A/N – This is a word of caution is for those who may suffer from a weak stomach. There are graphic depictions of brutality and torture in this chapter that might make some queasy. After all, it's one thing to see torture on a TV or movie screen but when left to the imagination, the scenes you picture in your head may come out painted a little richer. So, just FYI, okay? Happy reading and enjoy the weekend.
Part V
The emptiness in her chest crushed her. It was as if Tara's presence had been wiped from the bond, her very essence erased. To feel nothing of her progeny, to receive such cold, unforgiving silence from Tara's end of the bond…it was debilitating, devastating. Unnatural.
Pam allowed denial to poison her veins as she grappled for the bond with desperate, mental fingers.
Nothing. Empty. Not even a whisper of an echo thrummed in her chest.
Pam's eyes went blank with grief, azure blue depths dimming to shades of slate and iron in wake of the fumes of sorrow that seeped into her soul.
'A maker always knows when her progeny dies…'
A terrible, wounded noise escaped the confines of Pam's crimson lips. The sound was awful, a keening, mournful resonance that was designed to shred the muscles of a heart, to flay layers off a soul.
A wooden stake whistled obnoxiously through the air, its trajectory aimed straight for Pam's heart.
This new development cut off Pam's anguished cry and instinct had a pale alabaster hand snapping out. Limber magnolia-white fingers closed around the tip of the rough object, Pam stopping the stake so that its point was scant centimeters from the front of her corset.
Pam went preternaturally still, as if all semblance of movement had been robbed from her muscles. Then, dead, empty blue eyes looked up, locked onto the amber orbs of her would be executioner.
The guard, who threw the stake, had been the one to send Tara to her untimely demise. And he actually had the audacity to smirk at Pam.
Something within Pam snapped.
The blonde's face twisted with rage. Unfathomable, irrepressible, undeniable rage.
In a sudden blur of animated motion, Pam reached down with one hand, grasped the handle of the long sword that skewered her to the wall and yanked it out of her stomach with a strength that could have only come from the ashes of a deep, soul-damning pain and sorrow. Without looking, she sent it, coated to the base with her blood, in the direction of Tara's assassin. Her other hand moved in tandem, aided by her body which lunged forward to allow the stake she held to bury its point into the cheek of the guard nearer to her.
Twin howls sounded from either side of Pam, coagulating in the air above her as they collided to merge into one echoing sound of shock and agony.
Pam didn't stop. Couldn't stop. Wouldn't stop. Not when pain was suddenly all she knew and rage was all she felt. Fingers still closed around the rough wooden object, she ripped open a wide gaping hole in the first guard's cheek. Dark blood gushed from the torn skin and flesh, revealing a set of molars that seemed to glow white against the splashes of scarlet that dotted it.
The guard screeched as Pam jerked out the stake, further aggravating the torn flesh that made up his cheek. Pieces of skin and muscle flapped and flailed about the side of his face, like shredded bloodied curtains trying in vain to conceal an open window. Clutching at his ruined face with one hand, the guard attempted a wild, blind swing in Pam's direction only for his fist to punch at empty air.
Pam moved with the swiftness and grace afforded to her as a vampire. She ducked the flying fist, raised the stake, swung her arm in a half arc and slammed the weapon into the guard's left eye. Her face was terrifyingly impassive, her eyes so devoid of emotion, so eerily numb that the very molecules in the air around her seem to freeze.
The guard's shriek of unadulterated pain went by unnoticed as Pam twisted the stake lodged in the guard's eye socket before she tugged it viciously back out. The stake's point emerged, decorated with bits of nerves and corona, the whites of the eye trapped in between splinters that had appeared under the blunt trauma of being lodged into an eyeball.
Pam was almost robotic as she stabbed the stake into guard's remaining good eye only to cock her arm back a second later. This time, the stake reemerged with the guard's entire eyeball dangling from its tip, optic nerve and all. The resounding scream that followed would have made grown men shrink with terror but it only served to fuel Pam's wrath.
