Chapter 47: The Deepening Tunnel
Translated by Addis of Exiled Rebels Scanlations
Editor: PlumSauce
Carolyn steadied the wheel with one hand. The car had just turned a corner and hadn’t yet merged onto the main road when she suddenly slammed on the brakes.
The sky was growing lighter by the minute. Near the edge of the woods, not far from the road, stood a camping tent. A person in a red jacket lay collapsed outside it, and another figure’s upper body protruded from the tent’s entrance.
A woman’s piercing screams rang out as she scrambled over the body of her companion, crawling and stumbling toward the road in a desperate bid for help.
They were the tourists who had gone to explore the old manor yesterday! Carolyn remembered seeing them in the restaurant.
She felt a faint return of sensation in her right hand — the wounds were beginning to ache again, and her fingertips could twitch ever so slightly. She got out of the car and caught the woman before she could collapse. The woman’s screams cut off abruptly, replaced by a bewildered stare at the silver blade protruding from beneath the hem of the hunter’s skirt.
“Oh… just a special kind of high beam light,” Carolyn said, running a finger along the gleam to show it was harmless. “I can’t turn it off, so don’t worry about it. What happened to you?”
“Take me to the police! We have to go to the police…” the woman sobbed. “I don’t know what it was — God, it killed them — I don’t know…”
“Calm down,” Carolyn said, though she had never been good at comforting panicked civilians. “What almost killed them?”
“You wouldn’t believe me…”
“I would. I almost died too,” Carolyn said truthfully.
The woman wiped her face, tears still streaming. “You…you saw it too?”
“Well, tell me what ‘it’ is!”
The tourist’s words tumbled out in fragments. “We were already asleep, and then we heard crying. David noticed it first. There was this white shadow — trying to drag us out. Then David just died. And Martin too… I think he’s also dead, I’m not sure. Maybe they’re still alive? I didn’t look closely, and I don’t want to turn around now to check. Can we just call an ambulance? Oh — and then it let me go. Why did it suddenly let me go?”
How should I know… Carolyn thought, instinctively trying to rub her eyes with her right hand, only to remember she could barely lift that arm to the height of her stomach.
A white shadow, not a black worm? She wished Liz were awake now. And if Coraci and John had also escaped safely…they could all sit down and figure out what was going on with the white shadow and the black worm. Carolyn knew she probably wouldn’t understand the finer points of the casters’ discussion, but in the end, they would give her an answer, a solution…
“Just get in the car,” Carolyn said, tugging the woman with one hand. The woman scrambled into the passenger seat, still trembling but visibly relieved.
Carolyn was about to start the car when she happened to glance up. In the rearview mirror, she saw a figure approaching.
She jumped out and hurried toward him — it was Coraci.
He looked deathly pale, his black hair soaked with sweat and plastered to his cheeks. He could barely stand; each step seemed to nearly topple him. When Carolyn grabbed his arm, his legs finally gave way, and he collapsed.
“You got out?” Carolyn saw his gaze drifting, unfocused, as though he might pass out. “Coraci, look at me! What happened just now? Where’s John?”
“He was with me, but I…couldn’t bring him out…”
“Where is he?”
“In the basement… Carolyn, please hurry!” Coraci gripped her fingers, his strength almost nonexistent. “He’s buried…”
“What?” Carolyn didn’t understand.
“Exactly what it sounds like… Go.” He urged her again, as if he didn’t have the strength to explain further.
Carolyn went to the car and took out a gun loaded with silver-core rounds, a spare magazine, and a military-grade shovel. She figured they might come in handy — being “buried” was never a good thing for a vampire, and she might actually need to dig him out.
Her hand hadn’t fully recovered, but she didn’t have time to worry about that.
As she stepped over Coraci’s body, ready to run back to the manor, he called after her, “How long has it been?”
“How long?”
“Is it…morning?”
“Morning. Six fourteen,” the female tourist replied for Carolyn, stepping cautiously out of the car and checking her watch.
“It’s still today?” Coraci asked.
