Symco shot up in her bed wide awake to the sound of alarms ringing in from the hall. She leapt out of bed and quickly dressed herself, pulling her mask over her face as she went into the bustling hallway full of agents running back and forth, grabbing weapons and armor and then charging to the dispatch station. She ran down the hall, trying not to bump into anyone as they rushed past her. She got to Hodge’s room and opened door. He was changing too.

“Do you mind!?” He hollered, forgetting that he was actually in Symco’s body and it was nothing she hadn’t seen before.

“Nice to see you haven’t defiled my body with any tattoos, yet.” She said wryly. “Any idea of what’s going on?” She asked.

“I was hoping you’d be able to tell me!” Hodge said, rubbing some sleep from his eye.

“I just woke up too.” She said. They went into the hall together and weaved through the crowd of rushing agents, something that was more difficult for Symco than Hodge, and grabbed a side arm off the wall and proceeded to put on some body armor. Well, Symco didn’t. Hodges body was all the armor she needed, not that anything would have fit her in this body anyways. Hodge’s musculature made a XXXL shirt look fitted. Once they were equipped they joined the hoard and ran to the dispatch station.

Director Pledgestone was waiting for the troops to line up. His already grim and aged face had an even more serious tone than usual as he stacked some papers in front of him. Once some of the chaos died down he began to speak.

“There has been an attack.” He said grimly. “We don’t have all the details. What we know is this: The Kovani are involved, and they are somehow affecting people with what we believe to be either a neuro-toxin or some type of spell to make them more susceptible to conversion to their cause. The attack happened at a rave in the downtown core, we are sending all available agents to subdue and eliminate any threat of this spreading to the wider public.” Symco looked at Hodge who looked back and mouthed the words “Bloodfire”. Director Pledgestone continued.

“Teams Alpha, and Beta will work from ground zero out, capturing and eliminating any threat. Teams Gama, Delta, Epsilon, and Zeta will form a perimeter two miles out and close in. Agents Symco and Hodge, you’ll be dropped at ground zero to investigate and interrogate any witnesses.” He said, “Dismissed.”

Symco and Hodge headed for the chopper, Hodge jumped into his normal seat and Symco waited until it took off a bit before grabbing the bottom rail. As they flew to ground zero they talked on the telecom.

“You think this is bloodfire?” She asked.

“What else could it be?” said Hodge, “They must be trying to convert the normies.”

“Normies?” Symco asked, afraid of the answer.

“Yeah, normal people. We’re the weirdies, they’re the normies.” Said Hodge matter of factly.

“I see you’ve given this a lot of thought…” Said Symco.

The chopper arrived at ground zero and Symco jumped off onto the roof of the building while Hodge repelled down a rope in full tactical gear. He always felt weird in gear since he was thrown into Symco’s body. Her small frame made the helmet and Kevlar feel extra bulky, but he also never felt so at home as on a mission. He trudged towards the roof door to the stairwell in his combat boots and trench coat and flung open the door. Looking down the stair well with his gun out he spoke into his com and said, “Stairwell clear.”

Symco, who didn’t fit in the door started scaling the outside of the building like an oversized orangutan, which made her feel a bit like Godzilla. When she told Hodge about this later he growled in frustration and corrected her. “King Kong, genius! Godzilla doesn’t climb stuff, he destroys it!”

Symco managed to find a large bay window that lead to the dance floor of the club and was able to break the glass and climb in. Hodge appeared in the doorway as Symco brushed glass off of her shoulders.

“Is this where it started?” He asked.

“Looks like…” Symco replied. They looked around, it was a war zone. There were crushed and mutilated bodies everywhere. Several bodies looked as though they’d been torn apart by animals, or worse. They started inspecting the bodies, most were piled on top of each other. Symco and Hodge diligently and, with as much respect for the dead as they could, arranged the bodies in straight line on the floor so they could be more easily identified.

“Noticing anything?” She asked him.

