There Was...

A knock on the door.

'With everyone save the former soldier here, that could only be Celeste,' Irwin wondered as he wandered through the walls of the manor. 'She's half an hour late. Fashionable, huh?'

True enough, Celeste's shifty eyes and dampened collars revealed themselves to Irwin upon opening the door. Unlike the rest of the hunters, she was dressed in a comfortable polo shirt, padded sweatpants, and sneakers caked with mud.

"Whoa. Went on a run?" Irwin asked.

She laughed, "Yeah. Sorry about that. Found a hunt a few hours ago and, uh, forgot about dinner."

"Come on in, then. I'm going to get you a towel. The others are further in and to the left." Letting Celeste walk past him, Irwin felt the buzz in the air when her hair was caught in the tip of his nose.

'Pine and… blood.'

The smell pervaded his nose for quite some time as they entered the kitchen and handed her a fresh towel. He also gave her a new set of shoes since he doesn't want her tracking mud all over the carpet, rather that Irwin doesn't want Archibald giving him grief over the mud.

Irwin opened the door to the dining room and saw that everyone but him and Celeste was seated, a gap between Asa and Edward and Lady Anastasia and Ella had torn the two into a halt.

Irwin wanted to take no part in aggravating Lady Anastasia with his eating habits, while Celeste merely glared at Asa with impressively shaky irises.

"I, uh, sorry we're late." He started, looking at Archibald, who shrugged his shoulders. "Wanna switch seats?"

"I do." Celeste hummed as she sat in-between the only women in the room, "Asa."

"Celeste." Asa Fox nodded in greeting, not deigning to look her in the eye. "Irwin."

"Ok." Irwin chuckled as he sat in front of Rufus, who locked eyes with him. "Where's, uh, the food?"

Archibald raised a hand and gathered everyone's attention, "Thank you all for coming to this dinner and, more importantly, in agreeing to further discuss the details of the Protectorate. I know that everyone of you is a hunter of their own man or woman or otherwise, but… there is a storm brewing within the heart of our land.

Frankly, we cannot hope to stop it nor hope to strike it from existence. That is, of course, before my dearest son came to me like an angel in a dream. With him and his tools–tools given and brought from everywhere around the world–we hope to have a chance at upheaval or, hell, survival."

Archibald smiled and looked at his lover, "I have only known true freedom for months and I would like it to last longer. As such, know that whatever may happen today and in the future, the Greythornes will support Irwin and his Protectorate in whatever way possible. Because I know he would rather die at the hands of the enemy, than live a life full of regrets."

He clapped his hands, causing the door connected to the kitchen to burst open. Trays and pitchers of food began gloating out of the door and gently landing into the table, much to the surprised gasps and murmurs of the crowd.

"Since I know most of you had already started drinking," Laughter rang at Archibald's comment, "We'll be starting off the course with Red lentil soup, whose ingredients were freshly picked from Ethiopia hours earlier. Thank you for the help, my dear."

Lady Anastasia nodded gracefully as she snapped her fingers and the plates of soup began to be passed around. Archibald didn't pass up the opportunity to discuss his trips to Ethiopia, which involved a rather funny story about an Ebola epidemic and a Nazi Panzer commander–two things that were not inherently funny.

With Archibald's outgoing personality that had been bogged down by centuries of mental abuse, the delicious meals were always accompanied by stories of his time in the military. The only period in his life that was not accompanied by the chewing of hearts and the constant pressure of lycanthropy, normally.

From the catfish to the peanut salad, raucous laughter always ended and began with Archibald's snorts of delight, and it warmed Irwin's heart to see such a difference between his and Richard's memories.

In fact, if Irwin's eyes were not mistaking him, the man sounded and looked a decade younger than he used to be. Perhaps that was just a lingering side-effect of centuries of werewolf in-breeding, but it was good nonetheless.

Although Archibald and Irwin did almost all the talking at first, it was not within their expectation for the other hunters to loosen up and share their victory stories, too.

The broiled duck was brought out when Rufus took his fourth shot of the Johnny Walker, purportedly created by Johnny Walker himself, and shared his own story.

"Let's set it up. Morning of Binh Gia, and I was a-a squad leader by then. You know how it is with soldiers before the big fight, you know, they talk, they listen, and the fear is just… it's palpable. Here I was, telling my troops not to fuck it up. Don't be no here, be a good boy and stay back.

They don't listen to me, of course, nobody listens to me. We were ordered to retake if we arrived first or secure if late. I met with some squad leaders for a drink. I hear rumors about the people in the village, catholic refugees and running away from persecutions…"

A series of groans elapsed within the room, followed by bits of laughter. "I know where this is going," Mocked Edward.

"Yeah, yeah, let me finish. So, we arrive late, right? I tell my folks to stay close and don't wander in. We go to this church and, well, everything's fucked. Corpses around the altar, christian priests nailed to the ground with their heads open.

It's a fucking ritual, but I didn't know that. I didn't know shit. It was our victory, at least that's what commands want people to think. So, we set up camp, and we were told to guard the corpses in the church and we slept there!"

"You slept?" Irwin exclaimed, cringing at Rufus' story.

