Fan Fiction ❯ The Vampire Hunter II: Bloodlines ❯ Chapter 22

Chapter XXII

Clark and Gabrielle walked slowly down the dark passage. They'd both sensed the presence of at least a dozen vampires nearby. Clark held her sword at the ready, and Gabrielle had her claws fully extended in preparation for an attack.

As they came to the end of the tunnel, they both paused. The room appeared completely empty.

Gabrielle took a cautious step forward and looked around. There was nothing in the room, save the faded hieroglyphics that were on the walls, which were apparently there for decoration only, since they didn't make any literal sense. But all the other chambers had been that way, too, except for the first room that had offered Gabrielle a refresher course on the old texts.

Clark joined her at the entrance to the tenth Gate and took her own look around. The outline of the door to the next Gate was plainly visible in the torchlight that illuminated the room, but the clock said they still had fifty-one minutes to wait before it would open.

Gabrielle caught Clark's eye. Clark shrugged to say she didn't have the first clue what was going on.

They both jumped when the door behind them began to descend, and Clark smirked at their behavior. They turned back around to face the room, both remembering how the pseudo-mummies in the eighth Gate had caught them off guard.

Then all hell broke loose, as two nets dropped down on them from above, separating them from each other. Fourteen vampires quickly followed, jumping down from their concealed ledges and then mercilessly beating on the Queen and her Hunter in their suddenly vulnerable conditions.

Clark felt a rib crack, and then she was dazed for a moment as something slammed into her head. But she stayed conscious and slashed out with her sword to cut the thick netting away. It was her only chance for survival and she knew it.

Gabrielle heard Clark's grunts of pain, even as she ignored her own body's shock at feeling over half a dozen vampires attempting to beat her to death. She quickly used her claws to slice through the ropes of her net until she was able to crawl out of it. Just as she was about to move forward to help Clark, she saw the human roll free of her netting and climb to her feet. Clark arced her sword across the arm of one of the vampires who was trying to get a hold on her, and the limb was swept free of the vamp's body.

Then Gabrielle had to look away as over half the vampires charged her, recognizing that she was more of a threat to them than the Hunter. Gabrielle ignored their attack for the most part and instead started her own. She slashed at everything, opening wide gashes in her opponents, and causing large wounds to drain their blood faster, thereby making them weaker.

Clark moved as quickly as she could, but she could tell she was up against Higher Order vampires. The five vamps she was faced off against were landing blows much too often, and Clark was quickly losing her edge. She felt like she could barely move, her body tightening up from the pain in her side, and Clark realized they were just toying with her.

The thought made her angry. She was not going to be a plaything for some evil hellspawn.

Clark pulled the coagulant grenade from her hip pouch and took a split second to make sure Gabrielle was out of its range. Then she tossed the walnut-sized bomb at the most tightly packed area of the group surrounding her. The small device exploded on contact, and the three closest vamps fell to the floor, writhing in pain, as the concoction reacted with their vampiric blood and caused the fluid in their bodies to begin to solidify.

The two remaining vamps immediately maneuvered themselves to be closer to Gabrielle's position, seemingly unaware that Clark didn't have any more of the deadly bombs.

Clark grinned. At least now the vampires would limit their movements, which might make it easier for Clark to fight them both.

While Clark fought her life and death battle, Gabrielle had her own hands full with the nine vampires who were still trying to kill her. Gabrielle could feel that they were all Seventh Order, and they had started the fight at full strength. She didn't know how Clark was holding her own, but at the moment, Gabrielle had to focus completely on her own survival.

Though they couldn't move nearly as quickly as Gabrielle could, light-walking took energy, of which Gabrielle was running low. She'd fed about an hour before, but the vampire's blood had been weak from lack of his own recent feeding, and she'd already used up those resources trying to heal herself from the vicious beating she'd received while trapped in the net.

So, instead of being able to run circles around her opponents, she was only just barely staying ahead of them, as she cut at them and dodged their slightly slower attacks. Then an idea came to her, and she grabbed a vampire during one of her passes and ran off with him. She fed on him for a few seconds before releasing him just as the rest of the pack caught up to them. With this new strategy in mind, she quickly moved on to her next victim.

