“Unless you plan on using that little scratch on your back as an excuse to stay away from the gala, you’ll be looking more like they were than you think.” Then Cates started laughing all over again.
“No way. I ain’t dressing up like no girl,” Derek said, shaking his head over and over.
“You will not have to dress like a female,” Jacob explained. “However, you will have to paint your face for the occasion.”
“As long as I don’t look like no girl.”
“Rose colored cheeks, on pasty white flesh. Your eyes lined in charcoal black, and your lips in a deep burgundy wine.” Cates deliberately gave details in a low, deep voice.
“You’re full of it, Cates,” Derek smiled, looking back.
“We shall see in a few nights.”
“You will be looking at a larger version of yourself, Derek. Cates will have to do the same thing,” Tammy snickered, getting her ribs grabbed by Cates.
I was wondering what we were going to joke about, because we always did when we were going into the unknown. It wasn’t until the smell drifted up and Jacob had turned the last time after looking at the map that we knew we had reached the beginning. There was a break in the tunnel where the night sky could be seen. It wasn’t a portion that had collapsed in, but a place where Angelica’s castle drains met the tunnels that ran under the city of London. It was easy to see how they used them to their advantage and with her being the highest in power, it was easier to understand why we hadn’t crossed any scavengers or other nasty beings that might have occupied this portion of the tunnels. I didn’t think the church had anything to do with keeping the scavengers away from here because we had walked miles away from the entrance to the church’s basement and they could have come in from any number of the tunnels beyond. It was just this particular route that took us directly to the tunnels where we now stood. One that Jacob had said would be our easiest way.
The break in the tunnel was about ten feet, with the portion that led into the depths of Angelica’s castle becoming smaller and more rounded than the one we were stepping out of. Cates and Fala had to walk with their heads bent until we were deep enough in that the light of night couldn’t be seen any longer and the shape of the tunnel changed into a flatter bottom and arched ceiling. The deeper we went, the higher the ceiling became. Before the shape of the tunnel started changing, the two tallest of our group could walk comfortably without a problem. The floor was dry most of the way until the floor leveled out and we began moving straight in. Liquid stood stagnant and by the smell of it, for some time. The walls became mold covered and water seeped through some of the cracks that lined the stones.
“We should be getting close to the castle entrance,” Jacob said, pulling out the map from the pouch on his waist band. “The markings show it’s around the next turn.”
“We have to be getting close. The smell is almost as bad as that pile of bodies…almost,” Derek said, moving up past me to walk beside Jacob.
“I couldn’t imagine this sister being any different than the other when it comes to the way she keeps her lower levels,” Jacob replied, as he and Derek were about to take the bend in the tunnel.
“Do you hear that?” Derek asked, grabbing Jacob’s arm.
A hand, that was nothing but bones held together with dried tendons and stretched dried muscles, reached out and missed Derek’s shoulder by inches, as Jacob pulled him out of the way. The corpse that belonged to the hand approached sluggishly, moving around the corner, dragging its left leg behind it. The thing's lower jaw was missing and its eye sockets were empty, leaving nothing but wrinkled, leathered skin gripping the holes where its eyes use to be. Half of its nose remained, leaving the other side a gaping hole with gore oozing from the opening. Its withered tongue wiggled, hanging down its neck as it made a horrid moaning sound, reaching out to grab whichever intruder it could take hold of first.
Jacob pulled his blade, swung at the arm, and took it off at the shoulder. The thing never stopped moving as it raised its other arm, swinging its body toward Jacob, the one who had left its already mangled body partly twitching on the ground. Derek had his blade in his hand…we all did…and was about to take off the things head when he screamed out. A second one had grabbed a handful of his hair and was pulling him back around the corner. Cates pushed Tammy and me out of the way, trying to get to Derek. The first walking dead lost its head with one swift move of Jacob’s blade but the body kept reaching for him. He came down with another slice and removed the things other arm. The torso banged into the wall, with strings of tattered cloth hanging where its arms use to be, still dragging its leg behind it, trying to find the intruder. Fala pushed past, stomped on its one good leg and the thing fell to the ground.
