Hallow London [Apocalyptic Urban Fantasy]

Book 2 Chapter 22: Fool Talking


Unknown Location – Below Walworth

~ 3 weeks, 2 days remaining

The metal gate into the service tunnel raised up with a groan, and Henry watched his friend exit the trial exhausted, battered, but shockingly unhurt. He didn't quite stumble out to them, but it was a close thing. Still clutching the haft of the spear in his hands, he propped himself upright and used it as a walking stick as the spotlight in the arena behind cut out with his departure.

There was a brief moment when the service tunnel fell into near complete darkness. For Henry, who was currently pressed up against the wall of what was barely wide enough for his shoulders not to brush the edges alongside two others, having to wait for Enrico to squeeze past and address the victor was not a pleasant experience.

"Congratulations," was all he gave in the way of compliments. "You have proven yourself capable enough to be an auxiliary to our cause."

Robb was too tired to do more than grunt out an acknowledgment. With a momentary red flash from Enrico's ring, the bleeding stopped once more and they were once again escorted deeper into the sewers. Without being bound and gagged, this time.

Guess them doing it for me was more procedure than practical… could have done without it, at that point.

Henry took a deep breath and tried to use his thoughts to distract himself. He was just feeling a little on edge, surely. Claustrophobia typically wasn't something he had to contend with, but there was a slight twinge of it that he felt in this environment.

He wasn't exactly sure why either, which might be the more unsettling aspect. Compared to the nightmare scenarios of the world outside, tight, cramped spaces could feel downright homely in comparison. But at the same time, this leg of the journey seemed pretty much designed to induce that pathological state of mind. Enough exposure to anything, and you would eventually feel its effects.

Every sound in this tightly enclosed space was amplified. Every breath, every slight shift, every footstep as Enrico led them down yet another ladder leading God knows where. When he finally touched back down on solid ground, the soles of his shoes clacked loudly against the rough-hewn stone brickwork at their feet.

Henry could barely make out anything past his own chest, but those footsteps echoed with confidence borne of many visits that had taken their mysterious guide down this path. No slight shuffling of feet, no groping around to find the wall before you ran into it, every movement was perfectly measured against the confines of the tunnel.

Evidently, he'd been down this way many more times than both Henry and Robb put together. And fortunately for them both, that experience came with a welcome amount of forethought.

With the sound of a match striking, a dim flame from a hooded lantern sputtered to life, casting a weak orange glow of soft light around them. Stark shadows crept along the walls, elongated by the perspective of the single, tiny point of light in the all-encompassing darkness. The guide's hooded cloak appeared to them as a flat silhouette in front of them, dark as pitch under the faint lamplight.

"This way," Enrico muttered, his muffled words resonating profoundly within the absence of other noise.

They followed. Enrico led from the front, hunching over beneath the low ceiling of the adjoining tunnel and holding the lantern ahead. His thick coverings obscured most of the already dim light from view. It literally forced Henry to take a new perspective on vision.

Instead of parsing the visual in front of him as a coherent whole image, the lack of consistent lighting required a different approach to get him to not fall over his own two feet. It wasn't so much about the shape of things in front of him, rather the change in that shape over time. As Enrico moved, the flowing cape at his back swayed in time with his motions, blotting out light here, revealing it there. Every millisecond was a brief snapshot, and by piecing those together it was possible to just about perceive depth and distance.

Robb did the same just behind him, using the glow of his own crystal as a waypoint to navigate by. Like the stargazers of old, they followed the two motes of light into the depths.

Conversation lulled once more. Space for a change of topic grew larger and larger, until finally…

"Alright, Henry," Robb piped up once more. "Since we're basically already there, I think it's high time you started giving some better explanations on these so-called 'friends' of yours."

He choked up, his oath preventing him from responding instinctively. Just for a moment. But a moment longer that his companion needed.

"Just relax a bit," Henry responded, trying to disengage from the topic. "You'll see soon enou-"

"Please, no more of that evasive crap." Robb's footsteps ceased behind him. "I'm already at the bottom of a dark tunnel to nowhere, following behind some weirdo in a full cloak who supposedly lives in a sewer, just after he finished slicing my palm open, drawing modern art all over my hand and forcing me to fight a vamp to the death. All because I trusted your word at face value when we headed out. Either you give me a better idea of what's going on, or I'm going to turn around."

