22 April 2016: Mini update to dialogue.
Chapter LIX: Our Lady of Blood
The Tilbury Underground
Twenty minutes later.
Lucian woke to the sound of water dripping above his head. Muted pain filling every corner of his wretched skull. Broken bones, shattered joints. Not the end of his shattered existence then. Instead a dull sense that he ought to be doing something. That he ought to be moving. His consciousness starting to dip and sway before gaining momentum…
…and then rising up with a roar of pain. His eyes wide and unseeing. Like the dead pulling itself from an unholy grave, wary of nothing but hunger and pain. Straining, blinking against the light, trying to see between the shadows. The ground absent beneath his feet. The length of his arms strung up to the ceiling, each wrist tied with thick rope, the strands smelling of faint but undeniable wolfsbane. Poisonous enough that most would prefer bondage to the turmoil of biting their way to freedom.
His first instinct to bite. Draw back his teeth. Tear through the veins of a wrist, a hand, a throat. His hunger suddenly quelled as he recognised a second, more obvious scent. One he'd nearly forgotten for all the years he'd spent hiding it. Already sensing what was wrong, that stiffness to his movements, the numbness of his forearm driven by pain and loss of blood. It was not just water dripping above his head, he realised. No this scent was fresher than that.
Sinew.
With an echoing growl, he snapped forward, raging against his wound, his nails grasping towards the rope. The last traces of his adrenaline stamped out by the butt of a knife crashing down upon his temple, like a bell tolling for the dead, its sound accompanied by a round of silver pressing into his back. Sizzling, driving weakness through his joints again.
He fought back a scream.
Counting…
His heart beating frantically against the burn, forcing himself to think on the number of adversaries. One striking him with the knife. A second catching him from behind. Eyes darting left…right, cracking his neck beyond his shoulder, yet seeing no one. Too much light.
Without warning, he felt the same knife forcing his jaw back. A dreadful stench pressed into his windpipe. A pitiful beast squealing in fear, petrified not only by the creature who held its tail, but the beast whose dignity it was meant to diminish. He lunged before they could retract the insult, a mixture of rancid sinew and fur suddenly grasped between his teeth before any of them could blink. The blood putrid to the taste, enough to make his throat recoil before they wrenched it away.
Smells. He could smell blood in every corner of the room, strong enough to pierce the scent of ash clouding his senses. He knew the smell of vampire blood. Just as surely as he knew the walls were stained with the blood of his own people. More than a dozen scents. Fresh. The smell of burnt flesh and urine telling him they had all died in fear.
The smells making him wonder if he was asleep. His immediate memories seeming strange and impossible…a dream that he was starting to doubt. Acid crippling his gut, his last meal starting to fester in his veins, calling up a second…deeper…memory, faster than a blood skittering up a wall. Eyes burnt out of their… He cringed suddenly, his wrists jerking on the rope. Desperately trying to shut it out again. Emptiness. He was emptiness…
…he was a void.
Alive. Here. Now. He was breathing faster. Shorter, desperate, the wound in his chest starting to sear. Every ounce of pain hinting at his present situation. Not just broken ribs. Punctured lung. It meant the stab-wound was still open, healed enough to keep him alive, but the burns still seething on the inside. No more than an hour since the stabbing.
He could do this, he thought. Blinking furiously. He was awake. He could smell. He could feel. Again, he thought. Go over it again.The air giving him blood and ash…but no scent of alcohol. No fragrant whiff of the essential oils nor the heady smell of yeast.
What else…
Heat.
The heat of a raging furnace at his back, its existence in the room giving him a possible means of narrowing his location. A single point of heat. A distillery house usually had several. His last location had been close to the docks, but they were within range of the abandoned brewery. The docks made sense for someone escaping, while the brewery was a logistical nightmare. Abandoned by mortals, it was, by that virtue, heavily used by lycans.
He started again.
Water could signify the docks, but the heat indicated a smoke stack. The brewery. But if they were in the abandoned brewery, he'd expect it to be guarded. The whole point of something being abandoned was so they could use the damned thing. So where the fuck were they holding him?
He squinted at the ceiling again, focusing on the lightest point above his head. It was getting better. The light of each reflection finally starting to recede. Metal. He could see the metals in the room. The hook above his head. But no copper in the ceiling. This place was older than a distillery house. Older than the copper piping that was notably absent, older than the cylindrical vessels that so often formed the modern setting of a distillery house. Older because they were not in a distillery house at all…
…they were beneath one.
