++Escapes from the asylum are, sadly, rather common. Many madmen throw themselves at their bonds with an insane vigour, and there appears to be some element to their demented minds that encourages the growth of Attributes.++

  Chapter 46

  Reggie was now a pretty rich man. Or, rather, a man who’d been given a ton of money for doing a single job by a very rich woman. Which was just as good, because either way it meant he had a ton of money.

  He knew better than to follow his instincts in spending it, of course. Running around and stockpiling dubiously legal weaponry would’ve brought him a lot of comfort, and attention. For the time being he just headed back to his apartment, stashed the money, and then, reluctantly, moved out to meet with Norman again. It was only then that it occurred to Reggie the union leader might’ve died. Some idiot guard could’ve smashed his brains out during the chaos yesterday, god knew they’d tried hard enough to do that with Reggie himself.

  That would’ve fucked up his plans nice and thoroughly, and like most potential disasters it was utterly beyond Reggie’s control. That meant it was in ‘ignore’ territory, so he did his best not to agonize over it while heading across the city.

  The docks, at least, weren’t that damaged. They still weren’t docks though. The river was narrowed at this stretch, but everywhere in Lorwick it remained easily thirty paces wide. Maybe not enough for a true sea-faring vessel, one of the floating buildings Reggie had read so much about, but certainly wide enough to permit cargo ships hauling a good deal more than even a hundred horses could have managed. It also had the buildings needed to process a vast amount of goods, which meant finding the right one was a bit difficult.

  Norman ended up being in the third one Reggie checked, and by then his search had already attracted a few nasty men with guns.

  “Relax,” the leader hurriedly told them, “he’s a friend, recognise him?”

  Reggie saw a few moments of uncertainty, then shock as the men did. Apparently his bath had made him look a lot different. His clothes weren’t the expensive ones, fortunately, and he could only hope that kept the questioning limited.

  “Sorry I took so long in finding you again,” Reggie told Norman, “I got a bit…paranoid.”

  Which wasn’t entirely untrue, it’s just that Reggie was paranoid about the very real threat of the sun turning himinto a well-done steak. Still, Norman already thought he was frothing mad. The good thing about that is that, provided someone didn’t try to kill you right away, it served as an explanation for any weird shit you did as far as most folks were concerned.

  Reggie saw now that Norman was no exception.

  “Oh that’s fine,” he grinned, “I don’t care about the occasional quirk like that, only thing that had me worried was thinking you were dead or gone entirely. You’re back though? Ready to keep working?”

  “...Yeah,” Reggie replied. He instantly earned himself a chorus of cheers, arms around him and laughter.

  “Then we might just make it through this,” Norman grinned, “assuming you can put another twenty guards in the church’s infirmary the next time we have a fight.”

  Reggie was starting to enjoy being a hero. Sure, it was spoiled slightly by knowing that most of these people would unilaterally kill him if they learned even half of the truth, but still he enjoyed it for what it was. Of course it didn’t last, matters moved onto ones more important than praising a single person.

  “Our next move is to deal with overseer Aldyral.”

  Reggie did not like the sound of that at all, for a few reasons. The big one was that the overseer actually knew what he was. He couldn’t just go and protest though, tried to be sneakier about it instead.

  “That’ll be something for you then, right?” he asked Norman, “I’m not really a negotiations sort of person.”

  Norman smirked. “You’d be amazed how well negotiations go when you’re standing next to someone who beat up twenty of the enemy’s forces.”

  “You’re not planning on threatening him…?” even Reggie thought that was a bad idea, and he had the social skills of a guy who ate rats in public.

  “No, not outright,” Norman conceded, “but I’m worried that if we just go to negotiate, he’ll try something. Seize us, ‘arrest’ us, the city’s done that to union folk more than once. I’m bringing you, and ten of our other best fighters. It’s insurance more than a threat, but I do think things will go better with them seeing that level of fighting power brought to the meeting as well.”

  That pretty much killed any chance Reggie had of getting out of it, and he was sent off with another round of praise and a time and place to meet with Norman again. He headed back to his apartment in a sulk.

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  It wasn’t halfway there that a voice caught his attention though, oozing out from an alley and drawing his eye over to Walyn. The vampire grinned as he stared over at Reggie.

  “You look better than you did,” he noted, “I suppose a fledgeling is still a vampire, eh? Those guards were only human.”

  Reggie had a few choice words about the power of numbers, and a suggestion of what Walyn could say next if he wanted to see the guards’ attack simulated right here and now, but he was still forced into diplomacy mode here so he just pretended to find the man funny and smiled instead.

  “Did you want something?” he asked.

  “Come with me,” Walyn told him, “we have a few more hours of night at least.”

  Reggie wasn’t eager to follow anyone anywhere of course, an old leftover instinct from back when he’d been the most easily murdered person alive. Getting actually murdered had, funnily enough, not made it better.

  And yet, Walyn was easily offended and in a position to make things hard for him. Reggie swallowed his discomfort and followed the vampire. If nothing else, he felt a lot less nervous about fighting him now, even without the freedom to transform.