I heard Derek scream out again and ran after Jacob as he picked up the torch and took off after Cates to help them both. I slid to a stop when I saw Derek trying to dislodge the dismembered arm from the back of his head. “Get it off…get it off!” he screamed, while Cates chopped the thing that had dragged Derek out of our sight. Fala stormed in again, broke the fingers back, and threw the thin, bony arm down the tunnel. I was watching the whole time, seeing where the arm landed. I yelled out that there were more of them, then screamed myself when Tammy touched my back.
“Fala!” Jacob yelled, but Fala was already removing his pants as the fur began coating his body. His bones popped and slid as I watched him change, in astonishment. One moment he was a man, and the next he was a beast twice his normal size with a head that looked very much like its smaller kin.
Fala plowed into the four walking dead that were shuffling our way. All looked much like the first. Some more rotted than the others, but all unmistakably raised by magic and all coming after us. Fala slashed, tore them limb from limb, and knocked two skulls together so hard that they burst with the pressure. “I thought they went down if you removed the head,” Derek said, holding his blade at shoulder height in both hands, ready for anything to get past Fala. No sooner than Derek had spoken, Fala hit one of the walking dead so hard in the head that it flew off of its shoulders and came straight back toward us. It hit the wall beside Derek and rolled to a stop with its mouth moving as if it were trying to speak. Green puss was seeping from its eye socks, down into the long, stringy, blond hair that was still attached to what little scalp that was left. Derek yelled out as his foot came down and he repeated the blow until the skull was nothing but the pile of unmoving dust and fragments that death meant it to be in the first place.
We moved past the remains of Fala’s work, quickly stepping over the parts of the bodies that were still trying to reach for our moving forms. Legs twitched and rolled over on their own, while hands closed into fists then reopened as we hurried by. Tammy kicked at a hand that was too close to her foot and it grabbed the tip of her shoe. She screamed out, and shook her leg in rapid succession until it flew up and hit Garvin in the back. He turned around with more speed than I’d seen Garvin move in some time, with Tammy mouthing the words, ‘I’m sorry’. I was about to let a smile cross my face, when I felt something touch the back of my leg that made me high step it right past the both of them. When I turned around, I saw a torso with one upper arm bone dragging itself toward us at a painfully slow pace. I shook myself as if I had a thousand bugs crawling on me, closed my eyes at the sight, and hoped I could wash the memory out before it stuck in the back of my mind.
“Are you okay?” Garvin asked softly.
“Yes,” I responded, jerking my eyes open to him smiling at me. “I’m fine.”
“Try to think of them like the dried dead in the lower levels at Cuba.”
“Garvin, the dried dead hanging on the walls and spread out in the cells down there didn’t come crawling after us. If they had when all this first happened, I would have gladly let that crazy bitch Annabel kill me and get it over with.”
“I tried to tell you that you had not seen much in the ways of a bloodbreeder,” Jacob interjected.
“Just ke
ep moving. I know what ya said, and I don’t have to like any of it.”
“I would think that the living creatures would bother you more than the crippled remains of the dead,” Cates added. “But, I have seen little in the way of fear when it comes to them.”
“Well, even though I don’t find things that shift their bones and turn into something else, or hear clicking teeth of a pack of…” I paused.
“Javelinas,” Fala filled it the word for me.
“Yeah, those things, which I’m guessing shape change too. I don’t find them as bad. They’re not dead and rotting as they’re reaching out for our throats, because of some witchcraft spell put on ‘em by a sick and twisted devil worshiper,” I explained the difference the best I could.
“How do you know he worships the devil?” Cates asked. I thought he was mocking me, at first, until I spun around and saw, by the look on his face, that he was serious about his question.
“This whole city reeks of the devil, Cates. The man, or whatever you want to call him, plays with black magic…witchcraft, and where I come from, those who do such things, do it in the name of Satan himself.”
