A/N: Are you a first-time reader (FTR) or re-reading (RR)?
MY HANDS WERE STAINED RED.
It was the lawful truth. Everything that lived must die. And the universe wasn't biased - whether saint or sinner, villain or hero...death was inevitable, even for immortal beings such as myself. I just never imagined myself dying in fucking anstaltskleidung. Given how often I was imprisoned, I probably should have, but for the first time in a long time, I didn't want to die.
My eyes strained as bullets flew in my direction.
It was a dizzying sensation–something like a warzone, as adrenaline rushed through my undead veins. I dove across the small opening of the hallway, skidding on my calf and elbow as I fired back toward the guards. Not at. Towards.
They'd taken cover behind the adjacent stone wall at the far end of the hallway, shooting back at us wildly as Deacon reloaded his gun. I knew this place like the back of my hand. This prison was like a maze, but surprisingly, that worked in our favour since that also meant there were a lot of blind spots. This hallway was shaped like an 'I,' leaving the long passage free as we all took cover on opposing sides of the hallway in teams of two - like a weird, twisted game of Tennis; we all had our corner to cover. Deacon was pressed tightly to the dirty wall closest to me. It was on the opposite side of the hall I'd jumped across, and I didn't miss his hard glare. I could practically feel his thoughts screaming at me, not that I wanted to. He knew, just as I did, that it wasn't like me to miss a target.
"Head in the game, Valentine!" he growled.
"Law 208, subsection 5 A," I said as I fired another warning shot around the corner. Towards the guards. Not at. "Any escaping prisoner is granted," I shot again, "a fair trial if no guards are seriously injured."
Deacon fired as well, just missing the target before he leered at me again. "Darien, you blinded two guards back at the cell block."
"He can heal from that," I said.
"Heal from having his eyes gouged out?"
"I don't know," I shot around the corner. Towards. Not at. These were day workers. Innocent men. Granted, no vampire was legitimately innocent, but still, maybe they had a family. Maybe they had someone they had to get home to as well. "They might be okay," I added.
"Darien...." Deacon fired another shot, only this one landed in between the guard's eyes. The other guard wailed as his colleague fell onto the floor in a frothy, seizing mess. I'd watched many men die in my afterlife, but this man seemed to die in slow motion. I stared as the werewolf venom the bullet was laced with acted as a poison in his veins. The guard grabbed his dying friend, screaming his name, but all I could see was my face on the dying man's corpse. That could have been me–that could be me, I thought.
My hands shook as I reloaded my gun.
Beside me, I could hear Con's thoughts echo inside my mind. 'There is only one ticket out of here,' he thought, 'and it's escaping or in a casket.'
– † –
Prisoner number: 8-29 D.
That's what I had been reduced to on the inside. Three numbers and a letter. At least it was a fitting letter, I supposed. The guards called me '29-D,' like that was my name—regardless of the guards knowing my 'real' name.
Everyone knew my name.
Darien Bloody Valentine was a hard name to forget, especially around these parts, but they liked to make us nameless on the inside. They liked to strip us of any remaining sense of identity of who we used to be. Here we were cattle. Sheep. My rags were also proof of that; the same colourless grey they gave all the prisoners. My cell was so tiny that if I lay down and stretched out, I could almost touch the other side. It consisted of the following items – a cot, which smelled like goat cheese (I wasn't sure how), a broken metal sink with a reflective, plastic mirror above it, so I could see how depressed I looked, and a bucket to both sit on and piss in. The cement around me was damp, and despite my measuring method, you really didn't want to lay down in this hellhole.
Once a day, a guard came in and hosed out the darkened cells with a high-pressure water cleaner, and if we'd pissed them off enough, or they just didn't like us, they often hose us down too. But despite the in-house cleaning service, the cage I was left in still somehow had this grime everywhere and made the rest of my cell smell of stale blood and urine. This only made me question the goat cheese part even more. Was there ever a goat in here? Did it lay on the bed? Or was that just the scent of death and decay after many, many years?
