by D B Nielsen
Cole landed on his skinny ass, uncaring that he’d tipped over a metal pan filled with more blood that was slowly soaking into his clothing. He stared up at the arched ceiling of hanging, bloody carcasses.
Throughout the long tunnel, the naked bodies of stiff, frozen humans hung from the ceiling—at least two dozen, and not all of them adults. They’d been chained by their ankles, hosed down, and prepped like slaughtered animals ready for the local butcher. Beneath each one, a metal pan collected the blood that trickled out, draining from their slashed necks and wrists.
“They’re like meat popsicles or corpsicles,” Aislinn remarked in disgust as the stiff bodies swung back and forth in the tunnel’s frigid air.
One or two were obviously fresh kills as the ruby-red blood ran freely down their hands and dripped from fingertips with a regular pitter-patter into the metal containers and ground beneath. Shocked and confused, Cole watched as the blood formed an infinity pattern on the ground while the bodies swung about.
“What the Vlad? What is this shit?” Cole’s gaze darted between the corpses hanging throughout the tunnel. “What the fuck is going on, Aislinn? This can’t be the vampire mafia’s doing, can it?”
“The vampire mafia aren’t the only immortals operating down here,” she said, coming back to help him up onto his feet. She’d already noted the large capital letters on the tunnel wall, written in bright red as if in human blood: FACILITY 3. It stood to reason there were at least another two facilities down here. Luckily, Cole hadn’t been paying much attention. “These poor humans are Kinder Surprises. Easter eggs.”
“What the Vlad’s that?” Cole barely managed not to faint or vomit, despite gagging once or twice. She didn’t blame him. She spat onto the ground, getting rid of the foul taste at the back of her throat.
Her answer was blunt. “Black-market drug mules.”
Cole’s blank face stared back at her. Aislinn knew it would be hard for him to understand, especially not knowing the whole story which she wasn’t at liberty to disclose. She went on to explain what she could. “Their blood is laced with drugs which they ingested hours earlier. This is then bottled and distributed. It’s sold illegally to nightclubs and the leading, powerful figures of vampire society for money or secrets or whatever vice takes your fancy.”
“We’re not here for that, right?” Cole’s eyes were huge in his face, as if he feared the answer. “You’re not selling this stuff at the Nocturne, are you?”
Her lips curled up in a snarl, her teeth immediately snapping down at the insult. Then remembering this was Cole, she calmed down, replying in a barely-steady voice, “I’d be a fool to even consider it. No way. Besides, I may not be a Zooarian, but there are far more ethical means of obtaining blood, as Nikolaus can prove to you. But right now, we should keep moving.”
“You think? There’s nothing I’d like better than to get out of here.” He was relieved at Aislinn’s response but felt soiled. He was covered in blood.
He should have listened to Aislinn and stayed at the manor house, but now he was stuck.
Wishing he could be instantly magicked away from the Underground, he demanded, “Can we get out of here? Or is there more? Do we have to face the Minotaur first?”
Aislinn sighed deeply. Sometimes, she felt Cole was an overprotected, childish, sissy boy—which was her fault. She had sheltered him far too much.
Unlike Cole, the sight before her didn’t cause her blood rage because humans were slaughtered like animals. It distressed her for an entirely different reason. Among those chained and hanging were street youths and children—innocents used as drug mules because they were desperate.
But Cole was distressed because he’d caught a glimpse of how human “sausages” were made. It was a disgusting process. Though Cole fed on humans, like many of his generation, he was more than willing to hang out in the bars, clubs, or at the manor house and have his meal brought to him, filtered and bottled, rather than go hunting. It wasn’t too different from the humans who shopped at their local supermarket for their packaged steak, lamb cutlets, and chicken wings. Every now and again, Cole would get all righteous or squeamish. It was a pity he chose moments like now.
“There’s more. Suck it up and stop your whining.” Aislinn didn’t know quite how to break it to him but his words were closer to the truth than he knew.
Cole’s voice rose an octave in annoyance. In the silence of the tunnel, it sounded way too loud. “Whining? How can you say that? Look at me. I’m standing in a pool of human blood.”
