Chapter VI
Tarryn
There’s scratching, accompanied by a stench of rot, sulfur, and burning flesh. It’s a distinct smell that I could have lived forever not experiencing again. “ Ghoul!”
The walls around us crumble and give way in an instant, dozens of the foul creatures spilling from within. Where the hell have they come from?
“Run!” I bellow, shoving Nicolai in case he has any stupid ideas about fighting them.
We’re in too-close quarters for that; the ghouls’ long fingers—tipped and ending in fine points that cut through the hardest medal—aren’t something that I want to tangle with.
Especially in a space too small to transform in.
Not to mention he’s incapacitated and no help at all.
We don’t get far before the vampyre stops abruptly, and I run into him, going too fast to slow down quickly enough to avoid him. We plow into the wall. Instinctively slapping a hand on the stone above Nicolai’s head doesn’t do much to stop the impact.
“What are you doing?” I twist my head to see where the ghouls are: not far enough away, and closing in too fast despite how slow they are.
“We’re stuck,” Nicolai bites back, and it’s only then that I take in our surroundings.
He’s taken us into a circular room similar to the one we were in not that long ago.
One of the corridors leading off it has collapsed and is of no use to us.
The other plunges into pitch black, but not before I can see how it closes in, reminiscent of the tiny space we came through to get here.
Hell, it might even be the same one. I have no fucking idea.
The whole place is a goddamned maze. There’s no choice now but to stand and fight.
I’ve been a warrior my entire life, born and bred to fight our oppressors and take back the control so cruelly wrenched from us centuries ago. Which means I know when the odds are against me. I deal with it every day, and I’m still here. If the ghouls want to mess with me, they can try.
The ghouls push and shove each other as they make their way to us, shambling and stumbling in the enclosed space.
Rags hang off them, skin ripped open, pus and rot oozing out.
Their eyes are empty sockets, unseeing even as they stare with arms outstretched.
How long have they been down here? Why would there be ghouls here, in a vampyre lair?
What the fuck are they feeding on? Not sure that I want to know, actually.
“Take these chains off me,” Nicolai demands, turning his back to me and lifting his arms back as if I don’t know that he’s tied up.
I can’t take the ghouls all by myself, but the idea of freeing a vampyre and expecting it to help me is so anathema to me that I hesitate. Ghouls on my own, or ghouls and a vampyre? I’d be signing my death warrant.
I’ll likely be signing it anyway if I don’t have help.
“Fuck.” I bare my teeth and yank at the chains, unwrapping them from around Nicolai’s wrists, shoulders, and stomach.
“You better not make me regret this.” I haul him up against the wall and wrap a hand around his throat, growing out my claws to prick at his skin.
“You turn on me, you bloodsucking asshole, and I’ll leave you here for them to feed on, alive. Understand?”
“Is that supposed to scare me?” Nicolai drawls. Damn, but that accent is something else. Too bad about the fangs. I’d have known exactly how I wanted to hear it in my ear if it weren’t for that one important, essential fact. “Let me go.”
Every instinct in me is screaming to kill him. Leave him here to bleed out and die. Ignoring the urge beating at me, I step back. We stare at each other for a few tense heartbeats, both acutely aware of another danger getting closer.
The red in Nicolai’s eyes moves, like drops of color in ripples of water, and his lips part as his fangs descend further.
My hands clench at my sides, readying for a fight.
Is he going to attack me? He can’t even wait five seconds to turn on me?
My chances of survival are low but not zero.
I haven’t lived this long by lying down and accepting my fate.
Despite the inability to transform here, I won’t make it easy for him or them.
The ghouls’ footsteps are so close now, they’re almost in reach. He better make his decision fast.
Nicolai surges forward, and rage strengthens me as I prepare for his first strike.
The vampyre moves to my left and buries a combat knife up under a ghoul’s chin.
It’s at enough of an angle that the tip of the blade peeks out from the rotting cheek, slicing cleanly through the sagging flesh.
It reaches for Nicolai, taking no notice of the injury.
He uses the knife to cut the hands off and then kicks the ghoul backward, knocking over the three ghouls jostling behind it.
