“Go!” Delilah yelled. Two people stepped out and laid down cover fire while two others carried their plunder across the hall and into the stairwell back up to the upper level. When they were clear, she waved up the next quartet. “Go!”
Delilah turned to them. “Ramon, you and Luke are next.”
Luke let the wolf clear the way through the hall as everyone pressed themselves up against the wall.
“Go!” Delilah pushed Ramon.
The wolf sprinted across the hall into the stairwell. Luke, following, stepped out and fired off a shot down the hall. He didn’t hit anyone but was gratified all the same when someone dove out of the way. With Ramon still in front of him, they made their way down the stairs to the next floor landing and their next objective.
Delilah pointed to a handful of wolves. “You six, hold this door. If you have to bug out, three up and three down.”
“Got it, Delilah,” replied a deep voice.
Delilah pushed through to the front of their little crowd, now much diminished by leaving six people to hold the stairwell. The gun fire, while not intense, was still steady as both sides tried to take out the other.
They descended another level, then busted into the hallway. Flashlights flicked on as people pulled them from belts, pockets, and backpacks. A few people affixed specially designed flashlights to the bayonet lug of their shotguns. Once again, Delilah pushed Jimmy to the front to lead them into the recesses of this level. Luke knew they were on the right level to find the other hunters when they turned a corner and the stench of sewage buckets rolled out to greet them.
In the lead, someone fired their M12. The muzzle flash illuminated figures moving deeper in the hall. Luke, stuck in the back, kept his eyes averted to protect his night vision as more shots rang out. When the distinct scream of silver penetrating the flesh of a vampire drifted back, Luke smiled. His smile was quickly extinguished when a handgun shot was followed by the yelp of one of their werewolves.
“Make room!” someone called from in front.
Luke pressed himself against the wall as the shot wolf walked back, cradling a bleeding arm. As long as it hadn’t opened a major artery or broken the bone, the wound would heal quickly and they would be able to keep fighting if only somewhat weakened. When the gunshots stopped, Luke looked down the hall.
“Clear,” someone called.
“What were they doing down here?” someone else asked.
“Hey! Get us out of these fucking cages!” one of the hunters yelled.
“Keep it down in there,” Delilah yelled. “We’ll get you out shortly. Luke? I need you up here.”
Luke stepped out and pushed his way past the few werewolves and human form teammates. He didn’t recognize a lot of people and wasn’t sure who was in human form and who might be an actual human. When he made it to the front, Delilah swung her shotgun through the open door of the first cell. Luke gritted his teeth. The vampires had been down here to kill the hunters. A woman lay in a heap inside the cage, her skin slashed from vampire claws, though the vampire had finished her off by wrenching her head around, snapping her neck.
He and Delilah found the same scene in the next two pens. The fourth and fifth were empty. The two after those held fresh cadavers. When they arrived at the last three, the doors remained locked. Delilah grabbed a free flashlight from someone and peered into the pen. A hunter scrambled away from the light, blocking their eyes.
“Can someone find the keys?” Delilah asked, moving to the next to pens.
A similar scene greeted her and Luke when she aimed the flashlight into the last two cells.
“Is anyone injured? Can you make it out of here under your own power?” Luke asked. When he got no answer, he added, “If you are injured, we’ll get you out and to medical treatment.”
“Just keep those monsters on a leash,” one of the hunters said.
At the word monster, several of the werewolves responded with growls.
“The wolves are our friends and will protect you, so don’t insult them,” Delilah replied.
“At this point, I’d take death from a werewolf over this hell,” a woman said. “I just want out of this cage.”
“Got the keys!” A man pushed her way through and handed them to Delilah.
The man who’d found the keys stepped up to Luke and placed his lips near his ear. “There’s a vamp body back there if you want it. I had them hold off before staking it.”
“Thanks.” Luke patted his shoulder and stepped toward the back of the cell block, pulling his rudis as he picked his way through the mess of the others his team had killed.
