Werewolf Apocalypse: Rise of the Lycans

The Catacombs

The sewer tunnel narrowed into an ancient, vaulted stone catacomb beneath the city’s historic district. No wonder the Vampires built their skyscrapers here. The water here ran deep. It was freezing and black as pitch. It smelled of centuries of decayed limestone and stagnant iron.

​Behind us, the sound of Varek’s iron spear clashing against the vanguard died away, swallowed by the subterranean dark.

​I hauled Clara through the knee-deep black water. I could feel my boots slipping on slick, moss-covered stones. The run and the cold here had left my feeling like they were filled with crushed glass. Breathing was war, but the sheer, burning heat of Clara’s body against mine was far worse. She felt like a human torch, her fever radiating so intensely that steam rose off her wet clothes into the frigid underground air.

​"Clara," I choked out, my arm tightening around her waist. "Stay awake. Keep looking at me. We're getting to the cathedral."

​Before she could answer, a sharp, violent convulsion rippled through her body. It was so sudden and powerful that it ripped her out of my grip and sent her tumbling into the freezing water with a heavy splash.

​"Clara!"

I dropped to my knees and reached down to pull her up, but the woman who pushed herself up from the black water wasn't Clara anymore.

​She stood upright in the waist-deep current. The silver moonlight filtering down through a street-level storm grate above hit her face, and I saw that her human features were completely gone.

Her jaw had lengthened, and the whole transformation was beginning to take place before my eyes again.

​She turned her head toward me with a sharp, robotic snap.

​"Clara... please come back..." I whimpered.

​She let out a low, guttural roar, the sound was so loud and dark that it shook dust from the ancient vaulted ceiling. I feared the creatures held back by Varek would hear and come right towards us.

​Then she lunged and moved with that same terrifying and unnatural speed like before, cutting through the water like a missile. Before I could bring my arms up, eight hundred pounds of raw, predatory muscle slammed into my chest. And we both crashed together into the freezing water, my head bouncing violently off a submerged stone block.

​I was blinded for a few seconds, but it felt like forever. I struggled to breathe as her clawed hands pinned my shoulders into the muddy riverbed.

​She leaned down and opened her jaw wide, exposing rows of yellowed teeth directly over my face, sending huge slimes out from her mouth onto my face.

​"LEO!" a tiny, smothered echo of her human voice screamed from deep inside her throat, but her body didn't stop. Her fangs snapped down toward my windpipe.

my desire for survival overrode whatever felt like love I had within me, afterall this wasn't her anymore. I ripped my burning right hand out of the muddy water and slammed my open palm directly onto her face, covering her snout and cheek.

​ZZZZZZT!

​The sound was like plunging red-hot iron into ice water. It sent white steam exploding around us.

​Clara let out an ear-piercing, tragic shriek of pure agony as the pale-blue light surged through her skin like liquid lightning and burned away the black, spiderweb veins on her face. Her spine arched violently out of the water, and every joint began snapping back into place with wet, painful cracks.

​"ARRRGH!" she screamed, and this time, it was her real voice. Her human voice, broken and weeping.

​I held my palm against her face for three horrifying seconds until the light faded before I pulled my burning hand back.

As everything fell back into place in her body, she collapsed forward against my chest, her body limp, soaking wet, and shivering uncontrollably in the freezing water.

​"Leo..." she sobbed into my neck. "I tried... I tried to fight it... I tried to stop..."

​"I know," I whispered, tears spilling down my face as I wrapped both arms around her, pulling her close in the dark. "I know, baby. I've got you."

"It was so painful this time." She cried.

I couldn't answer, because I knew it was because the blood moon was fast approaching, and changes now were torture.

​Before we could catch our breath, a sudden, blinding white searchlight cut down through the drainage grate thirty feet ahead followed by silenced automatic fire that tore through the water around us, throwing up violent geysers of mud and spray.

​"Target sighted in the catacombs," a cold voice echoed down from the street level. "Vampire Tactical Unit 4. Deploy silver suppressors, do not let the Priestly vessel reach the cathedral stairs."

Oh my God! Again! These people wouldn't just let us be. I thought silently.

They had probably followed the raging beasts that were coming after us down here.

​Above us, the heavy iron storm grate was torn off by hydraulic clamps and four chalk-pale operatives in matte-black armor dropped down into the water on high-speed cables, their silver weapons raised and locked onto my chest.

​I looked at the black water ahead and back down at Clara who was barely conscious in my arms. Her skin already beginning to heat up with the next wave of the fever.

​"Hold on," I gritted through my teeth. ​I grabbed Clara, turned into the darker, unmapped side of the tunnel leading toward the cathedral foundations, and plunged straight into the deep water as the bullets began to fly.

The sound of silver rounds tearing into the catacomb walls was a deafening THWIP-THWIP-THWIP. It showered my head with pulverised limestone, but I moved on.

I hauled Clara into the narrow, unmapped drainage conduit leading west, my right shoulder slamming against the damp stone archway. The water here was deeper, pulling at my knees like heavy grease, but the sheer, agonizing heat radiating off Clara’s skin was the only thing keeping the sub-zero chill from locking my muscles entirely.