Chapter 83

~~Damien~~

As the night went on, two things were becoming painfully clear. First, that the hunters were either not in the tunnel, or hiding terribly well. Second, that working with Fiona was extremely distracting.

It wasn’t that Fiona was too juvenile to focus, or too bubbly to ... not bubble around everywhere, but rather Damien’s own mind not being able to concentrate. She was too attractive. Ever since that date, where they’d both enjoyed a meal together, it’d become impossible to ignore how beautiful she was.

He’d heard girls liked it when the man swoops in, sweeps her off her feet. Maybe he should swoop? Course, he didn’t know the first thing about swooping, and that made the whole prospect terrifying. But, despite a lack of skill, a girl could only smile at you so many times before it was clear she was looking for you to make a move on her. Fiona smiled at everyone, but whenever she met his eyes, she made sure to smile extra hard. When smiles didn’t work, she put her hands behind her, together, and pushed her chest out a bit, while also pushing her arms together, so her biceps pressed her breasts together.

The moment they were topside, he was going to ask for that second date. They’d hunt together, fill their bellies, and maybe, just maybe, he might stop being so scared of her, and do what she seemed to be asking for. Kiss her? Kissing was a good first step.

This must have been how Jack felt, when he met Antoinette in Bloodlust. The kid had shared with him the tense combination of terror and arousal he’d felt, when she drew him into her web. She’d used her seductive mastery, and her giant breasts, to seduce the poor boy. And Fiona, to Damien’s best estimate, was trying to do the same thing, except she didn’t have the centuries of experience to go with her efforts. In this weird dance, Damien was the older, more experienced one. Except, he was older, less experienced.

For now, he did his best to return her smile, and at his most bold, looked at her shapely breasts and how her jacket squeezed on them, when he knew she’d notice him doing so. In return, she offered a small blush on her freckled skin, and nudged her shoulder into his side. Flirting successful? Flirting successful.

“How long have we been down here?” Vicky said.

Damien shrugged. “Four hours.”

“That is a long time. Perhaps we should take the search elsewhere?”

Matt shook his head. “These tunnels are huge, and I’d prefer we do a proper sweep of them before we move on. If they’ve been down here within the past few days, I’ll smell them.”

Powerful nose on that werewolf.

“Assuming,” Parker added, “that they don’t have some way of covering their scent. And they are hunters after all.”

“Hunters don’t usually hunt werewolves.” Shrugging, Matt stopped at a fork in the tunnel, and took a long whiff. “Vampires spread. Werewolves are chosen by Luna. Our numbers never warrant hunters hunting us, not the way they hunt vampires. And, we don’t feed on humans; usually. It’s rare for hunters to devote themselves to hunting our kind.”

Parker raised a brow. “Your point?”

“My point is that I’d be surprised if these hunters knew tricks for dealing with werewolves, beyond the obvious like silver.”

“What other tricks are there?” Vicky said.

The giant laughed, nodded toward one of the tunnels, and started walking. “Like I’m telling you. I saw how much silver you guys had.”

The three vampires nodded. A little skepticism and distrust was a healthy thing. And, despite Matt being a werewolf, he was plenty kind and sharing with the vampires as was. Asking him to spill over their secrets was a bit much.

“We’ve covered a lot of the tunnels,” Matt said. “A couple more nights, and we can safely say they aren’t down here.”

“Yay!” Fiona said, throwing her hands up and bouncing in place a few times.

The big guy shook his head. “Fighting down here would be a good thing. No humans around to stop us from letting loose, and they can’t surround us. And maybe—” Matt slammed into the air in front of him like a sleepwalker walking into a wall. Crunch. Broken nose, assuredly. He stepped back, groaning loudly, and held his nose in his hands. “What the fuck!”

Matthew didn’t swear often. Damien almost laughed, until he realized the man hadn’t walked into a wall. He had indeed walked into air, and the air had blocked his path. Everyone froze when the realization sank in.

“Um ... w-what?” Fiona said. She bounced over to where Matt was, checked the big guy, before she reached out against where Matt had been hurt. Her hand hit air.