Pam kicked out at the guard's chest, felt his ribs concave and shatter beneath her heel. The guard staggered only halfway backwards away from Pam before she caught up to him, the knife she secreted away in her boot, now replacing the stake in her hand.
The blonde then proceeded to make ribbons out of the flesh of the guard's chest, methodically carving and slicing and shredding until the black cloth of his sweater was so clotted with blood and matted to skin that it was almost unrecognizable amongst the lacerations on his muscled chest.
And still Pam kept going, the knife glinting in brief flashes in the dark as she almost mechanically sliced and diced though paper-thin skin, flesh, sinew and muscle.
Two things whizzed at Pam from behind. They embedded their razor sharp curved points into her shoulder blades, immediately sizzling and smoking the damaged flesh and sending teethes of agony to gnaw at the blonde's nerves.
The guard Pam was torturing had been reduced to a whimpering, bleeding mess, his face horrifically disfigured as one empty, dark socket vomited blood whilst the other damaged eye blinked and pinked with internal blood. His chest was a raw mess of flesh and muscle, bits of bone peeking out, the white a startlingly contrast to the coagulated crimson that used to be his flesh.
However, when he felt Pam jerk in response to the shurikens thrown at her back, instincts kicked in and he kicked out a leg, catching Pam at the knees.
The blonde stumbled but remained unfazed even as something cracked and pain exploded up and down her leg. She threw the knife in her hand; it spun tip over handle before hitting home in the guard's bloodied mess of a chest, directly where his unbeating heart lay.
The guard didn't even have time to gurgle out a surprise before he disintegrated into a pile of blood and gristle.
Pam didn't even bother to remove the throwing stars embedded in her shoulder blades. The notes of agony singing a ceaseless aria down her back shoulder muscles did not even come close to the pain of losing Tara. Thus, instead of dealing with her new injury, she blurred over to the second guard, who was in the midst of tugging the long sword out from his abdomen.
"Let me help you."
Pam's voice was as flat as she had ever heard it, her husky lilt emptied of every iota of feeling, of emotion. She elbowed the guard in the face, splitting his lips and splintering cartilage and bone in his nose. Then she grasped the handle of the sword and yanked it sideways, opening up vulnerable, smoking flesh. A seam appeared in the broken skin, like a bag with its zipper pulled open. Viscera and blood spat themselves out, the guard's large intestines draping themselves over the front of his pants like wriggling gummy worms.
The guard screamed, the pain so overwhelming and the shock of seeing his internal organs make an external debut, almost making him half mad.
But Pam wasn't done. This was the vampire who had killed her progeny. Sent Tara to her True Death. And for that, for taking away what Pam was coming to need and treasure, she would inflict upon him a cruelty and torture that he couldn't even conjure up in his wildest nightmares.
Pam grabbed a handful of the spilling intestines, unfurled a tangle of small viscera then wrapped it like a noose around the guard's neck. At the same time, she kicked at the backs of his knees, causing them to buckle and forcing him to kneel in a subservient position before her.
"You won't die," Pam informed the guard coldly, who looked half delirious with pain. "Not yet anyway. We vampires are resilient." She bent then, let her lips linger by the side of his ear. Still gripping a section of guts, she gave it a tug, tightening the makeshift noose around his neck and eliciting a pained whimper. "I could torture you for years and still keep you alive." She let go of the guts, allowed them to hang around his neck and shoulders like a slimy, weeping macabre scarf then rapped her knuckles against the side of his head. She watched the resounding flinch without a trace of satisfaction. "So to speak."
Pam stared at the vampire kneeling before her, her observation akin to the way a scientist studies a new discovery under a microscope. She could see that the vampire's advance healing properties were trying to close the yawning seam in his stomach, but his intestines were hindering the full closing of the wound. Then there was also the long sword still stuck at the edge of his abdomen, the skin around it blistered, purulent and smoking courtesy of the silver.
