Holy water cannot help you now
A thousand armies couldn't keep me out
I don't want your money
I don't want your crowd
See I have to burn
Your kingdom down
Holy water cannot help you now
See I've had to burn your kingdom down
And no rivers and no lakes, can put the fire out
I'm gonna raise the stakes; I'm gonna smoke you out
Seven devils all around you
Seven devils in my house
See they were there when I woke up this morning
I'll be dead before the day is done
By himself tonight, blissful solitude. He loved True, but Gideon had been a solitary creature for so long that sometimes he missed the peace of lonesomeness, craved time when he needn't think of anyone save himself. Swaddled against the bitter cold winter wind in a long grey woolen peacoat, he ascended the front porch stairs, taking them two at a time, a lungfull of pale grey smoke making a remarkable substitute for the warmth of breath as he exhaled, the slow swirls of the stuff caught round his shoulders before he pulled the door to the inn open and the warm air vaporized the curling fingers of the clouds.
He tugged at the scarf, turned double and looped through itself round his throat, as he made for the bar. No need to seek sanctuary at the fireplace just yet with the open space of the inn so empty yet. He took a stool, pulled buttons open and let the heavy coat fall haphazard and careless over the back of his seat, nearly spent cigarette held carefully between his teeth.
Another pull, a long draw of breath and slow, languid exhalation as icewater eyes ticked in pleased laziness round the room. Old friend, old comfort. Always and never the same. He lent an elbow on the bar and ground out the butt slowly before an easy lean forward gave him just enough reach to grab hold of the neck of a bottle of scotch, the next lunge bringing up a low crystal glass. Two tots were more than enough, and the stuff burnt pleasantly at the tip of his tongue as he feigned a slow sip.
Elias has been waiting for this moment not for days or weeks, but months. The moment he regained consciousness under Ivan's care, before he was even fully aware of his transformation, he was resolved on one thing: Gideon's downfall. Somehow he just knew Gideon survived, and it then became a simple matter of waiting for his own full recovery. Since then fall has changed into winter, Christmas has come and gone, and a new year is nearly upon them when the young scholar dares to venture out into the open again. He watches the Inn from across the road, puffing steadily on an American cigarette, dressed in a new suit, new coat, and a new grey fedora with a thick black band. His smile grows with each step across the road toward his quarry, a new twist with every thought of torture, almost laughing aloud at the internal agony Gideon will suffer before Eli has him in his hands again, but he's silent when he comes in through the front door, angling his hat down to shield his face.
Guileless, blind man. Perhaps the danger of being an apex predator too long was that one neglected to protect themselves, forgot to be careful, cautious. Gideon had done this once, paid dearly for it, and it seemed hadn't learnt his lesson yet. He failed utterly to recognize that anyone of any importance whatsoever had just come through the door, too absorbed in the slow amber legs the scotch made against the artfully cut glass in his fingertips. Too bent upon enjoying the silence of the moment, bleeding out everything as background noise. He was a miserable beast of prey, really... too domesticated and dulled by city life and easy pickings.
He set the glass down and pulled open the button of the dark, nearly charcoal grey suit he wore. They were tailoring them closely this year, and it suited him, fit his outline like nothing else. Crisp white shirt made him look less pale, and the dark, deep inky blue of his tie lent color to eyes that seemed washed of theirs in proper light like this, only offered up hue when the firelight struck them from the side, highlighting all the odd angles of his face. He dug out a lighter, toyed absently with the thing as he shifted slightly to pull cigarettes from his inside breast pocket.
Eli lingers by the door, letting others breeze by as they enter, single-minded in his focus on the man at the bar. He steps around the other patrons, taking the long way over to the bar, slipping through the break. He can smell Gideon, and under the shadow of his hat his lip curls. He snares the bottle of scotch by the neck and tips it over Gideon's glass, topping off the thin splash.
"Trust me when I say you'll want the whole drink, sire."
Oh lovely, a flirt. The mingled consternation and flattery had a second's fleeting across his face before it was replaced with the mask of cool charm he always offered up. All this within the space of time it took for eyes to travel from the preoccupyment with the lighter to the glass now far too full for his tastes. So little time. Eyes lifted, a smile tugging one corner of a mouth that had begun to open in reply. Oh how quickly that mask cracked, fell away, became a rictus of horror.
