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Chapter 32 - Sink your teeth into it

"Fucking hell Charlotte. Don't tell me we're in your territory." says Lawrence.

"Not quite nuwisha. Were you following us?" says the female who I'm assuming is Charlotte.

"No, we came to look into a theft of spirit, this is the address I got from that file." he responds.

"Oh yes, I remember. Well you're lucky, there's no mages left alive in there, so investigate to your heart's content." she says.

Lawrence frowns and looks very worried at this point.

"Good luck. I'm going to find dinner." she says.

Then something out of a nightmare happened. Her entire body started to break down, each part of her becoming eight legged creatures that my brain in some part registers as spiders, but my entire body promptly screams and it comes out of my mouth.

I'm on autopilot as I tear off down the street, my mind focused on one thing 'escape'. Everything rushes past as I pound down the road, luckily there was nothing and no-one in my way as I race down the road. I was struggling to get a grip with what I'd seen and why I was running. I'd seen worse in my life, but something right there just made the very core of my being need to run like hell.

Shifting my thoughts for those few seconds was all it took for my foot to catch something and I went ploughing forward, rolling just about with the moment and slamming into a wall shoulder first. My vision swam in streamers of colour and I felt the coffee making a threatening bid for freedom. I couldn't bring myself to my feet, my hand kept sliding down the wall.

The damn thing must have been rendered or something cos pain lanced up my arm, it felt like my hand had been burnt or ripped open. Looking at the blood dripping from my palm brings me back into focus, still not totally sure why I was running. There's the sound of footsteps near me and I look up into Lawrence's concerned face.

"Fuck. So that's what happens when delirium kicks in... Are you alright?" He crouches down beside me.

"The hell is delirium?" I scowl and rub my hand against my jeans, the sharp pain bringing me back into my own mind.

"It's what happens to people who aren't kinfolk, or generally supernatural when they see a werecreature shift form. It's blind panic really. A safety mechanism if you will." he says.

"I don't feel all that fucking safe. Will this be fucking permanent?" I grumble.

"Only if we don't get your spirit back." He stands up and sighs. "Come on, we need to get back before those two get in trouble."

My heart rate suddenly goes through the roof again, there's only Lawrence here, where's Rain?! I start running back the way I came and Lawrence passes me and runs ahead.

I get there and see Lawrence jump onto a billiard and then clears the fence with a leap and flip over the top. Rain and Rin are nowhere to be seen, this is not good! I hit the fence intending to climb over and feel it give below me. A glance down and it's been cut somehow, not that I care right now as that's a faster way in. Dropping down I shove it up and roll under and head towards the entrance, seeing Lawrence diving in the door ahead of me. He's far too fast for me to keep up, but I have to try to keep up!

Rather than bother with subtlety I smash open the doors with my shoulder and use the momentum to keep moving down the corridor. A foot is going around the corner to the right as I get into the place and I try to run down the corridor, but the place is full of debris. There's doors on the floor, crates and other things sprawled around and I'm forced to slow down just so I don't impale myself on something.

I manage to pick my way through and around the corner and there's more than just debris now. The walls are a concrete with the lower half a sort of tiled mosaic along the walls and floor, but where it hasn't been damaged by something, there are bodies. I don't have to get as close as some people might to realise what's happened to them. Their skin is all wrinkled up and taught against their bones and muscles. Eyes sunken into their sockets and mouths open in silent screams of death. The blood has been drained from them, every last drop.

I'd seen vampires do this to mortals, drink them to the point of death and make a game of it. They would group together, feed upon the mortal and see who would risk it the longest. Taking the last drop would bring death to the feeding vampire, but those who would risk it the longest would be seen as the bravest. At least, that's what the stupid young ones would think. The foolish one who challenged Marcel to the contest, had put his own arrogance ahead of himself and all it took was for Marcel to meet the other vampire's eyes and bid him to keep feeding, that was that problem gone.

Shaking my head to shift the memory of that, I look around for signs of the other three. The corridor splinter off again at the end, but there's two rooms halfway down this corridor. One of the doors appears to be jammed up, the other door is laying on the floor of the corridor. Running blindly into whatever is down this corridor seems a bad idea and right now I'm the most vulnerable out of us all. Time to actually watch out for my own safety.

