The ironic truth was that instead of a vampire hunter, Jay Bee far more closely resembled a bat. For one thing, he was dressed all in black with a billowing trench coat that gave the impression of wings. For a second, he wasn’t breathing – well, not manually. Breathing made noise, and so it was often prudent to switch to his implanted artificial respiratory system. The real dead ringer, though, was that he was standing, silently and quite comfortably, on the ceiling, hat perched on his head, flagrantly disobeying the laws of gravity. Just like ancient civilisations built their castles on hills, it was far easier to defend with gravity on one’s side than not. Vampires couldn’t bite what they couldn’t reach, after all.

The cellar was dusty and cluttered. Though the main banquet suite was probably magnificent-looking, with balloons and cakes and party games or whatever it was American teenage girls liked (being a twenty year-old male Brit, Jay Bee wasn’t certain), the cellar was holed up with the whole manor’s supply of alcohol, lest the little darlings get their hands on them. Obviously, it wasn’t getting drunk that was the big threat to the kids, though.

He gently narrowed his eyes and focussed. Staring hard at the crates and bottles both in his mind and body’s eyes. Inside his head, he became aware of beta waves leaping across synapses and a pulsing in his lobes and, curiously, inside his hat itself. The bottles in one corner of the room began to jingle, shuddering against one another, while the crates began to creak and groan. Noise. But not enough. The sensation was nearly indescribable, but it was just like stretching and contracting awkward muscles, like wiggling one’s ears – the objects in the room were an extension of his body, connected through invisible nerves, and with one great impulse, he heaved the whole load into the air and crashed it back down. Bottles exploded. Wine and spirits wept forth over the cellar floor. After a moment, a new wave of largely intact bottles spilled from the crates, which were themselves largely cracked.

That would get their attention.

“The fuck?”

He heard a clattering of hurried footsteps thunder toward the cellar and down the narrow staircase. These were the thralls. This was the moment of truth. They were fast and freakish, like humans but not. Their movements were shuddering and unnatural. He was reminded of crack dens, with their shambling, pained denizens, but, in this case, in super-fast forward. They were well-dressed, or, once well-dressed, faces and white shirts from their bouncer disguises smeared in red (with no prizes for guessing what).

“The fuck happened here?”

There were two of them, and they hadn’t seen him. They were jumpy: did they have an instinctive hunch as to what was happening or was it just their new-found bloodlust? What didn’t help was the cellar door slamming shut behind them.

They shrieked. Loudly. And then they saw him. His blood ran cold as their eyes locked into his, dull disbelief crossing their slightly vacant faces. Their superhuman vision matched his Vigil-augmented pupils and the almost total blackness of the cellar was no disguise for any of them.

He had barely a moment to react as they threw themselves at him. Even with the advantage of the higher ground, their monstrous leaps and the low ceiling made it a close call – quite what they would do if they grabbed him, he didn’t know. His brain reacted instinctively to his cold sweat, releasing artificial hormones to prevent shock or panic as well as an absurd amount of adrenaline. This was the speed of battle nowadays: it took just one and a half seconds for them to cross the room and attempt the first strike, recover, and for him to react accordingly.

The thralls landed on practically the other side of the long cellar, and spun wildly for a second swipe. They didn’t attack. Their eyes instead focussed on thousands upon thousands of shards of glass followed by splintered planks and even the intact crates and bottles floating in the air before them. Only one of them was fast enough. The other was barraged at first with a thousand tiny cuts, cutting his body to ribbons, until the weightier objects audibly crunched his bones.

One down. One to go.

The survivor wheeled around at him and lunged again. This time, it was to be a direct hit.

One moment. One impulse.

With an instinctive mental flare, Jay Bee threw the thrall down onto the floor with a satisfying thump. The thrall squirmed, but found his body held in place by forces he couldn’t see. What he did see was the barrel of a gun pointing square between his eyes by the man standing on the ceiling. If you were to die unexpectedly, Jay Bee figured, this was about as unexpected as it could get. With his arm raised above his head, aiming at the figure on the floor like a starter’s gun in a Dali painting, he fired.

To make sure, the other one received a bullet in the brain, too. Whether his gentle twitching as the blood gushed out from the cuts between his mangled bones was a would-be second wind or just the last throes of his enhanced nervous system, neither of them would ever know.

Just as he was exiting the bunker through the tiny porthole window that led outside (through which he’d originally come), the others clocked in.

[indent][i]Mullens is taken care of.[/i][/indent]

Good news from Dan.

[indent][i] I’ve got the traffic cameras hooked up to facial recognition – if they as much as get near a stoplight, I’ll know about it. The musketeers are out and monitoring from each corner, so they’ll see it when the bastards enter the box. Finally, casino’s locked down, so no lovestruck teenagers are gonna wander into the killzone. Soon as I pick up anything, I'll give you tough guys a direction, an ETA, and a slap on the ass. I know what you’re thinking: ‘Blake, you’re just the best. I appreciate how hard you work for us,’ but save it for after we win.

Oh, I also texted Mullen a smiley face from a hidden number. Sorry, I couldn’t help myself.[/i][/indent]

And from Blake. He couldn’t help but gently grin as he sprinted across the lawns to Dan’s location, following his inbuilt GPS like a migrating bird follows the Earth’s magnetic field.

[indent][i]Thanks, chief. Nice work. Also, please refrain from doing stupid shit and taunting the vampires. Last thing we need is those fuckers to get their feelings hurt.[/i][/indent]

Probably sensible. It was time to check in himself.

[indent][i]Play nicely, kids. 

Speaking of playing nicely, I’ve just taken down two more thralls. How many of these little bastards are there? Either way, Operation ‘Make a Mess and Distract the Remaining Thralls' Complete. Should just be the vamps proper to go. On my way to your location for backup now, Dan. See you soon bbz xoxoxoxo ♫[/i][/indent]