Symco took a deep breath in. She tried to center herself, but it wasn’t working. She couldn’t concentrate. She shut her eyes tighter as she tried to force a meditative state, but the more she tried the farther she drifted away. She was confused, upset, and looking for answers. Hodge was in the other room breaking stuff. She could hear him through the walls and that was part of why she couldn’t meditate. She hummed a single note to try and drown out the outside world. It wasn’t working. There were witches and vampires out there and they held the key to her and Hodge getting back to normal, but just when they thought they were getting close to getting some answers those answers went up in flames. Literally. And got their heads chopped off, and then glyphed by some angry witch. The bodies of the scorched vampires were in the PPD morgue being analyzed and dissected by demonologists and doctors trying to make sense of the charred evidence. Symco breathed in as deeply as Hodge’s lungs would allow and let out a loud “HUOFFF!” as she collapsed backwards onto the floor. It was pointless. She wasn’t going to have peace until they had answers. She thought about her sister and had flashbacks to the night before. “I wish we had got to catch up more…” she thought.

Meanwhile, Hodge took a long drag off of his cigarette. He grabbed the upside down table and set it right again on the floor. He grabbed the broken shards of plate off the floor and piled them on the table. He breathed out a long streak of smoke and turned the exhale into a growl as he grabbed the table by the corner and flipped it once more on top of itself and onto the floor. He picked it up again, righting it, and setting it down gently. Just as he was about to flip it again he heard his own voice booming from behind him. He jumped and let out a short shriek. He turned to see Symco standing at the door.

“Are you just resetting the table so you can flip it again? Over and over?” She asked.

“You scared the crap out of me!” He screamed. “And yes, I’m pissed. And flipping furniture helps!” He flipped the table.

“I don’t know about you, but I’m done.” she said. “I can’t just sit here, we need to do something!”

“What can we do? We’ve got no play until the egg heads figure out those glyphs.” snapped Hodge.

“Well, maybe we can help them.” she said.

“You got a degree in demonology I don’t know about?” He said sarcastically as he picked the table up off the floor and set it right again. “It’s pointless, even if they figure out what the glyph means we don’t know that it will point us in any useful direction or tell us anything about the vamps or the witches or whatever kind of deal they have going on!” Symco frowned at him, not that you could see it through the mask. But she clenched her enormous fist and stomped, shaking the room a bit.

“Fine!” She shouted, “Then sit here and flip your damn table!” She stormed off. As she was half way down the hall she screamed, “And stop smoking in my BODY!!!” Hodge stewed in his anger for a moment, then screamed and flipped the table again.

Symco made her way down to the morgue. She opened the big metal doors with ease because of her great strength, but she slipped on something wet and viscus. She was on the floor before her eyes could register what was going on in the room. She slowly sat up, with her eyes closed after hitting her head. She raised a hand to her pounding skull and felt something wet. “Son of a…” She looked at her hand, scarlet red and drenched in blood. She looked at the room and screamed. She gazed in horror and took in the bloody mess. The corpses of three headless agents in lab coats lay eviscerated on the floor. And walls. And ceiling. The charred bodies of the 5 burnt vampires, and the one Casey had decapitated stood headless in the center of the room, naked, some cut open after having been autopsied, all with the same glyph burned into their chests. The same glyph that was now painted on the wall 9 feet high and 7 feet wide. It looked like a broken circle with a vertical line drawn down the center, and four dots, two on either side of the line. Symco watched, started to panic, and completely froze as she watched the decapitated and charred corpse directly in front of her twitch and begin to step towards her. She scurried back a bit, slipping again on the blood on the floor. The corpse’s fingers began mutating into what looked like sharpened bone. It started to charge at her with the other five corpses following closely behind. She managed to kick the body directly in front of her which sent it careening into the five behind it, knocking them over like a set of bowling pins, but that only slowed them down for a second. They all rolled over onto all fours and started leaping towards her like a pack of jungle cats. She swatted one to the side and struck another with her fist. She grabbed and kicked and flung and swatted left and right as they relentlessly attacked her, occasionally scratching her with their sharpened bone claw fingers. She managed to roll onto her stomach and was about to rise to her feet to run away when she saw Hodge standing there, dressed to the neck in kevlar and his black leather trench coat, hand guns drawn and ready to fire.

“Stay down!” He shouted as he began to open fire. The bullets slowed the monsters down but it didn’t stop them. They rushed passed Symco on the ground, having acquired a new target, and leapt in the air towards him, claws out. Hodge dropped his guns and reached into the back of his coat. He pulled out two wooden steaks and stuck them square into the hearts of the closest two vampires as they leapt towards him. He moved slightly out of the way and the torpored corpses flew onto the floor. Hodge ducked and weaved through the rest of the monsters, steaking them whenever he had an opening until he had taken them all out. Symco lay on the floor, face down, with her hands over her head. She lifted her head when she couldn’t hear any more fighting and saw Hodge pouring clear liquid out of a flask.

“Is that Holy Water?” She asked.

“No, this is Rum.” He said as he spat the his cigarette onto the corpse, lighting it on fire. Symco sat up and propped herself up against the wall.

“Thanks.” she said. Hodge said nothing as he moved to the next corpse and threw it on top of the flaming one. “So, you just carry around steaks in your coat at all times?” She asked.

“We hunt vampires for a living.” He said, “Why don’t you?” He walked down the hall back towards the bloodbath in the morgue. “What the hell happened here?” He asked. Director Pledgestone came running down the hall with a pack of guards and stopped short in the hallway near where Symco was sitting.

“Dear God…” He said. Symco raised to her feet and walked towards the morgue with the director and the guards in tow. They surveyed the room, one guard threw up, and though they were struck in horrid fascination with the corpses and pieces of blood, flesh, and bone of the demonologists strewn around the floor, ceiling, and walls, everyone’s attention was drawn to the giant bloody glyph on the wall.

“What does it mean?” Asked Symco

“I don’t know…” Said Pledgestone. “I’ve never seen a Glyph like it.” Hodge picked up a bloodied notebook.

“Maybe because it’s not a glyph. It’s two.” He said. He threw the book to Pledgestone and he took a look at it.

“It’s the a combination of the glyph for blood and the glyph for fire?” Said Pledgestone. “It looks like they figured it out right before they died.”

“I’m guessing that figuring it out is what killed them.” said Hodge.

“But…” Symco started. “What does it mean? What is bloodfire?”

“I think we just got a taste of what it is.” said Hodge. The fire alarm started going off as Hodge’s pile of corpses began to burn higher. “These weren’t normal vamps. They can be decapitated and still charge at you. Torpor only slows them down. The only way to kill them is with fire.”

“I think the only way to kill them is to do all three” said Pledgestone. “That’s why the witches torched and decapitated them on the docks.”

“What do we do now, Director?” asked Symco.

“I don’t know” Said Pledgestone. “I really don’t know…”