"At midnight, Dad went to the center of the dance floor, splashed some blood in a circle, and said a few words. I think most of the folks near him thought that he was just drunk or something. I saw him doing it, I didn't understand, but I knew that it was wrong. I knew that something bad was about to happen. His voice became louder, almost like he was talking with a megaphone. I've heard about every language there is, but not this one. Whatever it was, it wasn't meant to be pronounced with a human tongue. The blood caught on fire and the floor under him disappeared, it just kind of opened right up. I was far enough away that I didn't get to see where it opened to, but some of the others did. They died first."

"What was it?" I asked.

Julie appeared shaken as she recalled the memory. "A rift. To someplace else, we don't really know where. We say hell, but that isn't really right, that's just our way of explaining something that we don't understand, but it was not on Earth, that's for sure. Things came out of that rift, bad things. I can't even begin to describe them. They tore through the party like the Hunters were made out of tissue paper. Dad's plan had gone wrong. Bad wrong."

She unconsciously clenched her fists, the muscles in her jaw contracted, and her eyes narrowed angrily at the memory.

"We fought. We fought hard. But we had been caught unaware, and these things were tough. More and more of them kept pouring through the hole every second, and they weren't going to stop. We held them, we killed them until their husks were piled waist-deep. We couldn't retreat, because they just kept flooding out the rift. If we gave up at the gate then these things would have filled the country, don't ask me how I know that, but somehow we all did. Every inch we gave up was one more inch that would no longer belong to our world, it would belong to them. Everybody stood and fought. No Hunter ran."

I reached over and grasped her hand. She was shaking.