“What would those from your home call us?” he asked, stopping me in my tracks.
“Now you are picking on me.”
“I am very serious. I have never even thought on what the normals of the world thought on our kind, other than those who were raised by stories to fear us.”
“They would think we were the devil’s disciples,” I admitted, lowering my head, then bringing it right back up. “We’re not like the rest though, and we’re going to show the rest of the world that.”
“You are one of a kind,” Cates said, walking up, laying his half arm on my shoulder, because he held his blade in the only hand he had. “Your heart wishes for something that may never happen in your time. The world will never see us as anything more than what you see moving around back there on the ground.” We began making our way up to the others. “I have come in contact with the outside, and they have all reacted in the same manner. They scream, call out demon, and run for their lives.”
“Think it’s the teeth, or because you look like a giant, with those teeth?” Derek laughed.
“You, little one, will find the same reaction, even in such a small frame,” Cates responded, chuckling softly.
“My brother and I didn’t think like that when we first met Renee. And neither did our friends. So, how do you explain that, big one?”
“I really didn’t know what I was back then and y’all didn’t seem to be afraid of anything, Derek,” I shrugged.
“And you were just children who had never heard of the horrors of the night,” Cates added.
“Maybe, but we had our fair share of our own horrors. Renee was just real kind and could never look mean if she wanted too.”
I was about to put my two cents worth in, when a faint scream echoed through the tunnel. It was hard to tell if it was male or female, but it didn’t matter. I jerked forward to only be yanked back by Cates. “We must take caution,” he whispered, pushing me back and moving up beside Jacob, who was putting out the torch in the damp dirt by the water that was now running in a two inch stream around our feet. I assumed it was so he could light it when we came back through. I must have been correct, because he wiped it off and leaned it up against the wall. The darkness was blinding after the bright orange glow of the torch, but within seconds the light from the end of the tunnel that the walking dead must have come from gave plenty for our breeder eyes to see by.
We moved in twos following Jacob and Cates. Garvin walked beside Derek, and I walked next to Tammy with Fala following close behind. I looked down and saw something in Tammy’s hand, hanging, swinging back and forth as she walked, and for a split second I thought she had picked up one of the limbs of the dead, then I saw a hint of brown and knew they were Fala’s pants. I couldn’t help thinking how hard it must be, being a werewolf, or any shifting creature for that matter. Always having to remember where you left your clothes, or, if not, one would have to remain nude until they found other means. Being a breeder wasn’t the worst thing to become; at least I always knew where my clothes were and I never had to take them off to become what I am when I was needed.
Several screams brought me out of my thoughts and sent a new set in their place. This time we could tell it was the sound of a woman screaming again and again as soon as her lungs could fill with the air to push another one out. It was Derek, who took off first, dodging Cates’ outreached grasp. The rest of us moved with greater speed once he did and soon we were headed up the same steps that Derek was now crawling up, peering into an opening at the top. Jacob was by his side in seconds, taking three to four steps at a time, grabbing the back of his shirt and pressing his own body down low like Derek’s. The screams had stopped and Jacob and Derek disappeared in through the opening. Cates and Garvin followed, as Tammy and I made our way up the twenty-plus stone steps.
We both peered into the dimly lit room and saw Jacob and Derek moving in a crouched position to another square, stone opening across the small room that was filled with rusty tables that had small wheels on the bottom of the legs. I counted five different openings that led into, or out of, the room that Tammy and I were now sneaking into. By the time we made it to the door that the other three had gone through, Fala was just looking out of the opening from the tunnel. We waited for him, and then entered the slender hall that curved back to the left. I could smell fresh blood as if it had just been poured out in front of me. I was about to step out to find where the others had gone when Tammy threw her arm up and stopped me. It was then that I heard the squeaking sound of what had to be one of those tables being rolled, or something very much like it. She mouthed the words to me to ‘move’ and I did just that. I walked quickly back the way we had come, pushing Fala’s fur covered chest as I met him halfway. The three of us were about to run into one of the other openings, when Fala wrinkled his large snout and waved his claw tipped hand for us to get back against the wall beside him.
