URBAN NOSGOTHIC

Chapter 7

Legacy of Kain created by Eidos Interactive, Crystal Dynamics, Silicon Knights.

Thank you all so much for your reviews! I promise, proper review responses next chapter. *looks guilty, but cuddles her Raziel-plushies anyway*

"Rhianna," says Raziel, digging into a fold of his cowl (I swear he must have sewn pockets into that thing, there's no way he could be keeping things in there otherwise) "I brought these with me. They seemed too important to you for me to leave them behind."

He brings out the five little white packets, and although I am not exactly overjoyed to see them, I admit to a sense of great relief that he didn't leave them behind. They must have found the bleeding figure tied to the cistern by now, and that alone will land me in enough trouble to see me locked away until my seventieth birthday. I take them from him, weigh them in my hands. They look so innocent, really. Like talcum powder.

"Can you do what you said?" I ask. "Destroy them, I mean."

His head snaps up, alertly, and too late I notice the shadows of two figures crossing the mouth of the alley. At three a.m., very few travellers on the streets are going to be friendly, or, if I'm very unlucky, far too friendly.

I shuffle closer to Raziel, shoving the drugs into my jeans pocket, and watch him watching the two men as they cross the street and get into a car parked by the kerb. They are cheerfully loud, laughing and clapping each other around the shoulders. Late clubbers. No danger, at least not yet.

Raziel, however, is not convinced of our safety and almost drags me out of the alley.

"Not here, not now," he snaps. "Time to go."

We hurry forward, Raziel's blue skin turning a series of odd, muddy green colours under the neon orange of the streetlights. He seems focussed now, although he turns to me often to ask for direction. Are more people likely to be around down this street or that one? What does the building where the policemen dwell look like?

I am grateful for his company, but my own self-doubt is gnawing my stomach away inside. Where can we go, a woman on the run from the cops with a demon-angel at her side? I have no family here, and there is no-one who would take us in. I think even Kay, the friendly voice at the local Battered Wives Helpline, would balk if I turned up at the Refuge with Raziel in tow, asking for sanctuary…

Raziel hisses something in a language I don't understand, and yanks my arm hard, pulling me into a side-street. Dimly, I realise where we are – this is Cattle Lane, on the south side of town, beyond the rail bridge. Not a good place to be during daylight hours, and a place no sane person should attempt at night. I stifle a yelp of pain as my injured wrist catches the lid of a nearby dustbin, and Raziel's claws clamp over my mouth, almost too tightly for comfort. He draws me back into the shadows, and closes his eyes to hide the pale glow they emit. Obviously he has detected something he thinks is worth hiding from, and I am inclined to trust his instincts, although I have seen nothing myself.

In almost total darkness, I apply my old tried-and-tested methods of eluding detection. No matter how frightened you are, make your breathing slow and shallow. Don't gasp for your air – aspirant sounds attract attention quicker than the sound of a dropped coin in a beggar's meeting hall. Stay perfectly still, no matter the cost to your circulation. And always, always, if you're hiding from someone – wait at least twenty minutes longer after you think for the third time, 'they must have gone by now'. Trust me on these rules, my friends. In my belief, they've already saved my life many times over.

Raziel does not seem to breathe, and is so still he could be a perfectly carved gargoyle. His jutting pelvic bones are digging into me painfully, but I do not dare adjust position to avoid them, because even I can now hear the soft voices of a group of at least six or seven people, talking. They have halted at the entrance to Cattle Lane, and a few scattered phrases filter through to me as the blood pounds to my head in panic.

"….got a least a thousand for it, so Brian and me…"

" – wanted me to go get her some more, so I said to the bitch, more? I'll give you fucking more, darling –"

"…heard that Gary scored himself a proper gig this time. Somewhere he can really get his business going, if you know what I mean…"

An interruption of several men laughing in that ugly, knowing manner. My shoulders must have tensed involuntarily at their tone, because Raziel's claws tighten their hold again in a brief squeeze that is probably more shut up than it's all right.

The voices continue their conversation for several minutes, then I almost gasp for joy – it seems they are moving on! I see their silhouettes against the streetlight flare as they amble slowly – too slowly – across the end of Cattle Lane. For fun, I start to count them as they pass. One, two, three, two more built like tanks with shaven heads and heavy boots…

"Oi, wait a minute, fellas."

The boots crunch to a halt.

"What is it, Darren?" asks one voice, sounding paternally weary. "Did you see your mommy doing her night job down there or something?"

