Lair of Beasts [Book I in the Curse Of Blood Saga]

Discarded Prologue - Hanzel

🌟This is the discarded prologue. It adds no value to the story, but I was loathe to delete it completely, and so it sits here in the corner collecting dust. It may just become a short story one day? Who knows... So, in short, THIS IS NOT A PART OF THE FINISHED PRODUCT. I only left it here for a bit of extra 'were' action🌟

He was lost. 

He was loth to admit it, even to himself — for he was never wrong — but his predicament was not like to change, no matter that he willed it so.

It irked him all the more because he was beginning to feel wholly uneasy about his current situation, and that, above anything else, was unacceptable. He had always been the one to instill terror into the mightiest of hearts, but never the one to feel it's influence himself; yet here he stood, in the impenetrable darkness, like the prey he usually hunted — an ironic twist of fate to a man always bent on skullduggery.

Would that he could merely blame the darkness for his craven reaction, but the sound he had perceived earlier — that had so clotted his blood — had not been uttered by any creature, man or beast, that he could name. He had never heard its like before and wished now only to escape his confinement...ere the owner of that guttural, animalistic moan found him: blind and stinking of fear.

He had earlier pilfered a tallow candle from one of the wall sconces before he'd ventured into the tunnels, but that little flame had spluttered out nearly an hour ago, leaving him helpless and sightless. Carefully, he planted one foot in front of the other as he dragged the blunt fingers of his right hand along the rupestrine lichen and limestone of the perimeter wall — trying to trace his way back whence he had come as if his fingers would remember the route. This he did while waving his left arm out in front of him, lest he collide with some unforeseen barrier that, like as not, lay somewhere in the the inkiness ahead.

He was in a fell temper, propagated mostly by the fear he abhorred snaking into his gut, and thus so absorbed in his own mumbled nonsense that he did not hear the voices until he first descried the lamplight gathering in the darkness ahead. A propitious happenstance indeed, that he was in the exact tunnel as they, for there were only three silhouettes, one of which — he noted with deranged glee — was a woman's. They would be easily overcome, he thought, and it had been too long since he'd fed his fervid need to kill.

He retreated into one of the recesses he'd felt along the wall, pushing himself flush against the blocks at his back — like an apatetic spider; and waited with malicious anticipation for the girl, who seemed to be leading the way, to move within striking distance.

At length she came.

He jumped from his hiding place as she drew up beside him and blocked her path so that she slammed into him, his movements far too rapid for her to avoid the ambush; and she too distracted besides.

"Hello, Poppet," he snickered, crushing her to his chest.

As she struggled in his grasp, he deftly fended off the two lanky men that sought to defend her, one of whom reeked of piss. They were easily cowed and soon settled down behind the girl, staring at him warily from their crouched positions against the wall.

"Release me, you whoreson!" she seethed, though she was, without a doubt, terrified — of him? He hoped so.

What a surprising little gem to find in the pits of hell. Hanzel laughed, his fear forgotten, delighted by her unexpected vitriol. He decided then and there that he would sample her wares therewith and toss her aside before skinning her trembling cohorts.

Ahh, he thought, what a tasty turn of events!

He lunged at her breast with iron fingers and drove his muzzle into her shoulder, biting her there as was his usual modus operandi — for all whores loved a bit of rough play; this girl would be no different. Therefore, he was horrified when she, quite without warning, stuck him in his thigh viciously with a blade she'd suddenly pulled from her mantle.

"You little bitch!" Hanzel roared, dumbfounded by her daring.

The little slattern then tried to maneuver out of his way, but he caught her cape with furious fingers, intent on crushing her head with his bare hands and ravishing her broken body. He had, however, miscalculated the audacity of the lads at is back.

He had no sooner grabbed her hood and yanked it cruelly, half choking the wench, when one of the cowards behind him tore the blade from his thigh. As his blood spurted wickedly from his leg, Hanzel struck the boy with a powerful fist that laid him low and he might have bludgeoned the little sod further, but for the feral howl that suddenly echoed into the dank shaft from the direction the girl had come.

He stared keenly into the shadows beyond the light, oblivious to the girl who now dragged her limp comrade into the depths behind him. He could not — would not — take his eyes from the dimness that encroached on him from the tunnel ahead, as the sneaky little harpy carried her light in the opposite direction; it faded slowly into the dark at his back. He was just about to turn and grab her lamp form her when movement, at the edge of the lamp's glow, transfixed him instead.

The next instant he was on his back, no better than his victims, and screaming like a woman as massive fangs engulfed his head. He had caught no more than a blur of dark fur and glowing eyes before the light disappeared from the shaft completely.

But the beast, bizarrely, released his head, when it so easily might have killed him, and impaled its jagged teeth instead into his soft belly. In his panic, his flailing hand clamped desperately over the knife that the boy had dropped earlier. He plunged it frantically into the creatures shoulder, ichor spreading hotly over his shaking hand, but the thing seemed oblivious to the damaging blow and noisily feasted on — alternately licking and gnawing, as it ripped at his bowels and severed his spine...at least he thought the loud crack was the sound of his body snapping in twain.

It was a while yet before Hanzel died; paralyzed and horrified, he gasped into the pitch black cold, stunned by the realization that...he was being eaten alive.