Luke drained the vamp, turning it to dust, and returned to find the three hunters freed from their cages. Delilah ushered them out, sending out the squad to make sure the way remained clear. Every sound, real or imagined, drew flashlights, guns, and eyes followed by relieved sighs when nothing was found. When they reached the stairwell, Delilah reduced their squad by two more, sending them up to escort the hunters back to the entrance. She pulled a couple spare boxes of shotgun shells from her backpack for them to drop off on the way up as their squad holding the stairwell two floors up was still engaged, firing off shots at semi-regular intervals.
Delilah looked around the crowd as she pushed shells into her shotgun until she found who she was looking for. “Jimmy, take us down to the level for the last objective.”
“Yes, ma’am.” While still keeping a subservient pose, it looked as if his back had straightened some as his usefulness had proven valuable.
Delilah waited until Luke caught up and pulled him into a one-armed hug. “We’ll get her out, Luke.”
Even in the low light, she’d seen the worried look on his face. He returned the hug. They were getting close.
“Thank you for your support, Dee. It means a lot,” Luke replied. He couldn’t be truly free until Roxi was free.
“I know, now let’s go get your friend.”
* * *
They’d freed a few hunters from the main pens and sent them out with some of the wolves. Jimmy was taking them through the lower reaches of the arena into its deepest and darkest bowels. Delilah, with a can of spray paint from her backpack, had been spraying symbols on the wall so they could quickly find their way out again.
“This is as far as I’ve ever gone,” Jimmy said, addressing Luke, “but I’ve seen them taking you and that woman down this corridor. Beyond here was off limits to us low-level thralls.”
Luke nodded and stepped in front of the group.
Delilah grabbed his arm and stopped him, stepping in front of him. “Rhonda, you’re with me. Luke, you stay behind us in case we come on anyone feeling belligerent. Ramon, you’re still on Luke.”
Luke reluctantly conceded to Delilah. He felt they were close, and he wanted to run ahead and find Roxi. Restraining his anticipation was proving difficult, but Delilah and the hulking wolf that was Rhonda effectively blocked the hallway while Ramon breathed down his neck. They’d blocked it so effectively, Luke could barely see anything in front of them.
“Luke, we have a problem here. There’s no more hallway. It just a dead ends up ahead,” Delilah said.
“Let me by, please,” Luke said.
Delilah and Rhonda backed up against the wall, making a narrow corridor between them for Luke to squeeze by. He looked over the end of the hallway, and sure enough, it ended in a wall made from the same gray stone as the rest of the arena.
Closing his eyes, he lowered his head. “Please let me find her. It can’t end like this.”
Opening his eyes, he systematically searched the walls, starting from where they met the ceiling all the way to the floor. With his heart falling down a deepening pit as each second ticked away, he’d nearly given up when he noticed a floor stone at the wall’s edge. It featured more scruffs and scratches than any floor stone tucked along a wall should have. He ran his boot over the stone, feeling the texture through the sole of the boot.
“Get ready…” Luke said.
Rhonda and Ramon slid by him and crouched, ready to pounce if anyone appeared behind the wall. Luke set this toe up against the wall stone above the scuffed floor stone and pushed. At first nothing happened, then it gave way slowly until smoothly sliding the rest of the way in.
“Always secret doors with you,” Delilah mumbled behind him.
The false wall capping the hall receded into the wall sideways, revealing a dark stairwell. Either there were no lights in the hallway, or they’d been knocked out when the levels above had failed. Rhonda led the way as Delilah joined Luke behind her.
“Your friend better be worth all this trouble,” Delilah said.
Luke didn’t answer, angst eating at his stomach. After finding vampires upstairs killing hunters, he feared the worst as they descended into the abyssal darkness where even the flashlights worried about what they’d find.
Delilah squeezed his hand briefly before releasing it. When they reached the bottom of the stairs, they turned into a small hall, their flashlights illuminating heavy wooden doors. Luke walked up to the first door and pulled on the handle. Locked. “Shit.” He hadn’t thought about what they’d need to enter the cells.
