This was just one of the many auditorium halls on the first floor of the cinema. There wasn't a single source of light within the four walls of the premise, and nor was there any sound. Everything was just so...silent. So dead.
Suddenly, with a loud creaking sound, the door of the hall was slowly pushed open, and two figures walked in. Leading the way was a woman with short black hair. Her body was covered by a familiar black jacket, something the woman seemed more than happy to have back.
Katie quickly made her way into the hall, unconcerned by whatever danger that could be lurking within the dark rows of seats. All she did was pull out her phone and turn on the flashlight function and, with the flashlight, quickly scanned the hall.
She could distinctly see in complete darkness, but not as well as if there was an actual source of light.
After a few quick trips down the aisle and up the stairs, Katie turned back to the second figure, Gadreel, who was still standing at the door in caution.
"Oh come on! Relax!" Katie waved her hand in reassurance. "There's nothing unusual in here!"
Gadreel glanced at her before slowly making his way into the auditorium. Much like what Katie did, he was also going up the stairs, checking the seats to make sure they were really empty. As he did that, Katie raised a question.
"So...not to doubt your tactical knowledge, but...shouldn't we be going after the culprit now? Why are we wasting time searching through this movie theatre? What are we even trying to find?"
For the past few minutes, the pair have been venturing across the building, going in and out of the other auditoriums. Katie knew out of the pair, she wasn't the 1,500-year-old Angel who had seen god-knew how many battles, but she couldn't help but raise the question.
On the fifth set of stairs, Gadreel turned around and tossed Katie a look. Really? Now you're complaining about wasting time? Where was that concern when you wasted precious minutes chatting with those evil monsters back there?
He considered just keeping his mouth shut and ignoring the question, but he knew enough about Katie to know she would just keep asking him. She had always been curious, and not in a good way.
"Since we are on our opponent's home turf, they probably know about our insurrection the moment we broke out, which means they will try to be ready for us. If we struck as soon as we got free, we might've been able to take them by surprise and hit them before they had the chance to form defenses. Now...now, our enemies have to be fools to not be ready, and they're definitely not fools."
"And how is wasting more time helping to change that?"
"We're not wasting time here." Gadreel walked up another set of stairs as he explained. "If we have to fight an opponent of unknown power, I want to make sure we won't be ambushed or outflanked. I want to make sure our opponents didn't just hide an army on the first floor, ready to hit us from behind after we cross and cut off our retreat."
Katie's mouth hung open, partially because of surprise and mostly because she wanted to exaggerate a little. Then again...wow. Throughout the supernatural battles she had seen, Katie rarely saw this sort of strategic planning. Ambush? Outflank? Was Gadreel an Angel or an army commander? Then again, when the two sides of a fight were on equal power levels, tactics once again became important.
A long time ago, in that abandoned factory where the Seven Tribes assaulted the Dark Pantheon operatives and took them by surprise, the Seven Tribes first terminated the sentries. They fully surrounded the factory, cutting off all paths of escape before striking. This ensured that the Dark Pantheon forces were completely wiped out with no one left to flee and call for help. Tactics at work.
Fair enough. As Gadreel continued his search, Katie simply found an empty chair to sit in. She wasn't exactly on a timer here, and if Gadreel was fine with wasting some time, then she was definitely not complaining.
Gadreel walked up to another row of seats before pausing and turning back to Katie. A look of annoyance was on his face as he pointed at something.
"This is what you call nothing?"
In the middle of that row, on two dusty seats, were two skeletons. Well...they weren't exactly full skeletons, as there was still a fair amount of skin and flesh across the bones. Perhaps two long-dead corpses were more accurate. Their clothing was mostly gone, deteriorated by the passing time.
Faced with the irritated Angel, Katie could only shrug.
"Yeah. Nothing unusual. I'd hardly call two dead bodies in a haunted cinema unusual. But I assure you..." She grinned sarcastically as she leaned back comfortably. "if I see two living, breathing human beings within these rooms, I'll be sure to warn you."
Gadreel growled under his breath. For the 1,000th time, he reminded himself of one critical fact. The young woman sitting not far away from him with that uncaring smile on wasn't a trusted teammate. She might not even be on his team at all. To her, having fun was more important than anything else.
If Katie heard what Gadreel said, she would undoubtedly protest. Yes...having fun was important and was one of her top priorities, but she also valued other things! Things like love. Things like respect. She did respect James back there for what he said to her, and although those words might be no more than the script of the producer of that movie, Katie still respected the boy's character.
And that was why she would guarantee the culprit behind this whole atrocity, the owner of this cinema, dies today. She promised James vengeance, and she would fulfill that promise, albeit in her own little twisted way.
Before Gadreel could do anything else, the big screen in the front of the auditorium suddenly lit up. The pair snapped around and found themselves facing what looked like a scene in a horror movie. Well...more like the ending scene.
Why? The two bodies back there were likely the two victims pulled into the movie, and Katie had yet to see a movie where the main characters had snakes crawling out of their eyes and mouths be used as the starting scene.
A light beam extended from the big screen and landed on two corpses. Gadreel's eyes immediately lit up, but it was too late. He watched as the two corpses started moving. Somehow, snaked started to crawl out of the half-skeleton corpses that have been sitting there for god-knew how long. As the power of the cinema was asserted onto the two corpses, Gadreel slowly backed off.
