The Desire of a Hybrid

Chapter 22- The Tunnel

My feet landed sharp and heavy on a slab of brutal concrete, but I barely had time to register my surroundings before Spence was jumping down himself. I dodged out of the way and grabbed the trap door, swinging it shut and locking it with a sliding metal bolt. 

The tunnel suddenly became immersed in an impenetrable darkness that blocked out any natural light from the outside. Beside me I heard Spence fumbling around in the shadows for something, but I was concentrated more on the trap door above. 

"Will that latch thing hold? Shouldn't we get moving?" I asked Spence, my strong desire to escape presenting itself most intensely in my nervous, rushed voice. I was not suicidal and I didn't want to be stuck between the choice of being utterly defenceless or revealing my supernatural powers to the L.A mafia. It would mean I'd have to kill my friend...or be killed. 

"The door is dead-bolted. The only way they'll get in is with some kind of bomb," he replied, standing up as he turned on a torch that came out of nowhere, lighting the way forward to show a narrow passage which barely had enough space for us to walk through. "I've got some useful supplies including a medical pack if you want to take that bullet out of your shoulder. We hid some down here just in case something like this happened." 

"I'm fine. Let's keep moving," I wanted to get out of here and get some answers from someone who actually knew what was going on. I had a pretty high pain tolerance anyway thanks to the demon in me. 

Spence shrugged and he started to walk in front of me, leading the way with his simple but effective source of light. 

We continued down the tunnel in complete silence for about ten minutes, striding quickly down the corridors as the shock from what had just happened moments ago began to wear off. Spence suddenly stopped in front of me and I bumped into his back, my nose connecting with his head. 

"Why'd you stop?" I frowned, feeling worried as he sunk down to the ground and sat up against the wall in the narrow tunnel that was our only escape. Was he injured? Badly? 

"My friends...they're all dead." 

Oh. "You don't know that. Louie and them lot are smart enough to survive anything," I said, sinking down next to him as I realised he needed time to talk through what he had just seen. There was the likely possibility that the majority of the people he had lived with for years were dead, and I wasn't going to stop him from grieving. He had just lost so much. 

Spence turned his head to look at me, his face bathed in torch light that outlined the stress and pain he was suddenly experiencing after the loss of adrenaline. His brown eyes were dark with sorrow and I couldn't help but see the true reality of his life through those glassy orbs: Spence was only twenty three, but he had lost so much already. His father walked out on him, his fiancee left him and drugs destroyed his brain so much that he almost had no choice but to join the mafia, his criminal and academic record stopping him from going anywhere else. Spence had a sad story and I couldn't help but feel sympathetic. Sometimes people who society recognised as bad criminals were actually good men with scarred hearts and shattered dreams. 

"Maybe," he said, avoiding any eye contact. "But I didn't even try to save them...we just ran." 

"There was nothing we could have done. You saw how difficult it was for us to take out five of those men, let alone the thirty they were dealing with," I reassured him with a determined vigour. "The best thing we can do is get to another base, who can then send some men to look for any survivors." 

Spence didn't say anything and we sat for a while, in complete silence, as he calmly dealt with his fear and his grief. I allowed my mind to stray once again into the mystical thoughts of my sub-conscious, streaming together to form some sort of toxic chain: Mrs Darcy Robbins, mafia, bullets, masked men, dead bodies, lifeless green eyes, Carmen...