"Hey, hey. take it easy. You've come this far already, haven't you?"

"See, there you go again! You never got this defensive about a topic before! Why all the secrecy? Aren't we supposed to be on the same side, or something?"

From up front, Enrico stopped and turned to face them. The flame in the lantern fluttered rapidly at the sudden rotation, reflecting brightly against the grimy lenses of his goggles.

"Henry," he interjected. "While I appreciate your intentions in keeping your word… If he's here now, it's better if he knows. You may speak."

The ring on his finger glowed a soft cherry red, and the tightness constricting Henry's throat began to dissipate.

You might be reading a pirated copy. Look for the official release to support the author.

Two pairs of eyes stared at him intently, hemming him in and demanding answers. Finally, he could give a proper one, provided he moved forward carefully. In his eyes, dropping the truth cold turkey would be an even worse way of going about things here. That left really only two options.

Lie – not feasible, with Enrico on hand to correct any mistruths – or provide proper context, first.

He opted for the latter.

"...How much do you know about thralls, Robb?"

"Huh?" The sudden non-sequitur threw him off. "What's that got to do with this?"

"Quite a bit, actually. But let's not get ahead of ourselves. What do you know about them?"

"Uh… Enough to know I don't want to be one… but past that…"

"Right. I kind of figured that would be the case. Let me get you up to speed, then."

This was going to take a while, he thought. Deciding it was best to get comfortable first, Henry leaned himself against the sloping wall of the corridor as best he could, only craning his neck slightly to match the contour of the arch above his head.

"Thralls," Henry explained, "Are what happens when vampires give blood instead of take it. As you've probably heard already, the practical result is being condemned to the status of permanent bloodbag for one specific vamp, but there's a bit more to it than that."

Confused and not the least bit fully recovered from his recent close shave, Robb tiredly motioned for him to continue. Henry obliged with a nod.

"For starters, it's not a permanent contract with that specific vampire, just one with vampires as a whole. Thralls change hands all the time, either from what passes for trade amongst them or more typically from plunder. With enough time and distance from their original masters, thralls will latch on to the next nearest vampire. This is because, from what I've seen, it's not that thralls can't leave… it's that whatever magic is in that first batch of blood makes them not want to."

"…What, like it's some sort of drug?"

"...Maybe? That part is more uncharted territory. Some theories say it's a symbiotic parasite, some say it's a magical compulsion, it could be drugs like you mentioned… But it could just as easily be all three at once or none at all. It's hard to draw a concrete conclusion when nobody really wants to approach the issue from a scientific perspective, as you might imagine."

"Okay…" Robb allowed. "But I don't get what this has to do with us coming here…"

"Yeah, sorry for keeping you in the dark for so long," he apologized back. "But the reason for it was because everyone down here needs to keep a tight lid on what they're capable of. Robb, you're looking at some of the few people who can break someone free from thralldom. Technically."

A skeptical look flashed back his way. "Why would they need to keep that a secret? And, what do you mean, 'technically'?"

"Well, that part is probably better if we just show you. Enrico?"

"...Very well."

Their mysterious guide, at Henry's prompting, slowly raised his hands to his head and let the cloth slide back. Finally lowered the hood of his cloak, and began unclasping the brooch. The goggles came up, the cloth wrappings covering the face unraveled just enough to hang loose around the neck like a scarf. From beneath the coverings, a pair of pointed ears poked out to either side of Enrico's head.

Then, the other details came into the light, completely flooring Robb when he began to make them out.

His skin was pale, almost ghost-white. Underneath the goggles, his eyes shone with red irises, making him almost look like an albino save for the neatly-trimmed reddish-black hair on his head. As he shucked off the cloak entirely and folded it up neatly, he hung it over his shoulder. It soon became apparent that the folds of the covering had been concealing a much lankier, taller frame than might have been suggested otherwise. Or one that would have looked completely in line with human anatomy, for that matter.