Chapter Nineteen
We stood frozen next to Fala by the opening that we had just run out of. The end of a table appeared first, then I felt Fala pushing me back into the wall as I leaned forward seeing what appeared to be blood coated, long hair hanging off the side. The woman’s mutilated body stretched before us long before the breeder wearing a black leather mask and an apron to match came in to view. With one swift move from Fala’s powerful claws the breeder dropped, and pushed the table out with the force of his body going forward. His head bounced off of the end before hitting the ground and the mask went flat as black gore oozed out onto the floor. Tammy stepped out and grabbed the edge of the table to keep it from crashing into the other ones, then pushed it up against them with enough ease that it wouldn’t make too much sound.
“Where did the others go?” she asked in a whisper, leaning back up against the wall.
“I thought they went in there.”
“What do we do?”
“Go in after them.” I slid past Fala and headed back the way I saw my boys disappear.
The first thing I noticed was there was little of the long dead smell, and more of the fresh scent of blood in the lower levels of this castle, and seeing the woman on the rolling table, that made perfect sense. As soon as I looked around the edge of the stone door, I saw Jacob putting his finger to his mouth with one hand, and moving two fingers on the other for me to make my way to him. As I did, I went a little too fast, resulting in my slipping on the blood that coated the ground. I ended up on my backside, slid a few feet before I flipped onto my hands and knees, and moved as fast as I could to where he was. It wasn’t until I turned around that I realized how big the room really was. Cages with oval doors lined the far wall to the left of the opening that I had just come from and several different types of torture devises were spread throughout the room; some having unconscious or dead beings strapped in their grips.
There was, what appeared to
be, a tunnel just past the two other entrances, next to a set of stone stairs that went up to a closed door on a landing that had to be at least twenty to twenty five feet up. In the lower area, where we were, there was a wall filled with all sorts of blades and other things; like hammers and long iron files like my pa used to work on the hooves of our horses. Wide bristled brooms were leaned up against the corner with a large shovel, telling me that Angelica made her slaves clean up after her sick perversion, or it would have smelled of decay with so much blood smeared all over the floor. I looked but didn’t see Cates or Derek anywhere. But, I saw Garvin coming out from a hall around the table that was pushed up against one of the cells that was adjoined to the opening that we had come out of. He made his way over to look into another cell that he quickly disappeared into.
“Where are the others?” I whispered, getting Jacob’s hand over my mouth as he pulled me back into the room that Tammy and Fala were now in.
He pointed at the third cell in the middle of the room, the only cell that was dark. I saw Cates step out and look around into the cell next to it, then look back at Jacob and nod. It was then that I noticed there was movement in the cell that Cates looked into. “Bring me the cat-o-nine,” a male voice rang out. “That will wake him up.” Cates stomped over to the wall that was filled with horror, took down a whip that had several strands hanging from the handle and each strand had something shiny hanging on the end of it. He walked back over and opened the cell and stepped in. “Who…” was all that the unseen man said before we heard a thud. Cates stepped out with one foot and was waving his hand wildly with a horrified look on his face that ended up staring straight at me.
“Martin,” I hissed and took off.
I knew by the shape of his body that it was him hanging with his back facing us. His body was limp with his arms pulled taut above him. His head hung lifelessly forward, and his feet were misshapen, lying twisted between his spread legs. At first glance I thought he was wearing a red shirt, but he was nude. My mind was grasping for anything other than what my eyes were really seeing. Parts of his flesh were hanging like torn material where the slices crossed one another. His own blood drenched him and pooled on the floor beneath him. I stood there in complete shock, too afraid to move; unable to believe the person I loved was the one that had been treated this way.
Bloodbreeders: Lies Beneath London Page 18
