Maviolo Zabini

Once he managed to get himself unstuck - blood splattered over the front of his shirt - Maviolo turned to dash for the door. He grabbed Kelvin by the shoulder.

"Oi!" he pushed, then pulled the younger wizard along as they joined the scramble of wizards trying to leave. "You're in the way!"

Someone behind him screamed but it turned into a sickeningly wet, gurgling groan of pain. Mav couldn't look back. He knew what was happening, he knew Georges had made a go of it on someone else but he couldn't look back, couldn't even think of helping.

Virgil had rather hoped it was something more socially dramatic that had prompted the scream - The Closet got its fair share of dramatic break-ups - but he realised it very much wasn't when the dancers on the floor started to scatter and let people through from the back.

"Keep calm, don't carry on?" he suggested distractedly to Nick and Theo as he drew his own wand.

       "Out! Get me out!" someone shrieked from the increasingly confused throng. There were more screams and words, less decipherable.

But as Virgil tentatively opened his mind to the thoughts around him, one word seemed to have leapt from mouth to mouth - and from mind to mind, lightning quick, fear stirring. Shit.

"Vampire," V muttered, grabbing Nick's shoulder anxiously, "it's a va--"

A flash of red robes. He recognised Auror Pinn, Ari's mum, cutting past him as panic caught on the dance floor and people scampered in the opposite direction.

"It's a vampire attack!" Virgil called out after her, though by now others were also yelling it at her.

He quickly turned to Theo. "Can you heal bites? We should get people out if they're hurt."

“Vampire!”
   “It’s a vampire attack!”
“Get out of here!”

Nadine headed in the direction the party-goers were fleeing from, her pace unwavering. If anything, she seemed to steel at the news it was a vampire and not the slinging of spells from drunken wixes. It meant she was the perfect auror to respond to the red sparks. She carried stakes in her equipment for the very purpose of dealing with the toothy bastards.

Vampires were Nadine’s focus and had been for several years now. It had begun with muggle bodies drunk dry, Tristan Vaillancourt sending Nadine and Pratt to Penny Pickler’s diversity and tolerance training. It had started a curse on Nadine that drove her to darker and darker moments. With every turn her fate seemed to cross her path with vampires. Then the one she was pursuing in Manchester turned mind control on her, bitten and thrown her from deadly height. The ugly bite on her lower neck and shoulder were a constant reminder, and fate just kept bringing her back to vampires.

A blood-spattered wizard stumbled past, fear in his eyes, sweat pouring down his forehead as he ran in panic away from the source. Nadine regripped her wand in her dominant left hand, her right reaching for a stake in readiness.

“Clear out!” Nadine commanded in a clear voice, her wand now lifted ready to strike as she advanced.

Two figures fell into her path from out of sight, landing heavily on the club’s sticky floor. One was bent over the other, not in a passionate kiss but a feeding frenzy. Nadine struck out with a curse. It was probably too late for the chosen meal but if she had her way it would be too late for the consumer. The fiery orange explosion hit the vampire, its outfit curled with flames in a split second. Vampires were creatures of the dark, they abhorred sunlight and fire. This would not be Nadine’s first, nor last.

The vampire raged, hissing and flailing as it stripped its burning garments, and Nadine twisted her wand once more, casting Lumos Solem to keep it at a distance. As the blinding flash of sunlight burst forth, she saw its eyes, its slack jaw and bloody teeth.

Theo nodded solemnly at Nick, glad that he wasn't the only crazy one willing to charge into harms way, be it smart or not and watched as he climbed onto the stool to get a better vantage point. He whipped his own wand out, following suit with the two boys and couldn't help but smirk at Virgil's statement. The guy had a way with words, even in the worst of situations.

The hellbent screams weren't exactly giving him high hopes, though a decent amount of wix had already fled into the safety of the night. Self-evacuating wizards.. who would have thought?

Usually people as a whole were stupid enough to stand around and gawk. This must be something.. really bad. His thoughts were quickly interrupted by the crack of apparating Aurors though.. well, Auror. Still felt like seeing light at the end of the tunnel. The whole place must have magical security charms. Theo wasn't sure of that was meant to make him feel better or worse about the Club. The fact that they had security measures or that they needed them. Right about now it felt very much like the latter. Hmm..

When V declared that it was vampires Theo let out a breath and tried not to let himself get stiff, they all needed to stay focused and ready. Surely mediwix would follow up soon after but if it really was a Vampire attack, they'd have to stabilize the victims in the meantime. It wasn't all just closing up wounds with vampires and it wasn't as if blood-replenishing potions were things people carried around with them on the daily. He doubted the club would even carry them, it would probably look bad if they did, like they expected things to go south.

"Yeah, I can do a quick patch job but we'll have to get them out to be seen if their wounds are deeper than the typical bite." Which, given the level of panic he was certain they would be, if not ripped clean open. He could guess others might also have sustained traumatic injuries from being trampled as well, those would be easier if they hadn't already been targeted as sitting ducks.

Somehow seeing the woman charge into the throng of peoples calmed the last of his nerves and he nodded after her before following, feeling a bit like a moron at doing so. Sadly, it was not a new feeling. Theo nearly stopped at the sight of the wizard drenched in blood but a once over told him that the man was more traumatized than actually injured. Not good, but there were higher priorities right now, namely wixes potentially dying of blood loss if it wasn't already too late.

