Evil
Everything hurt. He curled closer, pressed into the comforting cold of the walls of his cell, and shook with the pain. Silver, they'd used silver again, too much and too soon, and he wasn't healing. The blood was no longer flowing from him with the same speed; it oozed out slowly from the incisions. Not because he was healing, no, but because he simply had no more blood left. He would have whimpered, moaned, voiced his agony, but he no longer had any voice to cry out with. One of the first things they'd done to him was to crush his throat to silence him.
They'd taken samples of each organ, with him screaming on the table as they did so, then while he was helpless with the agony, hauled him back to his cell, day, after day, after day. He'd hated Abraham, the man was cold, callous, but...not this cruel. He'd suffered under that bastard's control, but Abraham had at least had the decency to shoot a silver bullet into his head before operating, leaving him unconcious, had fed him at least a meager meal so that he would recover.
The doctors he'd hired hadn't wasted the silver, simply strapped him down and began their studies. He knew Abraham had given them specific directions on how to sedate his vampire, how to minimize the damage, how to feed it. And before he'd left the country on a week's worth of business, he'd given the vampire specific directions, too. No fighting back, no resisting, obey them as he would obey Abraham.
He couldn't disobey. But they could. And this was the third day of torture. He thought it had only been three days, but was near delirious from the pain. Oh, he'd thought Abraham had been terrible, had been physically miserable and mentally scarred...but this? And to think that he'd been relieved that Abraham would be gone, had anticipated a week of respite and recuperation. He might have been able to last for a week of this, but with what was left of his mind, he doubted it. He'd go mad from the agony, the unceasing, incredible pain.
And as they left him weeping silently on the stone floor, he'd heard the men talking. Master was delayed. It would be another week, perhaps two, before he returned.
Alucard wouldn't make it that long. He might be very difficult to destroy, but the starvation, the silver, the lack of a coffin and earth, the length of time, and the sheer extent of his injuries...he would die. Permanently. And "he", his mind, would die before his body.
He refused to die, refused to give up. The pain, he was powerless against it, could not help but to scream. And he despaired, not seeing any way out of his situation, but he would find a way, somehow, some overlooked possibility, some loophole Abraham had not closed. He'd chosen this corner, hauled his tattered and bloody body to it, for two reasons. It was away from the door, the distance illogically reassuring...and there was a small crevice in the wall. And it smelled of rat.
Only once before, when he was a newly-turned vampire, not yet aware of his abilities, nowhere near his current strength...only that one time had he ever been forced to drink animal blood. It was bitter, giving only a trace amount of strength, nearly useless...but better than nothing. And Abraham, damn the man, had fed him nothing but animal blood in the two months since his capture. And for the last three days, not even his meager cup of pig's blood had been available.
He would eat a rat, if only one would show. The time crept by, the incisions in his skin closing though the damage underneath remained. No more blood was being lost, but he had to replace it, and soon. And the smell of the blood drew the rat into the room. Cautious, sniffing carefully, it ignored his motionless form...and then the bony hand with the yellowed, cracked nails wrapped around it.
A bare mouthful of blood, horrible and disgusting...but all that he had. The entrails, he dropped in front of the hole, the carcass left beside him. The bounty of blood and fresh meat drew another rat in short order. So little, so very little...but he could feel himself healing. He watched the crevice, what was left of his mind wholely focused on the blood, the food, the hope for another rat. A third one! Yes!
Soundless whimpers from his mangled throat as he fought to swallow the bit of blood past the swollen tissues, rat twisting violently in his hands before dying. Three, three rats, a feast for the starving! But no more showed, no more grey noses sniffing cautiously at the air, and he lost his focus on the dark crack they had emerged from to realize that he must begin to plan an escape.
A warning chill, not pain, but a reminder, told him that he must not escape. Abraham forbid it. No escape attempts. He could not control his torturers, grip their minds in his and prevent them from abusing him. Abraham had seen to that, too. Could not bite them, could not even struggle against them, was forbidden from breaking free of his restraints. Could not even growl or hiss at them, unable to show any resistance at all beyond weak thrashing once restrained.
Despair...then...he could not escape. But could he hide? No chill, no warning...he could hide away.
Hide. Hah. Hide where? The basement was not endless, and he was far too weak to move far at all. At least they hadn't bothered to chain him to the wall, though Abraham had told them to. For the last two nights, they'd dropped him in the cell, to find he had barely moved through the night. So incapacitated, they hadn't bothered to restrain him. Locking him into the chains was more effort than they wished to put forth, for the locks were stiff and unlocking him was difficult and a nuisance.