Treading much lighter down the corridor, I peer around the door frame. More dead bodies. But there's something about them all that's now starting to catch my attention. They were trying to run from something. There's parts of clothing torn on bits of the debris around the corridor and these rooms all look in major disrepair, not like they were actually being used for anything. So they must have tried to come through these rooms to escape whatever the hell it was trying to get them. Though.... It wouldn't surprise me if it was the spiders.

Whatever it was. They didn't escape it.

The other frustrating part now is that I can't figure out where the others have gone. A building like this would normally be perfect for tracking someone through the dust, especially if they were moving quickly. But of course, this lot trying to escape whatever the hell they were trying to escape, has kicked up most of the dust and picking up any tracks is more than a little difficult. Time to use my head a little and pray for a bit of luck.

I look down both corridors and see that the one to my left has more bodies than the one to my right. If that's the case, they were probably trying to stream out from that direction, so, looks like I should start that way. Failing that, I might be able to find something left behind by these guys that might be able to help out. Providing it's not something that'll blow my face off.

God I hate mages sometimes.

At the end of this corridor though, there appears to be a staircase heading down. Strangely there's only one body on here, but it's just like all the others. This time I notice there's two holes in the neck, just like vampire fangs. If it was vampires, then I've never seen powers like these. I'm desperately hoping that it isn't vampires. This world does not need something like that in it.

Taking a breath, I head down the staircase. The solid concrete steps muffling any sound I might make. It's then I realise that I can't hear any sounds, not even the sound of running that I should have heard Lawrence making. I let out long and soft breath and the sound carries back to my ears. That's a good and a bad thing. There's no noise dampening spells or stuff going off, but that also means that Lawrence is either not running, or didn't go this way. Or the bastard is a damn sight more stealthy than I give him credit for.

Either way, I need to keep being careful. One foot in front of the other, trying to avoid the corpses and down the stairway until it curls around back on itself and leads deeper. About 4 more flights of steps deeper it would appear. There's more bodies here at the bottom piled in between a pair of double metal like doors. Some not so drained of blood as the others, but still with the fang marks in multiple places. I manage to pick my way over them and peer in between the jammed open doors.

The other side is a very different set up to where I just came in from. I can see a large room with very pristine surfaces in neat rows, several flat dark surfaced areas with keyboards below protruding from atop the surfaces. It looks like the room hasn't got anyone else in it at least, so I slowly creep inside.

This place reminds me of a futuristic version of my old school chemistry lab, although I can see computer keyboards, I don't see any monitors. Though, the flat black surfaces held upright by something plastic looking.... Maybe they're advanced versions of monitors? Urgh. This world's technology is going to take one hell of a getting used to. It's bad enough that I wasn't exactly hands on with all of the technology in my own world.

Ah, another set of doors around the corner of the room, brilliant. That means I haven't hit the dead end yet, but on top of that I haven't found anything that would suggest something more than just your orthodox research. Though there's yet another body propping open this door, I wasn't particularly worried as I came in, but another thought dawns on me that there doesn't appear to be alarms going off. Here's hoping I don't set any off myself, unless they're silent alarms, in which case my time here might be more limited than I can guess. Time to step it up a little or I'm never going to find the others.

Pressing on through the next room which seems to be full of canisters of varying items and labels that I just don't get. There's two doors open here though, again there's corpses wedging them open. It definitely looks like no one got out alive. Whomever did all of this had no mercy or intention of letting them all live. The idea of it being anything other than vampires is rapidly dwindling. I've never known anything else be able or have the heartless nature to do something like this. Cruelty I've seen, dangerous and vicious too, but a cold calculated massacre wasn't anything I'd seen outside of the vampires.

Biting my bottom lip, I head for the left hand door and frown. This room is full of upright mostly metal tubes apart from long glass panels on the front, stretching from floor to ceiling and the first 4 are full of a bubbling liquid or if it wasn't for where I actually was, I'd have said water. They were certainly wide as well, in fact, I'm sure I've seen this in a sci-fi flick. They had creatures growing in them. You don't suppose...?

A shudder ripples up my spine and I wince, do I really want to see what might have grown in these things? Oh shit, there's a few more around the corner here. Ahhh bollocks, I can see something in one of them. I don't want to look, I don't want to look, I don't want to look, WHY AM I LOOKING?!

I gulp and take another step to the side and see inside the glass appears to be a fairly lithe looking male, naked and hooked up to what appeared to be a breathing mask. However looking at his face, it looks familiar... I scowl and lean in closer...

