Driven by Dean Murray Page B

caused me to wake from the
sleep I so desperately needed.
    It
was quiet, far, far too quiet. I was used to the quiet of the manor
house, but it had been built with shape shifters in mind. Even in the
older parts of the house, the parts without any kind of modern sound
proofing, it was still usually dead silent simply because everyone's
rooms were positioned so that there were empty rooms on either side
of us.
    The
hostel hadn't been that quiet when I'd fallen asleep, but it was
nearly as quiet as the manor house now. It was dark outside, but my
phone said that it was only a little after midnight.
    It
was too early for everyone to be asleep, but the only sound I could
hear was breathing from the two rooms that were closest to us. I was
still trying to figure out what might be the cause of the sudden
change when an incredible feeling of lassitude settled over me.
    Suddenly
I had no desire to get out of my chair, no inclination to deal with
whatever danger lurked just outside of our room. All I wanted to do
was go back to sleep. It was like alien tendrils of exhaustion had
wrapped themselves around my mind and sucked away all of the energy
that my brief rest had infused me with.
    The
human part of me wanted nothing so much as to give in, to follow the
insistent demands that I drop back off, but my beast roared to life
an instant before I would have closed my eyes again. She recognized
the fact that the influence currently working on us was alien. It had
bothered me, but it infuriated her.
    My
beast didn't particularly like the fact that she was subject to me.
If I'd been a little less strong-willed, or if I hadn't been part of
her in some indefinable way, she would have taken over control a long
time ago. She suffered my rule, but she wasn't going to suffer the
rule of anyone else, at least not without fighting, not without
forcing them to prove that they were dominant to her.
    The
flare of otherworldly energy from my beast pushed, at least
momentarily, the foreign presence out of my mind. I was out of my
chair and headed towards the door before my conscious mind had
finished the threat assessment that told me that my most likely
adversary was a group of vampires.
    I
paused for the barest moment at the door. Even through the white-hot
rage of my beast I knew that I didn't want to leave Ben here alone
and undefended, but the only alternative would be to cower inside of
our room and wait for them to come murder us.
    Even
if it had been a smart choice it still wouldn't have been the kind of
thing that I could have forced myself to do. I stripped off my
clothes in quick, smooth motions and then slipped outside, making
sure that I heard the lock click shut behind me.
    The
narrow hall was lit by nothing more than safety lights as I ghosted
down it, my ears questing for some clue as to where the vampires
were. I could feel the alien presence lazily pushing against my mind,
but the mental intrusion was still a blanket, undirected kind of
thing. I knew that I'd be in trouble if the mentalist realized I was
awake and coming for them. If he was strong enough to cover an area
as big as the hostel and put everyone inside it to sleep then he was
strong enough to read my mind in the middle of a fight. If the
presence just outside of my mind started to really push it would be a
sign that things were just about to go from bad to worse.
    I
was able to smell them after taking only a few steps forward. The air
inside the hostel was too still to guarantee that I was able to scent
all of the vampires involved, but it smelled like there were four
different vampires in the building. It was sometimes hard to identify
different vampires by scent though, the incredible stink of old,
rotting blood is generally strong enough to overpower almost
everything else about them.
    I
stepped around a corner and saw the first open door of the night. As
I got closer my nose and a set of soft sucking sounds confirmed what
I'd suspected. The vampires, at least two of