It was the sort of traits that undercover vampires that had gone too long without a significant source of blood tried to hide from the world. Now on full display, careless of what the rest of the room might think of it.

"I apologize if I seem a bit unkempt," Enrico hazarded with a pointy smile. "Your friend Henry here has a way of arriving when he's least expected."

Robb ignored those words entirely. Instead, he rounded on Henry with fire in his eyes. The first time he'd ever seen the typically laid-back radio host genuinely angry.

"You're a thrall," Robb concluded. "You're a goddamn thrall, and you brought us all here acting as bait, didn't you."

Henry winced. It was the conclusion he would have come to himself in his shoes, but that didn't make it sting any less. Especially when it was flat-out wrong.

"No," he replied simply. "If I was one, I never would have made it out of here alive. Hell, I'd never have gotten into Hackney alive, if that were the case. But yes, we are going to be working with vampires pretty soon here, and-"

"Give me one good reason why I shouldn't try to put you both six more underground right now."

"Robb, please-"

"If I may?" Enrico interrupted. "I understand his problem is mostly with my presence, so perhaps it's better if I take things from here?"

The vampire stepped forward. Tension sparked between the two parties. Mostly from Robb, who was in the process of gathering a few tattered scraps dark purple magic at the tip of his spear in preparation for some sort of spell. The freshly revealed Enrico put himself squarely between the two humans, holding up his hands in a peaceful gesture.

"Who are you?" the radio host demanded. "And why have me kill a vampire if your one your bloody self?!"

"This is an understandable reaction for most outsiders," Enrico began placidly. "But, it would seem that persuading you to keep an open mind about us would be… challenging. Instead, let me speak of what myself and the rest of my people do down here. Perhaps you've heard rumors of our work in passing. Surely, our actions will speak greater than the nature of the general whole?"

"I don't care if you're somehow the second coming of Christ at this point," Robb snarled. "Do you know how many good people have died to-"

"I do."

Enrico cut off Robb's tirade, his words carrying thunderous pressure with every syllable. "I do, and it's for exactly that reason why I fight. Why all of us down here fight. To change the lay of the land so that the path our new species takes is not one of following our baser instincts. We have been both blessed and cursed, and for both us and yourselves to survive we need to straddle that difference and find a way to exist in harmony."

"We are the Reformationists," he said with steely bravado. "And we cannot stand for the ways of the thrall-camps above any more than you can."

The vampire stood tall. Proud, even. Of his purpose, his achievements, of those who stood side by side with him, fighting the good fight in the streets. As close to a poster boy for the movement as an underground guerrilla cell could get, honestly. Henry always thought that a fire like that would be perfect for them to attract more attention to their cause, but, well… their priorities emphasized secrecy for a good reason.

"They raid other thrall-camps for their captives, a little bit at a time," Henry explained to Robb in more practical terms. "It's a bit like a rehab clinic, to go back to your drug comparison from before. The vampires skim a few thralls here and there, make it look like the work of other camps, then discreetly bring them back here to start them on working their way back to normal."

"That's just kidnapping with extra steps!"

"Not quite," Enrico clarified. "A vampire in control of a thrall holds the power to relinquish that control, after a certain length of time in connection. Typically about a month or so, with some variation. What separates us from those pig sow above is that we actually make use of this power to liberate that they so quickly have cast aside. And once we have freed enough-"

"Okay, Enrico… let's cool it on the foreboding monologues…"

Henry gave a sheepish grin to Robb. "Sorry. He's very passionate about this, as you can see. But, for now, can you promise to follow along and see what they do for yourself? After that, by all means go ahead and blow the lid on this whole operation, if you feel like it."

The radio host glowered. "Fine. But I'm warning you, right now I have every intention of doing just that once we head back."

"Perfectly acceptable," he replied back. "Now, let's go take a trip down into historic Little Henwood, and give you a nice, long look at the locals."

"...Weird name for a settlement. Isn't that the Knight Commander's name?"

"As a matter of fact, it is. And there's an equally strange story as to how it got named that."

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