Bloodbreeders: Lies Beneath London

by Robin Renee Ray,

  “Who are we, Luther?” I asked, stepping up, sliding my blade back in its sheath.

  “You are the ones. You come to stop them from killing our people, it is being told all over the city,” he replied, blinking bright green eyes at me.

  “Thank you for helping our friend, and you're right about us, we do come here hoping to stop what’s going on. I’m sorry about your brothers.”

  “We are all sorry about your loss,” Jacob added, reaching out with his hand. “It would be an honor to have you lead our way to the church called St Michael’s.”

  “It’s not far from here, but we will have to move fast past the graveyard that takes most of the center of the forbidden zone. Fleshers roam looking for anything to fill their stomachs,” Luther said, taking off his shirt, with his brother doing the same. “We move faster in our natural form, just keep up.” They both removed their pants, just as Fala always had without any worries of Tammy and me being present.

  Chapter Eighteen

  I thought they would stand on two legs like Fala, but it was nothing like the beast that watched our backs. Both had jet-black hair that hung in strands down their back and with a trick of the eyes they stood on all fours covered in solid black fur. The young boys changed like liquid running into solid. They looked at us with emerald green eyes while growling out, then lowered to a soft purr, showing shiny white teeth that were much like the shape of their human form, only much longer. Their backs reached up to my hip and I couldn’t help but to run my hand over Luther’s back as he walked beside me; feeling to see if he was as soft as he looked, and he was. His cat head turned up and looked at me before he padded off to catch up with his brother.

  Both brothers crept low to the ground once we reached the crumbled walls that once protected the graveyard that was twice the size of the one behind Martin’s home. We all did our best to watch our footing and hide in the shadows of the rubble of the surrounding buildings and what little wall was left. I wasn’t worried about the fleshers, until I saw Fala sniffing the air and turned to see the two cats doing the same thing. Only they were holding their mouths open with their skin pulled back from the teeth. At this point I couldn’t tell one brother from the other, but both were jumping at the least bit of sound or movement, lowering their bodies as close to the ground as they could, while still moving forward. I had seen rats the size of small dogs throughout the ruins, but hadn’t seen one since we got close to the graveyard; which made me even more nervous about running into what we were once thought of by Alex and Bernard.

  “There, by the round tomb,” Garvin pointed in a low whisper.

  Three thin beings moved about, then, two more stepped out from the other side of the tomb. We froze at Jacob’s hand going up high enough for us to see it. He pointed across what used to be the street that was now filled with broken stones and rotted wood, to an open door that the two cats silently went into. Garvin and Derek made their way around Cates and Jacob, moving as quickly and quietly as they could. Once they were inside the building, Tammy and I took our turn. Tammy’s foot went through a piece of wood and we froze like statues; her closing her eyes and me daring to glance back at the things in the graveyard.

  Jacob yelled, “Run!”

  Fala stood; throwing back his head, echoing his presence throughout the forbidden zone. The creatures, that I was hoping were not the ones who lived off the flesh of others, paused at Fala’s enormous size then started moving over the desecrated headstones with a speed that I certainly would not have expected from creatures that looked like their limbs would detach at any moment.

  Cates yanked me up around the waist and pushed Tammy with his nub, toward the building with Jacob and Fala coming up behind us. We ran in, finding the cats going down a staircase that didn’t look like it would hold their weight, much less ours, but we followed. They took us through a maze of basements, and then upstairs into other buildings and back down again into another basement filled with the homes that used to stand tall above them. They slowed when they came to what looked like a back alley. It was hard to tell with the rubble looking the same at every turn, but the graveyard was nowhere in sight. They hurried to the right and didn’t stop until the buildings became whole and a few lights lit their windows. Luther changed into his human form but his brother remained.

  “The church is around the next street. We will wait for you to return but we can go no further.”

  “You’re welcome to join us,” I said, as I had to any who helped us and wanted a change in their lives.

  “It is forbidden for our kind to go near the sacred church. But, we will help you find your way back out of the forbidden zone when you find what you are looking for,” he replied, and before I could say anything else he shifted back into a cat and he and his brother blended into the shadows of the alley.

  “Fala, do you know why they’re not like you?” I asked as Jacob led us out into the street.

  “My people were infected by the great grandfather wolf. They were born with the curse in their line,” he replied in a gruff tone, slurring every other word trying to speak with a snout.

  “Changing into two legs to them is the change, where becoming a werewolf is the change to Fala,” Cates explained using a low tone.

  “That must be the church,” Jacob said, stopping to look up at the steeple towering over the top of the other buildings. “Fala, take your human form.” Then he pulled Fala’s pants from the pack that carried the maps.

  Fala shifted and changed in the shadows of the trees that were dwarfed by the buildings that towered them, then stepped out, bare foot and shirtless. I don’t know if I was expecting the church to be like the ones back home, but it was nothing like them. Our white washed, one-story buildings were big enough to hold maybe sixty people. This one stood as high as Inara’s castle, was made of brick and stone and could more than likely hold all the people in our county and several of the neighboring ones to boot.

