Belle Morte Bites (Belle Morte 4.3)

Night of Fire: Part Three

"Help." She looked at Oliver again. His face was tilted towards her, blank eyes seeming to stare into her own. A dark trail of blood dripped from his nostrils. "Someone help me, please."

But still no one came.

Hours trickled past.

Isabeau struggled to catalogue her injuries – broken ribs, broken fingers on one hand, a head injury that started bleeding again every time she tried to move, a deep gash on her left leg, through which a ragged piece of bone poked through, a large length of metal puncturing her right side, low down, above her hip. Her left ear felt strange, like it was lower down than it used to be, and she didn't dare touch it to find out. The throbbing ache in her shoulder suggested that it was dislocated, and there was a dull, heavy feeling in her abdomen, the sensation of something tearing deep inside when she tried to move. If she was human, she'd have been concussed, and she still wasn't convinced that she wasn't. Could vampires get concussion?

More than two hundred years had passed since she'd been made a vampire, and there were still things she didn't know about herself.

But she did know that she needed blood. She'd lost too much of her own, and her injuries were bad enough that she couldn't heal without help.

If she didn't get blood, then eventually she would die in here.

Isabeau closed her eyes and drifted out again.

A brick falling close to her head jerked her awake.

Her mouth was full of dust and blood, and her eyes were raw from the grit, and everything hurt.

She no longer had any idea how long she'd been lying here, surrounded by the pieces of the people she'd tried to save, the reek of their ruined bodies pressing down on her.

The rubble blocked off any view of the outside world, so she had no idea whether it was still night, or if day had broken.

Something scraped above her head, and another brick dislodged and fell, narrowly missing her. Sooner or later the whole thing was bound to cave in and crush her.

Maybe that was okay.

Maybe she'd lived long enough.

She closed her eyes.

But . . . she opened them again.

Isabeau didn't want to die.

These last couple of decades had seen her becoming deeply disillusioned with life, weighed down by her own loneliness, but now that she was staring death in the face, she realised that she wanted to live.

She tried again to move, and a scream ripped from her throat.

"I am not dying here," she said through gritted teeth.

She swiped the grit from her eyes with her unbroken fingers, and carefully probed the piece of metal sticking through her side. It felt like it was still attached to something on the other side, which meant she couldn't pull it out. She would have to pull herself up.

She flattened her hand against the rubble beneath her for leverage and tried to sit up, but it was too much and she collapsed with a moan.

A rat scurried over Frederick's body, pausing on the bloody ruin of his head, and Isabeau locked eyes with it. It was too small to properly return her strength, but a little blood was better than no blood. She waited, one hand stretched out, limp on the rubble, and when the rat came closer, she lunged. Pain seared her broken fingers as she grabbed the small animal, but she pushed through that pain and brought the rat to her mouth. Her fangs slid out and the rat squealed as she bit down. Rat blood was nothing compared to human, but it was warm and fresh, and she closed her eyes as it flowed down her throat. She drained the rat dry, then tossed the body away. That wasn't nearly enough for her wounds to heal, but it helped cut through the dizzy ache in her head.