BLACK SWAN TRAINING MANUAL, STANDARD PROCEDURES.
Section I: Chapter 3, #1
Personnel may not, for any reason, use materials or property owned or developed by The Order, or its various branches, 1.) for personal use, or 2.) without specific knowledge and consent of the local unit chief.
Baka stood at the head of a cobblestone alley and looked up and down High Street. The tourists and pub crawlers were thinning at that time of year, but still merry. Danger was the very last thing on their minds. There was an entrance to the underground just a few yards away in the alley where Baka stood.
He pulled back into the shadows, slipped along the wall, and descended via the semi-hidden entrance. Just a few steps into the tunnel, both sound and air went completely dead. Dead, silent, and cold as a grave.
He shrugged his backpack off and it hit the old brick pavement with a soft thud. The zipper seemed loud when he opened the pack. It might have even echoed a little. He pulled out his jacket and got into it just as his teeth started to chatter. Next he withdrew the helmet and tested the lamp. It worked.
His night sight was better than it would have been if he had never had the virus in his system, but, the dubious benefit of seeing well in the dark had definitely started to slip. As he put the helmet in place he thought he heard something. He froze and looked around, the light following the direction he looked. He remained still for some time just listening. Not that he would be able to tell what direction the sound came from. Between the maze of tunnels and the echoes he couldn't learn much from sound except that he was not alone.
Of course he already knew that. He couldn't say how he knew that, just some sort of sense thing. If he still had one, he would bet his soul that there were vampire down there. He didn't know of any way to tell for certain other than to die and that seemed like an extreme choice just to settle an internal argument. The question of whether or not he was souled would remain unanswered for a while if he was choosing, even if his actions might look like a death wish unfolding.
He pulled the canisters containing the cure out of the deepest pockets on his thighs and put them into the backpack exchanging them for the two dart guns which he had loaded before leaving Headquarters. He had enough canisters in each loin pocket for two reloads. When he stood he could brush the handles of the dart guns with his hands if his elbows were bent slightly.
Baka smiled at how closely that imitated the glamour of the gun-toting Old West. It didn't make him feel devastatingly deadly. If anything, it made him feel comical, like the Charlie Brown beagle, Snoopy, on top of his doghouse pretending to be the Red Baron.
Vampire beware. The fastest dartslinger in the history of the Edinburgh underground approaches.
He was suppressing a self-deprecating chuckle when he heard the noise again. Just as before he froze in place and listened hard to try and discern the direction. Or the source. Everything had gone quiet as a tomb again. He hated thinking about that reference because there were far too many parallels.
A formerly infamous, fearsome vampire afraid of ghosts? Impossible.
Starting forward down the main tunnel, he knew his light could be seen from a quarter mile away. He might as well have brought an ice cream truck with an annoying tune to announce that he was on the way. Because every thing down there was going to know it beyond a doubt. It couldn't be helped. He'd be completely blind without the headlight, but it was as far from ideal as you could get.
Twenty minutes later he didn't know how far he'd gone because the silence and darkness were disorienting. He'd been trying to move slowly enough so as not to call any more attention to himself than the light would be drawing.
Several times he had almost had to stop himself from yelling, "Hello? Anybody there?" After all, he knew what was in his heart. He was there to help. Not hurt.
Baka never had a chance to fire off a single canister. Three vamp slid out of blackness and pinned him, slamming him against the wall. His back took the brunt of a protrusion that was going to turn into a trophy bruise, but he couldn't take time to object to that.
He tried to explain that he was bringing a cure. They seemed entertained by that. At least they laughed for a couple of seconds while they were dragging him away.
They took off his helmet and switched off the light. The next sound he heard was probably the helmet being tossed against a wall. He could feel their hands on him, but couldn't see a thing. He wondered that they were able to see. So deep and so far from an entrance there was simply no light for eyes to refract.
He stumbled a couple of times while being pushed and jostled. The vampire made no effort to stop his fall. They let him go down then pulled him up roughly and shoved him forward again.
He was jerked to a halt roughly and without warning, spun around so that his back could be shoved against a wall. He heard iron clank and then felt manacles tighten, one on each wrist. He heard the clamps click into place and knew they'd been locked. As soon as the vampire let go of his arms he tried the chains. He pulled on one arm, then the other. While he was busy doing that, the vampire withdrew without a sound. He didn't have to ask out loud to know that he'd been left alone. He could feel it.
Within minutes he had finished experimenting to determine range of motion. He could stand up with his back against the wall and step about six inches in either direction side to side. He could slide down the wall into a sitting position, but if he did, it drew the chains attached to his wrists higher so that an extended period of sitting would restrict blood flow and cause the nerve endings in his hands to "go to sleep".
Having spent the past century learning to be grateful for small favors, he was glad they had left him his jacket.
"Well," he said to himself and the utter darkness, "you knew it was an insanely dumb idea. And this is what you get for being insanely dumb."
With that he sank down into a sitting position and wondered how long it would be before he couldn't feel his hands. ***
CHAPTER_4
"Here we are. This is the one."
When the car stopped, Elora jumped out, Blackie right after her.
"This?" Ram looked doubtful as he came up to where she was blissfully turning in a circle. Her skirt fanned out showing off shapely legs encased in funky, wide-striped knit tights; something she would not have been caught dead wearing when she first arrived in the dimension she now called home.
She stopped spinning and looked at Ram like he had just interrupted the best dream imaginable. "Do you hate it?"