Vengeance (The Captive #6)(22)
The eyes of the vampires across from him shone like rubies in the light playing over them. Their chapped and colorless lips skimmed back to reveal their fangs. They hissed excitedly when they spotted him standing on the bottom step. Pale hands wrapped around the bars of the cells holding them back; most of those hands had no nails attached to them. The nails on the ones who did still have them made him wince when they scraped against the bars.
Dried blood and torn skin hung from the end of some of the ragged fingers. It took him a minute to realize some of the scraping against the bars wasn’t only from fingernails. It was also due to the bones protruding from the tips of the shredded fingers. Some of them yanked at the bars, others sniffed the air like a dog trying to catch the scent. His scent.
Most of them no longer had eyebrows, and they were all in various stages of hair loss on their heads. Some still had almost all of their hair, others had bald patches showing through, and the rest had glistening, pale scalps.
He’d tried not to think about those creatures in The Barrens since they’d left there, but staring at these things across from him, he now recalled how their skin had been almost strangely translucent. The lack of a blood supply seemed to have drained them of the blood that had once been in their body. He kept expecting to see inside their skulls to their brains.
To the left of the two cells, he spotted another, smaller cage. The gleaming metal of the bars, and the sawdust on the floor let him know this cage had been hastily assembled after the others. He lifted the lantern higher to chase away the shadows lurking in the corners of the basement and obscuring the cage. Everything within him revolted at the sight that greeted him.
A silent scream resonated in his head as he stared at the small, lifeless bodies sprawled across the bottom of the cage. Children, dozens of them.
He didn’t move closer to the bodies; he had no desire to see any more of them, or to learn how they had died. It hadn’t been by natural causes if they’d been locked away in this basement. He assumed their fragile, young bodies hadn’t been able to withstand the starvation, but he had no intention of confirming it.
He almost turned away and walked back upstairs, but his conscience tugged at him. These were not the vampires of The Barrens; they hadn’t been put here because they’d been sentenced for a crime. If they’d been put here as a form of punishment, he couldn’t imagine what would have warranted this type of imprisonment and abandonment. These were men, women, and children who had been locked away for reasons he couldn’t begin to fathom.
He couldn’t leave them here like this to suffer and starve. With no food supply, they would become withered, dry husks like the ones the old king had kept in his twisted trophy room. He couldn’t find the keys and set them free; they would attack and drain him if he did. There was no saving them, not anymore.
Walking to the first cell, he pulled the bow and arrows from his back. He set the quiver by his feet and took a steadying, unnecessary breath before tugging an arrow free. He’d felt as cold as ice these past few months, as deadened as The Barrens, but he couldn’t stop the sorrow and regret churning within his chest as he took aim at the heart of the vampire closest to him.
It threw itself more vehemently against the bars as its hands swung viciously at him. The nubby bones sticking out from its fingers swung repeatedly at him, a mindless killing machine that could never again see the light of day.
He released the arrow. The twang of the string resonated in the dank room beneath the prison before it hit the creature with a dull thud. The force of the arrow sent it reeling backward. Silence descended as the vampire hit the ground; its hands clawed at the arrow still protruding from his flesh. The others stared at him for a moment, and then like sharks smelling blood, they pounced upon the body of their fallen cellmate.
He didn’t know why they hadn’t turned on each other to begin with. Perhaps it was some kind of agreement not to destroy their own kind, or perhaps it hadn’t occurred to them in their degenerating state. Now the scent of blood broke any kind of agreement they may have had and aroused their primitive instincts. They tore and clawed at the dead vamp like a pride of lions on a downed antelope.
Sickness twisted in his stomach, but he raised the bow and fired a new arrow at another vampire and then another and another. When he started to run low on arrows, he tugged his crossbow free from his waist. He loaded in the first bolt and fired it at the one standing against the bars.
There were four twisted and starving vamps still standing in the second cell and three in the first when he ran out of arrows and bolts. His arms shook when he lowered the crossbow and tied it to his waist. He didn’t look over the carnage he’d created. He knew what blood and death looked like; he’d dealt with it his entire life. Wiping the sweat from his brow, he tried to block out the slurping, wrenching sounds of the feast going on within those cells as he turned back to the stairs.
With a heavy heart, he climbed the steps. Throwing his bow onto his back again, he began to search through the desks for keys. He discovered them hanging on the wall, behind a jacket draped over a coat stand. Returning to the cellar, the sounds of the feeding frenzy going on washed back over him and caused him to take a step back. The hideous crunch of cartilage and bone, as their fangs and hands tore at the bodies like they were nothing more than a piece of chicken, would haunt him for the rest of his life.
Were they eating the flesh too? He tried not to look closer, but his eyes were drawn to the bone now emerging through the shrinking carcasses. He’d made the right choice in putting these vampires down, he knew, but he couldn’t shake the sickness in his belly. Pulling two stakes from the holsters strapped to his waist, he stepped up to the bars. They didn’t look up from their feast when he unlocked the door and stepped into the cell with the three vamps.