The rays of light grew long and bright around the rough-cut edges of the plywood panels over the west facing doors and windows that fronted the lobby of the Regent Hotel. We hadn’t had enough to cover every window on the upper level, even reaching them had been a feat, so we had settled on just the cracked or broken ones, hoping that the others would hold or that any monsters that appeared would be earthbound. As the final seconds ticked away on the timer, and Phase Two Relocation began, SCHEMA fell blessedly silent. The constant updates had begun to grate on my nerves. While I didn’t trust SCHEMA as far as I could throw them, I had grown spoiled on their apparent willingness to share information during the BEGINNER TUTORIAL, and their complete silence in answer to any request for more information on what we might expect felt ominous.

Just as the light through the cracks seemed to point directly into our eyes, causing us to constantly shift positions to keep from being blinded, the ones on the ground floor blinked out, like someone had thrown a switch. At the exclamations of alarm among some of the defenders, I spoke up to reassure them:

“Settle down! It’s only the sun going down past the new mountains to the west. Most of you probably haven’t seen how fast night can fall in the mountains, but I’ve seen it before.”

The news seemed to relieve some and disturb the others who didn’t like being reminded that Texas now had another mountain range (or maybe just the same tail end of the Rocky’s relocated), and there was a susurration of muttering. I wanted to shush them, but these were not military troops, these were ordinary people thrown into a possibly life-threatening situation; there’s only so much you can do with a bunch like this. The kid shot me a look that told me he too had been unnerved, and I put my free hand on his shoulder to reassure him.

Gradually, the muttered complaints died off and the silence of waiting began to reassert its irritation. The tension was almost a physical thing, the not knowing what we faced almost an illness that settled deep in the gut and gnawed at you. I gave the kid’s shoulder a firm squeeze and put my hand back to my side, trying not to wipe my sweaty palm on the leg of my breeches. I wasn’t immune to the bite of nerves, but I’d come to understand and learned to endure it.

The kid turned and surveyed our fellows lined up on each side of the hallway, then he turned back and moved a little closer to whisper something when we were both frozen by the sound of a door slowly opening somewhere in the lobby, the not-quite-quiet creak of a rusty hinge in a long, drawn out, heart stopping complaint. Everyone froze. I heard someone behind me take a breath and held up a hand to call for silence, listening intently for footsteps or the rustling of little rat feet. And waited.

Nothing.

I was just about to say something reassuring when the door slammed, the sound cracking through the silence like a gunshot that caused even me to jump with the spike of adrenaline that shot through my chest.

“WHAT WAS THAT? WHO’S THERE?” one of the more excitable defenders shouted, panic riding his voice.

“Shush!” I barked out, turning my glare around in an attempt to identify the culprit. In the growing gloom of the hallway, it could have been any of them. I didn’t know them well enough to guess. Speaking in a low, but natural voice so that any listening ears would hear just a murmur, I added, “you lot stay here, Brian,” I said to the facilities manager who stood closest to us shifting his grip nervously on the haft of his fire-axe, but whose face was resolute, “pick someone and come up and man the barricade, it was probably just the wind. We’ll go check it out.”

He gave me a nod and waved another of the maintenance men to move up with him as I looked at the kid and nodded towards the lobby. He gave me a nervous nod and swallowed loud enough that I was sure if anything was out there, it had heard, but with sure movements, he put the arrow he’d had nocked back into the quiver at his back, shouldered his bow, and drew the bronze sword that rode on his left hip. He gave me a nod when he was ready, and I swallowed down my own nerves and edged out through the small space left between the end of the barricade and the wall.

With a thought, the end of my staff sparkled and burst into flame causing a few muted shouts of alarm that Brian quickly shushed. Ignoring them, I held the staff up like a torch, and we glided as quietly as we knew how into the now cavern-like depths of the lobby, trying to angle the light so that it would give us enough illumination without completely spoiling my vision.

The sound came from off to our left, really that was the only place it could have come from, that was where the front desk and few offices were. Dropping into stealth (though what good that would have done while waving around a flaming banner that said “HERE I AM” I don’t know) we crept around the end of the hallway until we could get a better view. We crouched there trying to control our breathing for what seemed like ages, but was probably less than a minute, peering into the gloom.

