Blood Rebel [COMPLETED]

Chapter Twenty Eight - Through the open window

Selene was shaken awake, not roughly, but insistently. The room was dark, fractured only by the small candle Harland held that flickered in her face.

"It's time to go," he whispered. His eyes shone like liquid globes in the flame-light. "Get up."

She shrugged the sheet off and stepped out on the cold floor, peeling herself from Jackie's body as she did so. She was still wearing her white dress, which had softened with the crumpling of sleep.

She lifted the hem of the fabric in both hands and stepped over Curtis, who lay in his usual spot, snoring on the floor.

"You'll get wet again, in the sewer, but it should have dried by the time we make it to Cadogan Place," he hissed.

"I can pin it up," she said, pondering how best to do so. She decided upon tying it to her bra straps and hoping for the best. Now was not the time to maintain one's decency, as Jackie had been all too ready to demonstrate. She began to hitch it up to her shoulders and fix it under the collar of her dress. It was secure enough, for the moment.

Harland tiptoed into the sitting room and lifted a gun, which he slung over his shoulder, and fixed a cartridge belt full of wooden bullets around his waist. He slipped a knife into his boot.

"If the Vampires hadn't taken over we would have far more advanced weaponry by now. They've never really been interested in technology."

Selene raised her eyes in agreement, although the comment wasn't really for her benefit. She watched as Harland fixed some handcuffs and rope to his belt: for her, no doubt, when they arrived. The means of making a damsel in distress.

She watched as his muscular back exited the hide-out, and she followed, stepping into the trickling river of sewage which became a flood. She didn't feel safe with this man; she didn't trust him, but with every step she knew she was getting closer to Hector. And she knew, beyond any imaginable doubt, that he, Hector, cared for her, and that he wanted her alive, whatever he chose to do to her afterwards.

Her shoes, once white and now a dark rust colour, splashed in the sewage, the satin absorbing the filth once more. She thought of Veronica, stitching her costume together by the light of a feeble angle-poise lamp. What were they doing now at Stanley Hall, with no dancers?

Harland's candle was the only light they had to see by, but the journey wasn't long, so the wax would last before it trickled over his hand and dripped into the sewage below. He held it above his head and let the light penetrate the dark tunnel, and Selene followed without question.

"Are you alright?" He asked, glancing over his shoulder so briefly he couldn't possibly have made out her face in the blackness of the tunnel. His candle-light would have blinded him to what lay behind.

"Yes. Keep going."

*

Walking through sewage seemed to take forever, and when they finally came to surface, through a drain in a backstreet of Belgravia, Selene was sure she was about to feel the midday sun on her face. But she didn't; the sun was barely creeping upwards, and the western sky was still a dusky blue, chasing night over the horizon. Even a star or two were still visible in the fabric of a dying darkness.

Selene released the hem of her dress from where is was caught up at her shoulders, despite the fact that her shoes and stockings were soaking.

"I'm sorry," said Harland, as he watched the satin fall to the ground.

"It's not important."

He nodded his approval and led the way towards Cadogan Place. The streets were empty; the sun had scared the Vampires into hiding, and the Sunlight Guard had not yet taken their place on the streets. For a short while they were safe to walk.