A Chance Encounter

Ellis has discovered the origin of the Bristol infestation, and is on his way to meet a vampire prisoner who might be able to help him. However; on his way he is intercepted by a mysterious woman.

The east side of Bristol was dull enough as it was, with all the posh young men and women strolling about town with their s**t-eating grins and their coin purses rattling. The stuffy aristocracy that clouded the streets like a plague made Ellis want to vomit. However, the library was the worst place of all. It was where--counterintuitive as it may seem--the stupidest folks seemed to congregate. It was full of people who wanted to appear intelligent to their peers and potential partners. They would cross their legs and stare blankly at the books in front of their noses, their glazed over eyes reflecting their dead souls.

More than a few eyes raised as Ellis shifted into the facility that was usually reserved only for the wealthy. Members of the Crusaders of the Lord were admitted into any public or private facility that they so pleased, and nobody had the right to deny them. The Crusaders were, after all, the highest form of law enforcement in the world. They were the Pope’s very own secret service, and with the tenth crusade having left the papacy with near-total control over the eastern hemisphere, it put them in a very high position on the pecking order. This, however, did not sit very well with the aristocrats who had to ‘tolerate’ Ellis’ presence.

His muddied boots clopped along the hardwood floors as he approached the librarian’s desk, and he put on his most award winning smile for the withered old crone. Her hair was tied behind her with a ribbon, and she looked down her nose at him, her glasses perched near the tip.

“Well, you look ravishing today, my sweet,” Ellis cooed.

Her expression did not waver as smacked her lips. After a few moments of silence she raised her eyebrows and continued to stare at him apathetically.

“And, I must say, your personality is just beaming today. Are you pregnant? You’re glowing.”

“Spare me, Carter.”

“Feisty. I like it.”

It looked like the corner of her mouth threatened to twitch upwards in the semblance of some form of entertainment, but any sign of humor was snuffed out instantly as she resumed her expressionless staring.

“Alright, here’s the thing, Tess. I have a bit of a doozy for you.”

“Is that right?”

“Hold your horses, girl. I can feel the excitement rushing through your veins. You might pop a blood vessel.”

“Cut the crap, kid. If you want me to help you, you best get on with it.”

“Is it hot in here, Tess?” He pulled his collar to the side as if to air himself off and bit his lip ever so lightly.

Latessa stood up from her desk and turned around without a word, beginning to walk away from the desk altogether, as Ellis was the only one there anyways.

“Okay! I’m sorry! I really do need your help, though, I swear. It’s about the asylum across the River Avon. Do you know of it?”

Latessa stopped in her tracks at the mention of the asylum and she turned on her heel as she looked him over. “How do you know about that place? It hasn’t been open since before you were born. They buried any records of it a long time ago.”

“Ahh, but they seem to have missed a piece of that information. Word has it that it is hiding somewhere in your domain.”

“Alright, kid, you’ve got my attention.” She was sitting back down now, her gnarled fingers clasped together in front of her. The elderly woman’s eyes seemed to glimmer as she peered over the boney knuckles at him.

“I don’t have much to go off of, but if it’s you, I think it might just be enough. I’m looking for a journal. It would be an unremarkable piece--likely the reason why they managed to let it slip past them when they were destroying the documents linked to the hospital. Apparently it would have been written within the last few years of the asylum’s operation, and it belonged to a scholar of some sort. He would have visited there frequently before it closed down. That’s all I have though.”

“Mick! Mack!” she screamed their names so loud that people stopped what they were doing in order to peer over at the desk.

The two lugs appeared from aisles deep in the library, abandoning whatever menial task they were previously occupied with when they heard their mother calling for them. They sauntered up to the desk, their lengthy limbs dragging behind them like apes as they approached. The faraway look in their eyes and the way they absentmindedly bumbled through their lives caused people to stare or make jests, but if Latessa ever caught someone mocking her children, she would give them what-for.

“Yes, Mum?” the two of them asked in almost perfect unison.

Latessa’s hands were moving at breakneck speed across a sheet of paper. Her old, ravaged hands come to life as she whirred through numbers and letters at a dizzying speed. Ellis just watched in wonder as she went about her work--it was one of the only reasons that his visits to the library somewhat entertained him.

“Yes, Mum?” the voices came again.

Latessa handed a sheet to Mick (or perhaps it was Mack, nobody actually knew which was which, and many doubted that Latessa herself even remembered) without saying a word and the massive man-child looked it over while drool pooled in the corner of his mouth.

“Okay, Mum. Back soon.”

The oafish fellow clapped his brother on the back of the shoulder and pointed to the numbers and letters on the page. After a few brief moments of gazing over the book designations, Mick placed the page into his pocket and they both went their separate ways, trundling through the library to find the books that their mother had asked them to grab. While they were off looking, she continued to write, having stopped short to give her sons something to preoccupy themselves with.

“Apart from what many people think, they really are smart boys, aren’t they?” Ellis asked, looking as they wordlessly hunted down the several books from across the library without ever looking back at the page in Mick’s pocket.