Nothing.

Without a word, we both moved forward towards the gap at the end of the long front counter. Eventually, we reached Ms. Wilkinson’s office, which was first in the line, and I motioned for the kid to open the door while I readied a MANA BOLT with my off hand.

The door swung smoothly open without a sound and I quickly thrust the flaming end of my staff through the opening. A gust of frigid air swirled out causing the flame to stutter, but there was nothing else. The office wasn’t large, and the desk was one of those that’s more like a table, so it was easy to see that nothing was hiding under it. I guess something could have been crouched down behind the little column of drawers on one side, but I wasn’t in an all fired sweat to look.

Rob closed the door just as quietly as he’d opened it, and I was glad to shut away the chill. We moved down the line to the other two equally empty offices finding the same bunch of nothing. I would have felt better about it, except that none of the hinges on any of the doors had made a sound, and that cold chill from the manager’s office still had the hair on the back of my neck standing straight up.

Moving to the front counter, I held my staff up high and peered into the dark of the lobby trying to see if maybe a piece of plywood had fallen off one of the windows or something, but unless we wanted to make the circuit, the wan light of the tiny flame was just not good enough to see much.

“Nothing to see, here, folks. Move along,” I said in a quiet attempt at a joke, but you could hear the nerves in my voice. “Let’s get back to the barricade,”

Just as we got there, I opened my mouth to reassure everyone when the lock on the glass door to the shop that sold newspapers and cigars, the one just behind where we’d sat up the first barricade, clicked open, loud in the hush of the hallway.

Every eye turned towards it; the people nearest it jumped and started moving more towards the center of the hall. Like it was following them, the door swung slowly open, hinges creaking like they hadn’t been used in years. We could all see through the glass wall and door into the shop.

Nobody was there.

The lights on the coke machine behind the register inside chose that moment to flicker and turn on.

We all stood there, in shock. There was no way, no possible way.

The lights flickered off.

Even at the distance I was, I could feel the cold emanating from the empty shop.

Across the hall, the glass doors to one of the restaurants gave a loud click and started to swing inward with a screech. People were starting to react, everyone moving towards the center of the hallway. I was frozen where I stood, my mind refused to work.

A little ways down on the same side of the hallway as the newsstand, the metal door of a broom closet gave a loud click and popped open on screaming hinges.

One of the maintenance workers, a woman short as me, but sturdy with muscle was standing right in front of it. She didn’t hesitate at all, she shot out a hand and SLAMmed that door shut and, with probably more force than necessary, put her back to it, setting her feet to keep it that way.

That broke the spell and Excitable Man let loose with a wailing scream that would do any ghost proud just before he hit the deck, passed completely out. I shook myself like a dog, from head to toe, like I was breaking out of a shell of ice and said, “Someone drag that idiot back into the infirmary.”

That started a rustle of movement towards the back of the group, just when the double doors to the infirmary slowly began to creak obligingly open, followed immediately by the ones on the nursery across the hall.

I opened my mouth to say something, I don’t know what, I didn’t have a clue, but someone—some thing—beat me to it.

With an ear-shattering scream, a shining white woman in tatters of shining, flowing clothing flowed out of the ceiling, she headed straight for me, burning eyes in a skeletal face, claw-like hands reaching for my throat.

My arm started to move, to interpose the guttering flame of my staff between us, but she was quick as nothing I’d ever seen, and before I could even think it, she was on me.

And through me, leaving a rim of ice on my furred jacket and stealing my breath away.

I whirled around trying to bash her with my staff. Evidently passing through solid objects slowed her down some, because I did it, but it was like swinging at thin air, the staff didn’t connect, but the flaming end did and oh, she did not like that one bit.

With an angry screech she flipped around backwards, still flying in the same direction, those blazing eyes promising retribution. From the empty depths of the upper reaches of the lobby, glowing figures in tattered garments began to swoop down, swirling around one another, screaming their pain.

The woman reached the center of the lobby directly in front of the hallway, her screams of anger becoming wails of pain as the flame from my staff passing through her began to catch on the tattered ends of her shroud. The other specters that had at first swirled around her now drew back in alarm, swirling in two great columns as more and more flowed from the ceiling and through the boarded windows to join them.