"SHIT Sparky!"

Oh my god, it's the werewolf kid who fed me. Well, young lad. Oh who gives a fuck, what the hell is he doing in there? Dammit, how do I get him out of there? It's not like there's a fucking button clearly marked on... This... I could almost kick someone one of these days. Right in front of me is a big ass button with a notice above it saying 'Emergency Release'. The only catch is literally a locked catch over the damn thing.

Please lady luck, hold out for me or at least him! Looking around, my eyes fall on the nearest body and I begin searching through her pockets. Nothing there, dammit! I skitter to the next corpse and start patting it down.

Again, nothing.

Shit! Where the hell could they be? Unless...? Maybe these are the mooks and the higher ranking guy got further out?

I dive back through the door and look at the corpses in there, starting with the one furthest away from me. I flip him over and a jingle sparks a bolt of hope. There on his belt is a clip that's got a wire leading into one of his pockets! Yanking it out and it has a bunch of keys! Oh please let this have the right key on it.

Running back into the room, I get to the tube and start fumbling through the keys, trying each one in turn until lady luck smiles once more on me and the catch pops open. I hit the button and there's a whooshing flush sound as the water starts to drain from the tube. The front glass pops and more water floods out the edges before saturating the floor as I tear it open and grab him out of it.

He weighs fuck all and that terrifies me as I rip the mask from his face and throw it to one side. My fingers against his neck, there's a firm pulse at least.

"Sparky, SPARKY! Wake up!" I shake him firmly and am rewarded with a groan. "Come on Sparky, wake up, I need you to wake up!" another shake and a slightly louder groan.

"I'll apologise later for this hun." and I slap him firmly across the face.

His eyelids flutter and he starts to wake up.

"Oww..... Alex! Thank Luna!" his arms immediately wrap around me and hug tight. "I didn't think I'd see you or any of the pack again!"

"It's okay Sparky, it's okay. Listen, you need to get some trousers on from one of the cadavers around here and we need to get moving. There's more going off here than I know and honestly want to be involved in." I gently hug him back, then firmly push him towards the nearest corpse and pray the trousers fit.

He nods and quickly pulls off the trousers from this one, sliding them on, then stealing a belt from another and a jacket from one of the female corpses.

"We'll talk later, for now I need you to stay with me because I can't shift." I say.

"Fuck, we're in the same boat then, I'm tapped out. That tube drained all my spirit energy and I can't shift either." he winces.

Oh hells bells, how'd they manage to capture him? Were they just using him to drain him of his spirit energy? Oh for fuck sakes, this place is bringing up more and more fucking questions. I certainly hope that some of Sparky's luck rubs off on me some more and my spirit is here because it's starting to get further and further down a bloody big rabbit hole.

"Umm Alex?" says Sparky.

"Ya?" I say, poking my head around the other door in the previous room.

Beyond is another room similar to the one we just left, only this time there's another door on the other side of it. Thankfully this time, the tubes are all empty.

"Just in case something happens, I need to let you know. We've got a traitor in the pack." he says.

That stops me dead. Of all the fucking things, now we have a rat to take care of when we head back.

"Okay. Who and how do you know and what proof do you have?" I glance back at him.

"It's Vadir, the other competitor for the position of head Philadox. He's been feeding the mages the werewolves that don't quite fit the bill or wouldn't be missed. Guessing from what they did to me, they drain them of their spirit energy then chuck whatever is left. He's stepped up his game ever since you started getting friendly with Soothing."

A very human growl comes from my throat as that news makes me feel monumentally pissed. How dare some fucker try to usurp power like that! Fuck this shit, I'm getting my spirit back and I'm gonna paint him across the walls.

"So what you're saying is, you're the proof?" I grunt.

"Basically. You think I'd wanna be here?" he snorts.

Urgh. Right, need to focus, one problem at a time. I still need to get my spirit back, if it's here and on top of that we need to get out of here before reinforcements turn up.

"Look, we'll talk more later, right now I need to find..."

My sentence is cut off by the sounds of something giant and metallic crashing against something else metallic. Coming from further down the corridor we're both facing. I look at Sparky and then my head snaps back as I hear Rin's voice shout.

"RAIN! LOOK OUT!"

I don't give Sparky another look as I'm already running full tilt down the corridor.