“So what?” she retorted, trying to keep her voice low. “You were lying on a pile of pigeon poo.”
“You mock my pain. Look at me.” Cole realized he was repeatedly wiping his bloody hands on his jeans, trying to get them clean. Out, out, damned spot! Even the Cleaner wasn’t that good at getting out bloodstains and bourbon from fabric. It was like he’d gone hunting with Dorian—not that Dorian would ever invite him hunting—though he wondered how Dorian managed to remain immaculate, not a cuff out of place, while the others in his following returned looking like they’d been on safari in the wilds of Africa. Maybe that’s why Dorian wore black all the time. Smart thinking. “I don’t like this place. It’s dank. It’s dirty. It’s disgusting.”
“Remember when I asked for your opinion?” She paused for a second. “Me neither.”
His eyes narrowed, and he opened his mouth to hotly retort—when a loud, echoing wail startled him, silencing the words.
Aislinn immediately spun around to home in on the direction. The tunnel appeared empty, except for the hanging corpses. Nothing was there.
But she knew it was a lie.
The place was heavily surveilled. There would be guards on duty taking orders from their boss, watching their every move. They were protecting something of great worth—and she had a suspicion what that could be.
“OMV! What is that?” Cole whispered.
But there was no need to whisper as the wailing continued. Louder. Incessant. Demanding. It sounded close by. Even the daughter of Kayne couldn’t ignore it, nor hide her reaction to it.
Tingles crept up Aislinn’s spine as a new horror dawned. Her eyes met Cole’s, and they were full of fear. “It’s an infant.”
“A baby? A human baby?” he asked, stunned.
“C’mon. Hurry. We need to check this out.”
“Check it out? Are you insane? Why the Vlad would we want to do that?” In an instant, Cole went from righteous to hypocritical, happy to let the human fend for itself. It sounded like the worst idea he’d ever heard. “No way. We should get the Vlad out of here this instant.”
“It’s a baby. An innocent. Imagine its mother going out of her mind with worry for its safety.”
Cole countered. “That’s what having more than one child is for—an heir and a spare, get it? In the Victorian era, we didn’t get so attached to our children. Humans are breeders. They used to have twelve or thirteen kids in a row, kept popping them out like those tennis ball machines. Besides, most of them died in infancy anyway. They even recycled names since after the first, it didn’t matter what they were called. Matthew, Mark, Lucy, and Jane.”
“And you call me cold?” She rolled her eyes in disbelief.
“I’m just being pragmatic.” There was look of mockery on his pale face. “Mortals are born to die. Don’t you get it?”
“Got it,” she replied. “But I’m still going to check it out, and then I’m going to find that miserable son of a bitch who did this and take care of business.”
“Stop right there!” Aislinn’s voice rang out, causing the other vampire to pause momentarily, startled at their sudden appearance. He was like a malevolent ghost in a white lab coat, hovering above the vulnerable newborn. “Put the baby down.”
Standing at the entrance to an underground bunker, Cole was horrified at what he saw. He took back everything he had said. The tunnel had been converted to a sterile nursery for infant drug mules. Row upon row of open-box incu
bators housed babies of all sizes and backgrounds. IV tubes were attached to each small, still infant’s nose or mouth, feeding them drug-laced nutrients and formula, prepping them for harvesting. It was a brutal sight.
The ghostly Sanguis stood in front of them, half the distance down the room, holding a squirming, wailing, naked baby in his arms, ready to drain its blood.
“What are you two doing down here?” he demanded, thin lips drawn back in a snarl. Gleaming white incisors clenched tightly together as they instantly snapped into position. His obsidian eyes glared viciously, darting back and forth between Aislinn and Cole.
“What are you doing down here?” Aislinn threw back at him, her voice clipped. Her eyes were black pools of fury, and there was menace in her stance. She meant business. “Why don’t you put the baby down and step away? If you harm that baby, you know exactly what I’m going to do to you.”
Cole took in the scene quickly. He couldn’t help but stare, mesmerized by the sharp blade the lab tech was holding, glinting wickedly in the dull overhead fluorescent light as he prepared to slice the baby’s throat open.