Clark swiped at the first vampire who lunged at her, but he dodged the move and punched her hard in the stomach for her efforts. She coughed and nearly threw up, but she kept her grip on her sword, which was the one thing she knew was keeping them at least somewhat in check.

As the second vampire moved to take his turn to kick her, the first one sent his clawed hand deep into Clark's upper right thigh, and she screamed. He backhanded her across the face with his free hand, but unfortunately for him, she kept going and took off his head when she came back around. It wasn't a killing blow, but it did remove him from the fight.

The other vampire yelled in anger and attacked in a blur. But Clark was still moving, falling to the floor, and as she went, she used her momentum to spin, her razor-sharp blade cutting through his torso and cleaving him in two.

As the vamp fell to the floor in two separate pieces, Clark tried to sit up. Her leg felt like it was on fire. She glanced over at the bisected vampire, and the look on his face was pure surprise. But then he started trying to crawl away, using his hands to drag himself across the dirt floor. Clark drew on the last of her strength and pulled two of her throwing knives from her gauntlet. She sent one into the back of the retreating vampire, nailing his heart from long practice in the field and on special mannequins created for just that purpose. The other one she used to stab into the vamp she'd beheaded. Then she passed out.

Gabrielle felt her blood run cold at the cry she heard from Clark. She didn't have a chance to see what had happened, but just the thought of Clark being hurt bad enough to scream like that made her put on a burst of speed. In only half a minute, she was finished with the last of her attackers, and she ran to Clark's side.

"Clark? Clark!" Gabrielle tried to stir the unconscious Hunter, but she was out cold. "Please, Clark," Gabrielle whispered, as she felt through Clark's body to find what needed to be repaired first.

The human was a mess. Several of her ribs were broken; her kidneys were bruised, one of them close to rupturing; her left wrist was fractured; and her right femur was shattered. The artery running next to the bone was shredded, and Clark was losing blood fast.

Gabrielle concentrated on the artery first, piecing it back together and doing what she could to make the tissues reabsorb the blood Clark was hemorrhaging. Then she worked on the bone, forming the fragments into a cohesive whole and forcing the marrow to produce new blood cells much faster than it was normally capable of. Instead of weeks, Clark's lost blood would be completely replaced in less than an hour.

As Gabrielle went through each successive injury, she felt her energy being drained and taken away from repairing her own wounds and realized they were in trouble. Once Gabrielle had mended most of the damage to acceptable levels, she hurried to the bodies of the dead vamps.

It was almost unheard of for a vampire to drink from the dead, but Gabrielle didn't have a choice. And these vampires had died very recently. As Gabrielle sank her fangs into flesh, she drew in the still warm and powerful blood. She could feel her body infusing with life, the tissue repairing itself at a rate that was actually visible to the human eye.

Gabrielle drank from all except the three vampires Clark had gotten with the grenade, since their blood was useless now. It would be days before they would eventually recover from the coagulant they'd been infected with, but unlike the young vamp she'd given death to, Gabrielle had no mercy in her heart for them. She hoped they woke up and were trapped in this tomb for all eternity for what they'd done to Clark.

Gabrielle returned to Clark's side and continued with the healing process. The major injuries had been lessened to bruises, but Clark was still unconscious when the door to the eleventh Gate opened.

"Clark, come on. You have to wake up," Gabrielle gently nudged Clark's shoulders.

Clark's eyes fluttered open, and it took her a moment before she was able to focus her eyes on Gabrielle's face. She lifted her head and looked around the room.

"Damn. I was hoping I'd been dreaming," Clark grumbled.

"I wish you were. Can you get up? We have to go. Now."

Clark took Gabrielle's hand, and the vampire pulled her up to a standing position. Clark looked down at her right leg. The cloth was shredded, and there was dried blood everywhere.

"Did that all come from me?" Clark asked in amazement.

"Yes. And you're not allowed to do that again. Now, come on," Gabrielle urged, and Clark picked up her sword.

They jogged over to the dark tunnel and only hesitated for a moment before walking into the blackness.