Without preamble, she bent and slid the blade out, making sure to slice off slivers of intestine and flesh along the way. The guard gritted his teeth but pained groans still escaped unbidden as he felt bits of his body get cut away only to fall like leftover scraps of food onto the grimy floor. He then shrieked like a tea kettle when Pam jabbed the sword downwards, right between his kneeling legs into his crotch. She twisted the handle clockwise, then turned it anticlockwise, the point of the sword passing through flaccid flesh to scrape jarringly at the ground beneath the kneeling guard.
"S-stop," the guard managed, almost choking on his tongue, which had almost been chewed in half in his attempt to quell his shouts of agony. Blood pooled in his mouth, seeping from closing wounds made from his fangs and teeth. He swallowed the blood, made another attempt for a plea of mercy but it tapered off into a hiss of pain as Pam pulled the sword out of his manhood with deliberate slowness, twisting and turning the blade as she went.
Then she slashed the blade across his face, cutting a crimson line from ear to ear, making sure the blade passed each corner of his mouth, effectively decorating his face with a Chelsea grin.
The guard screamed, an instantaneous mistake for it only further pulled open the frankly terrifying wound and his lower face hung off like flaps of meat hanging from a butcher's hooks.
"How dare you beg for mercy!" Pam's voice was suddenly murderous, sapphire-blue eyes ignited with a wrath that was palpable. "You are not worthy of mercy." She made a grab for his tongue; an easy task considering just how much wider his mouth suddenly was, then pulled until it ripped right out of his mouth.
Blood starburst from the shredded flesh, choking the guard and spilling down his flapping jaw like crimson rain. Pam tossed the chewed and bitten flesh to the ground, stepped on it with her heel, then grounded it beneath her shoe until it resembled nothing more than minced meat.
The guard tried to articulate, tried to stave off the strafes of pain ricocheting off his nerves like fireworks but it was an all-consuming, all-encompassing feeling. He could feel his body leeching itself of strength, his injuries far too great and numerous for them to heal effectively. He pitched forward, unconsciousness creeping up to the forefront of his brain but Pam revived him by sinking the sword into his Adam's apple.
A tortured cry of absolute agony bubbled up from the guard's throat as his voice box was ruined and pain seared the lining of his throat but Pam was beyond hearing, beyond feeling. She resorted to stabbing him repeatedly, the point of the sword sinking and sliding into various parts of the guard's body like a knife through butter. Flesh charred and smoked, the silver singeing skin and muscle as it traveled through sinew and fat. Wounds opened, smiling across lightly tanned skin and spitting out rivulets of scarlet before slowly attempting to close. They didn't heal fully though; the guard having lost too much blood and zapped of too much strength and energy to heal himself. Instead, his body became covered in a patchwork quilt of raw and angry dark pink scars, the skin over the wounds puckered and ridged.
But still Pam continued to stab and she did so with unerring accuracy, picking out the most vulnerable spots of the guard's body and making sure to pierce all the internal organs he housed. In essence, every time the tip of the sword reemerged from his body, pieces of liver, kidneys, lungs and stomach followed, Pam essentially slicing him up inside as well as out.
Blood pooled ceaselessly at where the guard knelt, creeping outwards like an organic stain and growing wider and deeper with each thrust of the sword. Every now and then, the deliberate scrap of metal against bone irritated the air around Pam and the guard, followed by random pieces of flesh or organs slipping out of the guard and off the tip of the blade to drop onto the increasing puddle of crimson.
Pam was so intent on revenge, so lost in exacting vengeance on Tara's behalf that single-minded concentration on her current activities overrode anything else. Thus, she failed to acknowledge the brief and faint flutters nudging against the walls of the bond.
It was only when Pam cut the backs of the guard's upturned ankles through his mangled boots, then forced him to stand on them which ripped apart tendons and flesh that she finally cottoned on to the fact that the maker/progeny bond was in fact, still intact.