“A barrier?” Damien joined her, and reached out. Indeed, a barrier. It had the texture of still air, which was barely a texture at all. It confused his brain, touching it, having it press back against his fingers, but it did push back, same as any wall. Soon, everyone was up to the barrier, touching it, pushing against it. Strong as steel.

Matt snorted, and another, quieter crunch sound marked the manual fixing of his nose. He’d heal in no time. With a snort and ka-splat sound of blood leaving his nostrils and hitting the tunnel floor, the werewolf walked up to the barrier as well, and pressed on it.

“If they’re behind this,” the werewolf said, “then I’d be able to smell them. I don’t.”

With a quiet snarl, Damien got down onto a knee, and reached down. In the darkness and flickering lights, it was hard to see much, but he managed to spot some strange, black soot, a powder, drawn across the tunnel path from wall to wall.

“What’s that?” Fiona said.

“I ... have no idea.”

All of them looked down at the soot. And Matt, of course, reached out to touch it. Mistake. He howled pain, and jumped back, clutching his hand and shaking it as if it were on fire. It wasn’t, but the noises the man made suggested otherwise.

“Ye awright?” Fiona said, joining him.

“Ouch! Wow, that burns.”

Frowning, Damien took in a breath, and blew on the black powder. It didn’t move. He tried again, but still it didn’t move. Soon, all five of them were doing the same thing, blowing on the strange black soot and trying to move it. No one managed.

This was ridiculous. With a snarl, Damien withdrew his sword, and tried to strike the powder. But the invisible barrier stopped him, blocking the sword from doing anything more than skimming the edge of the powder.

And that was, apparently, another mistake. As Damien put his sword away, a glowing amber started to make its appearance; from underneath them. The five of them stared down as lines started to draw themselves, as if a ghost was painting with glowing amber, encircling them. It didn’t take a genius to recognize being inside an amber circle self-drawing onto the floor was a bad thing.

“Go!” He grabbed Fiona, and threw her. She squealed like a squirrel as she flew through the air, and groaned when she face-planted against another invisible barrier. Oh shit.

Whining, she struggled to stand up until Matt helped her. “Tae fuck!? Damien ye wank stain!”

“Sorry, sorry.” Wincing, he walked over to her and offered his best apologetic smile, before he reached out and pressed against the new barrier. This one had a shape, a contour, a curve. It was following the curve of the amber circle that now surrounded the group of them. Shit. “I was too slow.”

“It’s awright, ye silly dobber.” Sighing and rubbing her forehead, she pat him on his side, and nudged her shoulder against him. “We ... we uh ... set off a trap?”

“Apparently.” He glanced back to Vicky and Parker. Predictably, they were standing with arms at the ready, but weren’t getting involved. Passive, frustratingly so. They were the sort of vampires to sit back, wait for something to happen, and then react. Their reactions would be effective and intelligent, but until that happened, Damien had to assume they were borderline useless.

Matt, growling and groaning, pressed his hands up against the invisible barrier. Wherever he touched, the amber circle that surrounded them glowed brighter underneath the point of contact.

“We’re trapped,” Vicky said.

Parker nodded. “Indubitably.”

Good grief.

They had a decent amount of room to move around in. The circle was almost as wide as the tunnel itself, leaving Damien with more than enough space to start circling the trap. There wasn’t any black powder on the circle or its edges, but with how the amber glowed, he could see some small inconsistencies, as if someone painted it with a paintbrush.

It was a new trap, one the hunters hadn’t used yet. The hunters were far more experienced than any warning tale could have prepared him for, using new tricks at every encounter, and never repeating the same one. Frustrating.

“Anyone have any idea what this is?” Damien said. Everyone shook their heads, as he expected. “It appears to be some kind of ... supernatural trap.”

“It blocked your sword,” Matt said. “And it seemed to block the air from further down the tunnel.”

Damien nodded. “The black soot stuff did. But...” He stuck his sword out. It crossed over the amber circle without issue. “This strange circle appears to be less strict.”

“The first barrier,” a voice called from the tunnel darkness, “is a proper physical barrier, magical, created with that black soot you noticed. The second is a classic entrapment circle for paranormal scum, like yourself.”

Oh no.

