The Darkness Beyond Ch. 03

Cian was starting to get sick of being in pain. It had happened entirely too often in the last twenty-four hours, and it was starting to piss him off. He inflicted pain, he didn't receive it. His entire body was throbbing and aching, and his vision was slow to return.

He tried to move. It didn't work well at first, but as the feeling to his limbs returned slowly, he made progress. His hands scraped across the concrete floor as he pulled them underneath his body, and at the same time, he felt something moving underneath his cloak.

He grabbed Hannah's wrist reflexively, but the girl was just as fast. She pulled away, slipping from his grasp, and took her weapon with her. He rolled over and lunged at her from his lying position, causing her to lash out with it. Cian felt more pain as the metal collided with his cheekbone. His vision faded as his head fell back and hit the concrete. He gasped as he tried not to faint again and stubbornly blinked his eyes until his vision returned.

"Hey," he said in a rather raspy voice, and the word was followed by a cough that shook his body and hurt his throat. "Truce, okay?" He managed to raise his head slightly in order to look at Hannah, who was huddled against a bare concrete wall, pointing the gun at him once again. She looked scared as hell. Cian lowered his head carefully back to the floor and coughed again.

"Look," he said, staring at the ceiling of the room they were in, which was also bare concrete disturbed by nothing but a naked light bulb distributing dim yellow light. "I think you are going to need me to get out of here." His knowledge of the place they were at was almost as limited as hers, but he could not let her find this out. If he let her get the impression that he was useless to her, she might think it safer for her to kill him. He really didn't like the look of things right now.

"I am?" Hannah asked, and when Cian raised his head again, he noticed that she was in mild shock - pale, dazed and shaking, her eyes unfocused. He sighed and snapped his fingers in her direction.

"Look at me," he ordered, "and take a few deep breaths. You need to snap out of it." She obeyed, and he was glad when he saw her lower the gun and click the safety back on. He was starting to feel better as well; his body was healing itself rapidly. When he tentatively sat up again, his head was spinning only slightly.

"Where are we?" Hannah asked timidly. She was brushing her long black hair out of her face and looking around with an expression of confusion and fear. He wasn't surprised, since she had no idea what was going on. He had drawn his conclusions by now, and he considered how much he should tell her, since this was the only card he could play at the moment.

"Somewhere in the Lost City, I would imagine." He didn't elaborate, but left her to puzzle over this cryptic bit of information while he carefully got to his feet and looked around. The room they were in was concrete on all six sides, and there were no visible doors or windows. Cian was slightly disturbed to notice that. The two of them, and the light bulb, were indeed the only things in the room not made of concrete.

He walked over to a wall at random, and started running his fingers along the concrete, trying to find ridges, bumps, or other telltale signs of a hidden door. Hannah watched him for a while with an expression of confusion on her face, before she seemed to notice the fact that she was doing it. He watched her blink twice, reminding him of an owl. She forced herself to her feet after a few seconds, then went to help him explore the walls of the room.

There didn't seem to be anything to find though. Cian started to grow frustrated as he finished with the third wall and still hadn't found anything that would help them. He stepped over to the wall Hannah was searching and was just about to stretch out his hands and help her when she removed her fingers from the wall hastily and stepped back.

"It's vibrating!"

"What?" he asked, surprised for a moment, before he went and touched the wall himself. Hannah was right. The concrete had started a deep vibration. Cian couldn't tell what caused it, and so he stepped back as well and eyed the wall with some suspicion.

"I need to tell you something," he said, resigned. "If we really are where I think we are - this place isn't exactly... normal."

As if those had been the magic words, the vibrations grew suddenly so strong he could see them, and he hastily retreated to the other side of the small room, pulling Hannah with him. This turned out to be a very good idea, because not a second later, something came bursting through the concrete.