“You might want to do something,” Nicolai suggests tersely, giving me a look that tells me exactly what he thinks of me. “Or is your kind really that useless?”
He doesn’t need the look since he’s not into mincing his words.
“Where the fuck did you get that from?” I ask as I twist and slash across a ghoul’s face, ripping it open to the skull with my claws.
If they had brain matter left, it would have painted the ground and wall.
Instead, there’s no blood or organs, only a dark, sticky ooziness leaking out and over their grotesque form. Nothing left except decay and mold.
“Where do you think?” he retorts, throwing a ghoul into the wall and kicking it so hard in the throat the bone and muscle collapse. I know from personal experience in my own fight with him just how flexible he is.
“Was it strapped to your ass?” I duck a swing from the next ghoul and then grab both sides of its head, ripping it off its body, tendon and bone snapping. I then use the severed head to bowl over another two. They just keep coming, like cockroaches. How many are down here? “It was, wasn’t it?”
“My inner thigh,” Nicolai replies. He slits the throat of a ghoul, then sinks the blade into the side of the neck of a second. A kick to the stomach of the first sends it reeling back into two more. He doesn’t wait to see the fruits of his labor, already moving on to another.
I snort at his answer. His inner thigh? I was thorough and checked his inner thighs; there wasn’t anything there. It has to have been right snug up there. I hadn’t looked that far because who the fuck keeps a blade that close to their prized jewels? No one with half a brain.
I slam a ghoul into the wall by the throat and gut it with my claws. It hasn’t hit the ground by the time I’ve moved on to the next. And the next. And the next. There’s no end to them. For every five we cut down, there are twelve more to take their place.
Sharp nails head right for the back of Nicolai’s head, and he’s too busy taking care of two in front of him that he doesn’t even notice.
A tight grip around the wrist is all it takes for me to rip its arm off.
Using its own hand, I slice it from navel to throat, opening it.
Stench pours from it, and it collapses to the ground without a sound.
Nicolai whips around, his large eyes surprised. There’s more red than bright blue in them now, like fighting changes them. I’ve never seen a vampyre react like that before. How is he different, able to control those changes that are a natural part of a vampyre’s growth? What the actual fuck?
A ghoul barrels into the side of him, and he switches focus at the same time one swipes for me.
Seems a waste to not use their own steel-like nails to kill a few more, so I do just that and then pin one to the wall, the nails buried between its eyes and into the stone behind it.
The decor choice fits right in this dreary place.
A heavy weight stumbles against me, and I turn, ready to rip the next ghoul to shreds for daring to touch me. I stop mid swing at the familiar face. “The hell are you doing? Attack them, not me.” Does that count as an attack?
Nicolai’s eyes move in and out of focus, and he splays a hand on my side in an uncharacteristic display of weakness. He uses me to push himself upright. “I’m—fine.”
“I didn’t ask if you were fine.” Don’t need to ask, I can fucking see that he’s not fine, and this entire situation is far from fine.
I can’t deal with this horde while looking after a vampyre that should be able to take them on single-handedly.
Not to mention, in any other situation, he’d be dead on the floor with the rest of them.
I don’t care about him or any of his kind.
I need him right now from necessity, not choice.
Keeping the vampyre weak is backfiring on me, and I could growl at the irony of it.
Nicolai shrugs off the hand I put on his elbow and goes back to taking each ghoul down.
He cuts them down with a brutal efficiency that’s still not what he’s truly capable of.
I fought him when he was at full strength not that long ago; unfortunately, I know the difference.
And that difference could get us killed right now.
We need to move. If we stay here, we’re both going to die and going down side by side with a vampyre isn’t in any of my plans. I’ll die killing them, not protecting one of them.
A ghoul slashes across Nicolai’s back, right through the ribbons of his corset. It opens up his back for prime targeting. The trickling blood from the new wounds entice the ghouls into a frenzy, and they all turn in sync, heading straight for him and ignoring me.
Nicolai stumbles before whirling around and plunging his hand right into the ghoul’s chest. He pulls out its blackened, seeping heart and squeezes. The ghoul crumples into a pile of bones. Nicolai drops the still-beating heart over them.
His steps after that are sluggish as though he used the last of his energy reserves on spite alone. He probably did, the idiot.