"I've missed you too," Elias smiles, pouring himself a glass from Gideon's bottle. "I feel so awful that we've fallen out of touch... but trust me, we'll have plenty of time now."
He raises his glass. "And it's all thanks to you. Cheers, Gideon."
That little word sliding it all home. Sire. He nearly fell with the rush to get to his feet, and the chair under him went toppling backward, he almost with it, only managing by some small grace to find his feet and the floor. He stumbled though, hands gone hard and white upon the bar as they gripped it like a lifeline.
"Elias."
Elias takes a long drink, enjoys it, and smiles past Gideon at Icer, nodding to her. Then back to his old friend.
"How are you? I heard you have a new friend."
He felt sick, felt the world spin and a gaping maw that had suddenly opened in the pit of his stomach threatened to swallow him whole.
"Elias."
He repeated again, as if the sound of it might make this seem more real - or perhaps dispel the nightmare, wake him.
"You died.... you..." The next was writ plain on the look of intensified horror upon his face. The kind of horror only unintentional fathers will ever know. You are dead.
Shock to horror to fear to a deeper shade of regret -no!- self loathing than had ever made itself host to a man before; each followed quick succession upon the stage his features had become for all the worst emotions the human condition had to offer. Ah, but it all dulled into anger at that last little barb. He found his feet, from the slow backward stagger he'd seemed set into, and suddenly came barreling forward, planted hands on the glossed wood of its surface and cleared the bar in a
smooth arc, landing hard, fists finding hold in Elias' lapels a half second later. Rage, wrath. Sweet friend, perfect comfort and retreat. Let it all slip way into the dull haze of blood red obscuring vision. He flung Elias backward hard, toward the well of bottles and the jutting edge of a sink.
Eli gets tossed like a ragdoll and that shuts him up, at least for a moment. The scholar crumples behind the bar, bringing a shelf of bottles down with him.
Across the bar, Andu Kirost tilts his head from one side to the other. "Andu thought smash not allowed here."
"It's a sin," Elias agrees with Andu as he struggles slowly back to his feet, grabbing the bar with both his hands. He looks around the room, then at Gideon. "That was uncalled for... I'd keep your distance from this one, folks. Fella's a live wire. No telling what he'll do."
He brushes the glass off of himself, feels around his face and scalp for cuts, and grabs his hat, tugging it onto his head. "I'll leave you to your scotch."
"Shut the f*ck up, Elias." He spat, and went for him again, this time the rough shove angled to send him out from behind the bar, give him space enough to grab hold of the bastard and drag him toward the alley door. Sufficent thing, oak. To absorb the impact of the scholar's leaner build as Gideon pushed him hard up against the door.
"Uncalled for? I'd ought to hold you in the goddamned fireplace and watch you burn, and that would still not qualify as uncalled for." His voice was harsh but low enough, nose to nose with the other, raging but not far gone enough not to care who else heard.
The 10 foot tall, 1 ton Minotaur stands to his full height and slaps an open hand down on the bar thunderously enough to make even the aged and experienced bartop give a little jump and thump along it's entire length, roars at full volume, shaking dust from the rafters.
"NO FIGHT INN IN!!"
That slam upon the bar was enough to make him jump, though, and he glared sidelong at the massive, roaring beast. Jesus, it was getting so that one couldn't even have a minor dust-up in a bar. What was next to go? Smoking? Drinking? He obliged. One monster to wrestle with for the evening was enough. He pulled Elias away from the door, yanked the thing open and shoved the scholar out ahead of him before slamming the door behind them both.
"Don't have much of a choice!" Elias yelps past Gideon in reply to Andu and Janie as he's dragged toward the alley door, and goes sailing out, the door slamming behind them.
Elias goes soaring across the alley into the opposite wall and crumples, illuminated -- illuminated? His crumpled form's awash in the red glow of a truck's brake lights. There's no movement from within, but the entire vehicle reeks of death. Eli stays crouched against the wall for a moment, smiling through the blood trailing down his face and past his lips.
"Such... a good little puppet," he wheezes, and climbs back to his feet."You have your talents, sire... and I have mine."
He casts off his coat, tosses it and his hat at his feet, and rolls up his sleeves, exposing the dark mark at either wrist. He rolls his
head, then levels his gaze and a crazed grin on Gideon.
"Let's compare, shall we?"
"You f*cking bastard." He paced down the steps after his quarry, in no rush. "I ought to have made damned sure you burned."