“Do you think vamps did this?” He asked, “Some of these bites seem savage.”

“The Kovani couldn’t have done this on their own…” She said, “There must be some vampire assistance."

“What if we’re looking at this the wrong way?” Said Hodge.

“What do you mean?” She asked.

“What if we’re trying to figure out where the two covens are at, and what their involvement is, when we should just be looking for one united coven?”

“The Vampires wouldn’t merge with the Kovani unless they turned them all.” She said in response.

“Exactly.” Said Hodge. “Bloodfire. Vampirism mixed with witchcraft.”

“If that’s true,” she said, “we’re in a lot deeper trouble than we originally anticipated.” Hodge kept inspecting bodies.

“Uh oh.” he said.

“What is it?” Symco asked.

“This one has a brand on her head.” He said back. Symco kept inspecting from her side.

“I’ve got two brands over here, both on the forehead.”

“Bloodfire?” Hodge asked.

“Yeah.” She said. Suddenly the Bloodfire branded corpses opened their eyes and leapt to their feet. Their fingers began to mutate into sharpened bone. Both Symco and hodge grabbed their side arms and started opening fire, but it only slowed the monsters down. Every time they shot them the monsters got back up.

“It’s no use!” Said Hodge, “We need to decapitate them and burn them!”

“Don’t forget to steak them!” said Symco, who pulled a steak out of her belt and lodged in into the monster’s chest. They kept fighting them, but without a way to steak, decapitate, and burn them there was no chance of winning. Symco came to this realization and grabbed Hodge by the collar like a momma cat and leapt backwards out the bay window. She nestled him into her chest as she came crashing into the roof of a parked car, totally demolishing it. She groaned, but as she looked up she saw the monsters coming after them, jumping out the same window with the same trajectory. She had to move fast. She rolled off the car onto the road and began to run.

Suddenly they heard the sound of a series of loud engine revs. With the monsters close in tow they didn’t have time to look around, but soon 4 motorcycles drove past them with katanas drawn and began to decapitate the monsters. The bikers dismounted and began fighting them hand to hand, steaking and decapitating them whenever they had the chance until there were none left. Symco and Hodge sat staring in disbelief and the monsters were all but eliminated by this mysterious band of bikers.

Once they had all been steaked and decapitated one of the bikers grabbed a flamethrower from out of their bike sack and began torching the corpses.

“I should have one of those.” Said Hodge, enviously. Once all the monsters were on fire the bikers removed their helmets and Symco was relieved to see that one of them was Casey, her estranged sister.

“I see you met the ghouls.” Casey said.

“Ghouls?” Asked Symco and Hodge in unison.

“That’s what we call them.” she said, “Mindless vampire witches who do what the master commands.”

“We call them the bloodfire,” Said Hodge.

“That’s a stupid name.” she said “Ghouls is much cooler.”

“But the brand says, ‘bloodfire’.” Hodge protested.

“I know it says bloodfire, I can read.” She said indignantly, “but do you guys know how they are branded?”

“...with a brand?” said Symco.

“Not quite.” said Casey. “It’s a spell called a Soul Brand. These creatures are fundamentally changed on a cosmic level. Only a vampire can withstand the spell, though. So they have to be primed with tainted blood first.”

“What do you mean, ‘primed’?” Symco asked.

“We found these.” She said, tossing Symco a dime bag full of red pills. “It’s drugs, tainted with vampire blood. People are getting insanely high, bitten, and then soul branded. Then they are completely under Cornwall’s control.”

“How do you know all of this?” asked Symco.

“I told you. We’ve been tracking this pack for weeks.” she said. One of the other bikers piped up.

“Casey, we gotta go, there’s more up this way!” He said.

“We have 5 squads closing in,” Said Hodge, “They can take care of them."

“We saw your squads on the way in.” Said Casey. “They are ill equipped. Make no mistake, this city is at war. This was just the shot across the bow.” And Casey was right. The city would never be the same after that night.