“In their own ways. They can be a pair of damned fools, and sometimes they drive me almost as crazy as they are, but there have been times when they have been remarkably intelligent in their own rights.”

“In their own rights, eh?”

“Aye. If ye don’t believe me, get a load of this.” Latessa stated, a smirk crossing her features as she looked at Ellis. “Mack! How many books are currently out on loan?”

“One hundred and thirty four, Mum!” came the thunderous reply.

“Mick! How many books in this library have less than two hundred pages?”

“Seven hundred and sixty eight, Mum! Though, there are another twenty six that have pages removed, making them less than two hundred. Don’t know if that counts, Mum! Sorry, Mum!”

“That’s fine, dear. You’ve done wonderfully.” She leveled her gaze back to Ellis, and the hunter stroked his chin and nodded to her.

“One hell of a memory.”

“Oh, it’s not just memory. They keep track of all of these things on the spot. They can take a single look at a shelf of books and tell you how many books, and how many pages are in each one. It’s extraordinary. If someone could just teach them to tie their shoes properly and how to stay in bed at night, that would be fantastic.”

“Here you go, Mum.” One of the brothers dropped a stack of books on the desk, and Latessa kissed his cheek lightly.

“Thank you, dear. Here’s the second page. Share it with your brother, and take the books to wherever Mr. Carter is sitting when you find them.” The man nodded to her and strode off to find his brother and the rest of the books they needed.

“Remarkable.” Ellis stated, not even the hint of patronization or sarcasm in his voice.

“Well, you see if any of these are the books you are looking for. They are all journals, and they all belonged to scholars. We have a large number of them, probably another two dozen or so for you to read.”

“Amazing. I should be done by tomorrow night,” he replied, exasperation already setting in as he grabbed the stack of books and headed off into the corners of the library to sit down and begin pouring over the many journals.

The time seemed to fade away like nothing as he read, his feet kicked up onto the table in front of him, the mud slowly oozing down from his shoes onto the furniture. Many of the patrons looked at him with great disdain, wrinkling their nose and distancing themselves from him. A few of them were even bold enough to make complaints to Latessa when he decided to light a cigarette and tap the ashes out onto an end-table beside his chair. Tess merely shrugged them off and sent them packing. Ellis hated this place, it was true, but he adored watching Tess tongue-lashing the snooty b******s that inhabited it. Half of the people who were complaining had been smoking in the library at some point or another anyway, and Latessa was just as sure of that as Ellis.

By the time Mick (or Mack) left him another stack of books he had only managed to crawl through half of the first pile. The words seemed to drawl on endlessly--the language almost completely indecipherable--and before long his head was throbbing. He massaged his temples as he made his way through another journal, his bleary eyes struggling to find the words. As if they had read his mind, the two brothers appeared by the sides of his chairs, holding a very large candle each, which they placed on the table before him.

“Thank you very much, Mick. Mack,” he stated, nodding to them individually.

They seemed nervous as he talked to them, and they shied away, fidgeting with their clothing as they walked off. Ellis smiled as they left--the two of them were off, sure, but they had hearts the size of watermelons.

The candles fueled his reading into the later hours, after all the other folks had left the library and the doors were locked behind them. Latessa told him that he was welcome to stay, as long as he didn’t make too much of a racket. She lived in the building anyways, so it didn’t bother her to have him sifting through the dusty old tomes while she slept.

Eventually, deep into the morning hours, Ellis’ legs began to cramp and he stood up from his chair. Mick and Mack had barely slept through the night. They had lain down for a rest a few hours prior, but they had already appeared from their rooms and begun strolling about the library and making sure everything was in order. One of the brothers was walking toward him, but as Ellis stood and begin to pace with his book, the man continued on his way right by him without so much as a peep. Ellis shrugged his shoulders and he continued on through the final pages of the journal.

The sun was beginning to cast its very first rays across the horizon as Ellis finished the final book of his pile, as he continued to walk circles around the library. He sighed as he put the book down, his eyes bloodshot and sore as he flopped back down into his chair. It seemed there was, after all, something that Tess and her two boy geniuses couldn’t find.

He woke to a loud bang as the library doors clattered open and the sun broke through the darkness, blasting him with a wave of warmth and burning his eyes. He groaned as he covered his eyes with a hand and looked down to see a light blanket thrown over him; there was also a tattered old book placed on his lap. One of his cigarettes hung from his mouth still as he sat there, and he grumbled to himself as he plucked it from his lips and slid it back into the pack. He blinked a few times to make sure he wasn’t dreaming, rubbing his eyes, and he grabbed the book to see what they might have missed on their hunt during the previous night.

My name is Marsilio Ficino. I have decided after my long journey across the ocean, that as I find my feet in Bristol, I shall begin a recording of events of my time in this dark place. I long for my home in Florence, but it will be some time before I return to that beautiful city. The people here seem like they are half in the grave, and I have yet to even come close to the asylum I have been hired to assess.