Elias was bleeding, and the scent of it struck a high chord above the miasma rolling off that truck. It smacked Gideon clean in the face,
stopped him for a second in that slow advance. Fledgling. Blood of my blood. This close, this unguarded, Elias could hear it, hear each
thought like Gideon's voice echoing low in his own brain. Unnerving at best, disorienting at the least. No longer that foul half-breed scented blood. This was his, his and what remained of the dhampir's after he'd glutted himself on the wealth of his tormenter's veins. He was appaled all over again.
"WHY?!" He thundered. "WHY?!!"
"It was the only way I could survive, Gideon," he laughs, taking one staggering step closer, then another. "Isn't it so ironic... that your wrath saw me reborn with your blood? I told you that you would grant me power beyond mortal or immortal imagining, but I should have known it would be something far beyond my own plans!"
He laughs louder, lifting his arms toward the heavens, and what appears to be black electricity crackles from the marks on his wrists.
"Control, Gideon, is the future of our civilization. Embrace it!" and on those two words, the canvas flaps on the back of the truck begin to move. Dead bodies, reanimated by Elias' pure will and nothing else, jerking and shambling and stretching toward their quarry with every move of his hands like disgusting marionettes, close in on Gideon.
Disgust warred with outrage as those dead things closed rank. He stepped back, stepped into one, felt the sickly give and crunch of dead flesh and bone against himself as its arms came round him. He jerked down, bent at the waist, flipped the thing toward the others, and nearly retched as is arm came off in his hand. He flung it. These were sad little broken puppets. If the living were no match for him, if iron bars could give and snap like toothpicks, what good were fragile, decomposing creatures? It was disgusting, foul work, but hardly a fight as he tore through them.
The first wave go down like matchsticks, but the second? Elias closes his hands into fists and the muscles tighten around bone until they go hard as rock. The second wave resists the blows, and when Elias lowers his arm, begin lashing out at Gideon with all of their strength, no longer constrained by any concern for their bodies' limited durability. It is comparable to the strength Ivan displayed before.
"As you can see, my colleagues and I are still ironing out a few kinks, but as we review the incoming data, we find new ways of moving forward. I'm sure, if they could, they would join me in thanking you for being a part of this, Gideon."
One blow, then another, both well timed, felled him, sent him to a knee. The things pressed their advantage, swarmed. He was surrounded, blow raining from all sides, hands up, protectively grasping either side of his head.
"STOP!!" Desperate words, from a desperate man. Shouted with all the unbridled intensity of one being mobbed, overwhelmed physically and emotionally. The word bounced, echoed off the slick walls of that freezing, cramped alley... but what was more they echoed off the walls of Elias' own mind. STOP. Like it was his own will, like he had no choice. STOP. A command like the fist of god himself coming down upon the scholar. Inescapable, undeniable.
"Rgh... arrrgh!" Elias screams, staggering back towards the truck, as the reanimated bodies begin to crumple, one by one, around Gideon. "Get out, get out, get out..."
He rubs furiously at his eyes, grips his head with both hands as he struggles with the crushing weight of it. His strange nature rebels against the command, diluting its effect, but it's debilitating at best. It's not one ghoul, not two, but three that come out of the truck to aid their master, Ivan giving commands to his two juniors. They form a ring around him and stare at Gideon, but only Ivan speaks, after a long moment.
"Leave us, lesser beast," he growls at Gideon.
Gideon rose, slow, standing amid the bodies piled in an ungodly ring around him. Rose and smiled like some black devil. So the old ways still worked with the new breeds. "No." He sneered at Ivan, tilted his head to gaze past him, stare down the smaller figure beind their protective wall.
"Elias. Come here. Leave your dogs."
Elias jerks toward Gideon in fits and starts, but he's bodily restrained by one of the other ghouls, and little by little it's as if the fledgling vampire's shutting himself to the outside world altogether -- keeping the likes of Gideon out at the expense of his own ability to control the dead, at least anything more complex than the simple blood addiction that drives ghouls. Ivan continues staring for a few seconds longer, then grunts and waves a hand to the others. They drag Eli's limp form into the truck, leaving the bodies behind.
Gideon watched them go, some small smug sense of satisfaction tempering the immeasurable horror of the reality of the entire
situation he was choosing, quite firmly, to ignore for the moment. He turned, picked his way back into the inn, gathered his coat and made for
home. So much for alone time.
