Stun grenades, often known as "flashbangs", and in some quarters as "holy-motherfucking-fuck-that-shit-is-loud", were designed as a non-lethal alternative to just blowing people off, while having the added advantage of giving cops that chance to get their rocks off at pretending to blow shit up. It's supposed to temporarily disorient an enemy's senses with a blinding flash of light and an intensely loud bang greater than 170 decibels. I know this because that's exactly what it says on the wikipedia page, but also because after being on the receiving end of one of these grenades, you have an intimate knowledge of the effects of said grenade, as well as a burning wish to know what it was that just thoroughly fucked up your world in so many ways.
Normal people will get stunned, fall to the ground, since their inner ear balance will now be completely fucked and for about five seconds they won't be able to see anything at all. That's the flash part of it. Do I really need to tell you the effects of such intense light on the delicate retinas of vampires?
Oh I do? Well okay then, here we go.
Claude's aim with the grenade was accurate and potentially deadly. I didn't even see the grenade go sailing past me through the hole in the wall, since I was still recovering from the shock of seeing Claude in the last place I expected him to be.
"Hi Bob," Claude said, and instead of wondering why he was sticking his fingers into his ears and turning away from me, which frankly is usually a really bad sign around Claude, I was wondering how the hell I was going to save him from the Gentlemen.
Stupid me. Claude had that completely under control.
The world exploded into white that brought searing pain into my eyes that made me want to claw them out just to make the pain stop, but that was nothing compared to the sheer panic of feeling my eardrums rupture and the nothingness that came with that pain. The panic was the worst of it though as my vision slowly faded to black and all I could feel was the suddenly too loud BA-BUM-BA-BUM-BA-BUM of my own racing and desperately panicking heart.
I don't care what anybody says about the wonders of sensory deprivation therapy: fuck that shit. There is nothing peaceful about not being able to see and being 100% aware of your own heartbeat and the swish-swish of your own blood through your veins. We were not meant to hear those sounds and often do our best to make sure that we're not left alone with the sounds of our own bodies. To think that people actually paid for the experience and some nutcase doctors with their stupid fucking research actually advocated the positive aspects of this was way beyond me.
I could feel someone dragging me out of the wall and I wanted to panic, but realized I was already panicking so I couldn't possibly do anymore of that, so I focused on kicking wildly instead. I broke free and collapsed onto the floor, my sense of balance completely fucked. My legs were obeying, but I jus couldn't get upright.
Pain flared in my eyes, a bolt of what felt like slow moving lighting searing through my brain and giving me the worst ice-cream headache of all time and I was aware I could see again, but not too clearly as my vision doubled and then quadrupled, my eyes letting their displeasure known at the abuse meted out to them.
Claude appeared then and waved his hands in front of my eyes, clearly aware that he had just completely fucked up my entire world and that I wouldn't be able to hear him. He signed something about his eyes or maybe it was my eyes and I nodded vigorously and tried to give him a thumbs up. That earned me a grin from Claude as he checked his watch and then looked back into the hole into the other room where the Gentlemen were most likely in a similar state as I was.
I scrambled backward, glad that gravity was still in effect, but then I became acutely aware of a ringing in my ears... or maybe it was deep in my head, but wherever it was, more pain was coming with it. I didn't care at that point, just so glad to be able to hear something again, anything but the noises of my own body.
The double vision of Claude looked up from his watch and reached over to the bed where an army-type knapsack was sitting open. He pulled out a black and silver tube that looked a hell a lot like the flash-bangs that I see cops on television use so much and it was at that moment that I realized what he had done that had fucked me up this much, and that he was apparently going to do it again.
"COVER YOUR EARS!" he yelled, and threw the grenade into the hole in the wall. Claude ducked down, hands goign to his ears and I turned away, squeezing my eyes shut from my wandering double vision and covering my ears tightly.
A muffled BANG! came from next door, and I tried to gain my feet again, looking back to Claude, who was rushing over to me, concerned.
"Sorry about the first grenade, that was mainly one hundred percent instinct."
"Your instincts have a habit of hurting me," I said. Something clicked in my ear and suddenly I could hear perfect again, kind of like after clearing your ears from the pressure.
"Good to see you too, but we should be running before those guys come after us." Claude had grabbed the knapsack from the bed and it really didn't match his suit, but it somehow looked right at home on his shoulder. Claude had that James Bond thing going on where he could go through a dozen sewers and rivers of blood and still come out with a slightly dusty but still very good looking suit, even if he had lost the tie a very long time ago. It was amazing to witness.
I was instantly aware that I was a mess in my blood-stained black t-shirt and blue jeans that had been through so much in a matter of hours. I currently had no idea where my shoes were and was desperately hoping that we wouldn't have to walk over any broken glass tonight, but the odds were not in my favour.
"Good idea, " I said and pulled open the door. Hopefully there was nobody around to scare with my appearance. We exited quickly into the corridor and walked quickly towards the elevators. "They have a hard-on for finding you and ripping you to pieces. You stole their six-thousand year old vampire and they kinda really want him back."
