Page 15 of The Vampire's Lament
Had the man fallen with me?
Long seconds ticked by while I lay still, feeling like my limbs were filled with cement. I couldn’t move, too heavy, my spinepulsing with pain. So, I waited, listening to the man hack his lungs up while the werewolf part of my blood applied healing and painkillers.
Aidan bless the cocktail of red stuff in my veins.
No. Don’t let Aidan bless anything.
“Caer?” I spoke, pushing myself to my knees.
My head bumped the ceiling, forcing me to hunch.
The elf deity didn’t answer.
“Where…” the man said, the rest of his words drowned out by that damn crackling.
Okay. Time to get out of here. I wasn’t about to get trapped underground. Me and confined spaces did not mix.
Where were we? In one of the old mine shafts beneath the city? Oreflame City used to be a huge mining city, though all the mines were closed now, thanks to the more efficient spots opened out in the southern wilds of the Human Domain.
Over the years, there’d been a few incidents of underground tunnels collapsing, creating sinkholes.
Lucky me to be caught in one.
I started to crawl through the darkness, drawing on my executioner training to stay calm. If I lost my head to panic, I’d be dead sooner than later.
I reached out with all my senses for hints of fresh air, for sounds, for any sign of an exit.
You’re not getting trapped down here,I reassured myself.
Damn right!
Sinkhole…
The word echoed in my head as an image of the mermaid drifted across my mind. Copper scales on her light brown face, her eyes bloodshot like she’d been crying. I’d met her after escaping the ice. She’d given me money for the tram back to my flat, mentioning a sinkhole incident.
Sinkhole…
I’d seen her face again when Silvanus brought me to the island.
Who was she? What did she have to do with this?
“What happened to me?” I said into the dark.
“There is something else in here with me. Hidden. It won’t show me what it is.”That’s what Caer had told me.
Goosebumps prickled across my skin. Something else? Another entity? Some nefarious fucker pulling at a different set of strings attached to the crystal dagger? I mean, the weapon liked to show up whenever it wanted, and even took out two vamps, easily bypassing the rules that only a stakeblade or sunlight were able to slay them.
But it always vanished around Silvanus with a scream in my head.
Yeah, made so much sense.
Swallowing a lump of fear, I crawled forward slowly. This vision would tell me, right? There were answers coming.
A seismic quake forced me backward, the ground dipping beneath me. Chunks of debris rained down on me from the splitting ceiling.
The man screamed, and so did I.
A blink, and I flashed forward to me falling, body bouncing on rocks, spilling out of a hole and landing in a chamber of glacial blue light.
