Abby stood in front of the elevators just off of the museum lobby, a shiver of dread running down her spine. She stared at the numbers counting down slowly.

Don't look. Don't look.

Her eyes darted to the side, landing on the two large mirrors framing the doorway to the special collections room. Fear bloomed in her stomach and she squeezed her eyes closed.

Abby hated those mirrors. There was no reason for it. The ancient polished surfaces sent back a muted-brown reflection of the front desk. Their frames gleamed with centuries of polish, broken only by the symbols carved into the wood, one ebony with Greek lettering and Islamic symbols and one white ash with Latin lettering and Christian symbols.

The elevator dinged. Abby opened her eyes and darted into the empty car, jabbing the button for the 4th floor half a dozen times.

The doors slid closed and Abby breathed a sigh of relief. She made her way to her desk and pulled up her research files. She was nearly done writing up the history of those freaky mirrors.

Abby sighed and pulled on her headphones. She was soon immersed in translating tales of Byzantinian Muska sorcerers and powerful Knights of the Templar battling in the dark halls of the palace of the Anglid Dynasty. Alexios V Doukas, the last Emperor of this Dynasty, had called for his sorcerers to stop the Latin threat by any means necessary.

Abby lost herself in the ancient documents about the mirrors of life and death. One created to destroy the threat and one to neutralize the other. She struggled to decipher the Greek and Latin texts to figure out the details of the battle, but the accounts were too random.

The sun was down before Abby turned off her computer. She pulled off the headphones and gathered her papers. She stepped into the hallway and paused.

It was silent.

Usually, even this late, there were other curators and staff leaving for the day or janitors picking up trash from the offices.

Abby frowned and swallowed the lump of fear that formed in her throat. She took a deep breath and a shaky step.

A scream echoed down the hallway, a high-pitched sound filled with a terror Abby had never experienced. And she didn't want to.

She ran for the elevators and jabbed the down button over and over. The doors dinged and slid open. Abby slammed down the button for the lobby, jamming her finger in the process.

"Help!'

Abby jerked her head up at the sound of a man's voice.

Jason, an older man from accounting, appeared in the door. His out-of-style suit was rumpled and smudged with red. His face contorted with fear.

He grabbed her arm. Abby shrank away.

"The mirror," he whimpered.

"Wh-what?" She tried to pull her arm from his grasp. "What mirror?"

Jason dug his nails into her skin. "From downstairs. It's coming!" He leaned in closely, whispering. "It has tasted blood and it will kill us all."

Abby cringed and, fighting down her fears, shoved the man away.

In the space of a blink, it appeared. There was no noise, no warning. It just was not there, then it was. The white-framed mirror from the lobby was behind Jason.

He shrieked and reached for her, even as he was pulled back towards the mirror like iron to a magnet. He pressed against the frame, one arm angled up, one foot raised, like the stereotyped chalk bodies from old movies.

The screaming stopped as Jason's face turned red. But it wasn't just his face. His hands turned red, too. The pale blue of his shirt spread with a red stain, and red tears leaked from his terror-filled eyes.

Abby stared in shock as she realized what she was seeing. The man's pores oozed blood. The red liquid drained through his nose and ears, drawn into the mirror.

It only took a few seconds for Jason's body to shrink in on itself and collapse onto the floor, a dry husk.

Then the elevator doors closed, and Abby collapsed against the back wall of the small box.

Her mind raced. The mirror. The white-framed mirror. The mirror of the Knight's Templar. The mirror of death, triggered by an offering of blood.

The accounts she'd been reading all week said that one mirror was a death bringer. She'd assumed the mirror of death was the black one, the mirror of the Byzantine sorcerers.

One mirror had been created to bring death to the enemy. It was the white mirror. She’d seen the proof of that herself. It must have been created to destroy the enemies of Christiandom, those who threatened the power of the Church. The Catholic Church. In modern America, that would include pretty much everyone – protestants, atheists, those who believed in the separation of church and state.

But the other mirror, the black mirror, apparently, had been created to stop the mirror of death. The stories were quite clear how that part worked.

The black mirror.

Abby knew what she should do, but she wasn't the kind of person who generally did the brave thing. She was more of a cower- in-the-corner type.

She wiped the wet off of her cheeks, barely registering that she was crying.

The mirror would be hunting her now, by sound and by movement. The stories said that a few people had escaped by hiding, perfectly still and silent.

She could do that. She could stay in this small box and keep quiet until the danger passed.

The doors dinged open.

Abby took a breath and ran for the door to the special collections room. Her pumps slid on the linoleum floor and she nose-dived, knocking over a display with a huge crash.

She picked herself up and ran on.

Just a few more feet.

She reached out to touch the mirror as a white frame appeared, reflected in the uneven polished surface. She pressed herself against the black-framed mirror, shouting the words written on the frame.

---------------------------------------

The museum director stared at the small screen. The detective at his side sat silently, watching him.

"What the hell was that?"

The detective nodded, as if expecting the question. "A man tried to steal some artifacts from the special collections room while the museum was closing." He checked his notes. "A pair of vases, it looks like. He fired at the guard, who went down just outside the room, falling against one of the mirrors."

He turned to the monitor. "We aren't really sure what happened next, but, the next morning, everyone had gone missing and the two mirrors were pressed together, face to face."

The detective turned back to the director. "Nothing seems to be missing, just the people. I'll need you to verify this."

The director stood up, shaking. "But, the mirror..."

The detective nodded. "Darndest thing. It just kept appearing all over on the security videos. No clue who moved it." He shrugged. "But mirrors don't move by themselves, do they?"

The director frowned. "I guess not."