He crouched next to an unconscious man just a few feet up who looked alright, though very much unconscious. Looked like he had a shattered wrist though. That was an easy fix for now and he made quick work of it with an episkokaley charm, glad they guy wasn't awake for it. He could perform it well enough, but not without a sharp pinch he'd found, though he'd been assured his mending would mature with practice. Glancing forward, he couldn't decide, would it be more reckless to leave the man who would no doubt become another easy target, or take the time to remove him and run the risk of losing out on the few extra seconds that someone else in worse shape might need?

"Can one of you do a shield charm on this one?" He asked after a split second decision, nodding down at the man as the sounds of fighting up ahead started to replace the former screams. "Always been shit at them."

Maviolo Zabini

       “Clear out!” yelled the auror and Maviolo needed no urging.

He still had a hand on Kelvin, but let go of the younger wizard as he put space between himself and Room XIII. Clubbers were sprinting ahead in the passage, several still bursting out of neighbouring rooms in a flurry of disorientation.

       "The fuck is going on??"
  "Shit, all this bloo--"

Such exclamations did not last long. Maviolo, catching the flash of light from behind, finally commited the sin of Lot's wife and turned to look back into the room. He saw Georges, almost unrecognisable, crouching to shield his face from the spell. An ashen crust had formed on his skin.

In the wake of the bright light, the vampire snapped its head up in a wild snarl and leapt for the auror. Mav turned and ran. He had seen enough.

Time slowed down in an instant, and reflex took over. A vampire, crusted with sunlight burns, was in the air above her. Its undead ability to move beyond reason was nothing new to Nadine. She had made it her mission to be ready for it the past few years. Her right hand gripped tight, plunging the stake up through the bottom of the ribcage. Sharp teeth grazing her neck as the owner impaled themselves and Nadine gritted her own, willing all her strength to hold fast under the weight of it.

The unholy scream tore through the club, cleansing the air of joy and music, silencing the screams of onlookers for just enough time for the blood to chill. Icy cold as the vampire formerly known as Georges was fixed mouth wide open, head back, fixed in beastly howl before they turned, covering the walls, floor and the auror with the stake driven deep in thick dust.

Nadine fell backwards, her legs giving way. The stake clattered to one side, wood rotting, twisting and blackening as if it had been at the bottom of a lake for years. Before its use it had been fresh, rigid and sharpened to a point. The auror was caked in a sandy dust that splayed out across the floor in a starburst. Her ears still rang with the undead scream but the abomination was gone. Banished. She reached an arm of her red auror robes and wiped her nose and mouth, regarding anyone gormless to have seen with a long hard stare.

Though he wasn't a complete stranger to dealing with creature attacks, Nicholas was still taken by surprise when Virgil said it was a vampire attack. He knew vampires frequented the club and the back rooms.  He'd never expected something like this though. And he'd fill guilty about it later but a quiet voice in the back of his head wondered if Virgil knew the vamp.

The arrival of an auror, even if it was Ari's mum, made it feel more like a work assignment.  He wasn't there to deal with the threat, just cleanup and protecting his own hide.

Theo was already healing someone.  And asking about shield charms. He wasn't about to stand there and hold a shield on a guy.  Instead Nicholas flicked his wand and the man quickly but gently slide across the floor toward the bar behind the three of them. He followed it with a few more flicks, pulling people away from where Auror Pinn was charging in and taking on the vampire.  It'd be easier to shield if everyone was in one place when the vampire turned his attention on them.  He was about to explain, when a scream seemed to cut through him.

So no shield then.  Unless there was another blood thirsty vampire on a rampage in the back room.  "Crowd control and triage then." He said thinking out loud.  Theo was already on the latter, he couldn't stop people from rushing out, if he did there'd certainly be another vampire, but he could make sure no one got crushed or trampled.  He jabbed his wand, steadying a woman who'd been pushed.

Kelvin was being pushed and pulled and was otherwise terrified for his life.  He tried to keep moving forward, but he felt bodies slam into him from behind and there was no way to stay on his feet.  He slammed hard into the ground, knocking the wind out of him.  He turned and watched another person land next to him, followed by the vampire landing and savagely feeding on them.

Scrambling on his hands and knees, Kelvin tried to put distance between them. Sure that if he didn't he was next.  He flinched as a curse exploded on the vampire.  Kelvin saw the Auror taking on the vampire, and for the first time since the screaming started felt like maybe he wasn't about to die a horrible death as someone's meal.

He felt something grab him, and started to panic again, before he realized he was being pulled across the floor away from the vampire and panicked people toward faces that he recognized near the bar, along with several others who were also on the ground. Then a scream rang through the club, raising goosebumps all across Kelvin's body.  That wasn't the Auror. Thank-fucking-Merlin.  The turned over, laying on his back, trying to get his heart to stop racing.

He was distinctly out of his element - both Theo and Nick appeared to slip straight into work mode, and Virgil took his cue from the latter. Crowd control. It was the opposite of what one typically did at The Closet, which was to catch the mood of a crowd.

Instead he found himself feeling very separate from the throng rushing and shoving past to get off the club floor.

The shriek nearly sent him leaping in the same direction. V had to shake the surprise off, resist the urge to freeze up. He had never heard a vampire die before but it could not have been anything else - unmistakeable, the cry of a second and irreversible death.

Confusion pealed through the club, spurned on by this. Some hesitated and maybe recognised the end of a threat, and it was at their feet that Virgil spotted a familiar wizard on the floor.

"Watkins!" V slid to his knees next to him, hand on shoulder as he looked for signs of injury. "Slow breaths, nice and easy now."

It didn't seem like he needed a Healer but Virgil stayed with him anyway. "Lucky you," he muttered. "Not on the menu tonight."