Far beneath the ground. He was drinking it in. Sight. His eyes slowly adjusting to the light. The rope was attached to a winch on his right, the hook welded into an iron beam above his head. At least forty feet below the surface, the walls were made of brick and mortar that crumbled in places. They were on a level below the abandoned brewery. Enough hooks in the ceiling for him to know an old slaughter room when he saw it. A stained butcher's table in the centre…
…and Reinette laid out like a mummified corpse upon her bed. Possibly the first time he'd seen her peaceful without a bottle of blood-alcohol to help. Rope binding her to the table, and a dress—not one of hers he was mildly offended to realise that he knew—because why the hell would he know that—draped over the sides. Red staining every inch of her dress, the grooves and the floor stained with the same blood. Her face tilted back as though she'd only just fallen asleep, her hair silvery-white against the bleeding base of her skull.
On the one hand, his hackles were rising. On the other, he felt like carousing. Throwing his fist in the air, decapitating everyone in the room, dragging Raze back here by the jacket, sitting the man down in a pool of blood, telling him to close his eyes and then pointing vigorously at the table because—guess the fuck what, Raze…
She…was…alive.
She was not a pillar of ash, and the second Raze found out, someone in their blood-forsaken den would have to admit that he'd been wrong. It was a phenomenal feeling. One which ended up being rather wistful given the mood he was in. Blood, he wished Raze was here. The triumph of being right failing to better every aspect of his day for once.
On his left...
...a man by the name of Ewan Saunders. The vampire of Tilbury. One of the first names on the census of communal living with his wife, Gwen. Gruff and twitchy, he kept his eyes fixed to the floor, nervously wiping his hands on his shirt. Shame in his scent. A crow-bar clutched close to his chest as though he was afraid of dropping it. Possibly because he lacked all ten of his fingers. It could also be the six crates of dynamite beside him…one of them open.
The woman on his right needed no introduction. Paunchy and pale like too much pluck shoved in a sheep's bladder. Scars on her face. Eyes red for the ones who had been taken from her. The smell of sorrow, hatred…the cries of a rabid animal coating her skin. The infamous Grace Marsden whose face, he realised in that moment, was more familiar than he'd have wagered ten minutes ago.She'd asked a question at the last Gathering of the People in the London den. Over five months ago in the first week of Reinette's arrival. 'Will there be more of her kind entering the den…'
She had the look of a ring-leader. Her hand gripping the winch like she wanted to hang him…but her eyes kept glancing fearfully to the centre of the room. Fearfully. Both Grace and the vampire, Ewan, were shadowed by the presence of a third.
Nikolai Proshkov…fucking…Andreev.
Kolya.
The vampire stood with his profile to the room, the light of the furnace casting an unnatural glow upon his skin. His appearance unchanged from this angle. Dark and luminous, humming to himself, looming over Reinette like a supplicant kneeling before his alter. His expression rapt with an undisguised adoration as though nothing could tear his gaze away.
Blood, what was that scent...
Even with his lungs strung up from the ceiling, he'd almost forgotten how to breathe out, forcing himself to sniff…sniff…sniff…viciously trying to scent the man out. Odd that he could still smell gratitude. Wonder. An intense need to please all those around him. A change occurring in the scent, the underlying whiff of mania suddenly peeling back, as though a dam had burst free. Every sniff making him acutely aware that he was facing a three-headed dog. Murder coating the man's skin like a malaise hanging over a cesspit.
The vampire turned to look him in the face. Where once there had been a seamless profile, there was now a horrific scar healing across his face. His eye missing, the bleeding mess of his iris subtly weaving itself like a spider within a socket.
"Mr. Itzhak," he said with a warm smile. "I wish to thank you for the concern you have taken for my family." His voice was unchanged. Winsome, the Russian polite in its inflection. He touched the shoulder of Reinette. "For a half year, you are keeping my lady of blood from harm, and in exchange…" He indicated the blood-spattered room with a wide sweep of the arm. "…as agreed, I am hurting those who aim to hurt you…" The list was intoned as though it were a lecture of no consequence. "…whores, Blackmarks, traitors…they are no more."
It took him a moment to register. His ears starting to burn as he began to process…very slowly…the scene in front of him. The hand on Reinette's shoulder. The wording. Not just lady, but...lady…of blood. Even going so far as to use Latin in place of the Russian. A term that he'd not heard for a good four centuries. One that in many ways could only be described as vomit-inducing if it meant what he thought it meant. Needless to say, he was not about to waste perfectly good bile until the man was standing closer.
"What do you want, Andreev?"