~~Natasha~~

They were getting lucky. Very lucky. Too lucky? Maybe. It was perfectly reasonable that the hunters assumed the Kindred wouldn’t be able to track this path, considering how convoluted it was. Figure out who was sacrificed, figure out they came from Devil’s Corner, have a Kindred in the know about what kine might know something, get lucky that they knew where those who were sacrificed hung out, get lucky with the last kine at that location, and that they saw their vehicle. Convoluted, but not an impossible trail, and there was no doubt the hunters wouldn’t leave the trail intact forever. They’d eventually move, or cover their tracks, so the five vampires had to do this quickly, tonight.

It was getting exhausting, keeping her fellow Kindred wrapped in the Cloak of Night along with her. Obfuscate could be used in so many ways, but a full Cloak of Night on herself and four others, to the point the five of them were completely invisible? That was draining. She had to concentrate, and that meant she couldn’t devote much attention to looking for hunters or clues. She had to trust the witches.

In normal situations, a less aggressive Cloak of Night, A Face in the Crowd, would be the better choice, saving on vitae while also preventing anyone from noticing the Kindred, as long as other people were around. Not being recognized wasn’t good enough for this situation.

It was an abandoned home, as far as she could tell. Everything was worn down, covered in dust, needed repair or painting, and from the smell, no one was living here. A perfect place for hunters to squat. She pulled out her pistol and kept it in her good hand, and held her small sword in her off hand, as she followed the other Kindred around the home. There was another odor here too; more than just an empty house.

First, they checked upstairs. A small bathroom and three small bedrooms. Nothing. Next they checked the living room and kitchen, but they’d already passed through them, and a second glance found nothing. That left the basement, which they’d all assumed would be the place, but it never hurt to be thorough. And, as they approached the basement, the unidentified odor grew.

Othello pointed down at the floor by the basement door. The dust and dirt was disturbed, tracing an outline of how the door would open, if someone had opened it. Jackpot.

Triss nodded to the large man, and with locked eyes, Othello slid the door open. Darkness awaited, except not as dark as the building’s main floors. Light had a habit of doing that, of creating gentle illumination with no source, when it was bouncing around walls. And if there was a gentle, subtle illumination in the basement, that meant someone had a light turned on somewhere down there. Or light was coming in through some basement window, a street light maybe.

No, it wasn’t a street light. It had an amber hue, like fire. Maybe someone was having a party? No, there wasn’t any noise. And the sliver of light that reached the basement was so small, Tash was sure it was bouncing through other hallways to reach the basement they peered into. Maybe someone was running some sort of drug operation, and had another basement built, connected? Maybe. But there was something about the place, something heavy, and quiet, like liquid shadow you could drown in. She felt it, her partners felt it, and that was enough reason to assume the worst.

Othello went first, with Triss behind him, then Aaron, then Natasha, then Jennifer. The only one who bothered with weapons were Natasha and Jennifer. In the Invictus, everyone used weapons to some extent or another, but the witches were all comfortable killing with their bare hands; except Jen, who was young, and a Ventrue besides. The only weapon she had was a knife though, hidden on her belt underneath the open shirt. Not a good choice for a Ventrue, but better than nothing.

The basement was predictable, as far as basements went. No windows, concrete walls with no effort to make them pretty, damp cracks caught reflections of the scattered, subtle amber light, and Tash was sure she caught a glimpse of a centipede creeping along. She managed a small grin at that. When she was human, a centipede would have been enough to get her screaming. Now? Kindred and predators had a strange connection, even insect predators. But a centipede wasn’t a rat or a crow or a coyote. If Aaron or Jen could use it to see what was ahead, neither of them tried. So, they continued along, into the basement room.

It was empty. Very empty. Too empty. Tash expected maybe some old boxes, or a ruined couch, or some wood palettes or crates, or something, anything. But, no, the basement was completely empty, except for a bookcase. The amber light was coming from behind it, faint against where the wood met the concrete. Beatrice and Aaron wasted no time, each taking an end of it, lifting, and moving it aside.

Another tunnel, and it seemed to go down. That didn’t make sense from any blueprint for a building in Dolareido, not in Devil’s Corner, but it was the source of the amber light.

