The Dragon's Blood (Part 50)
During which Lorelei Price does some wondering...
50
They raced into the darkness, a few of them at first, the five or so who'd survived in that train before Stefan Blackmoon had used his sword from hell on the vampires in there. Others joined them, those who'd snuck away from other cars and rushed out after the blue and red beacon that this stranger waved over his head. There were New Yorkers from all walks of life. Thugboy was there. Next to him was a mother and her two kids, scared and frightened but running for their lives silently nonetheless with not even a peep of protest from the little ones. A trio of business people rushed up from behind and went into cadence with them, the three impeccably groomed, all decked out in their generic black stockbroker suits now rumpled and bloodied, high class Armani ruined and brought down to dwell amongst the mortals.
The mortals and their immortal monsters.
Price followed closely behind the man with the otherworldly katana, her gun out and ready, her bullets of silver finding themselves into more than a few Vamps that slunk out of the darkness. She didn't bother aiming for any vitals, just the bullet piercing the flesh near anything of any importance was enough to finish any of these things. It worked for Werewolves and it worked for Vampires as did quite a few other things from the movies. Now if only they could find a river of running water, they'd be fine and dandy.
None spoke as they left the dim lights of the train behind them and rushed through the darkness. It was as if to speak would bring the things in the shadows around into the light cast by Blackmoon's sword. No one questioned their strange benefactor, they just followed, either grateful to even be alive or stunned into that silence by the shock of what they'd just seen.
Price knew what they were going through well. Your mind did the most odd things to you when you encountered something that didn't belong. Some folks blacked it out completely, generally the ones with those kooky alien abduction stories, replacing the memory with something entirely different. They remembered only the buildup, the UFO or the arrival of something of high weirdness. They recalled the overwhelming feeling of dread during that time, a terror that was more palpable than any they'd ever felt before.
Those were the lucky ones, there were others that weren't so. Others went mad, remembering quite well what they'd seen but becoming obsessed with it. Some of these, very few, took it well enough, becoming researchers, so-called adventurers that now dedicated their lives to the unraveling of the mystery they'd only begun to witness. They wrote books, attended conventions or expeditions into the wild hunting for Bigfoot, the Loch Ness monster or any unnameable variety of Big Cats, Wolf-men and flying things with glowing red eyes better not mentioned. They took the fear and the subsequent obsession and tried to convert it into something useful, turning their obsession into a journey into the unknown. More often than not they lost everything from their former lives in this process, wives and husbands, children and parents, all falling to the wayside in this pursuit. The first group though, the unlucky ones, simply went mad. Mad and more often than not, dangerously so, becoming one with the monsters that had stolen their previous lives.
Then there were those like her. Those that it affected but did not destroy, those that remained who they were albeit with a broader view of the world, changed but not devastated. She'd found herself wondering on many quiet nights in her lonely little bed in her lonely little apartment whether or not she'd been better off being one of the ones who forgot it all and just went on living, forgetting that the things that go bump in the night were real after all.
She wondered if any of these poor bastards around her would survive to become like her or any of the other types of crazies.
She saw things in the darkness all about them as they ran. The ragged racing figures of the vampires were there, leaping to keep up, chasing them but purposefully staying out of the light from Blackmoon's sword. They were watching and waiting, waiting for the moment when the one who'd killed so many of them back on the train would bring his guard down so they could strike, perhaps steal one or two of his band of survivors out from under his protective eye or perhaps even to go for the man himself. Surely with the element of surprise on their side a few of them could overpower him, whoever or whatever he was.
There were other things in the darkness though, larger things, things with appendages that looked like they belonged on something prehistoric. Things with eye stalks and pincers, tails and more legs than she could begin counting. White things and black things, things that walked on two legs but glared out at her with reptilian eyes and those that dragged massive slime covered bodies across the tracks, only halting in their tracks at the wave of Blackmoon's weapon.
What the hell was happening down here? Lorelei Price asked herself and how was she going to be able to get any of these people back up into the sunlight?
End Part 50
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