It feels as if the hand of god has missed this place. It is cold and lightless, even as the summer warms my sea-sick bones. I pray that during my stay, I may cast some of His majesty over this forgotten realm of destitution and debauchery. The first man I encountered upon my arrival was so inebriated that he nearly toppled into the Avon. He tried to explain that it was the fact that he was missing an eye that he was walking as such, but his breath was so ripe with the scent of fermentation that I could have likely bottled his saliva and sold it as moonshine.

I am treated kindly, as a man of the cloth, but there are people here who look at me as if I am some sort of devil. I have seen men and women both, glaring from the shadows as I pass--as if my presence alone offends them. I fear this place may become my final resting ground, though I plan on speaking to god every day to ask him to spare me from such a fate. I must find myself a proper place to sleep, and from there my journey shall begin.

Ellis grinned from ear, having lurched out of his chair and thrown the blanket to the side halfway through reading the entry. He looked around for whomever placed the book there, and his eyes fell on one of Tess’ boys as he knelt down and gingerly picked up the blanket that Ellis had thrown to the side.

“Excuse me, but do you know who found this?” Ellis asked, a friendly smile on his face.

“I did, I found the book last night when Mr. Carter was still reading,” the man spoke quietly. “It wasn’t on Mum’s list. It also wasn’t on the master list, but it was a lot like the other ones you were reading. I gave you a blanket too. Mr. Carter looked cold.”

“Last night?” Ellis looked confused. “If I was still awake, why did you wait for me to sleep to give it to me?”

“Mum told me to give any books to Mr. Carter wherever he was sitting. But, Mr. Carter was standing while he was reading last night. By the time you sat down, you were already sleeping. Mum told me, Mr. Carter. Only where you were sitting.”

Ellis was about to try to explain the woman’s orders to her son, but instead he caught himself and shook his head, almost laughing. “That makes perfect sense. Thank you very much, my good lad. You’ve been a gentleman and a scholar.” He tipped an imaginary hat at the man and he turned on his heel, walking toward the exit of the library.

“I trust you have what you need?” Latessa’s voice carried down from her loft bedroom. She stood by the railing, obviously in the midst of preparing herself for the day.

“Indeed. As always, you are as intelligent as you are beautiful,” Ellis stated, folding his arm across his midriff and bowing low to her, his other arm swinging down in front of him in an extravagant show.

“Aye, and you are as charming as you are annoying.”

Ellis allowed himself a burst of short laughter as the older woman turned on her heel and walked back into her bedroom to finish getting ready for the day of maintaining the library once more. “Love you, too!” he called up to her as he breathed a sigh of relief and walked out of the library with the book held tightly under his armpit. Now he just had to work his way through the journal until he found what he needed inside.

At the very least, Ellis knew that he needed to head across the river, so whatever information he might find within the journal, he could ascertain while beginning the journey towards his destination. He began to idly flip through the passages, following the recounting of the man’s dreary adventures and growing paranoia. It seemed that Marsilio was under the belief that he was being followed by someone, or kept under close watch at the very least. By the time that Ellis had reached the ferry that would take him across the River Avon, he had already begun to piece together some form of direction to where the asylum might be.

Most of what was written about the journeys that Marsilio had taken from Bristol to the asylum were merely stating that he had been trundling down a path toward the setting sun, or that he had seen a most beautiful bridge over a small creek. However, these things were exactly the clues that Ellis needed to find his way through the now overgrown trails that lay on the other side of the river. He nodded to the ferryman as he approached, closing the journal and tucking it back under his arm.

The exchange was very brief, and there was little in the way of actual speech. Ellis mentioned that it was a beautiful day, and that he needed to cross the river. The man held his hand out for payment and wordlessly nodded, issuing nothing but a grunt of acceptance as Ellis placed the golden coins in his hand. The man placed the coin in his mouth (or at least that was what Ellis believed to be happening as the man’s hand disappeared into the dark of his hood, holding the coin at the ready) and when he made a curt nod and withdrew the coin from the hood, Ellis smiled awkwardly and nodded back.

“Right, then. Glad it tastes just like real gold.” In the back of his head, Ellis just hoped that the man didn’t get any sort of sickness from putting the money in his mouth. After all, it had come from a brothel, and God only knew where it had been. Immediately afterward, Ellis just hoped that the man could not see the disgust etched on his face when he thought of the coins previous whereabouts.

The ferryman’s arms were muscled--that you could still tell--but the skin seemed to sag off of the muscle tissue with age, creating a rather strange juxtaposition. Ellis quickly averted his gaze and allowed the man to go about his business, rowing the boat across the River. It wouldn’t take all that long, but it would give him some time to continue reviewing the journal. By the time that they hit the other bank, he had made it through nearly three quarters of the book, and he was almost certain that he knew where he was going. As long as he found the small signs in the woods along the way. It was almost as if Marsilio’s journal had been penned for the sake alone of hiding the directions to the asylum, like he knew that they would condemn the place and remove all records.

