If she was being honest, Calypso had been in better hotel rooms. Not by much… but better.
The coven had purchased two rooms for them- the one Calypso was in and also the one she had declared the girls’ room, and the one she had banished Caleb, Arken, and David to. This one was objectively better. It was bigger… and, well, that was it. It was mostly bigger to accommodate the pull-out couch by the window, but there was also a whole extra chair! How fun. Just like the other room, theirs had two queen-sized beds, a desk, a TV, a coffee table, and a small minifridge. Calypso assumed that everyone knew the universal rule of “don’t take anything out of the minifridge”. They’d charge you for it!
After checking in, Calypso had dashed to the room with the speed of a cheetah on cocaine. She was the first inside, but rather than put her bags on one of the queens, she plopped it onto the pull-out couch. Just to be nice, you know! It was right next to the window, too, which was nice. She’d get a good view of… Calypso opened the curtain, and frowned. Brick wall. Great. But she could totally see if there was a vampire outside of their window. Totally.
Calypso sat on the stiff, leather couch, and watched the door as the rest of the girls trickled in. If one of the guys walked in, she’d abruptly yell
“NO!” and point to the other end of the hall. Once everybody was in, she smiled and started to talk.
“It’s an… alright hotel room! We’ll have to share beds, unless someone wants to sleep on the floor. Kota and I can share the pullout couch, and the rest of you… well, you can figure it out! I say we get some pizza and we invite the guys in and we try to guess where the vamps will show up next,” Calypso said. The thought of sharing a bed with Dakota made her feel a bit tingly, but she wasn’t quite sure why. They were friends, and sharing a bed with your friend was normal. Right?
It took a few hours, but once everyone agreed on their sleeping arrangements and started to settle in, they ordered pizza, and Calypso spread a map, a laptop, the mission folder, and a few pins across the coffee table. She then cleared her throat. It was time for a brainstorming session.
“So…” she started, and opened up her laptop. God, she was glad she had brought this thing. Typical of Calypso, the laptop was covered in cute stickers with plenty of positive messages and bright colors.
“Could somebody get the guys in here? I wanna talk about what we’re gonna do tonight.”Once the guys were ushered in and the pizza had come, the door was closed. Someone made sure to cast sound-sealing, warding, and locking spells on the perimeter of the room, which Calypso was sure she would’ve totally forgotten if someone hadn’t remembered for her! With a slice of cheese pizza in hand, Calypso opened up the laptop, logged into the Wi-Fi (it took a minute), and started to browse through the news.
“I think we should be looking for obituaries and news about strange assaults,” Calypso said. A few people were gathered around her laptop, while most of everybody else was either fucking off or looking at their news too.
“If we find a hit on an obituary matching the causes of death, we can find where they’re buried, and… uh, go there! Because the vampires will probably be there. Right? We know what we’re doing. I don’t think we should fight them just yet, but we should totally follow them and see where they’re going.” Calypso explained her reasoning in a rather unsure manner. She really didn’t know what she was doing, and anyone’s suggestions would definitely be welcome.
Calypso ran a hand through her cloud of hair, and kept browsing the Internet. It took about 20 minutes, but the group finally found a hit. In the Baltimore Sun, there was an article about the assault and death of a 22-year-old woman named Madison Hawkins. According to the paper, she had been at a nightclub a few nights ago when she had been found in the bathroom, unconscious and with two puncture wounds above her collarbone. The cops had attributed it to her being drunk… but Madison had been the designated driver that night. She had died two days later in the hospital of a mystery illness.
Of course, witches knew better.
As soon as she saw the article, Calypso knew they had found their hit. It was sad, but… it was just what they needed. She didn’t smile, but she did smack a pin down on the place where the article said she was buried.
“I think this might be it,” she said.