The vampires moved closer. Upon closer inspection, it seemed like the hole was manually dug into the wall, as if someone had sliced it open and then got to digging. But that sort of work was loud, and it would have filled the basement up with a mess of dirt. Maybe that’s why it was devoid of any objects? Someone may have done just that, and cleaned it up. Well, whatever the methodology they used, it didn’t change that there was a hole in the wall tall enough for them to walk into, and there was a gentle amber glow coming from within.

They followed the same formation, Othello ahead with Triss by him, then Aaron, while Tash and Jen stuck to the rear. And as they followed the curving tunnel, everyone was deadly quiet. No one fake breathed. No one landed on their heel. No one stood straight, crouching instead. Everyone let a bit of their animal instinct to the surface, the part of them that knew how to stick to shadows, move silently, and listen intently.

There was quiet murmuring in the deep, from beyond the twisting, curving tunnel. Tash raised her lip in a hidden sneer, and looked around at the dirt that surrounded them. Someone was down here, in this homemade tunnel? This wasn’t a safe tunnel. Without support beams and going deeper, the ceiling of this tunnel was liable to—become soft, and warm, and wet?

Everyone froze as the walls were no longer dirt, but flesh. Flesh. There was no getting around it, no other way for her mind to think of it, no trick of the eye or fancy painting on the walls. It was flesh. She touched it, and sure enough, bits of blood coated her fingertips. Muscle and skin, sinew, tendons, and even some bones lined the walls, curved, unnatural. It was all unnatural, but the bones that lined it weren’t from any creature. It was the tunnel’s bones, complete with a spinal cord above, and ribs all around.

It was like they were inside a snake, except even a snake’s guts didn’t look like this, with the bones poking out showing through, with skin taut against them, connecting to their sides, and with slivers of pulsating muscle between bits of torn skin. And it was pulsating, like a heart might. A giant, slow, steady heart.

She’d heard you could walk into a blue whale’s heart, that it was big enough to move around in. How fucked up and big a creature would it need to be for this monstrosity?

They continued to creep forward, and Tash poured every ounce of effort she had into keeping them invisible. A very loud thought kept pulsing, that they should turn around and leave, or maybe one of them should. And, maybe, they really should do just that. But they’d discovered a golden opportunity, and might need every one of them there to keep them alive.

Just a little deeper, just enough to get some sort of knowledge about what was going on, and they could turn around and report back. Running away and reporting back a ‘flesh tunnel’ wasn’t really enough information to act on. And, if they left, there was a very real chance the tunnel wouldn’t exist the next night. They needed to learn something valuable, anything.

Tash wasn’t so stupid as to not have measures in place for something like this. Before entering the tunnel, she ran the ‘Unexpected Encounter’ app on her phone. It’d ping the Prince, and tell her where Tash was. If worse came to worse, someone would eventually show up and investigate. Maybe they’d be coming to scoop up some vampire ashes, but at least someone would come.

It was like a horror movie script. Anyone with a brain would just turn around, and leave before they traveled any deeper into what was obviously a dangerous situation. But they couldn’t. They needed to learn something, and splitting up was too dangerous. It was infuriating, being forced to pick between two stupid decisions, and Tash ground her teeth until her ears hurt. It may have been a witch’s tactic, to do everything on the fly, or off the cuff, but the Invictus and Dragon in her very much wanted to pull out a notepad and start creating a proper plan.

Predictably, the witches showed no sign of stopping. They knew the risks, had calculated it no doubt, but, like her, knew the best option was to press on, and learn more.

The murmuring got louder. It wasn’t English, and it wasn’t being said by one person. It didn’t sound like it was being said by people at all. It was deep and rolling, with a resonance and vibration quality that reminded Tash of throat singing monks. Flesh was a good absorber of sound, and shouldn’t have echoed or resonated with the odd voices, but it did, and it became terribly obvious as the vampires got closer, that the murmuring was some sort of chant.

Louder, and louder. Everyone crouched low, until eventually people were using their fingertips against the floor to move as silent as possible. The floor was flesh, and ribs, and shallow blood. She was tempted to taste it; what vampire wouldn’t be? But, no, better to not taste the blood that dripped from the walls and pooled on the tunnel path of alien muscle and skin. Vampires were immune to disease and poison, but that probably didn’t apply to magical or alien things.