He was aiming for curt, but his voice came out in a tired rasp. Worthy of celebrating given that his lungs were only a half litre away from collapsing.
The vampire shrugged as though it were obvious. "Business."
"What kind of business?"
"Transport."
He cut in. "Where?"
"The eastern dock." It was the direct manner of speech that seemed to plague every one of the Andreevs. "I wish for safe passage to my ship for both myself, my lady, and our two companions. You, Mr. Itzhak will arrange this for us." His teeth clicked on the last syllable.
Two incisors and a neck said he knew the name of the ship waiting at the eastern docks. "And what if I say no?"
"You will not."
He felt a twinge in the corner of his mouth. "Is that because you hear yes when people say no?"
The eye fixed on him.
Each man refusing to lower his gaze until Kolya made a tutting sound. His hand still resting on Reinette, gently tracing the outline of her cheek before he turned towards the furnace. Speaking to the flames with the grace of one accustomed to looking down on things. "Mr. Itzhak, every hour, I am going to give you a chance to accept my terms after your associate refuses."
They were studying each other, he realised. Testing the edges, seeing how far the other would go. "You've spoken to Raze?"
Kolya swivelled. "I sent him a message." The swivel was followed by a curious tapping on the chin. "I indicated that I would blow up Exile's Port if he did not comply with my request. He told me that I should do as I wished."
"Did he, now?'
He was buying time before the inevitable. The words narrowing the field. Close to the docks. At least forty feet below the surface. Exile's Port above. Smoke from the furnace leading to one of the brewery smoke stacks. The question was…how did they get here…which tunnel did they take…
"I warned him that I would also skin you alive over the next seven hours." Kolya's nails began to grow, his hands gracefully perching each nail against one another. "He still has yet to accept my offer."
"Perhaps you need to taunt him," he suggested idly. Perfectly content to continue on a subject that was so near and dear to his heart. "It's not that hard," he assured the man. "I've been threatening for years to use my own waste to write messages to him, and to this day, he writes 'faithfully yours' at the end of our correspondence."
"He is faithful to excrement?"
"You could describe it that way, yes," he said, following the pipes along the ceiling, still searching for an exit. "I used to think that made me special, but now—given how he responds to you, now—I have to ask myself if he genuinely takes pleasure in dealing with the psychotic. Don't you?"
The nails tapped against the chin...and then Kolya sighed, turning away. "Mr. Itzhak, please do not make this difficult. We have seven hours until sunset…and my lady and I, we cannot linger in these tunnels." Seeming quite used to his own torture room, he indicated the second table by the wall, the stained and rusty knives of a butcher. "…and of course, I have no wish to hurt an esteemed patron. You must understand this."
"Thing is, Andreev…" Realising there was no way out, he let his gaze drop, choosing a brick on the opposite wall. A single point of reference, focusing on that brick. Steeling himself for the long night. "…I am still not getting it."
The maggot-eye twitched. "I would be pleased if you could call me Kolya."
"Or what?"
"It is a mere courtesy."
He felt the ghost of a smile lighting his face.
"I'd really rather not."
o...o...o
Two minutes later.
His skull slammed into the wall behind with a painful, bone-crunching thud. The rope creaking from above and Kolya leaning against his head, clutching his temples as though he wanted to squeeze them into dust. "You are walking on thin ice, Mr. Itzhak…" His voice was soft. His eye turning black. "…I can tell you now…it will be painful if you do not help us."
He could feel the nails digging into his skull now. The tip of an unseen blade starting to draw along his cheek. Enough to suspect that (a) this third scent, even stronger than the second one he had smelled, was the worst of the three, and (b) it was going to be a long night. The urge to spew his guts rising up even as he forced a laugh through. "What happens if I keep missing the point?"
"Then I will ask you again…and again, Mr. Itzhak." The knife moved lower. Like a whore with too much vigour, the blade teasing the flesh of his shattered kneecap. "Safe passage to the eastern pier for myself and my companions. You will give us this."
His teeth drew back in a vicious grin. "How much do you want to wager?"
It was the perfect opportunity.
He spat.
A gob of blood-riddled spit trailing down the vampire's cheek. Almost worth what happened next. Kolya strained forward. The scent of his hatred polluting the air between them. And the world, the hell he was about to experience, suddenly grinding to a halt. His mind, the memories that made up his person, even in that moment, trying to analyse the breadth of his agony.
Now granted…
He knew it was going to be bad. But somehow the years had dulled the memory. Years that made him almost forget how much alcohol he'd drunk the last time. That he'd had a bone to grind between his teeth. That they'd spent an hour trying to numb his shoulder before Raze started cutting…
…and at the time, it made sense.
