Dawn of Darkness (Daeva, #1) (13 page)

"Yes,
Sir." The radio cut off.

"What do
you think the vampire meant about my power?" I asked.

"Nothing.
He was probably lying to confuse you."

"But you
said his ability felt exactly like mine. How is that even
possible?"

"I'm sure
it's just a coincidence." Ash waved his hand, dismissing
it.

"But–"
Static from the radio interrupted me. There were gunshots, followed
by screaming.

"We've
made contact with the Renfields," said Lucas. "They're rushing the
entrance. I'm guessing they sensed their master's
death."

"How
many?" Ash asked.

"Eight."
More shots. "Nine."

I looked
around the room we were stood in. There was only one other exit. A
wide flight of stairs led even further underground. I turned my
flashlight on to get a better look. Another corridor.

"I'm
still picking up two or three signals near your
location."

"There's
another level below us," I said. Ash acknowledged this with a quick
nod.

"You guys
start sweeping this floor. Mik and I will check out the lower
level."

The air
seemed to grow colder as we went down the stairs. I could feel my
heart speeding up, a sense of foreboding bearing down on me. The
corridor opened out in front of us. Ash pointed me in one direction
and he went in the other. There was another dripping sound, similar
to the one I heard at the entrance. Drip. I told myself it was
probably just water from above dripping through a leak in the
ceiling, and tried to ignore it. Drip, drip.

A quick
scan with my light revealed three large, metal sliding doors on my
side. I went to the first and pulled at the handle. It didn't
budge. I pulled harder and it groaned and shrieked, stiff from lack
of use. It finally opened with a loud clang. The room housed what
appeared to be an old, rusty generator, its pipes running up
through the cracked ceiling. Water trickled down one of the pipes,
dripping to form a small puddle on the floor below. Drip, drip,
drip.

As my
flashlight passed over the puddle, I spotted a black boot. I
recognised it as one of our standard issue footwear. The leg
attached to it disappeared behind the generator, clothed in the
same attire as I was. I reached the corner, searching with my light
for his face. At first, my mind refused to accept what it saw. Red.
White. Black. I stared at it, unblinking, trying to make sense of
the image. Muscle. Bone. No skin. There was no skin. Where the nose
should have been was only a bloody arch of bone and sinew. Teeth
exposed, stained with blood, where there should have been lips.
Bloodshot eyes, wide with terror, stared back at me, with no
eyelids to shield them from the horror. Instead of hair there was
only glistening bone, spattered red. Where the ears once were, only
two holes remained.

It became
hard to breathe. My windpipe started to close up on me. Choking. I
turned away to regain my breath. It took a minute before I could
work up the courage to turn back around. The tormented soul lay
there, unmoving, his eyes seemingly locked onto me. His jacket was
torn open, revealing the blood-soaked flesh beneath. From his neck
up the skin had been flayed. No, it had been torn off. There were
patches of bone where the muscle had come away with the skin. The
neck was a bloody mess, like an animal had taken a chunk out of
it.

I
couldn't bear to look at it anymore, and so I left the room as
quickly as I could, and reached up to activate the radio. "Ash,
you're gonna wanna see this." I turned to look in his direction and
could see his flashlight emerging from one of the rooms on his
side.

"What did
you find?" he asked.

"One of
the Fifth Covenant. He's dead and it's not pretty." Understatement
of the century right there.

When Ash
reached me he put a hand on my shoulder and gave a quick squeeze. I
pointed him in the direction of the body. He walked up to it, and
for a few seconds his entire body went stiff. He stared right at
it, and then bolted out of the room in a flash, doubled over and
coughing.

"Jesus
Christ! You could have warned me," he said.

"I told
you it wasn't pretty."

Ash
glared at me. "If that's your idea of 'not pretty', then I'd hate
to see what you think counts as horrifying." He took a deep breath
and stood up to report the details to the rest of the
group.

While Ash
was occupied on the radio, I decided to check out the second door.
Unlike the first, it opened with ease. Inside was a bunch of
broken, rotted wooden boxes. Whatever was stored in them was long
gone. Behind the boxes I found two more sets of legs. I took a deep
breath through my mouth, and shone my light towards their heads. I
turned away quickly.

"I've got
another two members of the Fifth Covenant here, same condition as
the other," I reported. "Moving on to the last room
now."

The last
door was bolted shut. I pulled at the bolt and slid the door open.
In the middle of the empty room lay the last body. Unlike the
others his face was still intact, save for a gash down one side,
the blood already dried. I let out a sigh of relief and kneeled
down next to him. His chest was moving.

"We've
got a survivor," I said. His eyes flew open. A hand grabbed at me,
attempting to pull me to the floor. I pulled away, losing my
balance and ended up on my backside. The survivor crouched, ready
to strike when I clicked the safety off my gun – a sound I'm sure
he was all too familiar with.

"You're
not one of them," he said.

"Mikhail
Hart. Third Sunreavers." I stood and dusted myself off before
offering him a hand. He took it and pulled himself to his
feet.

"Thanks.
I'm Liam Duntz. Fifth Covenant. Did you find the rest of my
men?"

Even
knowing that he couldn't see my face clearly, with the flashlight
pointing straight at him, I had to look away. How was I supposed to
tell a man his four comrades were dead? Especially given the
mutilations that had occurred to three of them. My silence spoke
louder than any words could have.

"It's
okay," he said. "You don't have to say it. I guess I kinda already
knew."

"Are you
hurt?" Ash asked from the doorway.

"No."

"Okay,
come with me. We'll get you escorted out of here."