Tash bit her lip, and stared on as the tunnel grew larger, widened, and eventually opened up into a room. Room wasn’t a strong enough word. Chamber? Whatever it was, it was massive, and it was inhuman. A hundred feet wide, but a hundred feet tall as well. The ribs were gone, and instead, giant pillars of bone lined the walls of the more square room, compared to the round tunnel they’d emerged from. The source of the amber light was clear now. Dangling amber crystals attached to ropes hung from the flesh ceiling, and they glowed.

No, wait, not ropes. Chains. The chains, dangling, swayed gently, occasionally clinking against each other, except the clink sounds were deadened by the sounds of flesh. On the chains, were body parts, attached by meat hooks. Torsos, arms, legs, fresh body parts with skin torn open and bones jammed or tied into the chains, dangled. And as Tash looked closer, she realized the fleshy walls of the chamber had bits of human flesh tied to it, flayed, spread, and hooked to it. Tapestries of skin were stretched taut over metal hooks, latched and secured to the alien flesh of the chamber.

If they hadn’t been vampires, the five of them would be vomiting.

The source of the chanting was clear now, too. In the giant chamber, against the back wall, was Elen. She was in her wheelchair, with the respirator machine making sure she had easy access to oxygen. There were a few others standing around, hunters, and they were managing various IV tubes that were ... connected to the wall. And it wasn’t the hunters doing the chanting, it was the faces on the wall.

Faces. On the walls. Perfect, smooth, pink fleshy faces, all with eyes closed, all with immaculate teeth, and all chanting the alien language. Not Latin, or any other old language Tash might have recognized, but it was definitely a language. But, the language aspect was less interesting than the fact there were a hundred faces on a wall of flesh, singing. What the fuck what the fuck what the fuck. Was it their blood, in the tubes being fed into Elen’s veins? Had to be.

There was someone kneeling at Elen’s feet. During all this, Elen wasn’t simply sitting there. She was leaning forward, with a scalpel in her hand, and she was making marks on a shirtless man’s back. A white guy, dark hair buzzed short, average height, with a lean figure of muscle.

Did they walk into a nightmare? Were they inside some chamber of dreams and fear, where the Begotten lived? It was the only possible explanation for the walls of flesh and bone. But, Begotten didn’t just randomly open their chambers, connect them to the physical world, for no reason. And as far as she knew from Fiona, Begotten could open and close their chambers into any place where they’d been, but the place also had to share resonance with the chamber. There was no reason to keep a chamber open, when they could open and close it at will.

Which meant, either a Begotten had opened their chamber preemptively, expecting someone to be coming or going, or this wasn’t a Begotten’s chamber. She dearly wished it was. Walls of bleeding skin, flexing tendons, tightening and relaxing, and enormous muscle fibers surrounded them. It was the stuff of nightmares. The pieces of corpses used to decorate were almost tacky in comparison.

The faces on the walls, in their perfect symmetry, kept their eyes closed, and continued to chant. What Natasha would do to know what they were saying. Just knowing what language they were speaking would have been a tantalizing drop of honey on her intellectual curiosity. And why, why flesh? Why was everything made of flesh?

Wait. One of the hunters. Tash had seen that hunter get cut open by a werewolf, in the nightmare world. If this shaman could heal the hunters, that made everything so much more problematic.

Elen sighed, leaned back, and spent some time rotating her wrist, in pain from the exertion of carving into a man’s back. Frail as thin glass. Capturing this woman alive would be difficult.

“Sándor, if you would stop healing so quickly, I wouldn’t need to do this so often,” she said.

“My apologies, master,” the Begotten said.

All five vampires froze, tension drawn tight until it threatened to snap. Not in a chamber, then, if that was Sándor; he’d be in his gargoyle form otherwise. Unless there was a way for a Begotten to remain in their human form when inside nightmares? Maybe, but from what she’d seen from the others, and what they’d said, it seemed to be expected they be in their horror form when in dreamland.

“No matter. We will do this, again, and again, and again, until Azamel is ruined.”

“Yes, master.”

“And when that day comes, Sándor, you need to pay closer attention. Jeremiah and Angela both nearly died, and if I have to sew them back up again, I’ll take it out of your hide.”

“Yes, master.”

