the trick. I hear it's a special blend."
Andre closes his eyes at the reference to earlier.
"Now, drink up. And don't come back until you make yourself useful."
Dr. Caterina Valentine was visiting a recovering boy in pediatrics who had his tonsils removed the day before. She supervised the procedure and the parents were appreciative of her bedside manner.
It was after checking on her young patient when the lights went out and she got a text that the hospital was possibly under siege with apparently a biological weapon. She looked over at the scared children, fighting back tears thinking about the unseen thing that could hurt them. She takes a deep breath and swallows her fears. The good doctor had to be strong for all of them.
"Okay, kids" she said locking the door and running to the patients' beds. "Everything's going to be alright. Just a power outage."
She sits down at the foot of one of the beds, scanning the room so that she can maintain eye contact with all of them and at the same time keeping a mental inventory.
"My name is Dr. Valentine. But my friends call me Cat" One little boy giggles. Cat smiles. "That's right. Isn't it cute? Now, what are all your names?"
Rob presses the button to raise his hospital bed. He can see Cook peeking through the door into the hallway.
"What are you doing?" he asks.
"I don't like this. Something's going on."
Rob shrugs with the shoulder furthest from his bandage. "Maybe they lost their power, too."
"Don't think so. I'm getting a bad vibe from this situation."
"Isn't that a little paranoid?"
"Now, Shapiro," Cook smiles. "Don't start sounding like everybody else."
Tori continues to bite her lip until it bled. She had to stay quiet. Her hair is brushed aside and a hand strokes her neck. With a single violent motion, Tori is pulled out from her hiding space and smacked onto the cold, steel slab.
"Found you," the aggressor breathed menacingly. He tilts his head, inquisitive like an animal. "Aren't you a pretty, pretty one." Tori's head is forced by one hand onto the table while the other pins her torso. She kicks wildly. "Shame you have to die. Well, better you than me, right?"
Tori screams until she runs out of air. After catching her breath, she tries to scream more. Slowly, her attacker eases his eager incisors toward her long, smooth neck.
In the blink of an eye, the deadly weight on Tori's chest is knocked off. She rolls to the edge of the table and looks down at the scuffle on the floor. A dark-haired woman straddled the man, choking him with her bare hands.
"FUCKING DIE!" she grits through her teeth.
The male then puts his hand on the female's face and pushes it, sending her flying into the x-ray display, shattering the panels and light bulbs.
Tori covers her mouth in shock at the impossible display.
He gets up and walks over to the down woman amid the wreckage. Tori swears she heard a doglike growl before what happened next. The woman leapt up and like a battering ram knocked the guy across the room. His trajectory is hindered by a 12-inch handle on the edge of the sink. It was shiny silver. It's red now.
The woman looks at the impaled dead man before her. She then turns around. Her eyes locked with Tori and the human opened her mouth and leaned back as if she had seen a ghost.
"Are you okay?" Jade asks the girl.
"Um, I'm okay, I guess." Tori looked for the words, squinting her eyes. "Thank you."
"Don't worry about it."
"Wait, are you alright?"
"What?" Jade looks behind her at the broken ex-ray display. "Oh, yeah." She looks back at Tori. "I'm fine."
Jade walks to leave the room. Tori grabs her arm and gets shot a dirty look.
"Hold on!"
"WHAT?!"
"What are you?"
"Excuse me?"
Tori just widens her eyes at such an obvious question.
"Well," Jade begins. "I guess I'm just like him, only less dead."
"He was trying to kill me; acted like he wanted to eat me."
"It'll happen. More often if you don't let me go."
"Can I at least get your name?"
Jade sighs heavily, showing off her frustration. "If I tell you, will you let go of my arm so I don't have to break yours?"
Tori nods.
"It's Jade." She stares at the hapless human. "Well?"
"Well what?"
"So, I don't get your name?"
"T-Tori."
She lets go and Jade disappears from sight.