He hopped off of the boat and onto the shore, and he thanked the ferryman once more, finding little surprise in the lack of a response. As the boat began its inch-by-inch journey back across the water, Ellis made his way up the large hill that led to the riverbank, letting the breeze roll through his hair as he took a deep breath and let the moment hover around him for a bit before he continued. He crested the hill and looked over it into the thick forests that surrounded this side of the Avon. The Mill was nestled into the trees, though the wooden giants were fading around the facility as they were cut and processed--a sound, Ellis noticed, that was not being issued forth from the massive complex. He furrowed his brows as he looked the place over, trying to spot the workers going about their business. He knew that it had been pretty close to noon, and that the workers were likely lounging around back, eating the sandwiches their wives had made them, or drinking their “coffee”.

He began to walk past the building and into the woods that lay all around it. He headed due East, and just as the journal had led him to believe, the forest thinned slightly in one particular area and began to trail off into the woods. He walked slowly at first, reveling in the sun on his back and the scent of wildflowers the light breeze carried through the air. It had been a long time since he had the chance to stop and relax--to appreciate the world that he worked tirelessly to protect. But, in those brief moments that he could feel the beauty of the landscape around him, he reminded himself of why he did it. Of why he chose to lead the life that he did.

When he was young, it was all about being the strong, grizzled man that his father had been. He could remember when his dad would come home after a long hunt, and they (much to his mother’s dismay) would sit together at the dinner table and talk about Christopher Carter’s incredible adventures. There was no name that rang quite as loud in the halls of the Crusaders of the Lord as Christopher Carter’s, the man was a legend. However, every legend eventually comes to a close, and it was no different for his father.

The man came back from one of his hunts changed. His strong arms hung at his sides like over-boiled asparagus, and his back was hunched and tired. He flopped down onto the table bench, and when Ellis asked him for another story, the man placed a hand on his son’s head and stared off into the dark shadows where the candlelight could not reach.

“Do not follow in my shoes, Ellis. You’re a fine young man, and you’ve got a brilliant head on your shoulders. I was like you, once. I believed I was invincible. Hell, so did everyone else. But, the day comes when you must face the truth. This line of work is not a career, nor is it an adventure. It is a hobby that instead of investing your time into, you watch as it takes more and more of it away from you. Until you have nothing left.”

“What’re you talking about, Dad? You’re not even fifty yet! You’ve got more life left in you than half the blighters in Britain!” His father laughed heartily at this. It was the last time that Ellis would ever hear him laugh again.

“Aye, I may have fewer years beneath my belt than some, son, but time does not wait for our years to pass. Not when you do what I do. If you walk the road I walk, death will come for you when it pleases, and no later than that.”

“Then stop! You’ve done more than anyone in the Lords! You’re a hero! You don’t need to go anymore. Stay with us!”

“It’s not as simple as that, Ellis, m’boy. When you are a man, you will understand. When you begin to walk a path, you are bound to walk it until it ends, no matter where that end may be. It’s your duty as a man to see your choices through to the bitter end. Where my path takes me may be the end of my life, and I have to know that you will be here to take care of your mother. There are dark forces conspiring against me now, and they plan to come for my head.”

Ellis’ lip quivered, and as he faced his father, his fist balling at his sides as he stood from the table. “Shut up!” he screamed, tears welling in his eyes. “If they come, then we’ll kill ‘em! We’ll kill all of them!” The tears began rolling from his cheeks in fat liquid balls. “Just stay here, and we can do it together,” he pled, his voice quieting as he fought his hardest to contain his sobs.

“I wish I could, boy. You will never understand just how much. But, I can’t put you and your Mum in danger. Now, promise me you’ll keep her safe. Promise me that you will stay away from this nonsense. Live a good life, and die an old, happy man with children of your own. Maybe even one named Christopher, no?” Christopher tried to smile as he jested, leaning forward to pull his son into a hug.

Ellis slapped away his hands and turned on his heel, running away and slamming his bedroom door behind him. Hurt shone in Christopher’s one good eye, and he wiped a tear from it as he adjusted the black eye patch that hung over his right eye. Ellis could hear angry words and tears throughout the night, and when he woke the next morning, his father was gone. He never saw him again, and he never forgave him for taking away his hero. For the last vision of his immortal savior to be one of weakness.

Everything Ellis had done from that moment on had been to protect his family. He bid his mother adieu and he sailed across the ocean to Rome, where he stayed for several years in training to become a Crusader of the Lord. His recommendation lay within his blood, and he had no problems gaining entry into the organization. When he returned home, he found an empty home, and a soulless note that explained that his mother had taken a heavy fever and died in the winter of 1521.

It took some time before he could forgive God for taking her from him, and while he was doing His work, none-the-less. But, after his grieving had ended, Ellis threw himself into his work more ferociously than he ever had, and after gaining a name for himself within the Crusaders, he had been brought back to Britain. It had been a few years since he had re-inhabited his old home, and begun to report to Raimey, but Bristol never could feel quite like home again.

Ellis sighed as he walked through the woods, finding himself backtracking over the last paragraph of Marsilio’s journal over and over again, reading a line and being consumed by his thoughts before re-reading it and realizing he had been glazing over the page once again. The path before him was thin and serpentine as it wound through the woods. Most of it had been erased by age, but with a sharp eye and a little bit of luck you could find your way along it still. He never truly knew for sure if the journal had led him astray until he spotted the creek lazily bubbling down the hilly terrain, flowing constantly toward the Avon in whatever meandering way it might find.