Had they been equally complacent about his door? So convinced of his helplessness that they had simply dropped him and left?
With the blood of the rats, he had the energy to crawl to the door, though each movement made him feel as though he was being impaled. All those torn and sliced bits inside him screamed with the motion, but he ignored them. A few hours ago, he'd been in far more pain. And far too soon, they'd have returned, and he'd be mindless with agony. That knowledge gave him the ability to ignore the rending pain, and he crawled to the door...and found that it pulled open with surprising ease.
They had not locked it. He had a chance. He was also leaving a blood trail, though reduced...they could follow the red smears to him. Despair rose in him, but he fought it off. There was already a dried smeared swath on the floor, left by his body on the trips to his cell on the last three nights. They began in the dissection room, and he shuddered at the thought, panicking at the idea of returning there. But he had to, going anywhere else would leave a trail. And they would find him, and it would continue.
They would not do this to him again. He WOULD thwart them.
Slowly and painfully, he pulled his wrecked body down the hallway, laying yet another layer of blood on the floor, indistinguishable from those already there.
It was a room of horrors. Trays of sharp silver objects, a drain on the floor clogged with his own dried blood, cabinets with shelves covered with tiny, precisely-labeled jars holding...holding...bits...of himself. If he thought about what he was doing, he would not be able to, and so he crawled in the room. His legs were nearly useless now, but he could pull himself along with his arms and did so, his legs reduced to the occasional weak shove.
Could he hide here? Anywhere else...and he'd leave a trail behind. An obvious trail.
No, not really. The cabinets were small, not deep enough to hide him behind their doors. The deep cabinet against the back wall? No doors. He wept in frustration, the room too obviously bare, useless, and rolled on his back to stare blindly up at the ceiling.
And the vent.
Vent. This house had a modern furnace, and his mind pieced together scraps of memory, of floor vents, of great metal ducts traveling the corridor ceilings in the basement. One of those ducts entered this room, running along the ceiling, and it had a vent. That vent...he could reach it without having to do more than kneel on the table. The table was tall, the vent low enough to reach...yes.
If he could get into the vent, he could hide. The opening was so small, but he was so starved...before Abraham left, he would never have fit. Now? Perhaps. And it was above the table, too. With the blood smeared about the room, they might not notice the extra, not realize where he had gone...he might have a few more hours of grace before they found him.
If he could get in there...if. And then they'd have to somehow pry him out. Yes. He would try.
With no energy to waste, he didn't move for a few moments, simply watching the vent, observing, thinking. It had two screws holding it in place. There were no screwdrivers, none that he'd seen...but the flat end of a scalpel might well work. The screws were large, after all. He thought he could remove them, remove the cover from the vent. The difficulty...would be in pulling himself up and into that vent. It would be agony.
But he'd be in worse agony when they returned. His brief rest on the floor over, he crawled to the table, using it to pull himself upright.
Scalpels, yes a tray of them. They wouldn't miss one, not with so many. He was glad of his crushed throat as he pulled himself onto the table. The screams, he could not help but scream, it hurt too bad, the edge of the table pressing against his stomach, the dissected organs tearing and pulling inside, but his throat changed the screams into hoarse, barely-audible gasps. And he made it, kneeling on the table, scalpel in hand. One screw was easy to remove. The second, he only loosened, letting the grate pivot on it and leave the vent open. It waited, a dark, silent rectangle, surrounded by shining steel.
He'd bleed on that, they would see the blood around the vent, they would find him. He'd have to clean it off. How? Ah, there. Rags, there were rags on the trays with the instruments, bits of cotton used to soak up his blood during surgeries, keeping the organs visible. He placed a few of the cotton cloths and the scalpel in the vent, pushed to the side out of the way...gritted his teeth...and before he could think of what he was doing, pulled himself into the vent.
Agony, blind agony. Only a will of steel kept him moving, and he pulled himself up, twisting and turning, pulling his body into the metal duct. The weight of a man should have pulled it loose from the wall, but he was a vampire, and starved, weighing a fraction of what his healthy weight would be, and the brackets supporting the duct held easily. Safe inside, he rested, waiting for the waves of pain to cease crashing over his mind.
