Bereft: Foretold

9 | A Foiled Escape

Cage had enough sense to move before I landed on him. The impact was harder on my joints than I thought it'd be, but I managed to stand and not waver—unlike Cage, who was sprawled on the muddy ground with one hand pressed to his lower back. 

"You don't even have to work at being a bastard," he growled as he clamored to his feet and beat the dust from his coat. "It just comes naturally to you, like you're a bastard protégée."

"Quiet." I started down the narrow tunnel after Amoroth, kicking bits of garbage and debris off my shoes. The Sin was moving with stiff, jolting steps, almost invisible in the dark but for the few stray shafts of urban light that managed to fall through the open grate and illuminate her. The tentative set of her face and limbs was uncharacteristic of the inimical woman.

"Something's...wrong."

"Wrong?" I stopped at her side, and though my night vision was worse than it used to be, I was almost positive there was nothing in the tunnel ahead.

That was until I heard the scrape of shoes meandering over rock, and the shadows started to coalesce into solid, bipedal forms.

Amoroth held her arm out and forced me to retreat several steps. "Your brother created these nasty things," she muttered as the first glassy-eyed vampire came into focus. It moved with unconscious ineptitude, shambling like an undead cretin from a mortal-made film. "What, by God, is wrong with them? How are they here?"

I didn't have an answer for her, and knew the woman must be at wit's end if she'd reverted to saying "by God." 

"Cage," I said in a low voice, hoping I wouldn't provoke the creatures while I stood in their path of destruction. "Cage, do something."

"If you're expecting me to just twiddle my thumbs and solve everything," the man replied in the same low, gruff tone. "I can't set them ablaze."

Another vampire appeared with her ear cocked toward the sound of Cage's voice. The third and fourth weren't far behind. "Why not?" I demanded. Worthless. Utterly worthless— 

"Do remember what fire uses," he snapped in a rare show of temper. "The air down here is thin enough as is. We'll suffocate if I light them up." 

Amoroth swore, her English accent prevalent as she stripped her suit jacket from her arms and threw it to the mud. "Get out of the way."

She grabbed the first vampire by the neck and slammed him into the wall with enough force to make the tunnel and its concrete struts tremble. Cage recoiled, but I stood without reacting, even when the coppery mist of the leech's blood hit my face.

My tongue flicked over my lip—and I spat on the ground. "Tastes like poison. Disgusting."

The creatures hadn't moved when Amoroth attacked, nor did they notice when she extracted her hand from their fellow's skull and gore dripped from her feminine fingers. The Sin eyed the stoic leech with her vivid gaze narrowed in distaste before deliberately prodding the next vampire in the eye.

No reaction. 

"What is going on, Darius?" Amoroth demanded. "Tell me something useful."

"I don't know." Frustrated, I grabbed the next leech by the jaw and stared it in the face, inhaling, willing the essence to come to me though I knew it would not. The vampire didn't blink or stir.

"For a man who was alive when dinosaurs roamed the damn earth, you sure don't know a lot." Her swearing became more flagrant as Amoroth started forward again. "I haven't the time for this."