The bridge that the journal had described was made of moss covered stone, and it was wide enough for a horse and a cart if you were lucky. From here-on-in it would be simple. He knew for sure he was on the right trail, and as long as his eyes were able to keep up, he would be able to find his way to the asylum in no time. However, something was still bothering him, and he returned to the journal, reading the last paragraph once more.

Their dead eyes never seem to close. They live in both this world and the next, with their feet already in the grave. These patients are without cure, and I fear that they are being called by Him to return to paradise, but they are being kept here by some ungodly force. The asylum is a tomb for the living dead. Their cries can be heard echoing the halls at night, as they slip into eternity. Beneath my journal, I sleep, and I hope that those who wake me will be doing so to take me from this place forever. I fear if I am not freed, I shall need to escape on my own with this pen of silver sheathed in my heart.

The asylum is a tomb for the living dead? Did he know? How could he have? But there it was. It caught him every time he read it, and he could not help but wonder. Was this place a home for the damned even before recent years? Did this Marsilio Ficino catch a glimpse of the vampire menace that hovered over their world? What else might be hidden in this ‘tomb’?

Ellis’ steps fell faster as he moved onward toward the asylum. An urgency gripped at his heart, and he wanted nothing more than to be done with this errand so that he could return to Bristol and drown himself in women and pints. Perhaps he could find a woman stupid enough to wed him and start a family of his own--as selfish as he knew that was. He, however, was not his father. He would protect his family until the day he died.

By the time that he had reached the old, forgotten asylum, the sun was hanging lower in the sky. The warmth of it had already begun to fade, leaving a chill seeping into his skin and the hairs on the back of his neck prickling. The weeds grew through the pathway that led to the front doors of the institution so heavily that it seemed like a green carpeting more than a gravel walkway. The courtyard fountain had long since ceased operation, the child angel perched with its mouth open in a wordless plea, where water once spewed from without cease. Its arm was outstretched, reaching for the setting sun that was slowly falling behind one of the corners of the building. He would give it an hour and a half tops before night had fallen. The putrid water within the base of the sculpted marvel was now nothing more than a breeding ground for insects and disease, and Ellis could almost taste the acrid scent as he walked by the fountain.

The doors to the asylum seemed to be stitched together by the moss that nearly coated them from top to bottom, and when Ellis wrenched them open, they seemed to scream in protest. The sound echoed deep within the asylum, and it made even Ellis take pause as he listened for anyone (or anything) who may have heard him entering the building. He breathed a sigh of relief and entered into the building, taking a careful first step so that he could analyze his surroundings as best he could in the lightless interior, holding the door open with one hand while reaching into his pocket with another to fetch his matches and the pilfered pack of cigarettes.

He slid the half smoked cigarette from the library out of the pack and regarded the malformed, odorous stump with disgust before he put it into his mouth and let the door slide shut behind him. His hands fumbled for a moment, as he tried to find his matches, and when he finally opened the tin and struck the match he was face to face with his worst nightmare. He cried out in shock, leaping backwards into the front doors and knocking them off of their hinges, sending him rolling head over heels into the front pathway once again, light blasting through the now destroyed front doors.

Ellis shot back up to his feet and he brushed himself off, removing the dust from his tattered old jacket and walking back up the stairs, making an inventory of his minor bumps and bruises that he had received. The only way to know what you were capable of was to keep a constant mindfulness on the state of your body. He took a deep breath as he walked back up to the doors and he narrowed his eyes as he glared through the tangled locks of crimson hair.

“After I exterminate the bloodsuckers and form an ever-lasting world peace…you’re next,” Ellis stated venomously as he motioned with two fingers beneath his eyes that he was watching the spider hanging in its intricately crafted web.

At the very least he could be sure that there was nobody else lurking about, else they would have most certainly heard him by now. The front desk was backed by a large office that could only be entered through a side door, and it was there that he could see the security station, where he would find the keys he needed to begin doing his rounds. He knew that his contact was supposed to be inside this eerie monster somewhere, but he had no idea where to begin. Keys, though, seemed like a spectacularly logical first step.

The unlit cigarette hung from his mouth, and the burnt tip still emitted its intensely unsatisfying scent as Ellis strode through the now well-lit room. He could taste the ash in his mouth before he had even taken a drag and it made him feel sick to his stomach. He spat the butt out, letting it roll off into the dark corners. Maybe one of those eight-legged b******s would find it and choke to death. The thought of it brought a smile to his lips.

As the asylum was a large building to attempt to light with candles alone, it became rather peculiar as to the lack of windows on the outside of the structure. Ellis stroked his chin as he walked to the side door of the main office, pushing the rusted gate open with a gruff shove. He found a couple of half-melted candles in the office, and he immediately picked them up and placed them on top of the front desk so he would not forget them, lighting a single candle with another of his matches before strolling into the security station. He had to raise a hand to his face, covering his nose from a foul scent, working its way from the likely unemptied washrooms that had been sitting for decades somewhere within this hellhole. There were empty hooks that lined a single cork board where the keys should have been, but as he glanced around the back room he realized very quickly that this wasn’t going to be as simple as he had wanted it to be.