A thousand armies couldn't keep me out
I don't want your money
I don't want your crowd
See I have to burn
Your kingdom down
Holy water cannot help you now
See I've had to burn your kingdom down
And no rivers and no lakes, can put the fire out
I'm gonna raise the stakes; I'm gonna smoke you out
Seven devils all around you
Seven devils in my house
See they were there when I woke up this morning
I'll be dead before the day is done
By himself tonight, blissful solitude. He loved True, but Gideon had been a solitary creature for so long that sometimes he missed the peace of lonesomeness, craved time when he needn't think of anyone save himself. Swaddled against the bitter cold winter wind in a long grey woolen peacoat, he ascended the front porch stairs, taking them two at a time, a lungfull of pale grey smoke making a remarkable substitute for the warmth of breath as he exhaled, the slow swirls of the stuff caught round his shoulders before he pulled the door to the inn open and the warm air vaporized the curling fingers of the clouds.
He tugged at the scarf, turned double and looped through itself round his throat, as he made for the bar. No need to seek sanctuary at the fireplace just yet with the open space of the inn so empty yet. He took a stool, pulled buttons open and let the heavy coat fall haphazard and careless over the back of his seat, nearly spent cigarette held carefully between his teeth.
Another pull, a long draw of breath and slow, languid exhalation as icewater eyes ticked in pleased laziness round the room. Old friend, old comfort. Always and never the same. He lent an elbow on the bar and ground out the butt slowly before an easy lean forward gave him just enough reach to grab hold of the neck of a bottle of scotch, the next lunge bringing up a low crystal glass. Two tots were more than enough, and the stuff burnt pleasantly at the tip of his tongue as he feigned a slow sip.
Elias has been waiting for this moment not for days or weeks, but months. The moment he regained consciousness under Ivan's care, before he was even fully aware of his transformation, he was resolved on one thing: Gideon's downfall. Somehow he just knew Gideon survived, and it then became a simple matter of waiting for his own full recovery. Since then fall has changed into winter, Christmas has come and gone, and a new year is nearly upon them when the young scholar dares to venture out into the open again. He watches the Inn from across the road, puffing steadily on an American cigarette, dressed in a new suit, new coat, and a new grey fedora with a thick black band. His smile grows with each step across the road toward his quarry, a new twist with every thought of torture, almost laughing aloud at the internal agony Gideon will suffer before Eli has him in his hands again, but he's silent when he comes in through the front door, angling his hat down to shield his face.
Guileless, blind man. Perhaps the danger of being an apex predator too long was that one neglected to protect themselves, forgot to be careful, cautious. Gideon had done this once, paid dearly for it, and it seemed hadn't learnt his lesson yet. He failed utterly to recognize that anyone of any importance whatsoever had just come through the door, too absorbed in the slow amber legs the scotch made against the artfully cut glass in his fingertips. Too bent upon enjoying the silence of the moment, bleeding out everything as background noise. He was a miserable beast of prey, really... too domesticated and dulled by city life and easy pickings.
He set the glass down and pulled open the button of the dark, nearly charcoal grey suit he wore. They were tailoring them closely this year, and it suited him, fit his outline like nothing else. Crisp white shirt made him look less pale, and the dark, deep inky blue of his tie lent color to eyes that seemed washed of theirs in proper light like this, only offered up hue when the firelight struck them from the side, highlighting all the odd angles of his face. He dug out a lighter, toyed absently with the thing as he shifted slightly to pull cigarettes from his inside breast pocket.
Eli lingers by the door, letting others breeze by as they enter, single-minded in his focus on the man at the bar. He steps around the other patrons, taking the long way over to the bar, slipping through the break. He can smell Gideon, and under the shadow of his hat his lip curls. He snares the bottle of scotch by the neck and tips it over Gideon's glass, topping off the thin splash.
"Trust me when I say you'll want the whole drink, sire."
Oh lovely, a flirt. The mingled consternation and flattery had a second's fleeting across his face before it was replaced with the mask of cool charm he always offered up. All this within the space of time it took for eyes to travel from the preoccupyment with the lighter to the glass now far too full for his tastes. So little time. Eyes lifted, a smile tugging one corner of a mouth that had begun to open in reply. Oh how quickly that mask cracked, fell away, became a rictus of horror.
