Beth approaches Hugo and Mike, bares her fangs and attacks. At the same time, Emily and Margaret both feel a very awkward and inappropriate desire for Mike, who shoos Emily across the room when she gets a little touchy.
The team, primarily Hugo, Seamus, and Cole, shred one of the bedsheets and subdue Beth. While trying to figure out next steps, Margaret and Emma both try to harvest some of their own blood in the hopes of soothing Beth’s hunger – but the first appearance of blood seems to energize her. Beth escapes her bounds by becoming a mist, then continues her assault.
After a scuffle, the party finally renders Beth unconscious.
Shortly thereafter Cole, unbidden, crushes her throat, seemingly killing her. Some period of party drama ensues, mostly involving Cole’s violence and Mike’s unwitting psychic influence over Emily and Margaret.
During the distraction, Jamie seems to perceive the “other” world without the use of a camera, and witnesses a confused Beth attacked and devoured by the denizens of that realm. He tries to make the visions fade, but accidentally transfers physically into this other realm (to the shock of the rest of the party). The denizens of the realm seem as shocked to see him as he is to be there, but he does take the opportunity to try to press through the outer door before being thrust back into the “real” world.
Naturally questions ensue, and Jamie makes another attempt, this time with Emily in tow, to try and explore if this is a viable means of escape. Something goes wrong, and the pair end up traveling through a multitude of realms and back again with a shock.
Moments later, the knockout light flashes with very little warning. When everyone wakes, they find that Margaret and Daphne’s cells are empty.
It seemed clear that Beth was losing the struggle with herself. Backing away, slowly, towards her own cell, Margaret noticed Mike standing on the other side of the room. Mike. All of a sudden, she felt a desire for him unlike anything she could remember having felt for anyone before. Rational Margaret mumbled something in the back of her head about pheromones. She gave that part of herself a two-fingered salute, the British one, and landed squarely on magic of some kind. Had the situation been less dire, she might have done something dramatic, like walk over to Mike and slap him. Definitely that, because the alternative was not an option. Absolutely not; if they somehow got out of this prison, she would, after all, have to live in a world that contained mirrors.
She shook her head and slipped into her cell. Not that she really thought she would be safe there, but she would be out of sight. It made her feel somewhat bad, like she was running away, leaving the others to fend for themselves. But she would be less than useful in a fight against a vampire, of that she was very certain. In fact, she would be useless in any physical fight at all, or worse than useless.
She did hear the fighting, though. People were shouting, yes, but they were yelling rather than screaming. Curiosity got the better of her, and she poked her head out of the door. Some of the others, Seamus and Hugo, mostly, it seemed, had somehow managed to subdue Beth. It did make some sense, she thought. The girl had been a freshly fledged vampire. She probably had little knowledge of her powers, and even less of how to use them.
Beth had tried to warn them, before she lost control. Not, Margaret thought, that it would have mattered much had they stayed away. All the doors were, after all, open, so the vampire would have had pretty much free access to all of them, and she had been starved by their captors. It was likely, from what Beth had told them before she lost control, that their captors had wanted her to attack the rest of the group. They were, she thought sourly, probably watching and taking notes. Possibly even placing bets.
She grabbed her blanket; it was made from some synthetic material, and it seemed solid enough. Remembering how Cole had torn fabric once before, she rushed out of her cell and thrust the blanket at him. “Tear this up!” No time to be polite just now. He stared at for a few moments, then did as she asked, or rather demanded, more like it. He then headed over to Beth and the men holding her down. It did take a couple of tries, but the three, mostly, managed somehow to tie her up.
Meanwhile, Emma had grabbed a cup and was gnawing on her wrist. The idea was, in essence, good. Beth was starved; feeding her might help bring her back to her senses. Not letting the vampire bite anyone was equally a good idea, though, for more reasons than one. They had no idea how it spread; a single bite would most likely not do it, or the world would have been drowning in either dead, drained bodies or in vampires, or both. Nevertheless, if they could find another way, it would be better. Also, there was the matter of making Beth stop before she drained her victim completely; that would be a lot easier if she did not get direct access to a donor. So, yes, a cup was a good idea.
Somehow, Emma did manage to bite hard enough that she started bleeding. And the vampire went… away? Of course. Of all the powers vampires were rumoured to hve, that one had to be true, the thing about vampires being able to turn into smoke or mist. Or something. Seconds passed, and then Beth appeared again, to continue fighting.
Emma was not bleeding enough, by far, to give Beth more than an appetizer. They had, naturally, no sharp objects they could use. Except one thing: Beth’s claws. Margaret hesitated; she really really did not want to do this, but it seemed like the most sensible thing to do, unless they wanted to kill the young woman, and that felt just wrong. Also, from what Beth had said before she went berserk, that was probably also what their captors wanted, to see them kill each other. To Margaret, that alone was a good reason not to kill the young vampire.