He closed his eyes and took a deep breath, flexing his hands and concentrating as he looked, trying to pick up any sorts of clues that might lead him to where he needed to go. His green eyes worked furiously as the peered through the candlelight, scouring every nook and cranny of the room before he saw the crack in the wooden floor. To the untrained eye, it would seem to be a failure on the carpenter’s behalf--a board merely set too far from the others--but as Ellis followed the crack’s path, he noticed the pattern and he quickly shoved a desk aside, wanting nothing more than to leave this acrid dungeon. He hadn’t thought that he would ever find a place on Earth that smelt worse than the lower end of Piss Paths, but this one took the cake. He leaned down and wrenched the trap door open, pulling it up and immediately feeling the moisture of the room below and catching the scent of foul decay.

He knew immediately that aside from their bodily waste, there were at least ten bodies in the hollow below. Bile rose in his throat as he stepped back from the door and he tried his best to swallow it down as he reached back into his jacket for the pack of cigarettes. His candle flickered in the dim light, but the darkness swallowed everything beneath the hole in the floor. He lit his cigarette, taking a deep, harsh, drag before he moved closer to the hellish entry once more. He grabbed an extra two cigarettes, stuffing one of them up each of his nostrils, leaving them dangling from his. He felt foolish, but he could only hope it would help diminish the smell of death.

He began his descent into the darkness below, his candle flickering more violently as he moved down the shoddily thrown together stairs. He was greeted with not ten bodies, but more than the light of his candle could reveal. Their faces were long since consumed by rodents or maggots, and there was little skin left on any of them, but he could tell by the robes that they had been the patients that once resided here. Most of them wore the gowns of the inhabitants, but Ellis picked out some nurses among the dead as well. It seemed that when the building closed, there were enough secrets that they needed to silence anyone and everyone who had known about it. He bit his lip as his stomach threatened to relieve itself of its contents. The only thing that kept him safe from throwing up was the fact that he hadn’t eaten since he returned to Bristol. In a sick turn of events, it issued a low grumble as he strolled through the endless rows of bodies.

As he moved further and further from the exit, he began to see the hope of the room ending--the darkness slowly peeling away into a wall of dirt. It would seem that the impromptu graveyard had been dug by hand after the building had been built. Ellis wondered how long it had taken them to do. It was easily three hundred square feet in size and almost seven feet deep. He stroked his chin as he felt the dirt wall, tracing his hands across it and feeling the deep chill that ran through the soil. His hands snagged against some underground roots, and he wondered how close he was to the edge of the building if the trees had reached this far.

His hand struck stone, and his brows furrowed as he rose the candle to see a strange sculpture among the dirt and dead. A man wearing a strange hat and holding a book of sorts, gazing with a sad expression over the corpses. Ellis leaned in closer to look closer at the face of the man, when a thunderous slam echoed from behind him and he nearly jumped out of his skin. When he whirled around, there wasn’t even a trace of light coming from the trap door. His heart began to race and he bit his lip as he fumbled again, trying to grab his matches. When the lid popped open, the lid slipped through his fingers and he dropped the canister, much to his own dismay as he cussed under his breath. He dropped to his hands and knees, groping for his matches in the dark. His hand passed over a human skull, his hands feeling the empty sockets, and surprisingly finding his reward as he plucked a match from within the skull.

He immediately lit the small wooden stick, and it exploded into life. Ellis’ eyes darted around the room instantly, looking for anyone who may have slid into the burial ground while he was blinded, and he took a deep breath as he touched the flame to the candle once more and he continued about his business. There was no living man or woman in this place, to be sure, though the sound of breathing seemed to come from all of the bodies at once and he knew that he needed to get out as fast as he could. He spit the now finished cigarette out and immediately snatched one of the fresh ones from his nose, lighting it with the candle and pulling the sweet relief into his lungs as his hands slowly stopped shaking.

It took him another fifteen minutes in that hell to discover a corpse with a guard’s uniform and a set of keys still hanging from the tattered clothes around his very slim waist. After snatching the keys he ran to the stairs and climbed them two at a time, slamming into the trapdoor at the top and sending it rocketing open as he spilled into the fresher air of the asylum and removed the cigarette that was still fastened in his nostril. He took three long breaths before he doubled over in a corner and heaved, his stomach attempting to dispense whatever it could possibly manage.

After wiping his mouth with the back of his sleeve, he placed the last cigarette back into the pack and walked back into the sunlit entry to the asylum. He stood with the rays hugging around his body, warming him and making him feel a little less suffocated after being in the impromptu grave for so long.

“So there was someone in there, after all.”

Ellis jumped, spinning on a heel to face the direction of the woman’s voice, his hands launching into a defensive position as she sauntered out of the shadows. How had he not noticed her earlier? He never missed anyone like that.