“It matches up. We should go there tonight, I’m thinking.” The group talked about it for a while, and eventually they agreed on how they’d go about staking out the cemetery. Arken, Dakota, Iris, and Rebecca would sit in Arken’s car and wait outside to see if any vampires showed up, while Calypso, Alayna, Hana, Iris, and Caleb would actually head inside the cemetery, cast an invisibility spell over themselves, and maybe get to watch some vampires dig up a body. And then follow them home. And then probably go home themselves.
When that was settled, they finished off the pizza, gathered up all the weapons and a few stake-out snacks, cast a spell so they wouldn’t be seen by the hotel staff, loaded themselves into the cars, and drove off for a graveyard stake-out.
A few hours later, around midnight, the two groups had been waiting in the graveyard for
hours. The vampires still hadn’t shown, and Calypso was starting to get a bit frustrated. Nobody had spoken in the actual cemetery for nearly 30 minutes. The tension and the exhaustion hung low in the air, although their eyes were still peeled.
The cemetery was tightly packed with graves, but well-kept. Polished headstones and freshly overturned dirt marked the area they stood in as housing newly-dead people. There was a chapel on the hill, but it was far off, and the groundskeeper was nowhere to be seen. A lamp lit much of the sidewalk and some of the graveyard, but the area they were in was nearly pitch black. Calypso, Alayna, Hana, David, and Caleb stood under the boughs of an oak tree near the grave of Madison Hawkins. Calypso’s eyes, at least, were drooping. They were still under the cloak of the invisibility spell, and she had been carrying the brunt of the spell’s power for about an hour. They had planned to stay here until 2 AM, and each had agreed to carry it for about an hour. Her hour wasn’t over yet, however. So Calypso pouted and simply kept holding up the spell.
She had been stunned by the power of the wellspring a few days ago, but even now it felt a bit lacking. Being in such close proximity and coming off of almost zero power had made her feel high off of the new, foreign power for a while, but now it felt almost normal. A few days ago, she wouldn’t’ve been able to do this wide of an invisibility spell for even 15 minutes. But now, that she could do it? Calypso felt herself wanting a little more. It was strange.
But for now, they were on a stake-out. Calypso leaned back against the tree and sighed. If nobody was here by 2 AM, they’d go. That’s what they had said, and it was starting to look like no one would come.
God, this was such a waste of time. Why, oh why had she thought this was a good idea?
Just when Calypso was considering going back to Arken’s car and trying to bum a cigarette off of Dakota, two figures came walking through the grass, making a beeline straight for the grave they guarded. Calypso’s eyes flicked up, her attention caught. From what she could see, they were two men- both pale, but one shorter than the other. And more human-looking than the other. The shorter one had brown hair, what looked like green (or brown?) eyes. The taller man was pale, dark-haired… and he had eerie, red eyes. Calypso shivered. Those were them, alright. Red eyes… he must be old. The shorter man was carrying a duffel bag and a sealed canister of some sort, while the red-eyed vampire walked unburdened in front of him. They spoke among themselves, softly.
“This bag is heavy, Dmitri,” the short vampire complained. “Why can’t you carry it?”
The red-eyed vampire- Dmitri, Calypso guessed- chuckled. “I am your elder. If I say you carry it, you carry the bag. Now come. Her grave is just right over there. We shouldn’t keep Ingrid waiting for long.” He pointed in their general direction and Calypso froze in fear, but then realized he was just pointing at the headstone.
Calypso stayed still as a statue as they approached the grave. Her heart thumped in her chest like the roar of a lawnmower. Could vampires hear heartbeats? She hoped they couldn’t. She glanced furtively at the other witches standing around her, all under the invisibility spell she was holding. Oh God, she had to hold the invisibility spell. Calypso put extra willpower into keeping that up, squinting as the vampires grew closer.
The shorter one dropped the duffel bag onto the ground and pulled two shovels out. He presented Dmitri with one, which he took. Calypso sucked in a breath. They were going to dig up her body!
Dmitri plunged his shovel into the ground… and then stopped. He raised his head, and cocked it. “I sense another presence here,” he said, and Calypso’s heart hammered against her chest.