Delilah handed the keys to Luke. He took them and thanked her with a nod. He tried every key, his despair threatening to overwhelm him more and more with each failed key until he was left with no more to try.
He looked down, noticing the crossbars along the bottom of the door. The lower crossbar blocked a shorter door that had been used to slide through trays. The second cross bar was the bigger one for the bucket exchange.
He sank to his knees and with shaking hands, tried the keys in the padlocks. When the last key failed, he hung his head, tears burning in the corner of his eyes. He reached for the shotgun and tried to bash the lock off the crossbar but failed to make a solid contact in his current condition.
Ramon stepped up and extended his paw to Luke. Nodding, Luke handed the shotgun over. Ramon flipped the safety on, then pulled back and brought the butt of the gun down on the first padlock, sending it tinkling to the ground in pieces. Another quick bash and the lock on the other crossbar joined it. He stepped to the next door and started on its padlocks.
Luke pulled the crossbars off, tugging the flap doors open. When he looked in, it was empty. He moved onto the next door and found it empty as well. His frustration and fear grew. What if there were other special cells in a different part of the arena? What if they’d taken her with them? What if she was dead inside her cell?
He violently yanked the bars off the next door and tossed them aside—the cell was empty. He slammed the flap door shut, then stared at the floor while he stood there on his hands and knees, his breathing growing uneven as his fear deepened. He took a deep breath and held it, then let it out, holding it again. In the silence between breaths, he thought he heard a soft voice singing raggedly. His heart sped up when he heard a couple of muffled screams accompany Ramon’s lock bashing, followed by a melody he recognized as one of Roxi’s.
Not bothering to get up, he crawled to the next door, and put his ear up to it, then moved to the next one. Finally! He pulled the crossbars off and set them aside. Casting a quick prayer to Selene, he lifted the flap, ducking his head in.
“Roxi,” he whispered.
The women he’d spent the last several months with sat in the corner, her knees tugged up to her chest and her arms wrapped around them, as her head hung down. She rocked as she sang the words to a sad song, tears staining the words.
“Roxi,” he spoke louder. “It’s me, Roxi.”
She lifted her head and looked through the sheets of her shaggy black hair and screamed, trying to push herself through the wall.
“Roxi, I’ve come to get you out. It’s Luke.”
Once she stopped trying to escape through the back wall, she sat back down, breathing heavily. “Luke?”
“Roxi, come here. I’m with friends. They’re breaking us out. We have to go,” Luke pleaded, hoping to break through to her. He could understand. He’d nearly lost what was left of his grip on reality when she’d been missing. The last thing she saw in the arena was people taking him away, away from her. “Please, Roxi.”
She crawled toward him until she was nearly within arm’s reach. He wanted to reach out to her and pull her into his arms, but he was afraid he’d spook her and send her scrambling back into the depths of her cell. She lifted one arm and slowly moved it toward Luke’s face. At the last moment, she paused then pushed a trembling finger into his cheek. Once he didn’t disappear, she placed her palm on his cheek.
“You’re real…”
“I’m real. We need to go, Roxi.” He pulled his head out and looked back at his friends. “Can you hold the flap door up?”
Delilah walked up and pushed it against the door, then lowered a hook into a loop to secure the door. “There ya go, buddy.”
He wasn’t thinking clearly. Roxi’s presence robbed him of the little clarity he’d achieved after Selene’s healing and draining some vampires. Without the door propped on his head and back, he reached through the flap door. Roxi extended her arms and Luke took them, gently pulling her out the flap door. Once she was out, she collapsed into Luke's arms, sobbing. He held her tightly, caressing her hair as she cried into his neck.
“Ma’am, there’s something in this other cell too.” Jimmy pointed to the last cell in the hall.
A mangy dog’s head poked out of the flap, its hair a matted mess, sticking out in all directions in mats and filthy strands. As he crawled out, patches of missing fur exposed rashy skin and too many ribs. His tongue lolled out as his tail wagged weakly.