“I thought it strange that they would have left the door open for any reason. I could smell the dead bodies from a mile away because of you. Perhaps you should be a little more considerate, Ellis.” She stood before him with a smirk, wearing a pair of loose pants and a skin-tight over-shirt created from a material he had never seen before. It seemed like a second skin almost, and the grey fabric only covered the woman’s stomach and breasts, leaving her arms completely open and free to move. He noticed the row of throwing knives on each of her hips and his hands trembled, bringing back memories.

“How do you know my name?” he asked, his shoulders tensing as he analyzed the woman. A smirk came to her features, and he clenched his fists so tightly his fingers began to ache.

“Easy, hot stuff. I’m a Crusader of the Lord.” The woman reached into one of the many pockets on her baggy cargo pants, and she pulled out a shimmering golden coin, and Ellis scrutinized it closely before he handed it back to her. “I was sent here to take this job off of your hands. The brass wants you for something bigger and better I suppose.”

There was a hint of something wrong in her voice. However, he knew that if she was lying he would have been able to pick up on it instantly. She was being earnest about it, but he couldn’t put his finger on it. What was she hiding from him? He sighed as he looked her over and he shook his head.

“I’m sorry, dear, but I don’t take my orders from any back-burning replacements. I think I’ll keep on this one.”

“That’s not an option.”

“Oh, you have a lot of learning to do, sweetheart. There are always options.” Carter turned on his heel and he walked toward the left wing of the asylum, where he would be able to begin his hunt for the b*****d the vampires had imprisoned there.

Suddenly his ears pricked up and he tilted his head to the side as fast as he could. The whirring almost drowned out other sound completely as the knife shot past his ear and imbedded itself into the wood trim of the doorway he was walking towards.

“The next one will take your legs.”

“That’s quite the boast, considering you missed me when I was completely off guard.”

“I didn’t miss.”

Ellis let forth a sharp bark of laughter and he shook his head, not even turning around to look at her before he continued toward the door. His senses were all on high alert, and he smirked as he looked into a convex mirror in the asylum entrance so that he could see her as she wound up her attack. He watched as her arm launched forward and he grinned as he spun on his heel, the trench coat tails whipping up as he turned. The knife aiming for his knee was knocked instantly aside by the trench coat, but his arm snapped forward and he grabbed a second knife. His hand was clenched around the hilt of the knife, and the tip of it was placed directly between his eyes. She had known…she had known how he would react to the attack, and she had thrown a second knife perfectly aimed between his eyes for where he would be after his defense…it was perfect.

He bit his lip as he stood back up, looking her in the eyes. He couldn’t deny it; he was impressed. “Not bad,” he said with a grin spreading across his features. “But you’ll have to do better if you want to catch me off guard.”

The woman looked genuinely surprised, and Ellis knew that she hadn’t expected her opponent to be able to see the second attack coming. “So, it’s true then. You’ve got the eyes.”

Ellis was taken aback for a moment, but he scoffed at her and dismissed it with a wave. “I don’t need a special pair of eyes to see your attacks coming. I got to watch an expert knife thrower practicing since I was a child.”

“Your teacher in the Vatican?”

“My father.” His eyes grew dark as he took a deep breath.

He hurled the knife with all the strength that he had, though he did not aim it anywhere near the woman before him, instead it was aimed far too high and to the right of his target, and then he blasted forward, kicking off the ground and towards the woman, who was now standing in the center of the fading rays of light coming from the entrance. He planted his feet directly before he would have barreled into her and he lifted his back foot throwing his body into a vicious spin and then popping off of his last grounded foot and turning his body once more to bring the foot that had been on the ground around in a monstrous downward kick. As the kick came exploding downward the woman jumped backwards from him and Ellis landed the maneuver perfectly, hearing a cry of pain instantly after.

When he turned to face her the knife he had previously thrown was jutting from her left thigh. The woman was gripping the handle and she was laughing while she pulled it out of her leg. “Well, I’ll be damned. You used the environment to bounce the knife off of an overhanging pipe, skimming it just enough off of the edge of the blade so it wouldn’t lose momentum and would still strike with enough force to penetrate. Not only that, but you predicted my movements after only seeing me move a couple of times. I got careless when you threw the blade off target, I wouldn’t have thought you would have progressed this much already.”

“Who the hell are you?”

“Let’s just say that I know you better than you think. If you survive the next thirty seconds, I will leave, and report to the Crusaders that you were a better match for this mission. If you fall, or are left in a condition unworthy of continuing on, I will take the keys you have been concealing in your jacket pocket all this time, and I will find the vampire of Whitehall without you. Deal?”

“You know, I was raised to be a man that doesn’t gamble. But, my father was a horrible hypocrite, you see, and he always loved a good wager. You’re on.”

The woman’s stance changed completely as she looked at him, and the smile on her face pulled inward and became thin and vicious. Ellis could feel the bloodlust seething off of her, and he knew that he had woken a beast of which he had never seen. Ellis kept his eyes trained on her so hard that he felt like his blood vessels would burst, but he did not close them, for he knew that any lapse in attention could be his life. She had only suggested him being too wounded to continue as a bluff…she was aiming to kill and nothing short of it.