The lab tech’s snarl morphed into a grin, and he laughed, the sound like a witch’s cackle from the back of his throat. “You think? Why do you care? It’s only a human. Good for only one thing.”
Cole sensed movement and looked over his right shoulder. The lab tech was trying to distract them. A group of three heavies were moving in on them, ready to pounce. Cole hissed in fear. These three were beefy, biker types who were protecting the lab and its most precious commodity, the infant drug mules. Their tattoos rippled as they flexed their muscles intimidatingly, leather squeaking as they stalked forward, pointing their weapons at Aislinn and Cole.
This was a very bad thing.
Reflexively, Aislinn’s teeth snapped down, but her eyes never strayed from the baby, nor did she show any fear. She smiled as easily as if she were at the Nocturne serving these brutes a round of blood ales. “Like I said, drop the baby and step away. Last chance.”
The lab tech’s coal-black eyes reflected Aislinn’s seeming fragility—just a harmless girl, blonde, pretty, and young. He laughed again. “Harley, get rid of them and be quick about it. I need to prep the containers and can’t have any interference.”
One of the trio broke away from the group as the others hung back, waiting. He was a tall Malum, muscular, with stringy long blond hair. His worn leather vest sported metal clasps and a sewn-on badge over his left breast, stating, ‘Live to ride’. This matched the tattoos down the vampire’s arms that Cole could see, the ink snaking under his clothing suggesting there were many more on his chest, back, and shoulders. The Malum smiled nastily, brandishing his blade as if the thought of getting rid of them was fun for him.
Aislinn returned his smile. If Cole didn’t know how sweet she could be, it would have chilled him to the bone.
“You should have taken my offer,” Aislinn said and, in one quick movement, threw her skean so that it flew straight through the air to lodge in the lab tech’s throat.
All hell broke loose.
The lab tech instantly dropped both his blade and the baby like Aislinn asked him to—but not because he was having second thoughts. His hands flew up automatically to his throat, but it was too late. Acid and flame ate away at his flesh where the blade was lodged, and within moments, the arrogant Sanguis went up in smoke and ashes.
But Aislinn didn’t wait for him to die.
As the baby toppled to the ground, she moved like a blur of speed, perceived by the rest of them only as a ripple of movement. Dashing across the length of the nursery, she slid the final feet on the polished floor and caught the baby before its tiny head was dashed upon the hard concrete. Her skean came tumbling down, and with unerring skill, Aislinn caught the blade’s hilt in her free hand as the lab tech crumbled into a pile of ash beside her.
One shivering second of silence—an eternity for a vampire—the shock of the moment suspended. The advancing thug paused in his tracks, unable to tear his eyes away from the combusting lab tech who had given the orders. The others hadn’t moved, frozen into witless statues.
“Fuck me!” he cried when he recovered enough to let out an expletive. Instinctively, he went on the attack.
But Aislinn wasn’t done. She returned the tiny baby, still wailing, to its crib, and she spun to face the charging, brutish vampire named Harley.
Brandishing his blade, Harley threw himself at her with astonishing agility for such a large Malum. Aislinn was ready. Reacting without that instant of frozen hesitation or surprise which might have made the attack successful, she leaped out from behind the incubators, moving so fast that the vampire could barely keep up. He felt, rather than saw, the karate chop to his throat and momentarily crumpled to the ground.
Rasping, he threatened, “You’ll pay for that.” Then he lunged at her again.
Aislinn cartwheeled over his head and swung a mighty blow downward, splitting the Malum’s head in two with her skean, only to land lightly behind him—or what was left of him. Where her blade struck, the vampire burned, crumbling apart from head to toe as if under molten lava.
The other two heavies jumped back in fright.
“No way!” one of them shouted with a mix of terror and disbelief. “What the fuck? Harley?”
They looked at Aislinn, eyes wide with fright, wheeled around, and bolted in different directions.
“Cole, stop them!” Aislinn cried.
Chapter 9
Cole grabbed the blade that Aislinn kicked over to him, the one belonging to Harley, and took off after the first vampire, a weaselly looking Sanguis whom he thought he could best in a fight. The other was out of his league. He left that one to Aislinn.
