Nusac

Chapter 24

Faith’s POV

My gaze flicks immediately to the place where I saw Abbas leave. I want to follow him but I heard my knee pop out. “How much did you see?” The voice I hear sounds distant so I ignore it. Closing my palm around my kneecap I begin to squeeze. “Faith how much did you see.” Nam kneels down in my Field of vision so I can’t ignore her this time. She’s careful not to touch me, her hands reaching out as if she wants to but she wont let herself.

“Enough.” I can hear the rage in my voice making it deeper then normal. As my palm puts pressure on my joint I can feel it being to slide back into place and with aloud crack it jumps back to where it’s supposed to be. I don’t cry out because I can’t feel it.

My hand reaches down my pant legs and removes the metal bar in the brace so that my knee is able to move.

Pushing myself up using the flat of my hand on the floor I slowly stand. Nam is instantly in front of me. I can’t hear what she says I can only see her lips moving as she tries to tell me something. I push against her arm to move her out of the way and take off at a run. As I pass my sword, which is still jutting, out of the ground I grasp the hilt and pull it with me.

Rounding a corner I can see him. If only he were a vampire I would be able to feel him out but this time I’m going to have to depend on my other five senses. I take off down the crowded street till I reach a T-junction. Left or right?

Rage is burning behind my eyes pushing out all cognitive thought. So I pick left at random. Heading out of the village. I get to about twenty feet from the outskirts when my slayer senses jump off the radar. Vampires… lots of them.

I follow the ache in my gut till I reach the crest of a hill. Without the mound of earth blocking my vision. I can clearly see the camp of a vampire army. His vampire army. Banners line the outskirts of the encampment proudly showing his dragon crest.

I try my hardest to push the slayer inside me out as I fly down the hillside. No matter how hard I try not even a glimmer of the familiar black and white in my sight makes itself known.

Too late now, I grasp a shaft of the wooden pole displaying the banner in my left hand snapping it. It twists skilfully in my hand and my sounder rotates into an arch above me. It flies forward at great speed like a javelin, impaling three vampires standing behind each other in the centre of the chest. They turn to dust and the banner falls to the floor.

Now that my presence is known many more vampires appear from inside the numerous tents. They are unimportant. I have one goal here anyone that stands in my way is dust.

My sword catches the sunlight as it swings, dismembering another two of my foes. I push my senses out from me trying to find a void in the valley of demons where a human might stand. I feel a slice against my ribs but feel no pain. Swivelling I remove a head from shoulders just as I pinpoint the only void in my senses.

I make myself a straight beeline to my target and thrust my blade deep into the chest of a vampire standing in my path. Not going to kill him but I don’t see him standing up anytime soon. The flat of my foot pushes against his chest pulling my blade out.

A stake slides out of my left sleeve and fits securely into my palm. The moment it is fit there my arm pushes out into the chest of another vampire. I’m a quite literally surrounded every time one turns to dust another is there to take his place. I get within feet of Abbas before a well-placed kick lands to the side of the week knee and I crumple to the floor. I can’t feel the pain but I can’t move it to stand either.

Hands take hold of my forearms pulling them behind my back so tight it threatens to pull both of my shoulders out of their sockets. I feel a great weight upon both of my legs stilling their movement. A hand closes into a fist in my hair, yanking my head up.

Even without a hope in hell I still struggle against the restraint as Abbas pushes thought his men to stand directly in front of me. “Well, well, well. What do we have here?” I pull against the two vampires holding my arms desperate to get free. He’s so close yet I still can’t reach him. “Looks like a rabid dog.”

“Better a rabid dog than a snivelling weasel.” He wants to taunt with animals I’ll play. Just come a little closer and I’ll break your nose.

He mock flinches against my weasel comment to the amusement of all of his followers. He turns his attention to the vamps holding me. “Restrain her properly. We’ll string her up tomorrow.”

I’m pushed face first into the grass beneath me and I lose all leverage to struggle against the four vamps holding me. I hear the clink of thick metal as manacles are closed around my wrists and ankles. Behind my back all attached to a small metal hoop in the middle of my back. Even if they are not enchanted I haven’t got any leverage to break the chains. Just for good measure another is attached to the loop and placed around my neck so that if I did try to break free I would either suffocate are break my neck trying.

That’s where I’m left for the next half an hour while all of the tents are packed away. As I am left to calm down the rage begins to ebb out of my system giving way to the pain that my body is in. My knee feels like it’s on fire. It’s not actually dislocated again but I’m feeling the burn from when I knocked it out before. My side is beginning to throb from the slice running down it and I can feel the blood trickling along my back.