"Tara?" Pam dropped the guard like a sack of bricks, nearly stumbling as another flutter echoed down the bond. The feeling was barely there, like the passing of a ghost, or the lightest kiss of a cool breeze against her cheek but it was enough to cut through the red smog that clouded her Prussian blue gaze.
"Tara…"
The guard whimpered and attempted a pitiful shuffle away from Pam. All his actions did was to allow him to swim in a disturbing pool of his own flesh and blood. The blonde glanced down at him, his presence suddenly insignificant and unworthy of anymore of her time. She raised the sword above her head, brought it down with a brutality and swiftness that would have made even Eric flinch and watched unfeelingly as the sharp of the blade passed through the muscles that made up his neck, severed the top of his spinal cord then emerged on the other side painted and dripping red.
The guard exploded beneath her feet, leaving a bubbling crimson stain on the ground.
Pam paid the mess no mind as she tossed aside the bloody and slightly chipped sword, her attention now fully focused on the blockage made up of collapsed ceiling, concrete, mortar and rock. The explosion from the grenades had resulted in a cave in, dividing Pam from the heart of the labyrinth though at the time, she had been drowning in too much grief and pain to notice the new development.
"Tara?!"
Pam's voice was an amalgamation of lost hope, delirium and unadulterated terror. Her face mirrored this, crimson splattered cheeks taut with painful anticipation that instantly dissolved into a mask of abject disappointment and arresting sorrow when only the echo of her voice answered.
"Tara! Answer me, damn you!"
Nothing.
"Tara, please!" Pam's voice broke on the last word, her body physically collapsing against a wall as defeat ate up the last of her strength when silence once again reigned supreme.
Alone, broken and bleeding, Pam allowed one stray, solitary sob rip itself out from the shackles of her throat before crimson lips sealed themselves shut disallowing any further sound. She stared at the blockage of rocks and collapsed ceiling, stared at the cave in like it was a foreign entity, something she had never in her hundred years seen before. Then, suddenly, without warning, arctic blue eyes went iridescent with palpable rage as her grief-soaked mind concluded that this was the last and only barrier that kept her from Tara.
The blonde didn't even need to think as she flew forward and began attacking the stacks of blown up ceiling and walls. She punched at the mish-mash of broken construction materials, her fists all but a blur as she worked at vamp speed. She didn't stop when the skin of her knuckles split open, revealing the raw flesh confined inside and continued to punch furiously, relentlessly until she had effectively cleaned her knuckles of skin, muscle and flesh.
And still she continued, her uncompromising goal of getting to Tara, wherever she was, numbing her of any pain she may have felt. It was only when the sound of naked bones scraping against concrete burst through the air to assault her ears that Pam forced herself to stop. She looked down, looked at the mess she had made of the backs of her hands.
There was no flesh covering her knuckles, simply a set of protruding bones that had been chipped and scratched from her constant pounding of the fallen rock and concrete.
"Fuck." Pain blossomed up her arms then, hitting her with all the grace of a runaway train as realization sank in and adrenaline bade the blonde goodbye. But as Pam looked at her handiwork, she saw that her sacrifice had not been for naught.
Giving the blockage a few well-placed kicks, Pam successfully carved out an opening to the other side. She kicked at the opening some more, widening it until she could contort her body through the jagged, circular opening.
Then she barreled through the escape hole she had made, the force of her body hitting the blockage at vamp speed aiding the widening of the hole even further.
Pam emerged on the other side only to be smacked in the face by carnage and chaos.
Charred and blown off limbs littered the epicenter of the Authority's labyrinth of tunnels. Stains of scarlet splattered every square inch of the floor and flakes of blood, flesh, skin and hair caked the walls like some sort of morbid wallpaper. The stench of death busied the air, so thick that for Pam, it was akin to wading through a pool of Jell-O. She pushed forward, ignored the cloying stink of decaying and burned bodies towards a black stain that crawled outwards out of a sizeable hole in the ground.
