“You are one of a kind,” Cates said, walking up, laying his half arm on my shoulder, because he held his blade in the only hand he had. “Your heart wishes for something that may never happen in your time. The world will never see us as anything more than what you see moving around back there on the ground.” We began making our way up to the others. “I have come in contact with the outside, and they have all reacted in the same manner. They scream, call out demon, and run for their lives.”

“Think it’s the teeth, or because you look like a giant, with those teeth?” Derek laughed.

“You, little one, will find the same reaction, even in such a small frame,” Cates responded, chuckling softly.

“My brother and I didn’t think like that when we first met Renee. And neither did our friends. So, how do you explain that, big one?”

“I really didn’t know what I was back then and y’all didn’t seem to be afraid of anything, Derek,” I shrugged.

“And you were just children who had never heard of the horrors of the night,” Cates added.

“Maybe, but we had our fair share of our own horrors. Renee was just real kind and could never look mean if she wanted too.”

I was about to put my two cents worth in, when a faint scream echoed through the tunnel. It was hard to tell if it was male or female, but it didn’t matter. I jerked forward to only be yanked back by Cates. “We must take caution,” he whispered, pushing me back and moving up beside Jacob, who was putting out the torch in the damp dirt by the water that was now running in a two inch stream around our feet. I assumed it was so he could light it when we came back through. I must have been correct, because he wiped it off and leaned it up against the wall. The darkness was blinding after the bright orange glow of the torch, but within seconds the light from the end of the tunnel that the walking dead must have come from gave plenty for our breeder eyes to see by.

We moved in twos following Jacob and Cates. Garvin walked beside Derek, and I walked next to Tammy with Fala following close behind. I looked down and saw something in Tammy’s hand, hanging, swinging back and forth as she walked, and for a split second I thought she had picked up one of the limbs of the dead, then I saw a hint of brown and knew they were Fala’s pants. I couldn’t help thinking how hard it must be, being a werewolf, or any shifting creature for that matter. Always having to remember where you left your clothes, or, if not, one would have to remain nude until they found other means. Being a breeder wasn’t the worst thing to become; at least I always knew where my clothes were and I never had to take them off to become what I am when I was needed.

Several screams brought me out of my thoughts and sent a new set in their place. This time we could tell it was the sound of a woman screaming again and again as soon as her lungs could fill with the air to push another one out. It was Derek, who took off first, dodging Cates’ outreached grasp. The rest of us moved with greater speed once he did and soon we were headed up the same steps that Derek was now crawling up,  peering into an opening at the top. Jacob was by his side in seconds, taking three to four steps at a time, grabbing the back of his shirt and pressing his own body down low like Derek’s. The screams had stopped and Jacob and Derek disappeared in through the opening. Cates and Garvin followed, as Tammy and I made our way up the twenty-plus stone steps.

We both peered into the dimly lit room and saw Jacob and Derek moving in a crouched position to another square, stone opening across the small room that was filled with rusty tables that had small wheels on the bottom of the legs. I counted five different openings that led into, or out of, the room that Tammy and I were now sneaking into. By the time we made it to the door that the other three had gone through, Fala was just looking out of the opening from the tunnel. We waited for him, and then entered the slender hall that curved back to the left. I could smell fresh blood as if it had just been poured out in front of me. I was about to step out to find where the others had gone when Tammy threw her arm up and stopped me. It was then that I heard the squeaking sound of what had to be one of those tables being rolled, or something very much like it. She mouthed the words to me to ‘move’ and I did just that. I walked quickly back the way we had come, pushing Fala’s fur covered chest as I met him halfway. The three of us were about to run into one of the other openings, when Fala wrinkled his large snout and waved his claw tipped hand for us to get back against the wall beside him.

Chapter Nineteen

We stood frozen next to Fala by the opening that we had just run out of. The end of a table appeared first, then I felt Fala pushing me back into the wall as I leaned forward seeing what appeared to be blood coated, long hair hanging off the side. The woman’s mutilated body stretched before us long before the breeder wearing a black leather mask and an apron to match came in to view. With one swift move from Fala’s powerful claws the breeder dropped, and pushed the table out with the force of his body going forward. His head bounced off of the end before hitting the ground and the mask went flat as black gore oozed out onto the floor. Tammy stepped out and grabbed the edge of the table to keep it from crashing into the other ones, then pushed it up against them with enough ease that it wouldn’t make too much sound.

“Where did the others go?” she asked in a whisper, leaning back up against the wall.

“I thought they went in there.”

“What do we do?”

“Go in after them.” I slid past Fala and headed back the way I saw my boys disappear.

The first thing I noticed was there was little of the long dead smell, and more of the fresh scent of blood in the lower levels of this castle, and seeing the woman on the rolling table, that made perfect sense. As soon as I looked around the edge of the stone door, I saw Jacob putting his finger to his mouth with one hand, and moving two fingers on the other for me to make my way to him. As I did, I went a little too fast, resulting in my slipping on the blood that coated the ground. I ended up on my backside, slid a few feet before I flipped onto my hands and knees, and moved as fast as I could to where he was. It wasn’t until I turned around that I realized how big the room really was. Cages with oval doors lined the far wall to the left of the opening that I had just come from and several different types of torture devises were spread throughout the room; some having unconscious or dead beings strapped in their grips.

There was, what appeared to be, a tunnel just past the two other entrances, next to a set of stone stairs that went up to a closed door on a landing that had to be at least twenty to twenty five feet up. In the lower area, where we were, there was a wall filled with all sorts of blades and other things; like hammers and long iron files like my pa used to work on the hooves of our horses. Wide bristled brooms were leaned up against the corner with a large shovel, telling me that Angelica made her slaves clean up after her sick perversion, or it would have smelled of decay with so much blood smeared all over the floor. I looked but didn’t see Cates or Derek anywhere. But, I saw Garvin coming out from a hall around the table that was pushed up against one of the cells that was adjoined to the opening that we had come out of. He made his way over to look into another cell that he quickly disappeared into.

“Where are the others?” I whispered, getting Jacob’s hand over my mouth as he pulled me back into the room that Tammy and Fala were now in.

He pointed at the third cell in the middle of the room, the only cell that was dark. I saw Cates step out and look around into the cell next to it, then look back at Jacob and nod. It was then that I noticed there was movement in the cell that Cates looked into. “Bring me the cat-o-nine,” a male voice rang out. “That will wake him up.” Cates stomped over to the wall that was filled with horror, took down a whip that had several strands hanging from the handle and each strand had something shiny hanging on the end of it. He walked back over and opened the cell and stepped in. “Who…” was all that the unseen man said before we heard a thud. Cates stepped out with one foot and was waving his hand wildly with a horrified look on his face that ended up staring straight at me.