The woman didn’t understand the question. Carolyn gave him a puzzled look. “What do you mean ‘still today’? It’s only been a few minutes since you threw me out — now it’s dawn.”
Coraci nodded, lowered his head, and closed his eyes to rest. Carolyn told the tourist to look after him, then sprinted toward the house.
The tourist was still badly shaken, but the morning sunlight and birdsong from the forest began to soothe her. She assumed Coraci had suffered the same fate as her. “Hey, what was it that you guys ran into? How did you get away?” she asked, thinking his experience must be like her own.
Coraci’s eyes were clouded with confusion, his voice weak. “I…don’t know.”
He seemed to add something else, but his voice was too faint for her to hear. What he said was “We got out…but I don’t know what happened.”
A few minutes earlier…
When the mouth, made from splitting open its wounds, swallowed him, John felt a sudden weightlessness. There was no tearing from teeth, no corrosion. An indescribable force dragged him down, pulling him into a darkness where direction meant nothing.
After the first wave of panic, John, for no reason at all, thought of a fantastical story: a man and his ship swallowed whole by a whale, only to find an entire world inside the whale’s belly.
He tried to shift the angle of his body, opening his eyes to stare at whatever he was being pulled toward. His eyes burned with red light in the dark, and the force that had been dragging him began to slacken.
At first, that force had been sure and decisive — like a frog’s tongue grabbing an insect. Now it hesitated, and finally let go completely. His fall slowed, but didn’t stop. Strange visions began flashing through the darkness, sliding past him like scenery outside a car window.
Stone-paved streets and old-fashioned storefronts. An iron streetlamp glowing alone in the night. The golden eyes of a black cat shining from a deep alley. A carriage racing through a forest. Warm light glowing in the windows of the Atwood House…
He thought he was about to crash into the front door, but he didn’t. The house seemed like an illusion, letting him pass straight through its walls and landing in a garden.
The sky suddenly brightened. Trimmed holly hedges stood in neat rows around him, and in the distance, across the garden, sat another “Atwood House”.
A rustling sound filled the air, like an invisible swarm of insects.
They flitted and swirled, sometimes near, sometimes far.
“What are you?”
“What sort of creature!”
“Not human.”
“Wrong scent.”
“A devil?”
“Do you belong to the Black God?”
“Undead.”
John got to his feet, glancing around, and pulled an Association badge from the inner pocket of his jacket.
“I…I’m a bloodkin, from the Unthreatening Creature Protection Association. Is there anything I can help you with?”
The Association’s first lesson during training had been: when dealing with potential subjects, announce who you are, make your good intentions clear, and show sincerity. He’d never had to say it himself before — he’d always been following Coraci’s lead. The clamor of voices paused. After a moment, the voices resumed, as if in a discussion somewhere farther off.
Maybe John’s reaction — and the way he tasted — were too strange, leaving them uncertain.
“What is bloodkin?”
“A faint scent of corpse.”
“An undead, mingling with humans?”
“No sound of a pulse.”
“Cannot be used.”
John straightened his collar, doing his best to appear calm and professional.
“Hey, I…I’m not a hunter. I’m a mediator. Can we talk?”
Coraci had once told him, “You work for the Association. Stay cautious, but don’t look afraid.”
Clearly, they understood the word “hunter”, but not “mediator”.
“Not a hunter? Good.”
“I can’t digest you.”
“Eating you would be useless.”
“You can’t give power.”
“You are undead.”
“Kin.”
“Stay here.”
“You won’t be able to return anyway.”
“Do you…eat people?”
In this sunny garden, John felt a creeping chill and was quietly grateful he was bloodkin.
“Nourishment.”
“Rebirth.”
“Break free from the cage.”
“Damn shackles.”
“One after another.”
John strained to follow the voices, sharp and overlapping, none of them belonging to Mr. Atwood. Now he wasn’t sure what to do. Technically, he should say, “Please don’t eat people,” but — what were the odds they’d agree? It’d be like telling a fleeing thief, “Please don’t run.” He had a dozen questions but didn’t know where to start.
