FOR a few moments everything was silent.
They stared at each other, processing the news.
The only noise in the room was the Warlocks ragged breaths and Zacs uneven breaths.
In the distance they could hear the muffled horns and engines of the traffic.
It'd be a normal day if it weren't for the note.
But this wasn't normal.
It was the calm before the storm.
And then it all happened.
Dale and Fred snapped back to reality.
In a second, Dale was hurriedly leaving the room but not before shouting out some orders.
"I'll get everything ready.
Meet me there in 15 minutes.
It's by the staircase though."
And the he was gone.
Literally.
In a poof.
Warlock magic, she thought.
Fred was left stranded there trying to figure out whether he should explain what was going on to the two blank faced teenagers seated in front of him.
Fred sighed for the millionth time.
"A bunch of vampires were meeting a couple of blocks away from here and if the message isn't a hoax, they were attacked." He said.
He was speaking so fast out of impatience, it was a wonder Zac and Tina understood him.
"You guys could come too if you hurry."
"But the sun.." She said. "We can't leave, it isn't dark yet."
"A portal." He said, exasperated.
"Oh." Zac said in realization.
"Gimme a second," she said and scampered back to her room, threw on a hoodie over her tank top and put on a pair of Jean's instead of her shorts.
"Okay, guys! I'm ready." She said to Zac and Fred who were standing at the doorway of her apartment.
Fred handed her a transport bottle with a thick red liquid sloshing around in it.
Her stomach rumbled.
Without thinking too much about it she took the bottle and gulped down the contents in a matter of seconds.
I just drank blood, she thought a little dizzily.
No, she snapped at herself, don't think about it right now. You can do your brooding later.
Leaving the bottle behind, they left the apartment.
Instead of going towards the elevator, they headed towards the emergency staircase, where on one end of the wall, something shimmered and rippled.
It glowed purple, casting a faint purplish tint to their skin.
The portal.
"You guys go ahead," Fred said, motioning them to go forward.
Zac and Tina step through it, hand in hand, after giving each other a worried questioning glance.
For a moment, it seemed to Tina that time had slowed; a second seemed like an hour.
They floated around in a void, stumbling and trying to regain their balance.
It was almost like falling from the sky, a purple sky, falling but not really ever landing.
Gravity seemed to have taken the day off.
But Zac's grip on her hand never faltered.
And before they knew it, they were tumbling out of the portal.
She nearly smacked her head on the ground but a pair of arms came around her and steadied her.
Dale.
"Oh! You're here already! Thanks." Tina said, a little out of breath and stepped away from The Warlock, looking for Zac.
Zac had, unlike her, smacked his head on the ground and was now muttering curses under his breath as he got up and dusted his clothes.
When he looked up and found Tina staring at him, he smiled back sheepishly.
She looked around now. They were in what looked like, a garage.
The portal was still shimmering on the garage door behind her.
Another door, which probably opened into the main house, was a few meters in front of her.
To her right, there was a single window right in the center of the garage wall.
The garage itself was dusty and dark.
Junk thrown in the corners and other stuff kept under white sheets now turned brown with layers of dust &
dirt and years of disuse.
Fred stepped out of the portal and, only to her and Zac's surprise, landed on his two feet.
He walked further into the garage, gesturing for the rest to follow.
He stopped near the window in the garage.
They clustered around him as he pointed at the window.
"The garage is on the left side of the house. Whoever's in the house will be able to see us through it if we make a commotion." Fred said in a whisper.
Tina heard something click. The sound came from the house.
And she was sure she wasn't the only one who heard it when she looked at Fred and saw his face frozen with fear.
"Guy's, get down." Fred said in an incredibly weird voice.
The rest of them stood dumbfounded, staring at Fred with blank faces.
But he ducked with inhuman speed and pulled them all down on the floor where they landed in a heap just as a loud bang sounded and the window pane behind Fred shattered and pieces of glass rained down on them.
Cristina squeezed her eyes shut. She knew this sound.
It was a gunshot.
Something embedded itself in the wall behind them with a dull oomph sound.
They heard bits of plaster fall to the ground.
Footsteps inside the house as they- whoever it was- moved away.
They got up slowly, warily.
Fred began to say something but she wasn't- couldn't - pay attention.
She felt dizzy and weird when she saw a bullet embedded in the wall right where Zac had been standing a minuscule ago.
***
"We need to go search the house." Fred said urgently.
"Wait." It was Dale.
Dale closes his eyes and chanted something low and inaudible under his breath, in a language they didn't know.
And suddenly the air around the four of them glimmered a purplish glow and them dissapeared.
"What was that?" A curious Tina asked.
"That was a sort of protection spell." He said.
They- Zac and Tina- waited for a more elaborate explanation.
Fred sighed.
Dale said,"Basically it protects you from any attack. Sort of like an invisible shield around each person. You can attack other people but they can't touch you."
Zac and Tina looked at each other.
Cool, they thought.
They'd only read this sort of things in books. Never did it cross their minds that they'd actually be able to experience it.
"Oh," Dale added, remembering something, "It wears off in an hour, so, keep track of time."
He then proceeded to enter the house, followed be Fred, Tina and Zac.
And as she entered the house she was hit by an overwhelming stench of blood and corpses.