Caspar let the force wall drop. The wide, fanged mouth of the creature opened in mockery of a smile.

Caspar raised his hand in a powerful thrust upwards. The floor buckled and broke, slabs of concrete jutting up from the floor.

The creature jerked back, hissing angrily.

“They’re fighters!” The creature rasped. From down the hallway, there was a skittering of legs.

Caspar’s face contorted with concentration. The concrete floor cracked further, the lines extending outwards towards the edges of the room.

The floor underneath me shook— and then collapsed. I plummeted downwards, scrambling to get a hold of anything solid— but everything was falling around me.

I hit the ground below hard, chunks of concrete landing around me, grazing my arms and legs. A few yards away, I saw Caspar throw his hands above his head, creating a momentary protective bubble of force around himself and Clara as rubble rained down on them.

The creature landed a few feet away. We were all in some kind of basement sub-level, now, though through all the wreckage, it was hard to make out what had originally been here.

“Run, Clara!” Caspar shouted. “I’ll hold it off.”

Clara, however, stood her ground.

“I fight with you,” she hissed. “We go down together.”

Caspar met her eyes, then nodded. He spread his hands apart, creating a shimmering baton of force, then handed the invisible weapon to her. She held it like a baseball bat, eyes shining with determination.

The creature, meanwhile, had reoriented itself from the fall, and was beginning to pick its way across the rubble to them.

Caspar put out his hands, and for a moment, I saw two brief twin bolts of force leave them in the form of a shimmer in the air— then the bolts collided with the creature’s chest. It reeled backwards, its multitude of arms flailing.

Caspar grinned— just as another creature appeared in the entryway to the basement. This one was more human in form, with a human face, its only sign of monstrosity being the many insectoid arms that had ripped through the police officer’s coat that it wore.

Caspar and Clara put their backs to each other. Clara smacked the rod of force on the ground a few times, daring either creature to approach them.

For a moment, there was a standstill.

“Deep one,” the first creature hissed after a moment. “Help us, and your reward will be great.”

I hesitated.

Clara glanced over at me. “Evelyn…”

“Don’t call my name like you know me,” I spat. “You kidnapped me. I should let that thing have you.”

And yet, I hesitated.

The first creature suddenly lunged at Caspar and Clara. Distracted by Clara’s cry to me, Caspar didn’t have time to create a force wall.

The creature grabbed him with two of its many arms and forced him to the ground. Caspar let out a howl, kicking at the thing to no avail.

Clara yelped and lept back— right into the waiting arms of the second creature, which grabbed her with its inhuman arms, smiling down at her with its all-too-human face.

“Hello, beautiful,” it said, grinning widely, revealing a pair of fangs where the canine teeth should have been.

Vampire, I thought— but what vampire had so many pairs of arms and legs, like some hideous crustacean?

The creature sank its fangs into Clara. She tried to fight, but it forced her to the ground, still grinning over her.

Howard had looked at her like that, before he had taken her in the church. And now she would die under another who looked at her not as a creature, but as a meal to be taken.

I found myself moving before I fully realized what I was doing. Clara’s rod of force had disappeared, but there was plenty of debris. My hands found a fist-sized chunk of concrete, and I raised it over the creature’s head.

And yet, I hesitated again.

I shouldn’t help them. They were my enemies— they thought I was a monster, just like these things.

But I wasn’t like these vampires. They thought I was— but they were wrong.

I was only half monster.

I’d show them how much my half-human side could do.

I brought the chunk of concrete down into the vampire’s skull.

Published by arrangement with the Delta Green Partnership. The intellectual property known as Delta Green is a trademark and copyright owned by the Delta Green Partnership, who has licensed its use here. The contents of this document are © Augustine Stuart, excepting those elements that are components of the Delta Green intellectual property.