It happened in a blur so fast that he would not be able to recount the situation if he tried. His breathing slowed, and his hands relaxed beside him as he entered a trance-like state. Her hands moved so fast that he could barely see it happen. She had grabbed and hurled a knife to the left of him, to the top right and three knives all directed perfectly at vital points. If he jumped to the right, he would be hit by her second knife. There was a chair beside him to the right, so there was no escape in that direction. If he rolled left he would be hit by the first knife. If he hopped backward or stayed still he would be hit by the three fatal knives aimed at his torso. Jumping left and avoiding the first low knife that way was the only option that would allow him to escape unscathed…which was the reason that it was the worst possible response.

He ground his teeth together. She was good, but his eyes would never lead him astray. Her body was tense and her eyes were trained on the opening that she had purposely left. She would catch him in the air if he tried to take the safe route. As such there was only one way he was going to escape. He smiled as he swung his body down and to the side. The first of the three fatal knives, instead of driving itself through his lung, pierced his left shoulder. The second, after his movement cut deep into the top of his right shoulder, but avoided any lasting damage. The last knife was, to his amazement, curving in the air. He had only seen that done once in his life, and the man who had shown him was long dead. The knife that should have been misplaced by his movement was now altering course and aiming directly for his heart. His eyes widened and clenched his teeth so hard his gums ached as he felt the warmth of blood pouring from his wound.

There was a slow clapping as the woman folded an arm in front of her and bowed low. “Well done, Ellis. You are just as good as He said you would be. I concede. You win this round, as per our bet.”

Ellis grimaced as he grabbed the hilt of the knife and pulled it out of his hand. The knife was moving so fast he knew that he would be unable to time the catch well enough. The last thing he could do was use his hand as a shield, hovering the hand just in front of his heart so the blade would bury itself through his palm instead of his chest.

“Where did you learn to do that?”

“Do what?”

“Don’t play stupid with me, b***h!”

“Now, now, Ellis, did your parents not teach you manners.”

Ellis charged forward, his hands balled into fists. He knew that she was taunting him--trying to make sure that he slipped up--but he couldn’t stop himself. She knew something about his father. He was sure of it. His hand cocked back and he released an unabashedly sloppy haymaker toward her face. The woman ducked low to the side so the punch would miss and carry him forward with its momentum and her knee came shooting up and digging deep into his gut. The air rushed from his lungs and he hit the ground hard.

He felt pain surging through his head as the woman straddled him and yanked his hair backwards, holding a fistful of the crimson locks so tightly he thought she might be preparing him for a scalping. She lowered one of her few remaining knives to his throat and placed her lips so close to his ear that he could feel her moist breath washing over his cheek.

“Listen close, you little s**t. I just gave you a test that I thought you would fail. I used just a little more force than I thought you were able to handle, but by no means was I going all out. I am under strict instructions to judge your capabilities and that is all. If you try to fight outside of our tests again, I will be sure to cut you down before you can utter another word. You will get your information in time.” She let go of his hair and pushed his head forward hard enough that his forehead bounced off of the floor.

“F**k you,” Ellis spat, fury gripping him as he rose to his feet. When he turned to look at the woman she was gone, and he spun around, looking for where she had disappeared to, but finding nothing.

He shrugged it off, brushing the dust from his shoulder and beginning to canvas the asylum. The light outside had guttered out, and the asylum as dark once more, and he sighed as he returned to the front desk, grabbing his candles from it and beginning his search. He had to move quickly. Night was not a time he wanted to be stuck out in the middle of the woods. He breathed a heavy sigh as he looked around the now blackened room and he pulled the near empty pack of cigarettes back out of his pocket and lit one of the fresh ones. As he breathed it in he felt the tension in his chest ease ever so slightly, and he sighed as he let it hang from his lips as he moved off into the bowels of the building.

It took him just over an hour to make his way through the east wing and then move to the west, where he eventually found his charge. The body was huddled with its knees to its chest in the corner of the room. It was likely starving and weak, so with any luck it would not give him any resistance. The lock cracked out as he turned the key and the door groaned open, but still the person didn’t move. Were they dead?

Ellis’ eyes snapped to the words on the wall, written in blood.

He already knows.

He squinted his eyes as he looked the bloodied letters over, and he quirked a brow as he reached out and touched it. It was wet. His heart began to race and he turned back to the huddled body and grabbed it by the shoulder, wrenching it into a proper sitting position, only to find a grinning vampire with several massive vials of gunpowder in its hands and a lit wick burning toward them.

“F**k.”

Author's Note

Hey there everyone. Here is the third chapter. I know it is quite long, but I hope that you will enjoy it regardless, and you will understand soon enough why it is that I couldn't break it up into smaller pieces. =]
Thank you all for continuing to read the piece, and as always, if you are able to take the time out to write a quick review of what you think thus far, that would be absolutely amazing. Thanks a bunch!