Prelude (Underworld Lucian Fanfiction)

59 - Chapter LIX: Our Lady of Blood

The Tilbury Underground

Twenty minutes later.

Lucian woke to the sound of water dripping above his head. Muted pain filling every corner of his wretched skull. Broken bones, shattered joints. Not the end of his shattered existence then. Instead a dull sense that he ought to be doing something. That he ought to be moving. His consciousness starting to dip and sway before gaining momentum...

...and then rising up with a roar of pain. His eyes wide and unseeing. Like the dead pulling itself from an unholy grave, wary of nothing but hunger and pain. Straining, blinking against the light, trying to see between the shadows. The ground absent beneath his feet. The length of his arms strung up to the ceiling, each wrist tied with thick rope, the strands smelling of faint but undeniable wolfsbane. Poisonous enough that most would prefer bondage to the turmoil of biting their way to freedom.

His first instinct to bite. Draw back his teeth. Tear through the veins of a wrist, a hand, a throat. His hunger suddenly quelled as he recognised a second, more obvious scent. One he'd nearly forgotten for all the years he'd spent hiding it. Already sensing what was wrong, that stiffness to his movements, the numbness of his forearm driven by pain and loss of blood. It was not just water dripping above his head, he realised. No this scent was fresher than that.

Sinew.

With an echoing growl, he snapped forward, raging against his wound, his nails grasping towards the rope. The last traces of his adrenaline stamped out by the butt of a knife crashing down upon his temple, like a bell tolling for the dead, its sound accompanied by a round of silver pressing into his back. Sizzling, driving weakness through his joints again.

He fought back a scream.

Counting...

His heart beating frantically against the burn, forcing himself to think on the number of adversaries. One striking him with the knife. A second catching him from behind. Eyes darting left...right, cracking his neck beyond his shoulder, yet seeing no one. Too much light.

Without warning, he felt the same knife forcing his jaw back. A dreadful stench pressed into his windpipe. A pitiful beast squealing in fear, petrified not only by the creature who held its tail, but the beast whose dignity it was meant to diminish. He lunged before they could retract the insult, a mixture of rancid sinew and fur suddenly grasped between his teeth before any of them could blink. The blood putrid to the taste, enough to make his throat recoil before they wrenched it away.

Smells. He could smell blood in every corner of the room, strong enough to pierce the scent of ash clouding his senses. He knew the smell of vampire blood. Just as surely as he knew the walls were stained with the blood of his own people. More than a dozen scents. Fresh. The smell of burnt flesh and urine telling him they had all died in fear.

The smells making him wonder if he was asleep. His immediate memories seeming strange and impossible...a dream that he was starting to doubt. Acid crippling his gut, his last meal starting to fester in his veins, calling up a second...deeper...memory, faster than a blood skittering up a wall. Eyes burnt out of their... He cringed suddenly, his wrists jerking on the rope. Desperately trying to shut it out again. Emptiness. He was emptiness...

...he was a void.

Alive. Here. Now. He was breathing faster. Shorter, desperate, the wound in his chest starting to sear. Every ounce of pain hinting at his present situation. Not just broken ribs. Punctured lung. It meant the stab-wound was still open, healed enough to keep him alive, but the burns still seething on the inside. No more than an hour since the stabbing.