He'd pushed the scalple, screw, and cloths in front of him as he entered, but the bloody grate hung open behind him. He had to clean it, close it...and that meant moving backwards. Palms braced against the sides and floor of the duct, he wriggled and contorted, sliding backwards a few inches at a time, pulling his tools with him. The vent and grate were wiped clean, no sign of his entry. The grate was rotated back in place, his fingers reaching through the grid to replace the missing screw. It twisted easily, even with his warped and broken fingers, and within minutes there was no external evidence that he'd gone into the duct. The screws were loose, but unless someone actually tried to remove them, they seemed untouched. And who would think that a full-sized vampire could have gotten into that little vent?
They might.
It was time to move on. Clenching the scalpel in his teeth, he pulled himself through the vent, inch by painful inch.
The night drug past him, as he traveled through the ducts of the basement. The one from the surgery joined a large one in the corridor, and he was able to rise to his knees and crawl down it. His legs buckled every few feet, but his iron will forced him on. He would NOT be their plaything again. He WOULD hide. He WOULD...not escape...no...but...be missing. Absent. Gone, as long as he possibly could be gone.
The basement duct had vertical shafts that reached up into the house, large, wide ducts...too wide. He began to worry, wondering if he'd be able to leave the basement at all. But the ducts decreased in size as he moved farther from the furnace, and he lay on his back, gazing up into a dark shaft, preparing to climb into it. Narrow, narrow enough that he could brace himself against the walls. And he did, pulling himself up, inch by inch, leaning his body against them to brace himself in place, sometimes sliding down a few hard-earned inches, but using the tight confines to force himself ever upwards.
Horizontal shafts came off at intervals, passing under floors. Under the main floor, the next floor...the next...Hours passed as he crept upwards. He was exhausted, having burned through any remaining reserves, desperation and determination alone keeping him in motion. Forty vertical feet he traveled, each horizontal shaft a chance to pause, to tuck his feet into and fold down, resting, the confines too tight for him to fall. And then the duct ended.
The end was a T shape, and he looked dully down the tiny shafts. These were for the attic, meant simply to keep it a few degrees above freezing in the winter, and small, so small. He might be able to fit, though...a child would struggle, but he was so thin, barely more than a skeleton. It was worth a try.
The difficulty was in his legs. The confines were so tight, had the legs been an fingers-width longer, or the vertical shaft a hair narrower, he could never have angled them in. If he'd needed to breathe, he would never have fit in the shaft. Hips twisted, shoulders twisted, arms stretch above him, he barely, barely fit. And he could not move.
No, he WOULD move. A fraction of an inch at a time, twist this shoulder, turn his hips so, brace his toes, shove forward with his feet, barely, barely moving. But moving. And by dawn, he was entirely in the attic duct. Not even his feet remained in the vertical shaft, and it would require dismantling the duct to pry him out.
One last thing. If Abraham called him, he would have to respond. He had no choice in it, his obedience was forced. And Abraham would try to find him. In fact, when his torturers demanded that he come to them, he would have to come. And he might be able to back out of this duct, fall down the shaft, be found.
And so he had the scalpel. Difficult in these tight confines, but not impossible...and he slashed at his arms, destroying the blood vessels in them. He was already almost too weak to move, and the blood welled slowly out. It spread across the surface of the duct, soaking his hair, oozing away from him. And with the last of his blood, the last of his strength left him, eyes closing.
It was dark, and silent. He was in agony, agony of his wounds, agony of starvation. He would not heal, not without blood, his coffin, his soil. He had none of those. He had condemned himself to a slow death from starvation; he no longer had any way to reveal his presence, and he had hidden his corpse away where it would never be found.
No, he could not escape, could not fight back. But they would never touch him again, never hurt him again.
He spent the day fading in and out of conciousness, in too much pain, his insides clenched from starvation. At sunset, he woke briefly, biting and sucking at his own arm in desperation of blood, his body's final, desperate attempt to feed, instinctive and mindless. Below him, dim and faint even to his vampiric ears, he could hear the angry shouts, the demands that he show himself.
His inability to obey repaid him with a warning chill, then agony along his entire frame, the pain unending and rending.
But still better than what he would have experienced had he remained. The same pain, as he fought to escape...and the torture of new injuries, as silver burned and cold fingers probed and his body was picked over by the carrion crows of doctors. They'd planned to take an eye today, had discussed their next planned actions in front of him, delighting in his mute terror, his fear and dread and anticipation.
Knowing this almost made the pain bearable. It would never end, not until he obeyed and returned to them, and he could not.
But he had deprived them of their toy, their plaything, and they would never touch him again, though it would be months before he finally returned to dust.
He wondered idly if he'd ever be found. It was the last coherent thought he would have.