The very spot where she had last seen Tara.
Pam's jaw clenched as she edged closer, almost terrified out of her mind at what she would find. Her back was ramrod stiff, her knuckles still screaming in retribution even as the white of the bones disappeared under muscle and flesh that were slowly but steadily re-stitching itself together.
The blonde was simultaneously relieved, disappointed and utterly bewildered when she saw that the blown up hole in the ground was devoid of a bloody crimson mess.
Had Tara survived? She must have, though how Pam did not know. Vampires weren't immune to being blown up by bombs and grenades.
Pam shook her head, wondering if she was simply delirious with grief and sorrow. She reached up, pressed a desperate palm to the space above her breastbone and almost choked on the relief that flooded through her veins when she felt that faint flutter against her hand.
"Where are you, Tara?" She canvased her surroundings, trying to pick apart the strewn bodies that were quite literally everywhere. Some were missing limbs, others heads. Some were charred black beyond recognition while others lay in twisted, mangled heaps that made them look like eerie mannequins with their limbs arched and bent in positions that would have been impossible had the person been alive.
The sight of so much blatant death and destruction unnerved even the normally unaffected blonde. Needing a reprieve, and needing to see Tara safe, alive and well, Pam closed her eyes, tapped into the bond and tried to use that flickering flutter that signaled Tara's presence to locate her missing progeny.
Five full minutes passed before Pam's cerulean blue eyes snapped back open. Her legs had begun to move before she could even compute doing so. And they were currently taking the blonde to the tunnel at the far end of the circular room.
Pam spat out a litany of curses that almost turned the air blue when she realized that the tunnel mouth she arrived at instantly forked left and right. She closed her eyes again, trying to pin down the flutter to get a better reading of where Tara was but the presence in the bond was faint, more absent than present, which petrified Pam. Tara's presence in the bond was normally a consistent thump, the younger vampire's energy and zeal thrumming down the bond at a consistency and pace that almost mimicked a heartbeat.
But now, her presence was so faded, so indistinct that Pam struggled to catch snatches of it as it flitted down the bond. It was akin to catching air with her bare hands and with each failed attempt to map out a precise location, Pam's fear and panic grew.
"Stay with me," Pam muttered as she turned to her superior vampiric senses. Her nostrils flared, trying to pick Tara's unique scent of cloves and musk apart from the dominant scent of death and blood that strained the air. Another stream of harsh curses escaped past crimson lips when she couldn't decipher anything beyond the cloying stench of decay and blood.
"Fuck!" Pam was almost at her wits' end, the need to see Tara safe making her almost rabid with anxiety. Turning to inbred instinct, she welded narrowed and panicked cobalt blue eyes onto the tunnel fork. 'Pick one,' a voice in her head urged. 'Follow your gut. Choose. Now!'
Pam suddenly darted left, her lithe frame all but a blur as she vamp sped down the left tunnel. A few minutes in and the tunnel arched up into an incline, cluing the blonde in to the theory that this might be the escape tunnel back topside.
She blurred around a sharp corner that came up, rounding the bend at such speeds that the air about her whooshed noisily. The manner in which she suddenly skidded to a halt when she finally rounded the corner would have almost been comical had it not been for the current and dire circumstance Pam once again found herself in.
Eyes a haunting mixture of steel-blue and winter-gray latched onto what seemed like a natural dugout that had been repurposed into a mini resting area. But it wasn't the suddenly presence of a rest stop that caused Pam's abrupt halt. No. What caused the blonde to freeze mid-run, for her heels to burn gravel and kick up dust was what her eyes ran smack dab into at the corner of the small room.
"No…" Blue eyes widened, her unbeating heart seized in her chest and the bottom of her stomach dropped to her knees as she took in the bloodcurdling, paralyzing sight in front of her…
TBC