With a shout, the kid fired one of his MANA arrows into the swarm on the left and the creature it hit, exploded in flames that spread to those nearest it. With screams of rage and pain, both columns surged towards us like great white tornadoes of screaming burning rage.

I broke my mind free of the spell that had held me frozen in place, and spammed GRASPING MANA along the sides of both hallways and the ceiling in front of the barrier, following that with blast after blast of MANA BOLTS from the end of my staff.

The screams of the ghosts were quickly joined by the screams from the crowd in the hallway, and I spared a glance over my shoulder to see Brian swinging his fire axe impotently through a glowing bear with tatters of fur flowing raggedly from its huge skeletal frame. Jumping forward, I screamed wordlessly as I jabbed the end of my staff right into the middle of its chest, setting it aflame. It screeched in eldritch pain and turned its hateful gaze on me, but before it could reach me, I followed up with a blast of MANA and it withered away.

Others joined it from every direction, great slavering wolves, giant screeching eagles, men and women all with their glowing eyes and grasping claws, everyone they hit staggered, and soon the ill equipped defenders began to fall to the ground breathless, covered in icy frost.

The kid was shouting wordlessly, shooting arrow after arrow into the massed columns flowing through the lobby while I desperately tried to fill the walls and ceiling of the hallway with fields of GRASPING MANA and MANA bolts, swinging my lone staff from side to side while running down the hall towards where the screams of women and children came from the banquet rooms beyond.

Then, a loud voice came from the room that we’d set aside for the infirmary, “In nomine Patris et Filii et Spiritus Sancti”! The Latin words rolled out in great booming syllables, over and over, and a bright golden light burst into the hallway through those open doors. From the other side of the hall where the children were, other voices took up the chant, some in Latin, others in English, “In the name of the father, the son and the holy spirit!” and the golden light spread there too.

Then the priests came out with their crucifixes held high, burning with a blinding light that filled the hallways, and people on both sides of the hall dropped to their knees. The spirits, both animal and other, turned towards them as one being, hatred shooting from their eyes and screaming out through their mouths, but they couldn’t stand in the face of that golden light, nobody could stand in the face of that golden light, they had to back away, flowing into the walls and ceiling from where they’d come, those still caught in the MANA traps struggled desperately to escape, and finally overwhelmed the tentacles of GRASPING MANA and jerked back into the walls.

A scream from the kid whirled me around just in time to see the traps there fail, too. He’d run out of MANA arrows, and the masses of screaming spirits had overwhelmed him and were surging forward with hate that you could feel.

For a moment, the golden light from the priests seemed to pause, and then to contract into itself, pulling back until just the priests and their crucifixes still glowed.

And then with a loud voice, the senior priest, Father Keller prayed:

Princeps gloriosissime caelestis militiae, sancte Michael Archangele, defende nos in proelio et colluctatione, quae nobis adversus principes et potestates, adversus mundi rectores tenebrarum harum, contra spiritualia nequitiae, in caelestibus.

And his fellows took up the prayer in English:

“O glorious Archangel Saint Michael, Prince of the heavenly host, defend us in battle, and in the struggle which is ours against the principalities and Powers, against the rulers of this world of darkness, against spirits of evil in high places”

And it was as if the light had only been drawing a breath, gathering its strength, and with a mighty explosion of sound and light, it burst from the breasts of the three men and rushed down the hallway, exploding into the lobby and filling the whole place with its glorious glow.

And where it passed, ice melted, breath returned, and the fallen stood with renewed hope and vigor. Where the passing through of the specter had frozen me in fear, that great golden light filled me with peace and safety, strength and victory. I turned around towards the lobby just in time to see its explosion, and when it passed, and the darkness returned, it was empty. The spirits were gone.

I turned back towards the priests. Only their crucifixes were glowing now, and that slowly fading. The youngest one—I couldn’t remember his name—collapsed to the ground, and even Father Keller sagged and put out a hand to the wall to keep from falling.

“You got any more of them crosses?” Brian the facility manager asked, and that struck me as the funniest thing I’d ever heard, and I laughed, and the rest of the defenders laughed with me as they moved to surround the priests and help the one back to his feet, and I to check on the SUPPORT people in the banquet rooms beyond.

Maybe we’d make it through this night, after all.