"I'm surprised anybody wants that crusty old bastard back. I've got him upstairs hopped up on Five-Hour Energy."
I gave Claude a long look and he grinned at me, then glanced at his watch, perfectly happy with himself to have pulled off the perfect rescue in the middle of this perfectly normal looking motel.
BLAM! There was a loud crash that made the both of us spin around, my spin a hell of a lot less graceful than Claude's; I stumbled into a wall and he had suddenly produced an extremely large handgun from apparently out of nowhere. My need to find out how he had done that magic trick was squashed by the sight of a lumbering Mr Bryce in the middle of the corridor, the broken door from his room, on the floor in front of him.
Blood was streaming out of Mr Bryce's ears and from the way he stumbled about, he was most definitely blinded from the way he moved his head back and forth as if he were almost smelling for us. And yes, he was most definitely pissed off.
"You should have put a bullet in his head when you had the chance," I murmured to Claude. "But I don't think that would have slowed him down much either."
"You going to introduce us or are we going to run?"
Mr Bryce took a step forward and grinned. "Bob! Come out and play!"
I made the decision for us: "Definitely run."
Claude reached into his knapsack as we backed up down the corridor, slowly picking up speed, mainly putting more distance between us and the abominable Mr Bryce. In one smooth move he pulled out a shiny metal ball, pushed a button on the side of it and pitched it underhanded at Mr Bryce.
"What is that thing?" I wanted to know and regretted asking instantly.
"Pepper bomb," Claude replied and we turned and hauled ass out of there.
BOOM! The corridor shook behind us and Mr Bryce screamed as he was enveloped in a fast spreading cloud of burning pepper. And I do mean burning pepper, as in pepper that was on fire. Take a cloud of any solid object, especially sugar and add flame and you're going to get a fireball. This fireball was made of pepper and it burned Mr Bryce in many, many ways.
Me, I just wanted to be far from the cloud of pepper as fast as possible.
We stopped running at the end of the corridor and dared to look back, since we had not been murdered yet; I was glad to see the figure of Mr Bryce lying prone on the ground in the middle of a blackened patch of corridor. Parts of the wallpaper and carpet were still on fire.
This was of course when the sprinklers kicked in and drenched that part of the corridor in water.
No, the entire floor wasn't drenched, since most sprinkler systems do not work that way, no matter what the movies tell you. They're actually referred to as "one-at-a-time-activation" systems, and only the sprinkler closest to the fire will turn on.
Claude and I looked at each other.
"That had a little more boom than I had planned for,"Claude admitted.
"It was pretty awesome though. What else do you have in that wonderful bag of yours?"
"You really don't want to know."
I really didn't.
"Gimme the gun," I said. "I really need to put a bullet in his head. It will take him a few days to make it and by then we're going to be a long time gone."
Claude pulled his gun away from me, giving me a weird look. "Since when did you get so gun happy?"
"It's been a really fucked up week dude. Gimme the gun!"
"No way in hell I'm doing that dude. The Bob I know doesn't go around putting bullets in people's heads!"
"Fuck that! That fucker over there is not people by any stretch of the imagination! He and his pals are the scariest motherfuckers ever to walk this earth and they want nothing more right now than to kill the ever-loving fuck out of me, so the Bob you know is going on vacation! Now gimme the gun or I'm taking it from you!"
Down the corridor I could see Mr Bryce rolling over and pulling himself up.
Claude pointed at Mr Bryce and whispered urgently to me: "Bob you idiot! It's a trap!"
That one stunned me for a second, and I waited for my brain to catch up, but it was still very far behind.
"Say what? Come again?"
Claude lowered his voice to a low whisper, even as he placed the gun into my hands and then proceeded to rifle through his bag.
"There are three of these motherfuckers, right? And yet Magilla Gorilla over there is the only one outside in the corridor. He practically shrugged off two stun grenades, one of which went off right next to his head, and he's still going. Flash-bangs, pepper, caffeine or whatever the fuck you use on these guys doesn't work the same way as it does on you. So ask yourself this: where are the other two?"
Claude was right. Mr Bryce was the muscle of the outfit but it was Mr Flynn who was the brains. If there was anyone who needed a bullet in the head, it was him, but he wasn't out there. Instead they had sent the tank, the one guy among them who loved taking a beating and came back for more.
I looked at the gun in my hand and back at the rising hulk of Mr Bryce. Claude nodded and I nodded back.
"It's a trap."
"Yep, it's a trap."
"Tell me you got some more tricks in that bag of yours. Something that's going to bring him down."
Claude checked his bag, looked at me and then back at Mr Bryce. Mr Flynn stepped out of the room, blood streaming from his ears and looked me in the eye.
"Mister Sinnel!" he called and a chill went through me. "Bring me their heads!
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AUTHOR'S NOTE: It's the beginning of the end kids! The boys are back together and shenanigans are afoot. And to think this entire chapter came about from a simple plot point "Claude rescues Bob using stun grenades". That's literally all I had to work with.