I did feel something but was it was the art project that disturbed me, or something else?
Charlie stood suddenly. “I have to go. I’ll see you upstairs.”
“Do you want some help?” I called after him.
He didn’t answer but raised his hand and waved before he darted out the door.
I turned back toward Derek. “I wish you could tell me what this means. It’s beautiful. I can even tell which one I am.” I reached to touch the top of his head but stopped, remembering his dislike for touching. “Do you want to come upstairs?”
He shook his head vehemently.
“All right. You don’t have to,” I said, startled by his reaction.
Upstairs, Sarah stopped me. “So are you coming tonight? I want you to meet Jesse.”
“Um, probably,” I said. “One sec.” I walked quickly to Charlie’s office, where I found him speaking urgently into the phone.
“Check it again,” he yelled and slammed the receiver down and looked up at me. “We need to get everybody out of here.”
“What’s going on?”
“I don’t know how it’s going to happen, but we’re going to be attacked.”
“When?”
“Soon. I can’t tell for sure, but I feel it. My skin is crawling; it’s horrible. We need to get everybody out now.”
“Has security noticed anything strange?”
“They said everything’s fine,” Charlie said as he walked out of his office.
I followed. “Do you know who’s going to attack us?”
He stopped and faced me. “That’s the strange thing. Whoever it is, they feel—” he chewed his lip before continuing. “—wrong. Could be vampires, witches, I don’t know. The signal is all messed up.”
I didn’t like the word wrong. “I’ll help get everybody out.”
Thumping loudly against the wall with his fist, Charlie announced to the office that they were going to have a practice fire drill. Annoyed sighs and moans filled the air.
“But it’s almost five o’clock!” someone said.
“Can I get coffee while we’re out?” asked Sarah.
“Sure, whatever. Let’s just get going. I’m timing you.” People stood but no one took it seriously. Charlie jogged up and down the aisles trying to hurry them along. “You’re being timed people. Move it!”
Without warning, the lights overhead turned off. Only a little streetlight found its way through the slated blinds, but it wasn’t enough to help us maneuver about the many cubicles.
“Sarah!” Charlie called.
“Yes?” she said, her voice still casual.
“Call security.”
I heard the phone being picked up.
“That’s strange,” Sarah said. “The phone is dead.”
“Eve!” Charlie called, the panic in his voice unmistakable.
“I’m over here,” I said next to Sarah.
“Get everyone into my office and lock the door behind you, do you understand?”
I called out, “Whoever’s still left in here, follow the sounds of my voice if you can’t see me.”
Several people, unknown to me in the darkness, found their way over. I told them to follow the length of the wall until they reached Charlie’s office. Meanwhile, I heard Charlie hurrying around the office opening all the blinds, but the dim, orange streetlights barely reached us.
I tapped Sarah’s shoulder. She had yet to move from her desk as she was on her cell phone talking about the current excitement with a friend. The light from the phone lit up her thrilled face.
“Get off the phone, Sarah,” I said.
She lifted a finger to signal ‘in a minute’. I snatched the phone from her hand and tossed it into the wall. As soon as it hit, there was a loud explosion near the floor’s break room.
“What the hell was that?” Sarah asked.
The silhouette of Charlie’s body slid skillfully over a desk toward me. “Get down!” he yelled and pulled Sarah’s desk on its side and jerked her to the floor next to me. He withdrew two revolvers from within his jacket. A few people who hadn’t quite made it to Charlie’s office began to run. Sarah scrambled after them.
“Go with her, Eve,” Charlie said.
“I’m not leaving you. I can help.”
“It’s too soon. You’ll get yourself killed.”
“I won’t,” I said, wishing I had just told him already about being an immortal. “I’ll be—”
A shrill cry pierced the air behind us, from a direction we weren’t expecting. I turned around, my heart almost beating from my chest. A dark figure of a man was gripping a woman by her neck with one hand high in the air, her legs dangling beneath her.
“Let the killing begin,” he said, and he tossed the woman across the room.
Chapter 39
Charlie fired his gun, drilling one bullet after another into the looming figure’s chest. The man’s body jerked, but he kept moving forward with frightening determination. That’s when I knew. He wasn’t a man. He was a vampire.