Even more creatures appeared behind me. I had nowhere to go.
Fear vanished, erased by the certainty that, here, I would die. Blinding anger burned through the fear, boiling into fury.
"Xhi kakini xhe keyalla!" I shouted in a guttural voice. I will kill you all!
Demonic instinct overwhelmed me, and my sword flashed like lightning among my enemies.
"Justin?" A warm hand caressed my jaw.
My eyes fluttered open. I flinched back with a shout.
"It's me, Justin. Elyssa."
"Holy Mary, what happened down here?" Fausta looked around the room, eyes wide. Blood spattered her face and clothing, but she otherwise looked no worse for wear.
I held out a blood-coated hand to Elyssa. She pulled me to my feet. I felt weak, but not completely drained. Dismembered, twitching bodies lay everywhere. Dark vampling blood covered the floor in a spreading lake of death.
"I don't remember." Pressing my hands to my head, I tried to recall the battle, but found only fleeting images and roars. Had I manifested into my demon form? My sword lay at my feet, and the bodies looked as though I'd run them down with a lawnmower.
"Remind me not to piss you off," Fausta said. She looked up the spiral stairs. "I think we're done here."
I followed her and Elyssa up the stairs, still feeling woozy and disoriented. The gagging stench of charred flesh and hair made me double over as I neared the top. It was all I could do to push it away as my supernatural senses soaked it all in.
A gentle breeze carried the smoke toward the chamber from which the vamplings had come. Adam, his face sweaty and covered in soot, appeared to be the source of the wind, his staff waving in circles. When he saw us, he stopped, mouth dropping open as he looked at me.
I looked down and noticed my blood-soaked clothing and my crimson hands. "Oh, god."
Michael, his own face splotched here and there with red, raised an eyebrow. "What happened?"
"He went crazy or something and killed—I don't know—twenty vamplings?" Fausta shook her head. "It was hard to tell with all the body parts."
Michael nodded his head toward the stairs. "Is it clear down there?"
Elyssa took my hand and squeezed. "Yes."
"What about in there?" I pointed at the chamber beyond the red door.
Michael nodded. "Looks like it. We were about to go check it out."
Adam sent a globe of light inside the room. Piles of roasted bodies and dismembered limbs lay at the entrance and beyond. A tar-like substance I identified as burnt blood covered the floor.
"I really don't want to go in there," Fausta said with a shudder. "Maybe we should wait on the Custodians."
Taking a deep breath, and instantly regretting it, thanks to the odor, I stepped past the charred bodies and inside the room. If the cells in the tunnels had been where the former dungeon wards had kept most of the prisoners, this room must have been where they put the vilest criminals, or at least the ones they wanted to suffer the most.
The room was large and filled with crude torture devices. They looked old, rusted, and unusable. Along the edges of the room were windowless, iron doors. I heard a moan and jumped back, ripping my sword from its sheath. The weak moan came again. I looked around the room, but couldn't find the source. Then I looked up. Cages hung from the ceiling by thick chains. In the glow of Adam's light, I made out a pale form lying in a heap inside one of them.
It groaned.
"Lower the cage," Michael said. "We need to burn it with the others."
A crank on the wall secured the chain. I spun it around, lowering the cage as the poor creature inside moaned. The cage clanked to the floor. A thick padlock secured the barred door.
"I've got it," Adam said, touching his staff to it. The padlock snapped open a few seconds later.
The cage door squealed open with a firm pull of my hand. The vampling huddled in the fetal position, shivering under a pile of blood-stained clothes.
"That's odd," I said.
Michael grabbed at some loose cloth and dragged the vampling out. Let go and backed away. The body sprawled. Red eyes looked up into mine from a blood-stained face. Blackened veins riddled the skin, writhing like snakes beneath the surface. I gasped and dropped to a knee.
"Help me," the infected vampire rasped. "Please, Justin."
I stared in horror at the vampire. At the young woman I knew. At Felicia.