One too many masters. This Begotten was being controlled! Tash managed to poke Triss in the side, and blink several times at her, emphasizing as best she could. The Nos nodded, and mouthed ‘controlled’ slowly. Ok, good, communication. Tash returned the nod, and frowned as she looked out to the room with dangling, amber crystals. If she could see what Elen was doing to Sándor’s back, what she was carving or writing, maybe she’d get some idea about what to do about it.

Or, maybe the five of them should just run in there and kick some ass? There weren’t many hunters, and it wasn’t like hunters could take a vampire at close range. The undead would win this fight, if there weren’t any surprises.

Tash nodded forward, and the five of them pushed out a little more.

They crept forward, everyone low, everyone deathly silent, and moved to a pile of flesh, a mound of it that came out of the red blood like a tumor. It’d be better if they split up, but Tash needed them close if she wanted to make sure they were invisible. And she was getting tired. Vitae, draining more and more with every moment, demanding she replenish it, or at least stop acting like a super hero and keeping a squadron of people invisible.

They were way too deep in this for this to become a problem now. And, with decades of Invictus practice under her belt, she wasn’t about to let her discipline break when she needed it most. She grit her teeth, and bore it. They moved in deeper, moving to another pulsating nodule of flesh. Not big enough to hide all of them, Jennifer stayed a bit further back, but still near, finding a big rib bone to stand behind.

This was all so very possibly a trap. Did the vampires find the hunters unawares, or were they hoping to be found? Tash tried to reason through it, but the more she thought about it, the more it seemed like good luck. There was no way Elen would leave herself this exposed on purpose, or have Sándor in such a compromising position.

Compromising position. Undefended, and unguarded. She could shoot him. She ... could shoot him! If she got him in the head, he’d die. Maybe it’d make up for not landing the shot, and killing Angela or Jeremiah when she tried. There were a lot of those weird, dangling amber crystals in the way though, and she was already strained trying to keep everyone wrapped in the Cloak of Night. But, if she could get a little closer, and line up a shot, she could kill him, and put a huge dent in the tools available to these hunters.

Except, watching Sándor kneel there, eyes empty, staring at the bloody floor of skin and muscle he knelt on, it was clear that he was being controlled somehow. His face was a blank slate. Tash had seen faces like that before, whenever Julias mind controlled some kine; or Viktor, on the rare occasion Natasha got to see that. And she couldn’t shoot a man who was a slave, a mind-controlled slave.

“Here.” One of the faces on the wall opened their eyes. Black eyes, completely black eyes.

“Here.” Another one of the faces opened their eyes. Oh no.

“Here!”

“Someone’s here.”

“Here.”

“Here.”

Elen started coughing, wheezing, a ragged sound of tearing throat and exhaustion, all caught in the mask she wore. The hunters around her brought up their guns, and started scanning, one of them focusing on removing the tubes and needles from the old woman.

Triss looked back, and groaned, nodding toward the entrance they came from. The pathway closed off, like a constricting ring of muscle. They may as well have been inside a stomach.

Shit.

Sándor got up, leaned his head left and right, earning some loud cracks, and started walking toward them. He may not have been able to transform, but Tash could see the subtle silhouette of the gargantuan gargoyle creature around him.

Double shit.

~~Eric~~

Three vampires, and one fresh werewolf, in a brawl with six vampires, and one experienced werewolf. Shit.

Caleb came for him again, and Eric sidestepped the punch. He returned it with his own, and unlike Caleb, he knew how to skim the line. Whoever this guy was, he wasn’t a professional fighter, and didn’t know how to move by inches. His motions were exaggerated, when they didn’t need to be. His punches would hurt like hell if they got him, but now that Eric was paying attention to him and only him, it was clear to see the man was not trained. He was, on the other hand, a brawler, a man who’d learned how to fight the hard way. If he managed to land a punch, it was going to hurt, more than Eric’s would.

Much as fighters like to say otherwise, there was one undeniable fact about fighting that always made fighters uncomfortable: size mattered. It didn’t matter if you were Bruce Lee, you were helpless against a two-hundred and fifty pound brawler. And Caleb did have a few pounds on him, a few inches of reach, and height. He’d be in a higher weight class, if this was a proper fight. Getting hit was to be avoided at all costs.