Fall of Two (Dark Urban Paranormal Fantasy): Blood Brute - Book 2 by Dixon Reuel

Author:Dixon Reuel [Reuel, Dixon]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Thunderloft Press
Published: 2021-07-31T22:00:00+00:00

Chapter 11

Glum Shadows

Flashbacks of their haphazard and ultimately foolish escape from Owl Court haunted Rise, but he pushed away such images. He needed to find that lion-and-unicorn tapestry.

“Look,” he began, then hugged Cypriot close when a flurry of Warwolf guards holding automatic weapons ran past. Rise’s heart pounded in his throat as their gun muzzles glinted in the hall’s candlelight. The Warwolves crossed the landing and hurried downstairs. Moments later, outside, gunfire.

“I think we should go in exactly the opposite direction of them,” he muttered and, although the clear, logical choice was to head downstairs, to at least get to the ground floor of Basilica X, Rise instead chose a different corridor, praying that they’d come out onto that familiar landing from the last time he’d escaped.

“I know there are yards outside. Yards with high fences and barbed wire,” Cypriot whispered as they hurried along, panting. One of his small hands pressed to the base of his spine, as if every step hurt.

Indeed, as sweat trickled down Rise’s face beneath his helmet, he felt worse for wear, too. When was the last time he’d walked more than a few feet? When Otrano brought him to meet Ab? When Rise then fled the tower? Well, there would be no returning today, no scurrying back to that cell like a frightened animal. He had his Cypriot and they would escape together.

“There are yards full of people and brutes,” Cypriot went on, mumbling, his breath foul by Rise’s ear as they leaned on each other. “There are so many things between us and freedom, Rise. I was shown the yards once, when first brought here. I was told that, if I didn’t behave, I’d be dumped in with the rest of those poor people.”

“Cypriot, please.” Rise tried to hurry them, but instead only shambled along, not too different from the undead, really. At the end of one corner, they had to wait interminable minutes for their bodies to recover. Cypriot laboriously caught his breath before, with a hesitant bob of his head, they continued on.

The warren of Basilica X nearly made Rise weep. He just wanted to find the way out. Why did they keep arriving at dead ends and spiraling corridors sweeping off to unknown wings of the house?

“Oh!” Cypriot stumbled to a halt before an ornate railing. They’d passed through a dark wooden archway that brought them onto a familiar landing.

Rise grinned. His gaze immediately whipped around to see that familiar tapestry hanging in all of its splendor on the far wall.

“This way.” Rise grabbed Cypriot’s bony elbow and brought them before the baleful gaze of a unicorn, whose pearlescent-thread horn speared the plump belly of a lion, who in turn mauled the unicorn’s throat. Rise hadn’t noticed their death-embrace before. Standing before such a tapestry, cold fear washed through him again.

Flee back to the tower! Fear upon fear!

Rise stood rooted, dwarfed, before the black eyes of the dying unicorn. Couldn’t they just flee back to his tower? Couldn’t he bring Cypriot back with him and plea to be imprisoned together?

Cypriot tugged his arm, puzzled.

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