By the time the camp is packed up and ready to leave my body is betraying me. Trying to sleep to allow itself to heal. I have to fight my eyelids to keep them open. If I fall asleep now I have no illusion that I will ever get up again.

I’m unceremoniously lifted from the floor and thrown over a broad shoulder. He uses my bent knees to help steady me. Pulling them slightly straight which pulls against my throat and makes my shoulders burn.

Every step he takes tugs against my windpipe and I have to time my breathing so I can get enough oxygen into my lungs to be able to survive the walk.

It’s not too long till we go under a threshold and the intense sun leaves my exposed neck. We go down endless sets of stairs, each flight the rooms around me get more and more dimly lit. I hear a large door open and scrape against the floor before I’m thrown down another set a stairs onto a cold stone floor lightly covered by a thin layer of old straw.

Without my hands I can’t control my landing. The only thing that stops me cracking my skull open is my bad shoulder. I feel it jolt but stay in place, but only just. Several pairs of heavy boots follow me down into the dark room. A knee is pushed against my spine and the chains around my throat and legs are removed. My hands remain firmly behind my back.

I haven’t got any energy left to fight back but these guys aren’t taking any chances and more pressure is put on my spine making it very hard to breath. I hear metal scraping against metal as a hook is pushed through the link holding my hands behind my back. My face is pushed against the dirty cold floor and I manage to swivel my eyes enough in their sockets to be able to see that the chain they are attaching me to runs upwards. It threads through a large, thick hoop, which is attached to the ceiling. Then runs diagonally downwards to a rotating circular block of wood. This is not good.

The third vamp that came down with me goes over to this crank and begins to turn it. My hands are lifted off my back and my body begins to lift. As the chain is pulling me upwards, another set of chins is attached to my ankles again. I can’t see around enough to know what that is attached to.

My hands slowly pull skywards pulling the rest of my body. I feel my shoulder finally pop out of its socket and my skin being the only thing holding me there, beings to pull and stretch.

When the tips of my toes are the only part of my body touching the floor I think that they might actually stop lifting me… no such luck. How stupid could I get? Remember they chained up my ankles? Yeah well that chain is attached to six bricks, which have been tied securely together. They continue to lift me until the bricks leave the floor. That’s when I feel my knee give. The brace that I’m still wearing helps against the strain in my skin but it doesn’t stop it completely.

With my shoulders in this position it makes my chest tighten almost crushing my lungs under the pressure. It’s almost imposable to breath.

I force my attention onto a single strand of the straw on the floor and my vision begins to cloud over with tears. I will not cry. It’s not that I’m being stubborn it’s just that I don’t have enough tears to be able to cry. My jaw hurts from clenching my teeth to stop myself crying out in pain. Every inch of my body seems to be on fire.

I hear another set of boots enter the room. “Is she secure?” For fuck sake Abbas. Leave me the fuck alone. Isn’t this enough for you?

“Yes sire.” I hear a vampire answer lisping round his elongated teeth.

He makes a small grunt to indicate to me that he has smiled. “Leave us.” I hear Abbas say to the vampire, I assume the creature does as ordered, I hear the door shut and the latch click.

I try to take a breath and manage a little, I then lift my head to look at Abbas who is circling me. I look up through my eyebrows at him and he stares right back at me. He doesn’t break eye contact and I can smell no fear on him.

“And I thought this day would never come Faith.”

I try to swallow some bile that has crept into my mouth but nothing is happening so I spit it out of my mouth as hard as I can, this proves fruitless as the thick gunk drips down my chin. “You have no right to use my name.”

Abbas laughs at my venomous response. “I don’t believe you to be in a position to tell me what I can or cannot do… Faith.”

My head drops back down as I try to force more oxygen into my aching body. Still he circles me, as if he is stalking prey. “So, you know my pet, she was always a favourite of mine, it is a shame I had to let her go.”

Through rasps I manage to spit out a response. “I had it that she escaped… she beat you and your little lackeys.”

He shakes his head and stops a foot or so in front of me. He lifts my chin with this index finger and glares into my eyes. “She is nothing more than an object to be used for others pleasure, you as well as anyone should know this.”

The anger I felt earlier flares in me again, no pain just the rage. I manage to swing myself forward and since most of my body is restrained the only thing I manage is to swing forward and take his out stretched finger in my mouth… and bite… hard. I feel the blood fill my mouth as I bite his finger off to the middle joint.

His scream is met by the vampires standing outside running in with a loud bang as the door bounces off the stone wall. “Strip her.” He orders before rushing off out of the room.

The rage gone, my body comes back to reality, pain in every atom. My mind tries to go elsewhere when the vampires start to act on Abbas’ last order; they rip and cut at my clothes brushing my burning skin with their cold dead hands.