Liam
nodded and let himself be led to the room at the top of the stairs.
He paused in front of the body, then fell to his knees, howling and
bellowing. From the screams, I managed to deduce that the man whose
neck had been snapped was called Xander. Liam seemed so calm about
their deaths at first, I thought. I guessed there was a difference
between coming to the conclusion your friends are dead, and
actually seeing it first-hand. Seeing the body adds a certain
finality to the whole thing. Once you see it for yourself, there is
no more denying it. No more hope.

Ash
instructed the others to meet up with us, so we could get to work
on hauling the bodies out. Lucas arrived first, and after some
gentle coaxing, was able to lead Liam back out of the bunker. The
worst was yet to come for him. I wondered if he would even
recognise the rest of his squad with their facial features removed.
It was bad enough to see a stranger end up like that.

Katiya
and Brad joined us not long after. There were four of us, and four
bodies to be carried out. To my dismay, and I'm sure Ash and Brad
weren't happy about this either, Katiya took the lightest of the
bodies, which happened to be Xander. Brad was able to carry one of
the bodies easily over his shoulders, paying special attention to
make sure the head was behind him, and not dangling in front where
his flashlight would illuminate the grotesque face. Ash had a
little more trouble with his body, but finally managed by draping
its arms over his shoulders and leaving the feet to trail along
behind.

I, on the
other hand, was smaller than the body I would be carrying. The body
was still limp, so I tried lifting it over my shoulder at first,
but found it to be too off-balancing. I eventually settled on
pulling it along by the hands, with the heels dragging along the
floor. When I reached the final corner at the bottom of the ramp,
my corpse snagged on something. I sighed, dropped the hands, and
was about to search for the problem when something took hold of me.
It grabbed at my ankle, pulling it out from under me. I landed on
my back, stunned.

There was
a scream not far away, and I felt something moving at my feet. The
corpse was alive, or undead I should say. I went for my handgun,
only to find it had been knocked out of reach when I fell. The
corpse continued to climb over me and was eyeing my neck. Thanks to
the absence of its lips, I saw the fangs starting to slide out from
the gums. I grasped at one of my knives and shoved it into the
underside of the corpse's jaw. It let out a gargled scream, rearing
its head into the air as it tried to remove the knife. There was a
bang, and something thick and wet splattered across my face. The
corpse collapsed on top of me. Our faces met. I panicked and threw
the body to one side, before scooting over to the wall as far away
from the monster as possible.

"You
okay?" Brad asked.

"I'll
live," I replied, scraping away some of the coagulated blood and
tiny chunks of flesh from my face. Disgusting.

I looked
up towards the entrance where the rest of the squad was standing.
Ash was clutching at his shoulder, gritting his teeth. The others
seemed unscathed. I retrieved my knife and Brad offered to carry my
body the rest of the way. I followed behind, the corpse staring
defiantly back at me.

"Is it
bad?" I asked Ash. He lifted his hand enough for me to see. There
was a fair amount of blood, and two large, ragged holes where the
fangs had torn into his skin.

"Just a
flesh wound," he said. "Stings like a bitch though."

Sergeant
Locke jumped down into the bunker. He went to Ash first. "Let's
have a look at it." He pulled out a small flashlight and examined
the wound. "We've got a first aid kit in the Wisent. We'll get the
wound cleaned up and dressed, but you're to report to the infirmary
as soon as we arrive home. You're probably gonna need a few
stitches. Understood?"

"Yes,
Sir." Ash saluted with his left hand. I could have sworn he was
smiling.

"What are
you so happy about?" I asked.

"This
could be my first battle scar," he said. "I think it'll add
character."

"Idiot."
I didn't want him to be scarred. Every scar would be a reminder of
a time when he had been hurt. They would be reminders of his
mortality. It was minor this time, but the next time he might not
be so lucky.

Ash
raised an eyebrow at me, but said nothing. With a hand from Brad
and Sergeant Locke, he was able to climb out of the bunker, leaving
the rest of us to deal with the bodies. Getting them into the
Wisent without them going up in flames from the sunlight was going
to be a pain.

Lucas
jumped out of the bunker to find something to cover the bodies
with. He returned with some blankets, meant for warming soldiers
who had been out in the cold for too long. We managed to wrap them
up individually, and Brad passed them out to the rest of us. There
was nowhere else to put them, so we placed them on the floor of the
Wisent. I was not happy about the thought of sharing the journey
home, in an enclosed space, with four corpses. But at least their
faces were covered, and the deaths were recent enough that there
wasn't much of a smell.

Liam was
asleep, strapped into one of the seats. He had had to be sedated
using some of the emergency medical supplies, Lucas told me. Ash
was sat outside on a small rock. His armoured vest had been removed
and the thermals torn, exposing the wound completely. I could see
his jaw clenched, his hands gripping the edge of the rock as
Sergeant Locke disinfected the bite with a hip flask of whiskey.
The blood was wiped away, and a temporary bandage placed over
it.

With
Ash's wound dressed and everything packed up, we started back home.
Most of the journey was in silence. Ash spent much of his time
wincing as the strap of his seatbelt rubbed against his shoulder. I
tried as hard as I could to ignore the bodies lying at our feet. My
mind flashed back to the sight of those skinless faces. I tried to
shake off the images, but being so close to the bodies with nothing
to occupy my mind wasn't helping.

That
drive was possibly the longest two hours of my life.

Ash went
straight to the infirmary upon our arrival, while the rest of us
changed out of our gear. Looking in the mirror, I noticed my face
was still spattered with dried blood. I scrubbed it as clean as I
could get, without scouring off my own skin. Before I left the
locker room, I grabbed a plastic bag and put Ash's clothes in
it.

Katiya
and I went over to the infirmary to check on him. The nurse was
finishing his stitches. She wound a bandage around him, explaining
the things he shouldn't do for the next few days, and telling him
to come for a check-up the next day. Given our increased rate of
healing, which varied from Daeva to Daeva, he would be healed in a
couple of days.