Re: Penthouse Level: 12:00 am
The thing that came down the backstair from R1 did not come with a triumphant angelic choir nor a trumpeting fanfare. He did, however, come with quite a racket, because he was, after all, about the size of an adult grizzly bear, with enough girth and muscle to make those stairs a real problem. Short roars of frustration overlapped over angry thumps and thuds as the beast threw itself from side to side, alternately wiggling and thrashing to force the railing from its bed against the wall so it could fit through the doorway.
Eventually, all eight-hundred pounds of him spilled out into the hallway. He wasn't a grizzly bear. The fur was wrong, a sort of a tawny brown color rather than dirt brown. It was shorter like a wolf's, and though a bear's thick shoulders supported the thick mane and strange, part-feline part-canine skull, there was something languid and tigerish about his spine as his momentum bounded to a halt a yard into the hallway. It was here he ran into the thorns, and they came about as high as his chest, and they were enough of a hindrance to give him pause.
He batted at the thorns, stopped, stared through them at the two women and the predator Vlad had become, then paced two steps one way, and two steps the other, clearly trying to decide how to get across. After a moment more, he pulled lips back over (cougar's?) fangs and let out a roar that was made to cross several miles of African grassland.