CHAPTER 12: BLOOD AND VENGEANCE.
A moment after the well-planned escape under a hail of bullets in the reception hall, Jamey, Harvey, and Stinson burst into a hidden lounge tucked deep within the hotel's blueprint. The heavy steel door slammed shut behind them with a clunk, sealing out the chaos.
The room glowed with dim, violet ambience, interrupted by flickering, multi-colored LED spotlights that blinked sporadically like a malfunctioning disco. It smelled faintly of stale whiskey, sweat, and citrus-scented cleaning agents. Velvet-black curtains concealed the walls, muffling sound. A sleek, black marble bar stretched across one side, glittering faintly with the reflection of broken light. A massive plasma TV loomed like a silent judge at the rear. Near a plush L-shaped leather couch stood a lone stripper pole glinting in the low light. In the center, a grand piano—polished obsidian—sat like a sarcophagus, its lid cracked slightly open as if it had just sighed.
This was their retreat. Their sanctuary for vanishing from the world.
Harvey and Stinson collapsed onto the couch like bricks, breathing hard. Jamey remained upright, tension radiating from his stiff posture, eyes flickering toward the door.
“Bro,” Stinson growled, scratching his uneven chin-beard with one shaky hand and holding a lit cigarette in the other hand, conjured from who knows where,
“everything—this goddamn massacre—is plotted by that bitch Amy!”
Smoke curled upward like lazy ghosts as he exhaled. “How the hell did she even hire those men? Where’d that white guy with the gun come from? Man, I’m getting some James Bond shit going on here.”
“No. She’s not capable of this,” Harvey muttered, adjusting his shades, cleaned them with his shirt before sliding them back on. “We haven’t seen her in over a month. Even if she is alive—and I hope not—this is way bigger. Someone connected to her is pulling the strings.”
Jamey crossed to the plasma TV, brows furrowed, and cycled through the hotel’s CCTV feeds using a remote. The images crackled with static—blurred bodies, corridors splattered with red, smoke clinging to ceiling corners like cobwebs.
Stinson made his way to the bar, poured three amber drinks, and handed them out. Jamey accepted his glass absently.
“Shouldn’t we be doing something?” Stinson asked, gulping a mouthful. “Like, I don’t know—escaping? Fighting back?” He slouched, but his leg jittered restlessly.
Jamey flipped to the VIP lounge feed. Mangled bodies littered the floor like dolls discarded by a violent child. Then he switched to the hallway outside Candice’s room—and froze.
A naked corpse sprawled in front of her door. Skin pale. Throat gaping.
Harvey peered over his drink. “Your hotel’s officially cursed, buddy.”
Jamey didn’t respond. He was flipping again. Searching.
Then—there. A flicker.
Amy.
But not Amy.
Something wearing her face like a trophy.
Dead, clouded eyes. A grin that split her lips too far, revealing cracked gums and jagged teeth. The skin on her cheeks blistered and peeling, as though she’d clawed her way out of the grave with her face.
Rot leaked down her chin. Rage boiled beneath the decay.
Jamey stumbled back, horror catching in his throat.
“Hell no—”
“You okay?” Stinson stood, glancing around like prey sniffing a predator.
“I—I just saw her,” Jamey stammered, pointing. “On the feed. Right there.”
“See what?” Harvey asked, stepping forward.
“All I saw were bodies,” Stinson added.
“No, it was—” Jamey’s voice cracked. “I swear she was just there—”
The TV erupted in static, then shorted with a violent pop, crashing forward to the ground, glass spider-webbing across the screen. The stripper pole vibrated, humming like a tuning fork. A second later, the grand piano behind them released three chaotic, echoing notes—its lid slamming shut like a coffin.
The room fell dead silent.
The men stared at each other, breaths shallow. Jamey’s glass slipped from his hand, shattering.
“…What the hell was that?”
---
Back in Candice’s room, the Indian boy emerged from the bathroom wiping his mouth, still pale.
He froze at the sight of the corpse outside the door. Candice stood over it, her arms crossed tightly over her chest, her lips trembling as if fighting to keep control.
“What the fuck, Miss Cold Heart? What do you think happened to her?” the boy demanded, pointing with a shaky hand.