“Don’t be such a coward!” he called to the fleeing vampire in the darkness. “Turn around and face me like a vampire!”
Absurdly in his mind, he had some thought of being heroic like the poetry-loving Scarlet Pimpernel. Next time, he would wear scarlet. Bloodstains would be harder to spot, too. He felt no fear, since he would tell this tale to his poetry group for decades to come.
But the thug turned into a dead end, stopping and whirling around with a nasty look on his face, his hand going to his blade. Cole caught a sour, acid stench of unwashed, moldy fabric and leather. It reeked, making him want to dry retch, and Cole’s exultation turned to dismay. He had failed to realize that the brute wasn’t afraid of him, but of Aislinn and her skean. Suddenly, he understood the danger he was in. This vampire was a degenerate criminal with nothing to lose, and he was just a poet.
Behind the vampire, a large, defunct turbine continued to turn sluggishly in the old steam railway tunnel, blocking the opposite exit. There was one way in and out—and Cole was standing in front of it.
“Stay back,” Cole warned, holding his dagger in the chamber grip as Caleb had taught him decades ago.
“You scared, boy?” the other vampire taunted quietly, giving an ugly chuckle. “You should be. Your girlfriend isn’t here to protect you.”
Weasel-face ignored the blade in Cole’s hand, advancing slowly.
Cole backed away, waving his dagger threateningly. “Don’t come any closer.”
“Or what? You got the balls to take me on?” He spread his arms wide, his blade wickedly gleaming in the dull light, and crouched slightly, bouncing from foot to foot intimidatingly.
Then, so fast Cole couldn’t follow, weasel-face bounded to one side, dodged the brandished blade, and struck his hand down sharply on Cole’s forearm. Cole’s dagger skittered away across the train tracks, out of his reach. Desperately, Cole flung himself at the other vampire before he could strike. Weasel-face grunted at the force of the impact as Cole’s body slammed solidly into his. They both went down.
Grappling frantically on the train tracks, Cole bit weasel-face’s hand, hoping he would drop his blade also. No such luck.
They rolled on the ground together as Cole tried to avoid the plunging blade in weasel-fa
ce’s tight clutch. Desperation lent Cole strength as he rammed a fist into his opponent’s ugly mug. Weasel-face fell back, momentarily disoriented. It was enough for Cole to roll quickly across the tracks and come back onto his feet.
But his opponent mimicked his actions a split-second after.
On his feet, his stance wide and his hands moving slowly in the air in front of him, tossing his blade from hand to hand, the other vampire grinned at Cole. Then lunged.
Cole dodged just in time.
Another shadow flickered in the darkness at the entrance to the tunnel.
“Cole, catch.” Aislinn threw her skean for Cole to defend himself with, unable to get a good angle to aim it directly at their foe. Cole didn’t even raise his arm to grab it, and the blade arced across the tunnel and clattered to the ground.
Weasel-face laughed shortly. “What a shame. Not much good with blades, are you, b—” His taunt was cut short, ending on a rough grunt as a boot caught him solidly in the side and another kicked the blade out of his grasp.
Aislinn dropped lightly in front of him, hair fanning out behind her. As she straightened up, she could smell from underneath the sour stench of his clothes that weasel-face was an addict. He was pumped up on drug-laced infant blood. It gave him greater strength, but at least it didn’t turn him batshit crazy like if he’d been on pure Black Magic pills.
Weasel-face met her in a crouch, his hands spread wide. “Girlie, you smell real sweet. I’m gonna sink my teeth into you and enjoy it. Hell, I’m gonna sink my—”
“Don’t speak to her like that, you whitebread zombie!”
Weasel-face barely had time to react as Cole charged into the other vampire again, pulling him backward across the rails. He pulled Cole down with him, briefly looking up as the huge fan blades churned inches away from their faces. Cole’s head hit the ground hard, and he lay semi-conscious, eyes rolling back into his head as the huge blades swept past his face.
“Cole!” Aislinn cried out in warning as he reeled from the blow, unaware of his surroundings. Suddenly alert, Cole rolled sideways as the fan blades sliced through the air above his head, and saw grimy, black metal an inch from his nose.