The two of them were showered with small pieces of wall, and Cian turned his head away reflexively as he closed his eyes. Hannah wasn't quite as fast. She yelped in pain and touched one of her eyes with the fingers of one hand. Instead of worrying about her, Cian turned back towards the wall when the pelting of small pieces of concrete ended, to see what in the world had just broken through there.

The view was grotesque. The thing reminded him of a badger, only much bigger, and colored a little differently, mostly mud brown. Then there was the minor matter of the steel claws the animal -- if that's what it was -- possessed, and the large metal antlers that grew out of its forehead. Cian took another involuntary step back, his body now tense with anticipation, and felt the wall at his back. Hannah, by his right side, was giving the creature a wide-eyed stare. She had obviously reached the limit of extraordinary encounters she could take for one night.

"When I tell you," Cian instructed her quietly, hoping she would listen, "move slowly to your right, along the wall. Now!"

Hannah obeyed him blindly, inching away from him, while he tried to keep the creature's attention on himself by waving his arms around. He started moving to the left, and the creature followed his movement with its head, just like he wanted it to. Finally, when it had taken an tentative step in his direction, he turned his attention back to Hannah.

„Run," he advised her, and she scrambled to get past the badger-like animal and through the hole it had created. Cian jumped at the same time. The animal's antlers missed him by mere inches, since it had apparently decided at that very moment that it was tired of waiting. While it crashed into the wall and tore another large hole into the concrete, Cian caught up with Hannah by the first hole, pulling her along with him as they stumbled into the next room together. It turned out to be a long corridor with creaking floorboards. The two of them made their way through it at a fast pace, and when they had reached the door at the other side, Cian turned and promptly froze.

The hole that they had come through had closed.

There was nothing to prove there had ever been anything but solid concrete wall there. No marks showed the passing of the large creature that had attacked them. Still, he didn't think they were anywhere near safety yet.

"Move," he ordered Hannah and opened the door, following her through it. The room they were entering now was very much like the first one they had awakened in, with the addition of several large holes in the walls. Next to him, Hannah had had enough.

"You have a lot of explaining to do," she said weakly and sank to the floor. She looked completely exhausted, and Cian almost felt pity for her.

Almost.

"I'm not going to do it just now," he replied and crossed the room. He picked a hole at random and climbed through it, satisfied when he heard Hannah get up and follow him. The room he entered this way looked just like the last one, but standing in it, he could feel a light breeze on his skin. As Hannah entered through the hole behind him, he was already moving on, trying to find the path to the outside world.

Whatever that world looked like.

It took the crossing of a few more rooms to get there. Hannah was scrambling to follow him as he climbed through hole after hole, guided by the feeling of the air brushing past him. Finally, the current of air grew stronger, and Cian made his way through yet another hole just to freeze as he noticed that the far wall of the room he was entering simply didn't exist. Instead, the room opened to the view of an endless city of grey, tall, seemingly deserted buildings, interlaced by paved, empty streets. The sky was almost entirely dark grey, with the exception of the horizon, where something emitted a faint, reddish glow. There was no sun or moon, nor any stars visible.

"This is crazy," Hannah whispered behind him. He turned to see that she had sunk to the floor once again, completely overwhelmed by the view before her. Just as well. He needed some time without being distracted to figure out how to escape this place anyway.

Cian stepped forward, carefully peering over the edge where the floor seemed to suddenly stop existing. They were at least eight stories up, and there was no visible way down. When Cian turned, he noticed that the hole they had come in through had once again grown shut, leaving them no choice but to attempt the descent.

"Now that we have some time and a view, maybe you'd like to finally explain some things to me?" Hannah asked. She had taken out her weapon once more, pointing it at him.

Cian groaned when he saw it. "Oh, come on."

"This seems to be the only way to make you talk, you know," Hannah replied, not moving. Cian sighed and moved from his position, sitting down where he could have a reassuringly solid wall at his back. He really didn't fancy getting shot again.

"As I said, I assume that this is in fact the Lost City. I'm pretty certain actually, since we got here." He made a vague hand motion towards the city.

