The break in the tunnel was about ten feet, with the portion that led into the depths of Angelica’s castle becoming smaller and more rounded than the one we were stepping out of. Cates and Fala had to walk with their heads bent until we were deep enough in that the light of night couldn’t be seen any longer and the shape of the tunnel changed into a flatter bottom and arched ceiling. The deeper we went, the higher the ceiling became. Before the shape of the tunnel started changing, the two tallest of our group could walk comfortably without a problem. The floor was dry most of the way until the floor leveled out and we began moving straight in. Liquid stood stagnant and by the smell of it, for some time. The walls became mold covered and water seeped through some of the cracks that lined the stones.

“We should be getting close to the castle entrance,” Jacob said, pulling out the map from the pouch on his waist band. “The markings show it’s around the next turn.”

“We have to be getting close. The smell is almost as bad as that pile of bodies…almost,” Derek said, moving up past me to walk beside Jacob.

“I couldn’t imagine this sister being any different than the other when it comes to the way she keeps her lower levels,” Jacob replied, as he and Derek were about to take the bend in the tunnel.

“Do you hear that?” Derek asked, grabbing Jacob’s arm.

A hand, that was nothing but bones held together with dried tendons and stretched dried muscles, reached out and missed Derek’s shoulder by inches, as Jacob pulled him out of the way. The corpse that belonged to the hand approached sluggishly, moving around the corner, dragging its left leg behind it. The thing's lower jaw was missing and its eye sockets were empty, leaving nothing but wrinkled, leathered skin gripping the holes where its eyes use to be. Half of its nose remained, leaving the other side a gaping hole with gore oozing from the opening. Its withered tongue wiggled, hanging down its neck as it made a horrid moaning sound, reaching out to grab whichever intruder it could take hold of first.

Jacob pulled his blade, swung at the arm, and took it off at the shoulder. The thing never stopped moving as it raised its other arm, swinging its body toward Jacob, the one who had left its already mangled body partly twitching on the ground. Derek had his blade in his hand…we all did…and was about to take off the things head when he screamed out. A second one had grabbed a handful of his hair and was pulling him back around the corner. Cates pushed Tammy and me out of the way, trying to get to Derek. The first walking dead lost its head with one swift move of Jacob’s blade but the body kept reaching for him. He came down with another slice and removed the things other arm. The torso banged into the wall, with strings of tattered cloth hanging where its arms use to be, still dragging its leg behind it, trying to find the intruder. Fala pushed past, stomped on its one good leg and the thing fell to the ground.

I heard Derek scream out again and ran after Jacob as he picked up the torch and took off after Cates to help them both. I slid to a stop when I saw Derek trying to dislodge the dismembered arm from the back of his head. “Get it off…get it off!” he screamed, while Cates chopped the thing that had dragged Derek out of our sight. Fala stormed in again, broke the fingers back, and threw the thin, bony arm down the tunnel. I was watching the whole time, seeing where the arm landed. I yelled out that there were more of them, then screamed myself when Tammy touched my back.

“Fala!” Jacob yelled, but Fala was already removing his pants as the fur began coating his body. His bones popped and slid as I watched him change, in astonishment. One moment he was a man, and the next he was a beast twice his normal size with a head that looked very much like its smaller kin.

Fala plowed into the four walking dead that were shuffling our way. All looked much like the first. Some more rotted than the others, but all unmistakably raised by magic and all coming after us. Fala slashed, tore them limb from limb, and knocked two skulls together so hard that they burst with the pressure. “I thought they went down if you removed the head,” Derek said, holding his blade at shoulder height in both hands, ready for anything to get past Fala. No sooner than Derek had spoken, Fala hit one of the walking dead so hard in the head that it flew off of its shoulders and came straight back toward us. It hit the wall beside Derek and rolled to a stop with its mouth moving as if it were trying to speak. Green puss was seeping from its eye socks, down into the long, stringy, blond hair that was still attached to what little scalp that was left. Derek yelled out as his foot came down and he repeated the blow until the skull was nothing but the pile of unmoving dust and fragments that death meant it to be in the first place.

We moved past the remains of Fala’s work, quickly stepping over the parts of the bodies that were still trying to reach for our moving forms. Legs twitched and rolled over on their own, while hands closed into fists then reopened as we hurried by. Tammy kicked at a hand that was too close to her foot and it grabbed the tip of her shoe. She screamed out, and shook her leg in rapid succession until it flew up and hit Garvin in the back. He turned around with more speed than I’d seen Garvin move in some time, with Tammy mouthing the words, ‘I’m sorry’. I was about to let a smile cross my face, when I felt something touch the back of my leg that made me high step it right past the both of them. When I turned around, I saw a torso with one upper arm bone dragging itself toward us at a painfully slow pace. I shook myself as if I had a thousand bugs crawling on me, closed my eyes at the sight, and hoped I could wash the memory out before it stuck in the back of my mind.

“Are you okay?” Garvin asked softly.

“Yes,” I responded, jerking my eyes open to him smiling at me. “I’m fine.”

“Try to think of them like the dried dead in the lower levels at Cuba.”

“Garvin, the dried dead hanging on the walls and spread out in the cells down there didn’t come crawling after us. If they had when all this first happened, I would have gladly let that crazy bitch Annabel kill me and get it over with.”

“I tried to tell you that you had not seen much in the ways of a bloodbreeder,” Jacob interjected.

“Just keep moving. I know what ya said, and I don’t have to like any of it.”

“I would think that the living creatures would bother you more than the crippled remains of the dead,” Cates added. “But, I have seen little in the way of fear when it comes to them.”

“Well, even though I don’t find things that shift their bones and turn into something else, or hear clicking teeth of a pack of…” I paused.

“Javelinas,” Fala filled it the word for me.

“Yeah, those things, which I’m guessing shape change too. I don’t find them as bad. They’re not dead and rotting as they’re reaching out for our throats, because of some witchcraft spell put on ‘em by a sick and twisted devil worshiper,” I explained the difference the best I could.

“How do you know he worships the devil?” Cates asked. I thought he was mocking me, at first, until I spun around and saw, by the look on his face, that he was serious about his question.

“This whole city reeks of the devil, Cates. The man, or whatever you want to call him, plays with black magic…witchcraft, and where I come from, those who do such things, do it in the name of Satan himself.”

“What would those from your home call us?” he asked, stopping me in my tracks.

“Now you are picking on me.”

“I am very serious. I have never even thought on what the normals of the world thought on our kind, other than those who were raised by stories to fear us.”

“They would think we were the devil’s disciples,” I admitted, lowering my head, then bringing it right back up. “We’re not like the rest though, and we’re going to show the rest of the world that.”