“Please don’t harm my friends,” John implored.
It was as feeble as “Please don’t eat people,” but he couldn’t think of anything better.
“Once it begins, it can’t stop.”
“I have no power of my own.”
“And yet I am very strong.”
“Infection.”
“I can’t control them. They obey instinct.”
“Their prey becomes part of me.”
John understood less and less.
This thing wasn’t like the creatures he’d met before — gilomorphs that would flat-out say “I’m a gilomorph, I’m hijacking the elevator”, a Clade dog that declared it wanted hamburger meat, a headless knight proudly showing off his missing head, or werewolves cheerfully introducing themselves, “Hi! I’m a werewolf. How are you, Vampire?”
This one didn’t even seem capable of self-introduction. And Coraci, who knew more dark creatures than anyone, wasn’t here. Good thing he wasn’t, John thought. At least for now, this monster didn’t seem able to eat bloodkin. Humans, though, were another story.
While he was still thinking how to keep talking, the voices suddenly erupted in a frenzy.
“Black.”
“A great amount.”
“So deep.”
“What is it?”
“Human.”
“Can be used.”
“Why is he still alive?”
John turned his head. Coraci had appeared in midair, just above head height, and crashed to the ground. Sure enough — whatever you fear will appear.
John ran over and helped Coraci up, noticing that Coraci looked a little dazed, while John himself, after everything he had just been through, felt perfectly fine.
Not only that, Coraci’s body temperature was low, and his breathing was shallow — though still regular. One convenience of being a bloodkin was that John could judge a human’s health with precision through pulse, scent, touch, and other senses. Reading the signs of life was an important part of their predatory skill set.
John knew Coraci’s body was not in serious danger — only extremely weak. That didn’t put him at ease, though, because Coraci was human.
Coraci kept his eyes open, taking a great deal of effort to focus on John’s face. Seeing that John was unharmed and that he himself hadn’t died instantly — those were both good signs. But the place they were in sent a chill through him. He didn’t rush to get up, deciding to rest for a moment instead. John supported his shoulder and rested his1 head in the crook of his2 arm. The position was surprisingly comfortable.
The voices in the air fell silent for a while before gathering around them again.
“Why aren’t you dead?”
“You’re human.”
“You must be human because we only want humans.”
“But humans are already dead.”
“Spit out the corpse.”
“Keep the soul.”
“There shouldn’t be a living human here.”
“Who are you?”
“Child of the Black God?”
“Abnormal.”
Coraci adjusted his breathing. This feeling was familiar to him — he had experienced something like this before, back when Russell had used his soul for spellcasting. No visible injuries, yet a chill like massive blood loss. The sensation of having his life force gnawed away. The loss of control over his body. That sense of separation… All of it was the same as last time, only now it was far more severe.
After a short rest, Coraci spoke softly. “I’m fine, don’t worry. It just feels a bit like a stroke…”
“What! A stroke?” John exclaimed in alarm.
“Just like one. I didn’t have a stroke…” Coraci reassured him, flexing his hand slightly. “I just lost another piece of my soul — same as when Russell used sorcery.”
“Was it that black worm that did it?”
“Yes. A half-corporeal evil spirit will drain all of a person’s life energy — what people call the soul. This isn’t the same ‘soul’ you find in religion or literature.”
There was one more thing Coraci didn’t say aloud: normally, during the process of having one’s entire soul devoured, a human would certainly die — just as someone would die from losing too much blood. Like the dead adventurer couple and the hunters, who had likely been attacked by something similar. In any case, they had all had their souls consumed.
The voices in the air still murmured, questioning why the black-haired young man who had fallen in was still alive. Coraci himself didn’t understand it either. He remembered something Russell had once said from his hospital bed: Your soul’s energy is too strong. I only took a small portion, yet I nearly couldn’t control it.
Coraci believed that surviving after being swallowed by the evil spirit might have been for the same reason. It had indeed hollowed out a large portion of him — enough to be fatal to an ordinary person. But for him…somehow, there was still something left.
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