Werewolf Apocalypse: Rise of the Lycans

The Catacomb's Current

The heavy meteoric iron gates at the end of the sanctuary corridor shrieked off their hinges with a loud BOOM folding inward like wet cardboard under the weight of Alpha Vane’s vanguard.

"Get them!" a guttural, distorted voice roared from the entry tunnel. "Don't let the Priestly boy touch the water!"

My heart slammed against my ribs like a trapped bird. I knelt on the slick white marble floor of the First Altar, my left arm still locked tightly around Clara’s trembling, soaking-wet waist. Her skin was freezing now, the terrifying fever completely gone, leaving her fragile, shivering, and exhausted in my arms.

If I was alone, I might have stood a chance with the burning heat pulsing in my right palm. But, with Clara barely able to stand on her own? They would tear us both to ribbons in five seconds.

"Leo..." Clara gasped, clutching my torn denim jacket with weak, shaking fingers. "The doors... they're through..."

"Hold onto my neck," I gritted through my teeth, hoisting her up against my chest as my boots slipped on the wet marble. "Don't let go, no matter what."

Above us, at the top of the three-hundred-foot vertical shaft open to the Blood Moon, Alpha Vane’s massive, twelve-foot shadow shifted. His violet eyes burned down through the crimson gloom, locking onto me like twin lasers, pinning me in place with pure, suffocating pressure.

Behind me, the first wave of subterranean wolves poured through the ruined iron gates, these were six massive, coal-black beasts with foaming jaws and eyes glowing like hot embers. They didn't run on two legs; they bounded across the stone floor on all fours with their claws clicking rapidly against the marble like gunfire.

I spun around, backing away from the marble basin, my eyes darting frantically across the dimly lit sanctuary walls. There has to be another way out, an ancient temple doesn't have only one door.

My boot caught on a raised stone lip directly behind the white altar.

I looked down and embedded into the floor behind the sacred basin, was a circular, rusted iron drainage grate, four feet wide, bolted into the limestone. Beneath its thick bars, I could hear the faint, rushing roar of fast-moving underground water.

it was an ancient Roman-style aqueduct.

"There!" I choked out.

The lead wolf, a scarred monster easily the size of a grizzly bear, launched itself through the air straight at my back, its jaws wide open to snap my spine.

I twisted sideways at the last millisecond, throwing myself down onto the stone grate while shielding Clara with my body. The beast’s claws shredded the back of my jacket and grazed my skin, before it crashed headfirst into the white marble altar with a sickening crack.

Before the other five could pounce, I slammed my blistered, glowing right palm directly onto the center of the rusted iron grate.

and with a HISS-CRACK, white-hot Priestly fire erupted from my Sun-Crest and struck the ancient iron bolts, vaporizing them in a shower of blinding orange sparks. The heavy grate buckled inward and dropped straight into the dark abyss below.

"Hang on!" I yelled to Clara over the deafening snarls closing in around us.

I wrapped both arms tightly around her, then I tucked her head into my chest and threw both of us straight down through the jagged opening.

We dropped fifteen feet through pitch-black air before hitting freezing, waist-deep water with a violent splash that knocked the wind straight out of my lungs.

The current here was ferocious, it pulled at my legs like a living thing, dragging us rapidly through a narrow, low-ceilinged stone tunnel. I kicked frantically, keeping Clara’s head above the black surface as freezing water flooded my mouth and nose.

CRASH!

Water exploded ten feet behind us, and I whipped my head back just in time to see one of the subterranean scouts land in the aqueduct, thrashing wildly in the dark current before locking its glowing yellow eyes onto us. With a terrifying burst of speed, it surged forward through the water like a torpedo, closing the gap in two heartbeats.

Clara gasped as the beast lunged upward, its massive, saliva-dripping jaws snapping shut inches from her pale throat.

"Get off her!" I roared.

Driven by pure, blind panic, I shot my right hand forward and grabbed the beast directly across its wet snout.

ZZZZZZT!

The Sun-Crest on my palm detonated with blinding, holy heat. Steam erupted across the narrow stone tunnel, illuminating the dark water in harsh white light. The wolf didn't even get a chance to howl, its skull scorched inward into grey ash and its limp body collapsed sideways and vanishing beneath the rushing black current.

I didn't stop to breathe. I grabbed Clara under her arms and let the violent current carry us forward into the pitch-black dark. I could feel my wounded shoulder throbbing and my palm burning like raw fire.

Ahead, the roar of the water suddenly deepened into a deafening, hollow thunder and my stomach dropped from the sound of it.

Through the gloom, the stone floor of the aqueduct abruptly vanished and dropped off into a pitch-black underground waterfall.

I kicked hard against the slick moss walls, desperately trying to slow us down, while my free hand reached blindly for a rusted iron pipe jutting out from the wet stone—

THWIP-THWIP-THWIP.

Three sharp, crimson laser sights suddenly sliced through the darkness directly in front of the waterfall's edge, locking straight onto my chest as silenced rounds tore into the stone inches above my head.

"Priestly target acquired at the drop," a cold, synthesized voice echoed from a steel catwalk spanning the chasm ahead. "Crimson Synod Unit 7. Open fire."