While Luke had been trying to coax Roxi out, Jimmy and the wolves had been opening the flap doors to ensure they were actually empty. Hearing the commotion, the dog must have decided to see what was up.
“Why is there a mangy old dog down here?” Delilah asked.
“Did he pee on the wrong vampire’s leg?” Rhonda asked, standing naked with her arms folded over chest after she shifted from her bipedal wolf.
Jimmy, staring at the dog, shook his head and shrugged.
After the dog cleared the flap door, he rolled over onto his side, exposing his belly, his tail swishing slowly back and forth.
“At least he doesn’t seem aggressive,” Delilah said.
Luke turned his lips toward Roxi’s ear. “Can you stand? We need to go.”
She nodded, reluctantly peeling herself away from Luke. He rose and offered both his hands to help her. She squeaked in pain as he levered her up, hopping on one leg until Luke steadied her.
“Can you put any weight on the other leg?” Luke asked.
She delicately put the foot down and nearly collapsed when she tried.
“Someone is going to have to carry her, Luke,” Delilah said, walking toward him.
Roxi shrunk away from the strangers. Hoping he’d drained enough vampires and that Selene’s strength would hold, he squatted down and scooped her into his arms. She wrapped her arms around his neck, clinging to him tightly without chocking him.
“Are you sure this is a good idea, Luke?” Delilah asked.
“No, but we have to get out of here.” Luke adjusted her to secure his grip on the woman.
Delilah nodded and pointed toward the stairs. “Ramon, help Luke if he needs it.” She took a few steps forward and turned back to the dog. “Are you coming?”
The dog got up a bit unsteadily and moved toward the group. Delilah and Rhonda, back in her wolf form, took the lead while the rest split up so Luke, Roxi, and Jimmy were in the middle. The dog trailed behind, his nails clicking on the stone floor. By the time they reached the stairs, Luke’s lungs and legs burned from carrying the slight woman, but he didn’t complain. When they found a couple of the vampire bodies they’d left, Luke set Roxi down.
Pulling his rudis, he stabbed one and drained it, feeling a bit of the burn leave his limbs. When he skewered the second one, he guided Roxi to it, helping her get set up. She spoke the incantation, the same one Luke has spoken so many times over the last two millennia. When nothing happened, she collapsed to the side, her sobbing renewed. Luke quickly drained the second vamp, then scooped her up again. He’d hoped his would work for her. Maybe they’d have to try it again, just in case.
They ran into more of their allies the closer they got to their exit point, pulling the six who were still holding the stairwell. Delilah sent them to the middle to reload, assigning teammates with more ammo to bring up the rear and keep the vamps from rushing them from behind.
Soon, it was a flood of werewolves running out of the arena. Luke could see the light of the moon ahead—they were nearly out. Sweat poured down his forehead, but he didn’t have a spare hand or arm to wipe it away.
“We’re almost out, Roxi,” he whispered.
The woman had gone silent in his arms, the only movement her shallow breathing. She’d calmed some as they wound their way out. They hadn’t made any stops after the first pair of vampires. The bodies they’d left had been staked by their allies.
“Go!” someone screamed from behind. “Incoming! Lots!”
Luke stepped to the side, letting his squad mates move to the back. They opened fire, sending up a din of shotgun blasts met with screams and small arms fire. After the first shot, Roxi trembled in his arms, squeaking and clasping tightly around his neck. The stop in momentum to get out of the way had robbed him of forward progress as he struggled to move again. Every muscle in his body screamed.
As the wolves in front of him climbed up the rubble leading out of the corridor and out of the arena, Luke’s lungs heaved in and out, trying to get air to his burning muscles. He wasn’t out yet, as he tried to ignore the shouts of his team behind him fighting a running retreat as they covered the withdrawal. Luke focused on putting one foot in front of the other, escaping the arena with Roxi his only objective. They’d gone through months of hell in this arena. They’d survived fire and death. Now they were nearly walking in the free light of the moon and whatever waited beyond.