  Fortunately, Walyn didn’t make him test his newfound confidence. There was no ambush and they made quick progress in crossing the city. Reggie figured out where they were going about a mile before they reached the place, giving his blood a nice few minutes to reach boiling point before the asylum was in sight.

  It looked just as it had last time. Disgusting, reeking of misery and evil. He could see the monstrosity, its hidden limbs coiling around it. His eyes might’ve watered at the sight, had his dead flesh contained any fluid besides blood.

  Walyn just smirked. “You’ll love this,” he told Reggie, “come,” he headed for the building and…walked right through the gate. Unlocked it, relocked it, headed over to a side entrance and unlocked that too.

  “Why do you have keys to this place?” Reggie asked him, already full of theories but trying to keep calm. Walyn was one of the Lady’s subordinates too, it wouldn’t do to go cutting his head off just yet, that would make a lot of people very angry and would probably spell the end for jolly old Reginald.

  “You’ll see inside,” Walyn told him, heading deeper as he said it, “close the door though.” Reggie did so, engulfing them in darkness. The few candles illuminating everything told him that the passage was made with vampires in mind, providing ample light for them and not nearly enough for the feeble eyes of a living human.

  Reggie wished he couldn’t see, everything around him was sickening.

  They passed cells that wouldn’t have been permitted in a debtor’s jail, thick stone walls with thicker wooden doors, iron-barred gaps the only concession towards letting light in. He heard shivering and panicked gasps from the occupants of them all as they passed, men shying away from the sound of footfalls.

  “This,” Walyn said proudly, “is our feeding ground.”

  Reggie had to keep himself from trembling.

  “You mean you drink the blood of the people here?”

  Walyn didn’t look back at him as he nodded. “Oh yes, and there’s enough to really indulge. We’re not supposed to kill them, to be clear, but…well, accidents happen right? And if one of these lunatics dies nobody is ever curious about why.”

  Reggie was glad his heart didn’t beat anymore, he’d not have been able to hear anything over the sound of it. Walyn continued, blissfully ignorant about the rage boiling behind him.

  “The Lady has told me to extend your feeding privileges to here, at least while you’re working on the union for her.”

  Feeding privileges. As in: permission to drink these people’s blood. As in: permission to use their bodies for his own needs. As in: permission to violate them against their will. This was a privilege Reggie was being given, not by the people in here, who had no rights at all, but by another person who found them a convenient way of rewarding someone.

  Because to Walyn and the Lady, they were just animals in cages.

  “You feeling okay?” Walyn asked Reggie.

  Reggie transformed, sunk his talons through the man’s throat and twisted, felt vertebrae pop and crack aside, the meat shredding, watched his neck split open and his head fall away. Watched what happened to a vampire when he became a corpse in truth.

  But all of this happened only in Reggie’s head. In real life, he kept his cool and forced himself to make a queasy smirk.

  “I don’t need to feed right now, actually the idea of more blood has me a bit sick for some reason, but I’ll use this place when I need it, thanks.”

  Walyn shrugged. “Suit yourself, you’ll find your own key by the way we came out. Lock up after you.” Without another word, he started heading for one of the cells.

  Reggie stood there a moment just to regather his wits, then hurried out. He didn’t want to stay in that place a second longer than he needed to. Wouldn’t. He heard sobbing from the doors beside him as he breezed past them, tried to tune it out and thoroughly failed. It was the plea for help that stopped him.

  “Please. I feel better now, I don’t…I’m okay, please just let me go home. I want to see daddy.”

  There wasn’t anything premeditated about what Reggie did next, it just kind of happened. He drew his arm back and smashed a fist hard into the wood of the door. Must’ve been reinforced with iron at the back though, because all his newfound strength did was make the thing shudder a bit. Reggie looked around, swore, then transformed.

  A dozen punches and he still hadn’t smashed the door fully in, but Strength at 37 meant he was doing more than just tickling it. With one corner broken clumsily inwards Reggie transformed back, in case any unexpected witnesses showed up, and reached down into the cell to start prying the door open from that side.

  It was a morbid stroke of luck that everyone in the cells was being so loud. Reggie would’ve been heard for sure otherwise, with all the squealing metal and coughing wood. Thirty seconds was all he needed to be done with the work. He stopped it after only twenty, paused, stumbled away. Started thinking.

  Walyn had taken him here with explicit permission from the Lady to let him feed, which meant that she knew Reggie was here too. There’d be no mystery about who was responsible if someone got sprung. If he stopped now, the damage might go unnoticed, or only be found late enough to get attributed to something else.

  Every instinct Reggie had snarled for him to keep going, to rip the door out of its fucking hinges and use it to smash down all the others, but he bit them back.

  The Union. They’re working to fix this, to make things better.

  Reggie might jeopardize that if he kept going, might make people too scared of an escape to loosen up their grip on the asylum’s occupants at all. Could he risk it?

  He stepped out, then left. Feeling as if his legs weighed a ton more with every step.