Nightshift 33: Walk-In Refrigerator
[From here]It was cold. But for once, it wasn't the first thought that crossed Wolfram's mind as he was practically thrown into the giant cooler. He was more worried about his eyes than anything. It still hurt to open them, and when he tried nothing would focus anyways. And he could still hear what was going on in the kitchen behind him
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Anya collapsed as soon as she had the door open, finding it necessary to take a moment to bleed in relative peace.
Sheer adrenaline had kept her going, but now that she had a second or two with just the perishable foodstuffs, she found her energy ebbing away. Her skin shifted back to human form, which irked all the burned out nerve endings in her back, not to mention the chunk that was missing from her side. Normally she'd be healed already, but everything sucked in this dimension.
Slowly, she raised her head to see if Willow and Angel - oh, and that monster - had followed her through.
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"Anya?" Willow asked tentatively, still with both hands on the edge of the door to keep it open for Angel. One hand might normally have worked, but Willow was too weak from the spell to manage that. It scared her a little bit how much that simple spell had drained of her energy.
Willow wanted to go straight over to Anya's side and help stem any bleeding as quickly as possible, but she also needed to help Angel get in the room quickly and shut the monster out behind him. She bit her lip, torn between the two, and just hoping the monster wouldn't try to follow them into the basement.
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They couldn't stay here forever, though. Big monster aside, they were inside a fridge. He lacked the body temperature to properly feel the cold, but Willow and Anya were a different story.
"We need to find the way down," he said. He'd look for it himself except he didn't want to take his eyes off the entrance just yet.
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"Why'd it attack me?" she groused, picking up her sword from where she'd dropped it. A speck of the acid blood had clung to the metal, but no real damage done. She brushed it off with a nearby wedge of cheese, and it began eating its way through that. "Angel looks decidedly more threatening."
When the vampire in question spoke, Anya tried to recall exactly what her roommate had told her. "The entrance is under an off-color tile. Somewhere back there, I think," she informed the others, gesturing vaguely towards the back of the room.
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"Hokuto...!" Willow took a hurried step toward her, really not liking how sick she looked. The redhead hesitated for a split second as she realized that Hokuto had two other people with her - people who looked very capable of helping her - and vaguely remembered that they needed to get to the basement as soon as possible. But still... there was no way she could just leave a friend who needed help like that.
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He frowned, equally concerned, but logic told him it'd be better to keep going. The girl looked like she had some help, and he figured the last thing she needed was another group of people crowding her. Besides, there was Anya, too-knowing her, she'd grow impatient, find the entrance, and just go down on her own, badly injured and all.
He took Willow's arm lightly to catch her attention. "She'll be okay."
Starting to unwind one layer of cloth off the handle of his axe, he crouched down beside Anya and pressed it against her side. "We need to keep going," he said, gaze going back and forth between Anya to the back of the fridge, scanning for the tile. He finally spotted it with a bit of squinting. Or he thought he saw it, anyway. They'd have to go closer to be sure. "Can you stand?"
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She started to head for the back of the fridge, but realized that the blood loss, coupled with the head injury from last night, was doing her no favors. She quickly returned to Angel's side and leaned on him again. "Come on! The sick teenager can take care of herself, Willow." Half putting most of her weight on Angel, half pulling him along, Anya headed for the tile at the back of the fridge.
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In the end, she managed to do it only after promising herself she'd find Hokuto at breakfast tomorrow and make absolutely sure she was okay. With one last, worried glance, Willow turned around and followed them to the back of the fridge, and beyond to this mysterious basement.
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He knew what she was feeling. It was harder here to know what to do. Between keeping his friends safe and keeping everybody else safe, he never went one night without wanting to be in two places at once.
He glanced over the floor. "Got it." Getting down might take a bit of effort with the way Anya was leaning on him, though.
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