"I've missed you too," Elias smiles, pouring himself a glass from Gideon's bottle. "I feel so awful that we've fallen out of touch... but trust me, we'll have plenty of time now."
He raises his glass. "And it's all thanks to you. Cheers, Gideon."
That little word sliding it all home. Sire. He nearly fell with the rush to get to his feet, and the chair under him went toppling backward, he almost with it, only managing by some small grace to find his feet and the floor. He stumbled though, hands gone hard and white upon the bar as they gripped it like a lifeline.
"Elias."
Elias takes a long drink, enjoys it, and smiles past Gideon at Icer, nodding to her. Then back to his old friend.
"How are you? I heard you have a new friend."
He felt sick, felt the world spin and a gaping maw that had suddenly opened in the pit of his stomach threatened to swallow him whole.
"Elias."
He repeated again, as if the sound of it might make this seem more real - or perhaps dispel the nightmare, wake him.
"You died.... you..." The next was writ plain on the look of intensified horror upon his face. The kind of horror only unintentional fathers will ever know. You are dead.
Shock to horror to fear to a deeper shade of regret -no!- self loathing than had ever made itself host to a man before; each followed quick succession upon the stage his features had become for all the worst emotions the human condition had to offer. Ah, but it all dulled into anger at that last little barb. He found his feet, from the slow backward stagger he'd seemed set into, and suddenly came barreling forward, planted hands on the glossed wood of its surface and cleared the bar in a
smooth arc, landing hard, fists finding hold in Elias' lapels a half second later. Rage, wrath. Sweet friend, perfect comfort and retreat. Let it all slip way into the dull haze of blood red obscuring vision. He flung Elias backward hard, toward the well of bottles and the jutting edge of a sink.
Eli gets tossed like a ragdoll and that shuts him up, at least for a moment. The scholar crumples behind the bar, bringing a shelf of bottles down with him.
Across the bar, Andu Kirost tilts his head from one side to the other. "Andu thought smash not allowed here."
"It's a sin," Elias agrees with Andu as he struggles slowly back to his feet, grabbing the bar with both his hands. He looks around the room, then at Gideon. "That was uncalled for... I'd keep your distance from this one, folks. Fella's a live wire. No telling what he'll do."
He brushes the glass off of himself, feels around his face and scalp for cuts, and grabs his hat, tugging it onto his head. "I'll leave you to your scotch."
"Shut the f*ck up, Elias." He spat, and went for him again, this time the rough shove angled to send him out from behind the bar, give him space enough to grab hold of the bastard and drag him toward the alley door. Sufficent thing, oak. To absorb the impact of the scholar's leaner build as Gideon pushed him hard up against the door.
"Uncalled for? I'd ought to hold you in the goddamned fireplace and watch you burn, and that would still not qualify as uncalled for." His voice was harsh but low enough, nose to nose with the other, raging but not far gone enough not to care who else heard.
The 10 foot tall, 1 ton Minotaur stands to his full height and slaps an open hand down on the bar thunderously enough to make even the aged and experienced bartop give a little jump and thump along it's entire length, roars at full volume, shaking dust from the rafters.
"NO FIGHT INN IN!!"
That slam upon the bar was enough to make him jump, though, and he glared sidelong at the massive, roaring beast. Jesus, it was getting so that one couldn't even have a minor dust-up in a bar. What was next to go? Smoking? Drinking? He obliged. One monster to wrestle with for the evening was enough. He pulled Elias away from the door, yanked the thing open and shoved the scholar out ahead of him before slamming the door behind them both.
"Don't have much of a choice!" Elias yelps past Gideon in reply to Andu and Janie as he's dragged toward the alley door, and goes sailing out, the door slamming behind them.
Elias goes soaring across the alley into the opposite wall and crumples, illuminated -- illuminated? His crumpled form's awash in the red glow of a truck's brake lights. There's no movement from within, but the entire vehicle reeks of death. Eli stays crouched against the wall for a moment, smiling through the blood trailing down his face and past his lips.
"Such... a good little puppet," he wheezes, and climbs back to his feet."You have your talents, sire... and I have mine."
He casts off his coat, tosses it and his hat at his feet, and rolls up his sleeves, exposing the dark mark at either wrist. He rolls his
head, then levels his gaze and a crazed grin on Gideon.
"Let's compare, shall we?"
"You f*cking bastard." He paced down the steps after his quarry, in no rush. "I ought to have made damned sure you burned."