  We jumped the wrought iron fence that circled the back of the church and found a door close to the back that was made of solid wood and what looked like railroad ties. The doorframe and door were arched with a top so high that Cates and Fala would have had a hard time reaching it with up-stretched arms.

  The door was locked and wouldn’t budge, so we made our way further around the back, and found a window about six feet off the ground with the same type of iron bars that the fence was made out of covering it. Cates was able to reach up with his one hand and pull, showing that the top of the iron ribs were loose at the top right. Fala got on Cates’ shoulders and pulled the bars free, handing them down to Garvin, being as quiet as he possibly could. He then pushed the window until it slid up enough for him to stand one foot on Cates’ shoulder and slip into the opening. A few moments later, he popped his head around the side of the church and waved for us to come back to the arched door.

  “Well done, Fala,” Jacob said, putting a hand on his arm. “Did you sense anyone around?”

  “Only the smell of normals. I could not tell if they were close by, because the inside is strong with the smell of old scents as well as new ones,” he explained in a low tone as he followed Jacob back inside.

  “This is where Sydney would have come in handy,” I whispered, getting a frown from Jacob and Cates. “Sorry,” I added, shrugging my shoulders.

  “One does not need to feel something when they already know the consequences of their actions.” Cates turned back looking in the direction of the way we were headed and got a tongue stuck out at him because Jacob was holding up a hand for us to be quite.

  Garvin laid both of his hands on my shoulders and squeezed lightly. I reached up and touched his hand in a ‘thank you’ gesture. Jacob stuck his head around the corner of a room that had a large amount of light coming from it then darted back in just as fast, holding up one finger. He watched until a man left the room and then ran to the other side, waving us over one at a time. I had to stop to witness the enormity of the room. There were enough pews to fil
l the church with hundreds of parishioners. Statues standing on pedestals were spaced every other pew, with more affixed to the ceiling looking down on those who came to worship. I wanted, more than anything, to see what the pews were facing, but I was yanked out of my adoration by the back of my shirt right before the man in a brown gown that draped to the floor, came back in the large room holding a golden goblet in his hands. I saw from the shadow of the door, him kneeling then walking out of view.

  Jacob gave me a stern look, which caused me to give him one back that had just as much glare as he was giving me. Fala and Derek were still on the other side of the room as we waited for the strangely dressed man to leave the area again. That’s when he started speaking in a language that I didn’t understand. Jacob waved his hand for Fala and Derek to go around to the back of the small hall that they were in and move around another way. After we were all together, Jacob moved us further down the hall, and put Cates to watch our backs. Jacob was about to go down a flight of stairs to our right when a voice rang out, “You dare desecrate the house of God?!”

  A bald man, dressed just like the younger man that we saw in the large room, ran back out. Jacob grabbed the back of Garvin’s shirt and hurried him through the door. “Move, he’ll be back,” he said in a low voice. Tammy was next, and was past the door frame when the man came running back in with a silver cross with our Lord Jesus Christ on it as if he were just being nailed to the cross and a long silver flask in the other hand. “Our Father who art in Heaven,” he began saying the Lord’s Prayer, pulling the flask back and slinging it toward us. As soon as the contents hit the skin on my arm it started to burn like he had splashed acid on me. “Thy Kingdom come, Thy will be done.” Then he raised it back and slung the substance at us a second time. Derek pushed past me, as I pressed my body to the wall, with Jacob trying to push me through the door and down the steps yelling, “run”, but I couldn’t stop watching the man’s actions. Cates and Fala were down and Jacob and I were all that was left. “On earth as it is in Heaven.”

  “Give us this day, our daily bread and forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us,” I said, walking right up to the man, who was now backing up from me. “And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from every evil. Psalms 23. We mean you no harm, but we do need to use your beautiful church to enter the tunnels to stop those who do wish you harm.”

  “You are a damned creature. Take this demon from my sight, Lord God,” he said closing his eyes, praying in the same language that the other man was using, dropping to his knees while clutching the flask close to his chest, and holding the cross out toward me.

  “Forgive me,” I said then turned and headed down the stairs with Jacob right behind me.

  The wooden staircase that we started out on soon turned into stone steps that began to curve in a winding fashion the deeper we went. It opened up into a room where Cates grabbed a torch hanging in a wall sconce and kept going down another flight of stairs that were much narrower and twice as curved as the last ones that we were on. Once we reached what I thought was the bottom, Jacob slid his flint across the wall and brought the torch to life. He looked back at me with his brows furrowed and stormed up to me so fast that my back hit the wall before I even realized I was moving away from him.

  “What were you thinking up there?”

  “What’s the matter with you? He was just another normal, Jacob.”

  He grabbed my arm and yanked it forward. “Does this look like the work of a mere normal?”

  “It’s some sort of acid,” I replied, looking down at the blisters where the liquid had hit my skin.

  “It was water that his magic turned to harm the likes of our kind.”

  “That’s nonsense,” I replied, pulling my arm out of his grip.

  “Derek holds the marks. I hold the marks…Fala does not,” he snapped, showing me the side of his arm. “We were lucky he stood alone. We spoke of this.”