Someone handed her the coffee pot, and she emptied it. The others, or some of them at least, would most likely be upset over that later; she did not much care right now. Besides, she would have done the same if it had been tea; she just needed something bigger than a small cup. Gritting her teeth, she leaned across the table. Beth was fighting, but Seamus, Cole and Hugo seemed to have her almost subdued. Her arms were free, flailing, and Margaret held her arm out. The claws hit her arm, pretty much as intended. She pulled back, trying to get as much blood into the container as possible. She was not bleeding too much; she could just hope that she and Emma together would be able to gather enough blood to help Beth regain control.
While she and Emma were busy bleeding, the others managed to bring her down again. This time she looked unconscious. Hopefully, that would give them the opportunity to tie her up and feed her. Margaret was about to head over to Beth with the pot, when Cole stomped on her neck.
Margaret was furious. She was not the only one either; Beth had been, at this point, defenseless, and at least Margaret and clearly, Emma, had hoped to help her snap out of her frenzy. The two of them were not the only ones who seemed shocked and angry either. Not that it mattered, not anymore. Margaret was fairly certain that the vampire was really dead, not just vampire-dead.
That, too, was something she had never spoken with Ezra about; partly because he seemed unwilling to let her know anything about the world he was living in, and partly because, well, it seemed awkward to bring it up; it was simply too intimate. It would be like asking someone about their sex life or something like that. With him, there had been no doubt, not at all, that he was really dead, especially after his body turned to dust. Beth’s corpse did not. But then, Beth had probably been a vampire for a few weeks, if that, while Ezra was more than a century old. That could explain why Ezra’s body disintergrated, while Beth’s was still there. What happened to the body when a vampire was killed for real probably depended on how long the person had been a vampire.
For a brief moment, a memory flashed in her mind; Ezra’s cool hand in hers, then the feeling of it just dissolving into dust. She pushed the feeling away, and distracted herself by yelling at Cole. She found a further distraction when she noticed that Emily was sitting by the wall. To say she was looking unhappy would be an understatement. Margaret knew she was not the best at dealing with people, but she seemed to be the only one who had noticed, so she walked over to Emily and sat down next to her.
The younger woman was glaring at Mike, in a way that made Margaret suspect that she too had felt that very much unwanted desire right before the fight started. A quick whispered question confirmed it, and both of them started yelling at the man. She was ignoring Rational Margaret’s whispers that Mike might have as little control over whatever he had been doing as Beth had when she attacked them, but yelling at him was another welcome distraction.
Not that this was Emily’s only frustration. She had tried, several times, to find a way to open the door from the rooms they were trapped in. Although she said she could feel the electronics keeping the door shut, she could not manage to reach it, to influence it enough for the door to open. Margaret had no idea what to say to that, she was not really good with people. Oh, she knew what she would have said if she were in the position of whoever was making a fool of himself or herself in books she was reading. That was not, however, real life. In real life, she had no idea what to say to encourage Emily.
Then Jamie screamed. He started babbling something about how the others were eating Beth; from what Margaret could pick up, he had seen the people, those that he had been able to photograph, attacking and devouring Beth. Except he had not been using his camera, clearly he was, at least right now, able to see the dead ghosts or spirits or whatever they were, without a camera. Then he vanished.
Quiet. Then someone mused out loud, perhaps he had managed to get out, to get away. Margaret hoped so, only to have that hope dashed when he suddenly popped back into existence, by the wall where the door and the food slots were, at the far end of the room from where he had vanished from.
From what he said, he had not just seen what Margaret assumed were ghosts or spirits of people, perhaps people who had previously died in this room; they had seen him too. And the door had been there in this spirit world as well; he had tried to get through it, but it had not worked. He then, at least half in jest, she thought, offered to try bringing someone else with him. Daphne seemed willing to try, but it seemed she only saw it as a new kind of high. It struck her then, that perhaps Emily could do something from this other world, if, of course, Jamie were able to bring anyone across.
Another question was whether their captors had been aware of Jamie’s powers. This one in particular. If they were, the room was probably protected against him getting out that way. And if this was something they had not really know about, the group might have only this shot at getting out; if it seemed to work, chances were they would not be allowed to make a second attempt.
Emily seemed willing, if relucantly so, to try. Jamie took her hand, and for a few moments, they seemed to flicker, but nothing else happened. Well, nothing supernatural, that was; both started screaming, and then more or less collapsed. Something had gone wrong; maybe the room was protected against Jamie’s powers, maybe it was caused by him trying to bring someone else with him, or perhaps it was simply bad luck.
They had seen something, at least. What Jamie told them was confused, but it seemed as if they had moved, very rapidly, either through other parallell worlds, or seen the same place in different times; he was not sure if it was the same place, but it did seem that way. If, Margaret thought, Jamie could somehow control this, there was definitely a way he could get out of there.
Before they had time to discuss further, an alarm went off, the one that had sounded right before the light that had knocked them out last time. This time, however, they had no time to move to their cells, even had they been inclined to. The light flashed, and the world went out.