Notably, it did fuck all for the pain. But he remembered it as being a grander moment than this. It had been his choice. His decision to cut a piece of his flesh off, to remove that symbol of enslavement from his shoulder. Whereas now, he was not so sure about his choices.
For example, it took about twenty seconds before he screamed. Possibly. Thirty before he vomited. Again. Eighty before a slice of skin the size of a small rabbit was peeled from the right side of his back, the agony making him twitch as the rope suddenly snapped, depositing him heavily on the stone floor.
It would have been the perfect moment for an impromptu Change. He could have decapitated someone. Borrowed some skin so he could fix up his back. Instead he was slipping in his own blood. Shivering as the cold hit him. It felt like winter…and it hurt. Everything hurt. Every ounce of his skin…his knee…his… He folded over on his stomach, passing out. Thanking the bloods that the room was going dark. That Raze had not been here to see him scream.
Definitely not like last time.
o…o…o
As soon as the lycan passed out, Ewan dropped his crowbar with a yelp. Grace, on the other hand, scuttled forward and began to sniff the air around the man. Staring up at the rope. Prodding him in the shoulder. And then looking fearfully to Kolya…and then Ewan…
…the same thought on all their minds.
Rope.
"We can't stay here," said Ewan. He was on the verge of tearing his shirt, twisting it with his palms. They weren't prepared for this. A child, yes…but not a full-grown lycan. There was a brief moment when he worried over whose voice would answer.
Hrafn. Nikolai…or Kolya. The eye finally turning black, letting them know who spoke. "Grace." Beside her in an instant, he wrenched her up by the collar. "…you know these tunnels."
She whimpered.
Nikolai's claws tightened around her neck. Instantly, Ewan took a step back, picking up the crowbar. He knew how these things went. Any second now, her neck could be a spray of red across his face, he knew. That was how it always started.
A whimper.
"Ol' Butcher's block!" The words came out in a squeak. Her eye were bulging. The woman cowering on the floor as soon as she was dropped, crawling back on her knees like a crab. "Two levels down. Sealed with the rest of the tunnels."
"Cages?"
She nodded fast. "Shackles in every one, but no silver. Used to kill bloods there. My father an' his men…'fore he died, they sealed it."
Nikolai had his eye on the dynamite, the safety fuses in the crates. He pulled the map from his coat, laying it out on the table. "Still beneath port?"
Grace ducked her head once. A loyal dog, her eyes wild, straying over the line of sanity. Nothing like your own heart beating to remind you of what was important.
Ewan had seen it all before. It was the last croak before someone became a lackey. All of them just handholds on a crumbling wall, and Nikolai the only one climbing to the top. He looked behind him at the butcher's table. Reckoned every one o' them knew the first time they caved.
Even the crone.
The eye twitched. Scanning the map. "Good," he said. "It is good, my friends. We move him…quickly now."
Ten minutes later, Nikolai had his shoulder against the brick, their eyes on the ceiling as they pressed their way through an old wall. Dust in their faces. The smell of stale air greeting them as they ventured deeper into the underground.
Ewan got stuck carrying Itzhak. They'd wrapped him in oilcloth, the grease and dirt starting to meld with the bleeding back. Like the first wound, it was not healing. But wounded or not, he'd still known lycans to Change on a dime. Chains was what they needed…chains and silver. Grace trailing behind them both with her bucket, scrubbing the stones every time a drop of blood fell. Scrub the blood, burn the scent, she muttered under her breath.
Nikolai hissing at them to move faster. All he needed was a silver-whip and they'd be three centuries younger. Time still slipping faster than they'd planned. Too many things to do…and too few of them. Break through a wall, move a lycan, and scour a trail. In the end, even the monster had to help. His tongue gripped between his teeth as he began to move each crate of dynamite to the new location.
Ten minutes, they all thought. Just ten minutes…and they'd be back for her. The door shut on the furnace and the crone left on the table. Barely a hop, skip and a croak between the furnace and old butcher's block. And blood knew she wasn't going anywhere.
Least not with a two-inch hole in her head.
A/N: I was going to wait until the weekend to post this, but then I thought, 'Carpe diem!' I'll be proof-reading heavily tomorrow or the day after, but I'm determined to just get on with pumping out the middle chapters so we get to the later ones that already written. Thanks to Wynter Phoenix, StrictlySomething, and Secretly-A-Fangirl for the reviews! Glad to see a few folks are still reading! As always, feel free to read and review.