Текст книги "Bloodbreeders: Lies Beneath London"

Автор книги: Robin Renee Ray

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Текущая страница: 11 (всего у книги 18 страниц)

“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.

“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 keep 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.

“We have to get him down,” Derek said, walking up to him.

“Don’t touch him,” I replied, finally making my feet move forward. “His feet…you’ll hurt him.”

“He’s tore up bad.” Tammy shook her head.

“Go with the others, Renee. We’ll take care of Martin,” Jacob ordered, trying to take me by the arm.

“Get away from me, Jacob. I’m not going anywhere.” I walked up, swallowed my heart, which had concreted itself at the back of my throat, and moved his long hair so I could see his face.

I dropped to my knees and cried out. They had beaten him so badly that, had I not known he was my maker, I wouldn’t have recognized him at all. Cates lifted his body, while Garvin and Derek unbound his wrists. Jacob worked as gently as he possibly could to get the restraints off of his badly broken ankles, while I stood taking his head into my hands. “Is he alive,” I cried softly, praying that someone would say the word that I so wanted to hear. Knowing, that if he weren’t, he would be no more than a mess of gore on the floor, like the one that Fala had just killed. But my mind wasn’t anywhere close to thinking right. Hope filled my heart when I heard him moan my name. “I’m here my love and we’re gonna get you out this place, right now.” He tried to lift his arm and couldn’t, so I took his hand in mine and lifted it to my face, kissing the inside of his palm, telling him over and over how sorry I was. I heard the faint sound of him trying to sooth me with a ‘shhh’ sound before he fell unconscious.

“We have to get him out of here right now,” I snapped, losing all care whether I was heard or not.

“We will make haste, but you must control your feelings, Renee. It will do him no good to have us attacked because of your anger,” Jacob replied, lifting Martin’s body, helping Cates put him over his shoulder.

“You’ll hurt him that way,” I said, reaching up for him.

“We will hurt him worse by holding the wounds on his back.” Jacob grabbed me by both arms and shook. “If you wish to see him live, then get a hold of yourself, manage his head so that it does not fall hard on Cates’ back, but do not lose the reason we come here this night.”

“I…I,” I muttered through my sobs.

“I know.”

Fala took the lead, with Cates behind him and me holding up Martin’s head, matching Cates' speed. I heard Derek tell Jacob that the door at the top of the stairs was opening and he and Jacob both pulled their blades. It was another slave dressed in the same type of black leather mask. He froze when he saw us leaving the room, and ran down a few of the steps reaching for a rope that was hanging from the ceiling. Jacob and Derek threw their blades at the same time, both making contact with the man as his hand locked on the rope. He fell off the side of the steps and yanked down on the rope as his body went over. Derek ran up, pulled his blade out of the man’s stomach and drove it through his heart. The man under the mask turned to ash, as to where the one that Fala had almost decapitated had turned to the black gore that some do.

We moved as fast as we dared with Martin draped over Cates’ shoulder. The moment we stepped out of the room with all the tables, a putrid smell washed over us. It was like that of decaying flesh, mixed with a long-standing outhouse; gagging me the moment the smell hit the back of my throat. “Move quickly,” Jacob hurried us across the small area. Fala took the stairs first, making sure nothing was waiting for us to come back down into the tunnel, with Cates following him. He was about to step down onto the steps when the sounds of shuffling turned us around. Echoes of moaning and the sound of scraping, like whatever was making the moaning sounds was dragging something hard along with it, came from the direction that we had just left. Cates took the stairs carefully, trying not to jar Martin’s broken body. I was two steps behind him at the stairwell entrance, holding Martin’s head up off of Cates’ back, when I heard Tammy hiss.