More sniggering. But Darren is not to be put off.

"Saw something, all right," he says.

Raziel moves his head the slightest fraction to the right and his eyes glow open a slit. I risk a tiny motion to see what it is has caught his attention.

It is a cat.

One of those scraggy, back-fence toms, more scar than skin, and he is staring at Raziel in complete horror. As Darren's footsteps start to echo in the mouth of the street, the cat screeches and hisses, fluffing up to his full size in an attempt to intimidate the intruder. He must know Raziel is not human, and as such must be a threat to his territory.

"It's just a cat," calls a voice from the group. "Leave it. Come on."

But Darren is no longer listening to anything his mates have to say – Darren is too busy croaking out: "Bloody hell…" because Raziel, aware that the game is up, pushes me aside and charges forward with a snarl of fury.

"Please!" I scream after him, "Don't kill anyone! Please!"

I suppose he must have heard me. Because although he is pulling no punches as the gang rush into the street to defend their friend, the Reaver remains conspicuous by its absence.

I flatten myself against the wall, trying to hunker down behind the bins. Peering around one corner affords me a glimpse of the action, which is far more than I really want to see, but morbid curiosity keeps me watching.

There are far more men in this gang than I had previously supposed. At least twenty, with reinforcements turning up with frightening rapidity. They are armed, mostly with knives. Raziel dances around them, wings flaring as he leaps out of danger again and again. One falls to a kick in the groin from his powerful hooves, another misjudges Raziel's immense strength and tries to pin him with a bear hug. I'd always imagined the sound of bones breaking to be sharper, like a length of bamboo cane snapping neatly in two, but it isn't like that. The sound as the thug's arms both break simultaeneously is more like that deep, glacial sound of an ice-berg cracking in the spring thaw. Darren himself is lying quite near to me, moaning softly as he tries to re-locate his knee-caps without causing himself any further pain.

Raziel I am not concerned for. He is too fast, too strong, too skilled to be in any danger from a small-town backstreets brawl. I watch the men drop, one by one, as Raziel turns about angrily, bringing his claws up in a vicious swipe across the torso of another –

Abruptly he staggers, as if pole-axed, and the echoing report of the gunshot is ringing in my ears like the passing bell. The bullet has gone through his ribs at heart height, and the marksman, standing against the wall with his gun raised, is waiting calmly for his foe to drop.

Raziel turns a slow-burn, furious gaze upon the sniper. "I almost felt that," he says, quietly. "Would you like to try again?"

The second, third and fourth shots slam into his forehead, shrunken waist, and thigh respectively. Raziel keeps walking, his pace as leisurely as if he were strolling through the park on a Sunday afternoon, as the next three shots punch holes in his cowl and shoulders. I notice the thin gleam of blue blood beginning to ooze sluggishly down his leg and wonder: how long? How long before he stumbles again, even a little?

A second later, and I am far too preoccupied to worry about him anymore. Two of the gang, taking advantage of Raziel's absence as he methodically snaps the shooter's gun in half, have found me and what I am carrying.

"Christ!" one says. "How much is this lot worth?"

They cradle the packets as if they are as fragile as butterflies, and grin at each other in delight. "And she could be useful, too," says the same one, his eyes predatory. "Couldn't you, babe? You could have some fun with us, after we get all the cash from this little stash?"

"Cash…stash," snorts the other, obviously delighted by his buddy's highbrow sense of humour. Their hands snake towards my shirt, pluck at my zip.

"Ra –" I begin to scream, but once again I feel big hands smothering my mouth. Raziel cannot hear me. He is too busy hurling gang members against the walls, no doubt aching in a dozen places from the bullet wounds. My feet kick out wildly at nothing, finding only empty air.

"Hold still, hold her, will you?"

I flail again with my legs, and this time I connect with what feels satisfyingly like a man's booted shin. I kick it, over and over, hoping to hurt its owner as much as I can. Although I can't see him, I'm sure he deserves a good kicking anyway.

So it comes as a surprise when the two would-be rapists on top of me are lifted straight up in the air by their scruffs, shouting and swearing for all they are worth. Their assailant, his hair a gleaming, bone-white mane in the darkness, breaks both their necks with a brisk, business-like shake, and casts the bodies aside casually. His eyes are glowing red like the fires of hell, and he does not look happy to be here.

Kain eyes me disdainfully, says: "Don't ever kick me when I'm hungry," and then lunges for my throat.