"And what is the Lost City? Where is it?" Hannah asked. Cian shrugged.

"Where, I can't really tell you. In an alternate dimension somewhere. But I know what it is, and you're not going to like it."

She only raised her eyebrows at his dramatic pause. Cian contemplated for a moment how to best phrase this bit of information, but then decided for the direct approach.

"This is where we originally came from," he explained. "The vampires. This dimension is... it used to be full of demonic creatures, and a few of them figured out how to conjure portals to Earth. That was a long time ago, and we're not sure what exactly happened, but..." He scratched his head. "You can see the place now. It's deserted, or at least it appears to be, except for some bizarre... things. It's dangerous here. That's why my kind doesn't call portals anymore, because we decided not to come back. It's not safe here even for us."

"And yet, we're suddenly here." Hannah bit her lip, obviously suppressing something. "How?"

Cian shrugged once more. "I can only speculate. I know none of the others called the portal, and we don't know of any other vampires left on earth. Only the nine of us. But maybe we're wrong. Or maybe..." He glanced up at her, not liking this new idea. "Maybe there's another way. Maybe it was you. You do have the essence after all. But I doubt that's true."

"Maybe you shouldn't..." Hannah began, but she was interrupted when suddenly, the entire building shook.

"What in the world?" Cian heard her ask, astonished, but by this time he was flat on his belly, peering over the edge.

Something was moving down there. He was up high enough that all he could see seemed like a blur of the air, but there was definitely something. He narrowed his eyes, trying to get a better look, but then something heavy suddenly landed on top of him.

He got the wind knocked out of him quite effectively. First he thought that it was Hannah who was assaulting him, but then he could hear her frightened scream, somewhere in the background. He twisted, and something cold grabbed hold of his arm.

His eyes widened when he could finally see his attacker. It appeared to be the shape of a person, but made of something that seemed like liquid glass, or smooth, hard gelatin. He could see the distorted walls of the room right through the thing.

It also appeared to be extremely strong. Cian wrestled with it, trying to free the arm it had pinned, but unable to do so. Finally, he heard a shot being fired, and witnessed a bullet going right through the creature's head just a split second later. It exited the see-through mass unharmed and unslowed, and vanished into the open air.

"Don't waste your bullets!" Cian yelled, and finally managed to free his wrist. He backhanded the creature, which had absolutely no effect. Cold, slim fingers wrapped themselves around his throat, choking him. He gasped, tried to twist away once more and finally managed, narrowly avoiding falling over the edge as he dragged himself away from the creature. When he glanced down, he suddenly felt sick to his stomach.

What he had thought looked like air distortions were in fact more of the eerie, glassy creatures. They had been on the street when he had last seen them, but now they were moving up the wall with astonishing speed. It wouldn't be long until they got up to where he was laying, and he couldn't even handle one of them.

He rolled away when he felt the cold hands touch him once more. The creature's grasp slipped, but it lunged again. Cian ducked, then thrust out his hands when the creature was in midair, pushing away the slippery, cold body. The creature was flung through the air, far away from him, towards the city. He wondered briefly if it could survive such a fall.

He felt a hand wrap itself around his ankle, and reflexively kicked out. A glass creature recoiled as he hit it, but then lunged forward again, and Cian stumbled. While he was still trying to escape the creature's grasp, a second one threw itself on top of him, and Cian wasn't able to stop it from also wrapping its arms around his throat.

More hands held him. He had no idea what had happened to Hannah, but sensed that she wouldn't be of too much help right about now. He tried desperately to escape his attackers, but there were too many hands, much too strong for him, and his vision started to blur as his lungs ached for air.

He couldn't see the creature on top of him any more, it was too see-through and his vision too faint. He heard a hissing noise, and thought it was him, struggling to breathe. Then, it was as if waves were splashing all over his body, as if he were being submerged. It was a rather pleasant sensation, and Cian stopped struggling as his consciousness finally gave way to nothingness.