The hallway stretched on for an eternity.

Walls and shadows carrying the firm sound of footsteps and the heavy breathing of one man, who followed a woman accompanied by several others wearing masks more detailed than his once was.

Instead of worn wood and unfinished smiles, their masks were smooth, porcelain-like surfaces shaped into the elegant, sleek face of an owl with eyes too dark to tell if they were hollow shadows of black stones glimmering under the light they passed.

This gathering of masked associates kept on, quietly walking down the corridor until they came to a black door and stopped. The woman knocked.

The maskless man stood there, trying his best to fake the composure lost when he watched his men being ripped apart by that creature, tossed around like game in the jaws of a rabid hound. And he bit his thumbnail, knowing it was either that or shiver in fear at the remembrance of broken bones and torn flesh, and he refused to appear cowardly in front of Sorrow. But, the fear returned, the creeping of unseen claws lurking in the shadows of the hallway, and anxiety told him to run, to warn his boss and all the others of what in the fuck went down.

When he noticed the woman watching him, though she hadn’t said a word, he quickly straightened his shoulders and stared into her inhumanly violet eyes, a color he assumed to be fake with how the light passed through them. Sweat ran down his face, and his heart refused to settle, though he held no expression on his face, attempting to match the naturally vacant look she carried.

“Come.” Was all she said, and the doors opened to a room darker than the hallway they walked.

The only source of light came from the massive screen mounted on the wall in front of them, a pitiful glow overpowered by the darkness of the room—darkness that seemed to move. And displayed across the screen was a movie, no, a live broadcast depicting men and women coming together in a violent orgy, and surrounding the show were smaller squares of shadowed figures he couldn’t make out before a cold voice reached out to him.

“Well?”

That one word was enough, spoken in the voice of a mortal god—deep and terrifyingly calm, one untouched by smoke or liquor, or overcome with any emotion other than the slightest hint of irritation at the possibility that his orders weren’t carried out efficiently and without failure.

And Nathanial Sorrow didn’t respond well to failure.

The man felt the weight of his boss’s voice, the heavy presence of the woman and her masked associates staying in the shadows by the door. He licked his lips, tasting salt and blood, and watched the smoke of his cigarette writhing in the air, and listening to the ice of his drink shift in a soft clatter.

“Did you get him, or not?” But he already knew the answer.

“N-No.”

Silence, nothing but the moving images on the screen, and someone had won the bid.

“B-But, we…we were attacked! One of those demons attacked us! Killed my crew, and the masks did fucking nothing! He tore everyone apart and…and he ate them, no, drank from them like a fucking vampire!” A brief surge of panic pushed his words out before he could catch and adjust the informality of his tone, but Sorrow wasn’t pleased. “I had to run, I didn’t stop until I made it back here, I even lost my mask, and I swear…I won’t fail again.”

“No, you won’t,” The chair shifted, revealing only a glimpse of his face as he glanced back, and his eyes flickered like lightning hiding beyond that storm-dark stare. “Will you?”

Quickly—almost frantically—the man nodded, bowing his head and putting his hands together in prayer. “N-No, sir, no. I swear I’ll make everything right. I just...I need a new mask, a stronger one.”

The sound of Sorrow’s heavy intake of nicotine was heard, and he reached for his drink—a dark amber liquor in a glass still chilled. The screen had faded, now informing viewers when the next auction would be by displaying a countdown of odd numbers. The silence was maddening, and the man was becoming uneasy, his shaking hands rubbing together, and his body rocking impatiently.

“Nyra.” He said, and the woman stepped closer.

There was something wrong with this woman, the man saw it faintly—the way she moved, the way her eyes remained unblinking as though she were some mysterious creature hiding in the body of a seemingly ordinary young woman, but had trouble adjusting to the skin and bones of mortality. At the corner of his eye, her hair seemed to move, swaying like feathers eager to rise.

She looked to him, and for a moment, her eyes were pure-black pools of darkness, but he blinked, and they were again normal.

“Come this way,” She said and walked toward a door on the other side of the room.

Relief filled him, a sense of security, and a desire to figure out what in the hell attacked him and his friends.

The woman, Nyra, opened the door, and he walked in first, distracted by his thoughts of revenge and curiosity.

And he fell into a pit, immediately into the jaws and moving limbs of a monster hiding in a tight space.

Sorrow listened to him scream, a long and slow echo of agony and body parts breaking. A noise eventually tuned out when Nyra closed the door and faced him.

“A vampire?” Sorrow all but snickered at the thought, and tapped a few buttons on the tablet beside him. 

The screen cut off and he waited for his call to be received. 

“Shall I retrieve your toy?” Nyra asked, appearing closer to his desk and watching him with the reflective stare of an animal in the night.

“Later,” Sorrow took a deep drag of his cigarette, speaking against tendrils of smoke. “First, I need to figure out what exactly is in my way.”

And the screen opened, revealing the Auction Master in all his obscurity.

A dark chuckle rolled from other places in the room, not from speakers in the walls, but the corners of darkness as if this strange entity were sitting before them in the flesh. 

“I was expecting your call.”