“I’m just as stunned as you are,” Candice whispered. She knelt beside the celebrity woman’s glassy eyes and gently but not obviously, closed the lids.
She turned to him. “Who do you think did this?”
“I don’t know! Should I ask one of the assholes shooting up the place? Or maybe it was some demon from the underworld!” He moonwalked a few steps, singing mockingly: “~It’s close to midnight, something evil’s lurkin’ in the dark—”
“Stop it!” Candice snapped, louder than she intended.
He froze mid-joke. The color drained from his face.
She pressed her palm to her forehead, pacing in slow, tight circles. Blood trailed faintly from the corpse toward the carpet. Every breath she took felt heavier.
“We need to get out of here,” she said firmly.
“You’re insane!” he barked. “You heard those guns! If we step outside, we’re next!”
But then he paused, staring again at the body.
“…There’s no bullet wound.”
Candice knelt again, examining the gash across the woman’s throat. “Something ripped her open. This wasn’t surgical. Not even messy—savage.”
The Indian boy squinted, crouching beside her, bushy brows furrowing. His face twisted in disgust. “Hell yeah it’s not human! Nothing in this damn hotel is!”
“Listen to me.” Candice grabbed his arm gently, her voice lowering. “You feel it too, don’t you? This place—it’s not just danger. It’s something worse. Like the walls are breathing. Like we’re not alone.”
He looked at her, genuinely scared now.
“If we don’t get out soon,” she said, “one of us will end up like her.”
He glanced at the body, then at the door.
“…I just hope it’s not me.” The Indian boy muttered under his breath, fingers twitching at his sides.
---
Meanwhile, buried beneath the hotel in its forgotten power house, a lone engineer agent descended into the guts of the building. The rest of his unit had scattered in their scramble to restore power.
The power house—once a gleaming hub—was now cloaked in shadows. The luxury design had not spared even this underground vault: polished steel walls, digital monitoring panels with blue LED outlines, sleek generators purring like sleeping beasts. But now, most of those lights were dead. A few flickered.
He clicked on his flashlight. Its beam carved a path through the thick dark.
“Power’s good… no damage,” he muttered to himself.
But the silence… wasn't empty—it was watching.
“Guys?” he called, voice echoing.
No reply.
Then—rasp.
A faint, gurgling rasp like someone drowning in dry air.
His grip tightened on his gun. He turned, flashlight darting.
He moved toward the sound, each step deliberate.
Boots echoing on the metal floor—too loud, too alone.
The corridor stretched, shadows clinging to the corners like breath held too long.
He turned the corner—
And there she was.
‘Dead Amy’ crouched on all fours, limbs bent backward, her elbows hyper-extended. Her hair hung like seaweed over her face, and her head was cocked at a sickening angle, jaw slack, tongue flicking out like a serpent’s.
"You've gotta be shitting me," he whispered, voice cracking.
She rose slowly, the flashlight's beam jittering as it tried to keep up. One vertebra at a time clicked into place with a brittle crack. Her shoulders snapped into place. Then her head—jerking upright like a puppet on a string. Her eyes—milky and inhuman—locked on him.
Then her jaw unhinged.
Wider. Wider. Until it hung down to her collarbone.
He groaned and fired—but she moved faster than the bullet.
She slammed into him.
His arm snapped like a twig in her clawed grip. The gun clattered to the floor.
He wailed, eyes bulging. “Ahhh! My arm! You took my fucking arm!”
He grabbed a dagger from his sleeve with his remaining hand and drove it into her forehead.
“Yes!” he gasped.
She twitched. But didn't fall.
The blade remained lodged. She didn’t flinch.
Then—smiling—she leaned forward and licked the blood from the dagger’s blade.
Her tongue was split down the middle like a snake’s, long and dark purple, glistening.
The dagger still jutted from her skull, yet she moved as if it didn’t exist.
He tried to pull the weapon free, panicking.
She seized his other arm. Ripped it from his body with a wet, sickening tear.
Blood sprayed the walls.
He collapsed to his knees, mouth hanging open in a mute scream. Dead Amy loomed over him, head tilting again as if studying a puzzle.
The last thing he saw was her crawling toward him—slowly, deliberately—as the shadows swallowed his scream