Elias was bleeding, and the scent of it struck a high chord above the miasma rolling off that truck. It smacked Gideon clean in the face,
stopped him for a second in that slow advance. Fledgling. Blood of my blood. This close, this unguarded, Elias could hear it, hear each
thought like Gideon's voice echoing low in his own brain. Unnerving at best, disorienting at the least. No longer that foul half-breed scented blood. This was his, his and what remained of the dhampir's after he'd glutted himself on the wealth of his tormenter's veins. He was appaled all over again.
"WHY?!" He thundered. "WHY?!!"
"It was the only way I could survive, Gideon," he laughs, taking one staggering step closer, then another. "Isn't it so ironic... that your wrath saw me reborn with your blood? I told you that you would grant me power beyond mortal or immortal imagining, but I should have known it would be something far beyond my own plans!"
He laughs louder, lifting his arms toward the heavens, and what appears to be black electricity crackles from the marks on his wrists.
"Control, Gideon, is the future of our civilization. Embrace it!" and on those two words, the canvas flaps on the back of the truck begin to move. Dead bodies, reanimated by Elias' pure will and nothing else, jerking and shambling and stretching toward their quarry with every move of his hands like disgusting marionettes, close in on Gideon.
Disgust warred with outrage as those dead things closed rank. He stepped back, stepped into one, felt the sickly give and crunch of dead flesh and bone against himself as its arms came round him. He jerked down, bent at the waist, flipped the thing toward the others, and nearly retched as is arm came off in his hand. He flung it. These were sad little broken puppets. If the living were no match for him, if iron bars could give and snap like toothpicks, what good were fragile, decomposing creatures? It was disgusting, foul work, but hardly a fight as he tore through them.
The first wave go down like matchsticks, but the second? Elias closes his hands into fists and the muscles tighten around bone until they go hard as rock. The second wave resists the blows, and when Elias lowers his arm, begin lashing out at Gideon with all of their strength, no longer constrained by any concern for their bodies' limited durability. It is comparable to the strength Ivan displayed before.
"As you can see, my colleagues and I are still ironing out a few kinks, but as we review the incoming data, we find new ways of moving forward. I'm sure, if they could, they would join me in thanking you for being a part of this, Gideon."
One blow, then another, both well timed, felled him, sent him to a knee. The things pressed their advantage, swarmed. He was surrounded, blow raining from all sides, hands up, protectively grasping either side of his head.
"STOP!!" Desperate words, from a desperate man. Shouted with all the unbridled intensity of one being mobbed, overwhelmed physically and emotionally. The word bounced, echoed off the slick walls of that freezing, cramped alley... but what was more they echoed off the walls of Elias' own mind. STOP. Like it was his own will, like he had no choice. STOP. A command like the fist of god himself coming down upon the scholar. Inescapable, undeniable.
"Rgh... arrrgh!" Elias screams, staggering back towards the truck, as the reanimated bodies begin to crumple, one by one, around Gideon. "Get out, get out, get out..."
He rubs furiously at his eyes, grips his head with both hands as he struggles with the crushing weight of it. His strange nature rebels against the command, diluting its effect, but it's debilitating at best. It's not one ghoul, not two, but three that come out of the truck to aid their master, Ivan giving commands to his two juniors. They form a ring around him and stare at Gideon, but only Ivan speaks, after a long moment.
"Leave us, lesser beast," he growls at Gideon.
Gideon rose, slow, standing amid the bodies piled in an ungodly ring around him. Rose and smiled like some black devil. So the old ways still worked with the new breeds. "No." He sneered at Ivan, tilted his head to gaze past him, stare down the smaller figure beind their protective wall.
"Elias. Come here. Leave your dogs."
Elias jerks toward Gideon in fits and starts, but he's bodily restrained by one of the other ghouls, and little by little it's as if the fledgling vampire's shutting himself to the outside world altogether -- keeping the likes of Gideon out at the expense of his own ability to control the dead, at least anything more complex than the simple blood addiction that drives ghouls. Ivan continues staring for a few seconds longer, then grunts and waves a hand to the others. They drag Eli's limp form into the truck, leaving the bodies behind.
Gideon watched them go, some small smug sense of satisfaction tempering the immeasurable horror of the reality of the entire
situation he was choosing, quite firmly, to ignore for the moment. He turned, picked his way back into the inn, gathered his coat and made for
home. So much for alone time.