The Parisian Codex

37 - Oups! Alone with the Wrong Guys

Headlamps lit up the mine ceiling like air defense lights. Around me, several of my assailants were regaining consciousness. I could understand why, with three doses of holy water in his body, Zagan would have been unable to curse them or use magic to disable them. But I'd seen him fight: he could very well have killed them, even with his bare hands. Breaking a few vertebrae isn't that difficult.

Speaking of vertebrae... The knife-wielding lunatic hadn't succeeded in decapitating me, but he had severed my larynx. And if the amount of blood pouring into my lungs was anything to go by, he'd nicked my carotid artery.

Both my shoulders were dislocated, and my arms were as useful to me as suspenders to a pigeon. I rolled over as best I could and positioned myself on my side to take a look at the two guys who'd been standing behind me.

The first lay a yard away. His head was at an unlikely angle to his body. It must have been him that Zagan had kicked.

Ah, so when he wanted to, the demon was perfectly capable of breaking necks. But he hadn't bothered with the second guy ... who wasn't one.

A woman lay against the stone wall. She wore a black turtleneck sweater and pants of the same color. Her brown hair had escaped from its bun. A rifle lay beside her as if it had just slipped out of her hand. So it was to her that I owed the torture of liquid fire. A silver chain was looped over the collar of her sweater. The crucifix gleamed coldly on her chest—chest that rose at regular intervals. I didn't know what this gal did in a brotherhood, but she'd do.

I had less than two yards to go, but I was weak as a newborn kitten, and I had to go around the corpse with the broken neck. All the while enduring the torture of liquid fire in every nook and cranny of my body.

Damn!

I may not have been able to swear aloud, but I wasn't above doing so in the recesses of my mind. Flat on my stomach, I crawled like a worm until I reached the unconscious woman.

The collar of her sweater covered her neck, the crucifix made me nauseous, and she had scented herself with holy water.

None of this stopped me.

About halfway up the neck, the carotid artery splits into two thinner arteries. One runs behind the ear, the other just in front. That's the one I aimed for when I bit the woman at the angle of her jaw. The holy water coating her skin burned my lips, and my canines rasped along her mandible. But the warm blood ran over my tongue.

Knowing my larynx was nicked, I was aware that only part of what I swallowed would reach my stomach. All the more reason to drink as much as possible. It took me long minutes to empty the woman, but by the time I'd finished with her, the muscles and cartilage in my throat had already begun to repair themselves.

Unfortunately, some of my opponents were also regaining consciousness.

And I still couldn't move my hands.

Alone, I couldn't get my shoulders back in place. I had to eliminate my enemies before they were fit to fight again.

On the opposite side of the tunnel, more than ten yards from where I stood, a body stirred. A young blond guy whose boyish face was already covered in bruises. He grunted, opened his eyes, and his blue gaze fixed on me.

Crap.

I used the wall to prop myself up while the guy got up on all fours. Standing up, I couldn't trust my balance.

The guy looked a bit green.

I dashed towards him, and the motion of the run awakened the pain in my dislocated shoulders. The torture of liquid fire, however, had already receded.