No. Vampires didn’t… they didn’t have magic! They couldn’t see them, no no no…
The younger one suddenly looked interested. “A human?”
“Perhaps. Whoever they are, they’re close. I can feel something else here. Another sort of energy.” He started to walk right at the tree, and his horrible red eyes focused right on them. Hungry.
Calypso’s eyes went wide.
Fuck. This could not be happening right now. She sidestepped, quick, and ushered the group along with her. They needed to get out of here, now.
But before everyone could get away, Dmitri swatted at the group with his hand. Calypso didn’t know how, but it was almost as if he could… sense where they were. He had a sick smile on his face, and on his third swat he landed someone.
Hana. Calypso’s mouth went dry as his long fingers closed around her wrist, and lifted them to his mouth. He wanted to bite her. In Calypso’s shock and terror, the invisibility spell broke. She felt it shatter around them, felt her magic break. They could see them. The younger vampire stared right at the group of them. His fangs popped out, and he smiled.
“Witches!” Dmitri yelled loudly while yanking Hana’s wrist to his face.
Then, in a flash, the younger vampire pulled out a dagger and darted at them, quick as lightning. A slight female figure appeared out of seemingly nowhere and joined the younger vampire in darting at the witches. Calypso took a fighting stance and started to cast a spell. She had been hoping this wouldn’t happen, but it seemed they had no option now other than to fight.
Arken’s car was parked on the side of the road, lights off with everybody inside. Calypso hoped they had thought to cast an invisibility or even a night-seeing spell… otherwise, sitting in that dark car would get old fast. The car was parked so that both sides could clearly see the cemetery gate, the walls, and the sidewalk beside it. On the other end of the street, there were apartment complexes facing the cemetery. It wasn’t a nice neighborhood. After all, who would want to live next to a cemetery?
They had been sitting there for a few hours when there were six flashes by the gate. Maybe someone got out to investigate. Maybe someone didn’t. Whatever happened, three of the figures jumped the fence, and the rest just stood by the gate, idling.
Eventually, there were screams from the cemetery. The vampires on the ground and the group in the car could hear Dmitri’s warning shout, and some ensuing screams from the witches. The people whispered among themselves, seemingly wondering if they should go and assist.
Gary, North Carolina was a small town. For most, it was only a rest stop on road trips, or a stop for tired truckers. As you exited the freeway and drove into town, homes with large properties would begin to pop up in the countryside, gradually growing closer and closer together until you were in the town square proper. That’s where the group would find the Williamson’s Inn. Or, well, motel. It was a motel. A shabby, run-down place with a neon sign on the front. Jean-Luc’s Audi probably looked quite out of place compared with the atmosphere there. Moldy walls, the ice machine, the dirty pool, and the flickering neon sign all created a certain vision of the place. The ‘am’ bit of the neon sign had lost power, so it just spelled “Willison’s Inn”.
When they got there at 10 PM, the town was dark and quiet. The only places with lights on were the motel, the nearby dive bar, and a 7-Eleven down the road. When the group would head inside to check in, there was an older, scruffy-looking middle-aged man sitting at the desk, watching TV. Checking in didn’t take long. The man was brusque and gruff, but getting their keys only took a moment.
Both rooms had two queen-sized beds (which looked slightly questionable) with floral bedspreads, stiff, squeaky mattresses, and yellow-ing sheets, but one of the rooms had a pull-out couch. The carpeted floor was also questionable-looking, and They both had doors and windows that faced the parking lot, and both doors had deadbolts on them. That likely wouldn’t be enough for the witches, though. Wards and magical locks on the rooms and cars would probably be set before they went to sleep, too. Somebody probably went to go get food. The only places open were the 7-11 and a McDonald's five miles down the road. It seemed that there were a few more restaurants in town, but none were open at that hour of night.
However, it was late, and maybe they all wanted to go to sleep. Driving for 8 hours was a pain in the ass. Or maybe they went out to go and do something, hunt some vampires. The night was their hunting grounds, after all.
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