Katie hopped up from her seat as well and walked up to the Angel. She looked at the two twisting bodies curiously.
"Where do you think those snakes came from?" She suddenly asked. "Like...did they grow out of the bodies? Or maybe they were teleported in from...what? The movie?"
The Angel didn't bother satisfying her curiosity.
The two corpses have stood up by now. Their eyes were long gone, but as the snakes crawled through their eye sockets, the corpses slowly turned their heads to face the pair. Their exposed jaws twitched and clashed together, forming a chilling sound that sounded like... laughter?
"Are they laughing at us?" Katie raised her eyebrows. Before Gadreel could answer, she took a step forward and drew her Knife. "You know...guys, I love a good laugh as much as anyone else, but the two of us happen to be on a schedule, so...I'm afraid we have to cut this encounter short."
Gadreel eyed Katie as the girl recklessly leaped into combat. He was going to tell her to be careful. As deadly as the two corpses felt to ordinary people, they didn't feel threatening to them at all. If the owner of this cinema tried to use them to take the pair out, then Gadreel would be letting out a breath of relief.
Most likely, this was part of a trap.
But as Katie jumped into combat, Gadreel didn't feel like there was the need to do so, and not just because he didn't like or trust her. Whatever his thoughts were about her, Gadreel knew the two of them were on the same boat. However, from what he saw about Katie, the girl wasn't that easy to kill. She would perfectly serve the purpose of exposing whatever trap that the owner might have set.
The combat ended quickly. The two snake corpses were hardly easy foes. One by one, the snake bites landed on Katie before even she, with her enhanced reflexes, could react. The snakes were obviously poisonous, considering the wounds Katie incurred quickly became bloated and black...before they disappeared almost just as quickly.
In typical Katie-styled combat, the girl didn't bother dodging or deflecting incoming hits. She only attacked, and after a few rounds of deadly exchanges, the two corpses were put back into their seats, now each with one less head than before.
"Well, that was satisfying." Katie commented as she wiped her Knife against her black jacket, spelling that jacket's death sentence. However this fight would turn out, this jacket was not going home with her. "Come on, cheer up! That was a win, I think."
Beside her, Gadreel didn't seem too relieved.
"We should keep going." He only said quietly.
Katie nodded. The pair headed back out to the hallway outside. Katie was the first to walk out, and as soon as she got into the hallway, she suddenly sensed something was off. She casually turned and glanced at the side...and found herself staring at dozens of bodies.
All of these bodies were of different styles. Some were missing an arm. Others only had half a head left. Some had spiders or tentacles coming out of their eyes and nostrils and mouths while others had a third eye on their forehead. Some were older than others based on the level of decomposition.
There was only one thing in common with them. They were supposed to be dead, but now, they were standing here in the hallway, staring at Katie.
That was a good jump scare, and what was Katie's response?
"Hello there."
The next second, the crowd of corpses overwhelmed her.
Behind her, Gadreel's expression changed. His celestial senses were deeply dulled inside this building, which was why he was so concerned about ambushes. Just as his eyes lit up and he was ready to join the fight, a voice called out from the middle of the sea of corpses.
"Give me a minute, will you?"
The Angel growled and retreated back into the auditorium and closed the door.
As she was left alone, under a pile of moving bodies, Katie let out a small smile before retaliating. Several branches tore through her jacket, grabbed onto the corpses piled on top of her, and ripped them apart limb by limb. Katie's right hand swung forward, bringing the smile on Katie's face even wider as she felt her Knife tearing through human flesh.
One of the bodies to her left bit down on her forehead with rotting teeth. A branch from Katie cut through its body and severed its neck, but the bodiless head still held its grip. Its teeth digging into Katie's skin and drawing blood.
Katie didn't really pay too much attention to that. With the severed skull still attached to her forehead, she slowly stood back up. Several battered bodies fell off her, now lifeless once again.
A corpse leaped toward her like a hunting lion pouncing on a defenseless gazelle, but Katie was no gazelle. Instead of dodging, Katie tilted her body and slammed her left shoulder into the incoming body. The collision alone shattered the corpse into a dozen pieces of flesh and bones.
The screeching door was pushed open once again, and Gadreel walked out into the hallway. It had been one minute already.
At this point, over half of the corpses were, once again, nothing but lifeless bodies. There were still around twenty of these moving bodies left, but just as Katie turned to Gadreel, about to say something snarky, these moving bodies suddenly turned and fled down the hallway.
"What the…" The disappointment in her voice was clear as Katie grabbed onto the skull attached to her forehead and crushed it between her fingers. "Damn cowards!"
Gadreel bit his lips as he tapped his chin thoughtfully. These corpses were the victims of the cinema. After their death inside the horror movies, their bodies and souls alike have been enslaved by this cinema. They would never run out of their own free will. This...this was an organized retreat.
"We should be careful and keep checking those halls. This may be a trap..." The Angel turned to the side and quickly came to a conclusion. "and...she's gone. God, she's fast…"
Once again, as Gadreel was busy being the responsible one in the pair, Katie took the liberty of dashing down the hallway and chasing after the retreating corpses. Maybe this was a trap...or maybe her brutal slaughter just scared these corpses off? Either way, her reaction would be the same.
If there was a trap in front of her, then she would gladly jump right in. After all, she was Katie Lockwood. To expect other things from her was nothing short of foolish.