URBAN NOSGOTHIC
Chapter 5
Legacy of Kain created by and belonging to Eidos Interactive, Crystal Dynamics, Silicon Knights.
Thankyou for all your kind reviews! I promise to try and do proper review responses every few chapters, but I just have to say: Guardian!! At least let me have my mutant back! *starts untying Kurt from the chair* Poor baby…did she hurt you…*grins*
"Hold still."
The bandages are starting to turn red already. I wince as Raziel slashes up swathes of gauze with swipes of his claws.
One thing my boyfriend should be grateful for - there are always plenty of materials for healing wounds available in this house. I make sure of that.
Raziel glowers, leaning in with lengths of sticking plaster tabbed to his lower arm just above his wrist. "Hold," he repeats, "still."
My boyfriend has been understandably twitchy throughout this process. Raziel and I tied him to the toilet with the curtain-cord, just in case he decided to try anything funny this time, but he hasn't tried to run away. He has flinched rather a lot, however.
The wound in his shoulder is remarkably clean. The Reaver seems to almost cauterise as it cuts, and apart from the unrelenting dribble of blood, it looks as if it might heal quite quickly.
If he doesn't bleed to death first.
He yells aloud as Raziel slaps a further strip of tape across the gauze with a heavy hand. "I'm sorry," says Raziel, flatly, "did that hurt?"
I can't help it: I giggle.
"You're dead," comes the murmur from between my boyfriend's cracked lips. I think for a moment that he's referring to Raziel (he's always been a champion of stating the obvious, after all), but soon realise that no, he means me. "You're…so dead…when I get out of here…"
Raziel pokes a wad of cotton into his mouth and he splutters, frantically, struggling to breathe. His eyes bulge as Raziel leans even closer, his cowled face inches from him.
"And who would believe you?" Raziel asks, speaking softly and almost lovingly. As he speaks, he is drawing the cloth aside to reveal his ravaged death-mask of a face. My boyfriend begins to sweat as the long top eye teeth are revealed, with no lower set to compliment them, and the sharp angles of blue cheekbones too long bereft of a jaw to connect them. "As I understand it, people such as I are unknown in your world. What would you tell these -" he glances at me for a prompt, and I give it - "these policemen, if they came to you?"
For some reason, at the word "policemen" my boyfriend's eyes flick up to the cistern, and a dreadful weight clutches at my heart.
Some years ago, policemen had come to my door. Not, sadly, at my behest. They had come to ask us a few questions regarding our possible involvement in the trafficking of large amounts of crack cocaine. They had a warrant. They searched. My boyfriend pushed me to the kitchen, out of the way, and did all of the talking with a bright manic look in his eyes and a false smile on his lips. I was tempted to try and grab one of the officers, say, take me with you. Today I'm afraid he will kill me. Take me with you.
Nothing was found, nothing was said, and for over a year now there has been no sign of anything more to do with illegal substances in our lives.
But now I'm disposed to wonder…
I lift the lid of the cistern and close my eyes in quiet horror as I see the white plastic packets resting safely below the water level.
Raziel replaces his cowl, gives a final vicious and unnecessary smack to the bandages (my boyfriend screams) and looks over my shoulder as I stare helplessly at the drugs in the tank. "What is it?" he asks. "Is something wrong?"
"We have to get rid of this," I say to him. "People would kill for this stuff. People have probably already killed for this stuff."
He unhesitatingly dips his claws into the water and pulls the packets out, one by one. There are five in all. I can't even begin to imagine how much they are worth.
"I will take them outside," he says. "The Reaver will destroy them for you, and leave no trace."
I am surprised now by his protectiveness of me: after all, I should mean nothing to him, I'm just another human who tried to run away - but possibly he sees me as his only real link to his own world. My boyfriend is weakly trying to free himself, shouting and swearing at both me and Raziel. Strange. He cares more about these little packets than he ever did about me.
Raziel is on a mission - and as I well know, this means he will not stop until he has completed it. He is almost half-way down the stairs when I hear a car drawing up on the street outside, and suddenly the sound of big fists beating on my door.
"Raziel, stop!"
His voice comes back up to me from the lounge. "What?"
I run to the bedroom, whip aside the curtains and peer out. The car outside is slim and streamlined, and topped with blue warning lights. I want to shout to Raziel again, to warn him, but I'm too late to forestall the instinctive response of a territorial vampire lord who is already in an very ugly temper.
"Who are you?" Raziel calls. "State your business here!"
"Police," comes the response. "Can you open the door, please? We're here to investigate a possible domestic disturbance."
Of all the times my neighbours could have picked to report strange cries of pain and sounds of conflict coming from within this house, they had to pick tonight. It would almost be funny if it wasn't happening to me. I hurl myself down the stairs and fling open the back door for the second time that night.
Raziel, still loaded down with the drugs, gives me an interrogative what-now? stare.
"Can you open the door please, sir?" from outside once again, sounding a little more impatient this time. Raziel hisses angrily at the interruption.
"Come on," I say. "We have to get out of here."