  “Fala was lucky, Jacob. If he would have gotten some of this stuff on him, he would have gotten burned just like us,” I snapped back.

  “No, My Lady. I did get the water on my back. Small drops like warm rain.”

  “Bull shit,” I replied walking over, taking the torch from Jacob’s hand and turning Fala to look at his back.

  Sure enough his back had several drying spots on it. I reached out and touched one that wasn’t quite dry, feeling a slight burn on the tip of my finger. “That’s not possible.” I saw Cates look over at Jacob and then lower his eyes. “Why does it burn us and not him?” I asked, waiting for any of the others to give me an answer. Then the reality hit me. It was because we were, without any doubt, like the walking dead. Our life left our bodies when the sun rose…we were truly damned in the eyes of the man upstairs, The dread of the truth must have shown on my face because the others gathered around me.

  “It is a hard thing to learn, Renee. We all know that you still pray to your God of creation,” Jacob said, trying to take me in his arms.

  “I’m not a child, Jacob. And I will keep praying to my Lord, no matter what the world of the bloodbreeders has caused the rest of the normal world to believe us to be. He can’t be proud of the violence that we cause, but he has to understand the reason behind our actions. One day, others will think differently.” Then I turned my back and wiped the tears out of my eyes before they could give away the sorrow that was killing my broken heart. “I don’t know what he thought that cross was gonna do. We practically live in cemeteries that are full of them.”

  “I think this is the tunnel,” Garvin said, gratefully taking the attention off of me.

  Jacob reached out as if to touch me, then dropped his hand and turned to join the others who had gone to see the opening that led deeper down into the darkness. I said a silent prayer, hoping that God would hear me, asking him to forgive me for scaring the priest and to help us find a way to get Martin out safely. I knew I would never turn my back on the one true creator, no more than I believed he would ever turn his back on me. The thought of never seeing my God in the afterlife was more than I wanted to think about because I knew that’s where my family waited for me. To never see the glory of my Lord, and be held from those that were taken from this life before their time, was worse than anything that could ever happen on the earth that was now no more than hell itself to me.

  “Are you gonna be alright?” Tammy asked, coming back over to where I stood with my back still turned to them.

  “Yeah, I just never really put any of this into perspective until now, ya know?” I replied, turning to look at her.

  “I know…I know all too well,” she partially smiled, then pulled me into an embrace that almost caused me to lose the composure that I was fighting to hold together.

  Jacob looked back, giving us a few minutes then told us we needed to move. I nodded as I passed him, put my hand in his and smiled up at him. I released his hand and received a reassuring smile from him before following Cates into the depths below the church. Now I believed the stories that Jacob had told and understood more of the meaning behind the tales. The air became much cooler than it had been outside or in the church building. The bodies that Jacob had told us about, back on the ship, being wrapped in shrouds lay in indentations that were carved right out of the stone wall, one on top of the other. Some of the skulls were fully wrapped, while others showed the teeth and empty eye sockets of the once living. Once again many dead surrounded us, but there was no smell of their long since rotted flesh. The smell was dank and musty, with the present hint of damp mold. Dusty webs and a fine blanket of years gone by coated the dead in the small coves of their final resting places.

  The steps opened into a room that looked much like the tunnels, from the sandstone color of the walls to the bones stacked to the ceiling. Layers of bones made up the walls halfway up, then a layer of skulls with bones crossed at the chins, then three more feet of bones with no description before another line of skulls made it all look like a sick mockery
of wallpaper. The opening to the hidden tunnel that we would be taking was no higher than three feet and filled three quarters high with bones. Cates kicked his way through, leaned down and went into the tunnel feet first, then took the torch from Jacob once on the other side. All of the tunnels looked the same as when I first stepped into them when we reached London, making me wonder how far we would travel before encountering the hell that Angelica’s little surprises would provide.

  I think we all had our minds on the end results of the long walk in the dark tunnels because no one said anything for the first hour. The crackle of the flame and the shuffle of our feet were the only sounds to echo, indicating that the dead were not alone. It was Derek who spoke first, breaking the silence that had felt strangely comfortable in the cool dark space. “Take the heads? Right, Jacob?”

  “Yes, if we were in the open, I would say to not worry with the walking dead. They move slow and will take up time that we cannot spare, but this is a small confinement.”

  “And if this doctor friend has those other things?” I asked, making my way up past Derek and Garvin to get behind Jacob.

  “Then we move twice as fast. Dismemberment is the only way to keep them from coming after us. And still, they will come to a certain point.”

  “What point?”

  “The point of which the doctor has ordered them to protect. We don’t know that we will even see such a thing. Alex said it was only something he heard in passing.”

  “Yeah, passing a nail brush over his mistress’s feet,” Cates laughed. “Alex was well suited as Felicia.”

  “You think? I think Bernard should have been wearing a dress. I can just look at that boy and he passes out,” I shook my head, laughing with Cates.

  “You’ll never catch me wearing that kind of shit. I ain’t never seen nothing so stupid in my life.” Derek turned around, walking backward to look at Cates, who burst out laughing, echoing through the tunnels. “What?” Derek asked, turning back around before he fell.