Radu, I realized as my vision cleared the rest of the way, was attempting to beat the thing off me. But his aim wasn’t very good and as many thumps landed on me as on the recently departed. My ribs felt sore enough to let me know that this had been going on for some time.
I sat up, throwing the body away and catching the stick as it descended again. I tried not to notice that several of the creatures in the corners immediately began to make a meal off the remains of the kitty. “Cut it out. I have enough bruises already.”
“Dorina? You… you’re not hurt?” He looked stunned. I don’t know how people think I’ve lived as long as I have. The rumor is that I’m freaking lucky, and while I wouldn’t argue the point, it isn’t the only reason.
“No, didn’t feel like being cat chow.” I glanced down at myself, but all parts seemed to be present and accounted for, if not in particularly good shape. There was a lot of blood—not mine for the most part—and a few tufts of fur clinging to my top. “Crap!” I shrugged out of my jacket and held it up to the light. Large slash marks perforated the heavy leather giving me a view of the room in places. Its thickness had spared my body much of the laceration, but that didn’t make me feel much better. “This is the second one in less than a day,” I complained. “The Senate’s going to get a bill for a new wardrobe if this keeps up.”
“You’re really all right!” Radu threw his arms around me, causing me to wince when he squeezed the wounds the jet parts had made in my back. “I was so worried, Dorina! Mircea would… I couldn’t think what I’d tell him if—”
“Yeah, I’d hate it if my death got you in trouble with Dad,” I said with undisguised sarcasm. Radu didn’t seem to know how to reply to that, not that I gave him a chance. “And what the hell is this place, anyway?” I realized that none of the creatures, some in cages and some roaming free, looked all that familiar.
The two things snacking on the carcass looked like someone had hit a giant rat and the contents of a Dumpster with a dislocator—nothing made sense and nothing was where it was supposed to be. One of the sort-of rats seemed to have gotten hold of a human leg, which I originally thought it was saving for dessert. I looked away when I realized it was attached to the side of one furry hip, and was moving slightly, as if trying to gain a footing on the blood-slick floor.
After five centuries of horrors, very little gets to me anymore. Disgusted I can still do, but I would have said that appalled was no longer on my sensations list. The last time I’d felt it had been during the Great War, when a hunt took me into the trenches in France just after the Battle of the Somme. A mountain of corpses, too battered and blood soaked to reveal what army they had belonged to, fell on top of me while a revenant vamp and I were playing hide-and-seek. Digging my way out had not been pleasant. I still have dreams about it sometimes, of sliding on a bed of churned-up mud, decaying bodies pressing in all around me, someone’s soil-stained tibia stabbing me in the ribs, and rats the size of rabbits snacking on the feast man in his infinite stupidity had provided. A few of the men in the pile had still been alive, although they were busy coughing their lungs out in foaming pink shreds, courtesy of a recent mustard gas attack. I made a few mercy killings and got the hell out of there, leaving the revenant behind. It was the only time I’d ever run from a quarry, and I wasn’t proud of it. But at least I believed I’d seen the ugliest face of humanity.
I’d been wrong.
I think it was the instinctive knowledge that, whatever these things were, their creation had not been accidental that got me. I watched a thing with a wolf’s head and a giant lizard’s body pull itself across the floor toward us, its heavy, fang-filled mouth dripping saliva onto the floor, and felt as much pity as revulsion. Both of those were eclipsed a moment later by a rushing tide of pure rage.
“Is this your new hobby, Radu?” No wonder he hadn’t wanted to be followed! “And here I was telling someone recently that one of my uncles is semisane. Guess I’ll have to rethink that statement, huh?”
“Please, Dorina, it isn’t what you think—”
“The name is Dory!” I realized that I had Radu in a grip that would have broken more than a few ribs if he’d been human. I pushed him away from me, and he staggered near the remains of the kitty cat, causing the rat things to chatter at him. He took a few steps back in my direction, but stopped short, as if having trouble deciding which of the dangers was worse. If he’d been doing what I suspected, it was definitely me. “Okay, tell me what I should think. ’Cause you don’t even want to know what ideas are swimming around my head right now.”
“You aren’t supposed to be in here!” Radu wailed, almost in tears. “You weren’t supposed to see this!”