Either way, believe it or not, this was one of the better places. The Slab, they called it. It was a holding facility where the real offenders were put before their trial, which was typically some kind of death sentence.
"29-D," said a guard.
With my back still leaning against the cold cement behind me, I glanced up.
"Your lawyer's here."
About bloody time, I thought bitterly. How long has it been? Three days? A week? It was hard to keep time in this Godforsaken hellhole, considering there weren't any windows in here. The prisoners relied solely on the fluorescent lighting which was on the roof in between the cells, in the middle of the aisle. Somehow, it was still dark in here, but I supposed that I should count my blessings since other holding cells down south were built with skylights on the top so that the sun would beam down into the cells all day. For a vampire, that was another kind of torture. This, being withheld in the royal part of the prison, wasn't so bad by comparison.
I had to shuffle forward in my shackles and place my hands through the tiny, squared-out hole in the bars near the cell door, so they could handcuff me. Once I was no longer as much of a threat to them, they opened my cage and let me out, grabbing me by the shoulder and pulling me toward the end of the corridor. There, I could see other inmates. There weren't many. Mostly empty cells. It made sense, considering this wasn't actually a jail. It was just where they kept outlaws until their sentencing.
Down the end of the aisle, near the entrance, I noticed a familiar face. Currently, it was pressed against the bars with a smug expression which only grew as his dark eyes met mine. Deacon 'Buckshot' McCallister. His friends called him Fuckshot; his clan called him 'Con' since he was always in and out of prison—usually because of some con job that backfired on him, but right now, all I could think to call him was 'my way out.' He didn't belong in this cellblock, since he was neither a royal offender nor a pureblood vampire, so I guessed that someone pulled some serious strings to place him here within earshot of me. I tried to focus on his mind—to see what lay behind that all too confident smile, but the guards said, "Keep walking," and pulled me along by my chains.
– † –
"Come on!" Deacon yelled from down the stone hall, snapping me back into the present.
Deacon had already run past the grieving man; apparently cutting through his Achilles heels, breaking his wrist, and disarming him as the guard let out a blood cry beside his colleague's corpse. He didn't deserve this fate, but all I could think was: better him than me.
I paused beside him. "Just to be clear, you saw that he did that, right? Not me."
"Fuck you, Valentine, you're a dead man!" he spat out blood. "A dead man!"
"Okay, but if you were under oath...." I stared at him.
"Darien!" Deacon groaned from down the hall. "Escape now. Flirt later."
The guard was still uncooperative as he went for his blade with his good arm–luckily, it wasn't his dominant one, so I quickly booted him in the face–repeatedly–until he was knocked out cold. I tilted my head as blood poured from his wounds. He'd heal from that, I told myself. I was still in the clear if we got caught.
I knew it was stupid, senseless even–either way, the stakes were high, and I was royally fucked, but I was a gambling man...so naturally, I felt compelled to play the odds. Right now, my best chance for survival was if I wasn't in prison, but I also severely doubted that we'd actually make it out, so if we got caught, I wanted to claim the right to a blood trial–which I could, so long as I didn't injure anyone severely during my attempted escape. It was a weird rule, but a rule nonetheless, which I guessed was put into action solely to try and protect the guards from escaping inmates. It wasn't easy keeping supernaturals restrained and cooperative. A lot of vampires tried to escape from prison, so the strange ruling kept some renegade people - such as myself - from killing innocent guards out of desperation and fear. And as much as I wanted to take credit for being merciful, it was entirely for my own self-preservation.
Just don't kill anyone, I kept reminding myself. Don't kill anyone, and you can claim sanctuary and maintain the right to a fair trial.
Adrenaline continued to surge throughout my undead veins as we raced toward the south wing of the prison. With every heavy step, my mind was wrapped around one thought, and one thought alone–I couldn't die. I couldn't die. And that's how I knew that any man who crossed me right now wasn't going to win. It didn't matter how much they shot at us because I refused to lose. Losing wasn't an option. Not when my family was waiting for me on the outside.
"Lucien left us a present," Con yelled back at me. "It's by the poison ivy in the yard."
A/N: Where are you reading from? Let me know!