“What were you thinking up there?”

“What’s the matter with you? He was just another normal, Jacob.”

He grabbed my arm and yanked it forward. “Does this look like the work of a mere normal?”

“It’s some sort of acid,” I replied, looking down at the blisters where the liquid had hit my skin.

“It was water that his magic turned to harm the likes of our kind.”

“That’s nonsense,” I replied, pulling my arm out of his grip.

“Derek holds the marks. I hold the marks…Fala does not,” he snapped, showing me the side of his arm. “We were lucky he stood alone. We spoke of this.”

“Fala was lucky, Jacob. If he would have gotten some of this stuff on him, he would have gotten burned just like us,” I snapped back.

“No, My Lady. I did get the water on my back. Small drops like warm rain.”

“Bull shit,” I replied walking over, taking the torch from Jacob’s hand and turning Fala to look at his back.

Sure enough his back had several drying spots on it. I reached out and touched one that wasn’t quite dry, feeling a slight burn on the tip of my finger. “That’s not possible.” I saw Cates look over at Jacob and then lower his eyes. “Why does it burn us and not him?” I asked, waiting for any of the others to give me an answer. Then the reality hit me. It was because we were, without any doubt, like the walking dead. Our life left our bodies when the sun rose…we were truly damned in the eyes of the man upstairs,  The dread of the truth must have shown on my face because the others gathered around me.

“It is a hard thing to learn, Renee. We all know that you still pray to your God of creation,” Jacob said, trying to take me in his arms.

“I’m not a child, Jacob. And I will keep praying to my Lord, no matter what the world of the bloodbreeders has caused the rest of the normal world to believe us to be. He can’t be proud of the violence that we cause, but he has to understand the reason behind our actions. One day, others will think differently.” Then I turned my back and wiped the tears out of my eyes before they could give away the sorrow that was killing my broken heart. “I don’t know what he thought that cross was gonna do. We practically live in cemeteries that are full of them.”

“I think this is the tunnel,” Garvin said, gratefully taking the attention off of me.

Jacob reached out as if to touch me, then dropped his hand and turned to join the others who had gone to see the opening that led deeper down into the darkness. I said a silent prayer, hoping that God would hear me, asking him to forgive me for scaring the priest and to help us find a way to get Martin out safely. I knew I would never turn my back on the one true creator, no more than I believed he would ever turn his back on me. The thought of never seeing my God in the afterlife was more than I wanted to think about because I knew that’s where my family waited for me. To never see the glory of my Lord, and be held from those that were taken from this life before their time, was worse than anything that could ever happen on the earth that was now no more than hell itself to me.

“Are you gonna be alright?” Tammy asked, coming back over to where I stood with my back still turned to them.

“Yeah, I just never really put any of this into perspective until now, ya know?” I replied, turning to look at her.

“I know…I know all too well,” she partially smiled, then pulled me into an embrace that almost caused me to lose the composure that I was fighting to hold together.

Jacob looked back, giving us a few minutes then told us we needed to move. I nodded as I passed him, put my hand in his and smiled up at him. I released his hand and received a reassuring smile from him before following Cates into the depths below the church. Now I believed the stories that Jacob had told and understood more of the meaning behind the tales. The air became much cooler than it had been outside or in the church building. The bodies that Jacob had told us about, back on the ship, being wrapped in shrouds lay in indentations that were carved right out of the stone wall, one on top of the other. Some of the skulls were fully wrapped, while others showed the teeth and empty eye sockets of the once living. Once again many dead surrounded us, but there was no smell of their long since rotted flesh. The smell was dank and musty, with the present hint of damp mold. Dusty webs and a fine blanket of years gone by coated the dead in the small coves of their final resting places.

The steps opened into a room that looked much like the tunnels, from the sandstone color of the walls to the bones stacked to the ceiling. Layers of bones made up the walls halfway up, then a layer of skulls with bones crossed at the chins, then three more feet of bones with no description before another line of skulls made it all look like a sick mockery of wallpaper. The opening to the hidden tunnel that we would be taking was no higher than three feet and filled three quarters high with bones. Cates kicked his way through, leaned down and went into the tunnel feet first, then took the torch from Jacob once on the other side. All of the tunnels looked the same as when I first stepped into them when we reached London, making me wonder how far we would travel before encountering the hell that Angelica’s little surprises would provide.

I think we all had our minds on the end results of the long walk in the dark tunnels because no one said anything for the first hour. The crackle of the flame and the shuffle of our feet were the only sounds to echo, indicating that the dead were not alone. It was Derek who spoke first, breaking the silence that had felt strangely comfortable in the cool dark space. “Take the heads? Right, Jacob?”

“Yes, if we were in the open, I would say to not worry with the walking dead. They move slow and will take up time that we cannot spare, but this is a small confinement.”

“And if this doctor friend has those other things?” I asked, making my way up past Derek and Garvin to get behind Jacob.

“Then we move twice as fast. Dismemberment is the only way to keep them from coming after us. And still, they will come to a certain point.”

“What point?”

“The point of which the doctor has ordered them to protect. We don’t know that we will even see such a thing. Alex said it was only something he heard in passing.”

“Yeah, passing a nail brush over his mistress’s feet,” Cates laughed. “Alex was well suited as Felicia.”

“You think? I think Bernard should have been wearing a dress. I can just look at that boy and he passes out,” I shook my head, laughing with Cates.

“You’ll never catch me wearing that kind of shit. I ain’t never seen nothing so stupid in my life.” Derek turned around, walking backward to look at Cates, who burst out laughing, echoing through the tunnels. “What?” Derek asked, turning back around before he fell.

“Unless you plan on using that little scratch on your back as an excuse to stay away from the gala, you’ll be looking more like they were than you think.” Then Cates started laughing all over again.

“No way. I ain’t dressing up like no girl,” Derek said, shaking his head over and over.

“You will not have to dress like a female,” Jacob explained. “However, you will have to paint your face for the occasion.”

“As long as I don’t look like no girl.”

“Rose colored cheeks, on pasty white flesh. Your eyes lined in charcoal black, and your lips in a deep burgundy wine.” Cates deliberately gave details in a low, deep voice.

“You’re full of it, Cates,” Derek smiled, looking back.

“We shall see in a few nights.”

“You will be looking at a larger version of yourself, Derek. Cates will have to do the same thing,” Tammy snickered, getting her ribs grabbed by Cates.

I was wondering what we were going to joke about, because we always did when we were going into the unknown. It wasn’t until the smell drifted up and Jacob had turned the last time after looking at the map that we knew we had reached the beginning. There was a break in the tunnel where the night sky could be seen. It wasn’t a portion that had collapsed in, but a place where Angelica’s castle drains met the tunnels that ran under the city of London. It was easy to see how they used them to their advantage and with her being the highest in power, it was easier to understand why we hadn’t crossed any scavengers or other nasty beings that might have occupied this portion of the tunnels. I didn’t think the church had anything to do with keeping the scavengers away from here because we had walked miles away from the entrance to the church’s basement and they could have come in from any number of the tunnels beyond. It was just this particular route that took us directly to the tunnels where we now stood. One that Jacob had said would be our easiest way.