"Damn right, we did." Rufus swallowed a mouthful of duck before sighing, "As you might expect, midnight came 'round and I hear clicking inside. I stand up,I'm a damn soldier 'cause I'm not afraid of no Viet Cong. If anything, these shitbags should be afraid of the Rangers and they're mortars. So, I investigate the clicking and found it on the pile of corpses.

We've, uh, put these sheets over them so that it'll be easier to transport them, and one of them was moving. I figured it's just Hendricks, a joker from the Bronx, messing with me, so I grab the cloth and square up to him."

Rufus shook his head and rolled up his sleeves, showing a bite mark the size of an onion in the elbow pit. "Damn fucking ghouls. Took half of my men before we could get out of that church."

"How many were raised?" Asa asked.

"About five, I think? Got interrupted by the VC." Rufus answered. "Only stopped them when half the camp concentrated fire on the church. They were bits and pieces by the time artillery was done with them."

Irwin nodded along as he asked, "Was this your first run with the supernatural?" 

"Yeah, and it wasn't the last thing I saw in that country before I got shipped back."

Archibald cleared his throat, quite tipsy from quaffing five glasses of wine. "You know, dear friend, I was going for fun war stories. I suppose it's a good thing not one of us is sober at the moment."

Lady Anastasia snapped her fingers and the magical trays brought out the lemon sorbet, cleansing their pallets for the second meal, when another knock on the door interrupted their dinner.

"Are we still waiting for someone?" Archibald asked, stopping his WWI story about a French soldier stringing an Italian mobster atop a pine tree. It was hysterical out loud, but quite problematic on paper.

"I–No. This is everybody here. Excuse me." Irwin stood up while wiping his face, "The twins are supposed to be on guard duty."

"Should I tell Scott?" Ella suggested.

"No, I can handle it." Irwin looked back to the dinner guests. "Please. Enjoy your meal. I'm gonna be right back."

He met Scott in the hallway, who leaned in to whisper, "There's no signal on my phone."

"What?" Confusion marred Irwin's face. "There's a cell tower half a mile from here. Why don't you check the laptop on my bed?"

"Alright." Scott pursed his lips, shrugging his shoulders as he went the other way. "Oh, Garth told me he's hungry, and he doesn't like the broiled duck, so he went to the Diner. Just letting you know."

He shook his head as he heard knuckled rap on the wood of the door. A hint of frustration filled up his temple as he went to open the door, only for the very door to explode upon contact. Showered by splinters of wood and fire, Irwin flew across the hall and crashed into a foyer table, smashing an ancient ceramic vase into his face.

He tried to stand up, ears ringing with an exuberant buzz of a dozen decibels, while his limbs numbed to the sensation of burns. Alarm bell rang within him and within the house as sounds of panicking came in after the ringing stopped.

Irwin tried to stand up on his own, only to feel warm hands grasping the back of his shirt. Scott helped him up to his feet before turning back and did something out of Irwin's sight.

"~~up, man!" Scott's voice broke through the haze of the explosion and so did currents of lightning tearing throught the air. "Straight–Ugh!"

Scott stumbled back, hitting Irwin on his way down and causing Irwin to go down with him.

"What~~ning?" Asa's voice rang in the air, followed by Lady Anastasia's worried tone. "My wards are being destroyed one by one."

Irwin controlled himself and the pain coursing through his body, allowing him to regain his mind and take his surroundings. It took no more than a second before he stood back up, blood dribbling down both the side of his face.

He turned around to face the door and summoned Egoi by his side, submitting to his will by appearing in a bow.

"Your will?" He asked.

"Take the--uh, Scott to the kitchen. Protect my sister." Irwin ordered as he took and quaffed out a health potion. "I'll give you a bonus later."

"By your will."

Wind buffeted his soot-stained, burnt clothes, his unsteady foot swaying at the barest draft.

"Come out now. I know you're in there. No point in making this longer." He called out to the dark hole of what was supposed to be their double doors.

Floodlights should have worked by now, but it expectedly didn't as they were taken out either by the explosion or by the very nature of their attackers.

"You really don't think I see you?" His smile grew wider as taunted.

[Class 1 Infernal]

[Class 1 Infernal]

[Class 2 Infernal]

Lunging out of the darkness were two demons in a human suit, intent on taking out Irwin. Before any of the two could move past the door frame, however, their body met an invisible wall that caused them to bounce back with great intensity.

Bone broke by the sheer velocity of their jump, followed by the cracks of joint realignments. If the humans inside were not dead by now, then they would have liked to kill themselves by the sheer pain caused by the fall.

"Son, what's happening? The lights are going out!" Archibald asked as he went out of the kitchen.

"Demons on our porch. Hundreds of them."

[Class 1 Infernal] [Class 1 Infernal] [Class 2 Infernal] [Class 1 Infernal] [Class 1 Infernal] [Class 2 Infernal] [Class 2 Infernal] [Class 1 Infernal] [Class 1 Infernal] [Class 1 Infernal] [Class 1 Infernal] [Class 1 Infernal] [Class 1 Infernal] [Class 1 Infernal] [Class 3 Infernal] [Class 3 Infernal] [Class 3 Infernal] [Class 1 Infernal]