Mayme had no chance of succour, she had to push on alone. She followed the beckoning trail of blood to the door that stood slightly ajar at the back wall. Two smeared crimson hand prints painted the dark wood— one on the handle, the other wiped across exactly where Mayme intuitively put her hand to open it. It was just as heavy as the medical bay door. She pushed against it slowly, only opening it centimetre by centimetre. After each little movement she stilled herself, held her breath, and listened. Nothing. Just the quiet hisses of the candle’s flames and a rushing heartbeat from within her ribs.

When it was about half way open Mayme peered inside, her eyes darting side to side frantically. The church woman was nowhere to be found. The door didn’t even open to a room, instead there was just a narrow, dark staircase. The lanterns that clung to the stone walls were not lit, making the descent look as if it led to an endless abyss. The blood trail had not stopped at the door, the church woman had to be down there. Either she had fled into the dark, or it went down so far her candle light did not reach the surface. Or, more likely, there was a door at the bottom of the stairs. That last possibility was not one Mayme even considered. She saw the staircase as more of an oubliette than a connecting corridor. However she saw it, she had to steel herself. For her kin, the thrall, herself.

Mayme took the first step. Then she took another. Another…

Her candlelight bounced off the walls, illuminating a jittering orb around her as the candelabra shook in her palm. A single, anxiously breathing sphere in pitch black. The light brought no colour to the area. The roof, the walls, the stairs… all the dull colour of basalt. Only the slight cracks in the stones and occasional bloody hand print stopped the trek from feeling completely repetitive. The latter of which curdled Mayme’s stomach each time she saw them, even if the rivets of blood that weaved on the stairs below her feet were a constant.

She descended for minutes on end. Each step thunderously echoed around her, making her stop to assure herself it was only her in the stairwell. Every so often she’d step onto a landing only to see another set of stairs leading down right next to the ones she just got off of. The blood trail never stopped. It remained up until she finally made it to the bottom most landing. She had automatically turned to try and find another flight, but was greeted by just a wall next to the stairs she just climbed down. When looking over her shoulder she saw it: another door. It was not like the others, it was metal with a large lock that was utterly painted with gore. The church woman must have fumbled with the key for a while. Mayme stared at it, her ever growing dread niggling in her stomach.

Was it locked? Was it better if it was or wasn’t? Was the one who made all those thrall in there? Was there the blood bags— no, were there the crackers and wine in there? Was the church woman alive and waiting for her there, or did she curl up and die from the bullet Mayme had inflicted? What one of those two options was worse, and why did Mayme kind of think the latter was?

With Percival completely out of commission she had only one way to get these answers. She had to open that door, or at least try. She put down the candelabra onto the floor and armed herself with her pistol before placing her left hand on the latch-like door handle. It was still a little warm— or was that her imagination? The hiss of the fire was gone, only the thumping of her hammering heart and racing of blood in her veins filled her ears. It made her eyes and vision pulse. She wasn’t even breathing. She stood like a statue, unable to muster up the courage to try and throw the door open until her stomach rumbled and startled her into pulling the latch. The mechanism popped open with a booming metallic clang. Mayme gasped as her hand moved away from the latch quickly. The musty air felt entirely too damp in her mouth.

The door was unlocked.

However, she had no doubt alerted the woman of her presence, if the woman was still alive. So what was Mayme to do? Open the door and get shot, or turn and run only to risk getting shot in the back? At least if she opened the door she might get more answers before she died, she figured. Or she could shoot first… she didn’t much like that plan, but there was only so much she could do. With her choice made she threw the door open, it was so heavy she had to use her shoulder to slam into it. It screeched, scraping horrifically against the stone floor. It almost made the floor feel like it quaked as the door itself rumbled against her.

The room behind the door was the same basalt colour as the stairs were, but it had wooden counters and cupboards lining the far wall and shelving totally across another. Jars of leeches decorated a shelf, squirming and writhing in water that just barely coated their bodies. Various medical (or perhaps torture) devices hung beneath them imposingly, gleaming silver in the candle light that filled the room. Most things Mayme could not put a name to, but she could see clamps of some sort, pliers, and tubing. Worse than those was what was on the table just underneath— again, there was a lot of medical supplies, but it was the blood transfusion supplies that really caught her attention. The very same wooden box as the one upstairs sat open, the syringes were clean. In a small crate on the far corner of the table lay a few bags of blood. The label on the top most one simply said “Untampered”.

Mayme’s mind turned to Percival and the scene she had left behind. She forced her eyes away from the device, even as the bags of blood whispered to her. She didn’t want any reminders of him. As gruesome a state as she left him, that wasn’t what bothered her. She knew she did all she could, and she didn’t have to watch him die. She was proud of her actions, not letting his torment make her a worse person made her feel stronger, but that still did not mean she liked the man nor thinking about him. Perhaps the visceral disgust the mere thought of him caused her was a blessing. She couldn’t be tempted by the blood if it remained out of sight. As empty as her stomach was, she still had a church woman to look for and worry about. Satisfying her animalistic desires would do her no favours, just distract her.

The trail of blood dribbled all over the floor, in every direction. It seemed like a gambit the church woman pulled to either gather supplies or cause confusion over her location. It looked as if several of the cabinets had been tossed open and closed again from the various hand prints. Whilst scanning the various trails a small sound made Mayme’s eyes snap to the left most side of the room, opposite all the shelves and supplies. All she could see from her angle was a line of iron bars, like a prison cell. She cautiously took a couple steps forwards, revealing more and more of the space until she saw it.

Behind the bars was a woman, her pale, naked body sat slumped over. There were cuffs chaining her wrists tightly against the wall. Each rib was distinct, her skin stretched over them tight as a drum. Her nails were so long that they nearly reached her shackles when her fingers folded. She had a head of pure white hair that was long and matted, it hung in her face, only parting enough for Mayme to see a single, light periwinkle eye staring out. The woman opened her mouth, letting out a long, strained breath, but did not try to speak. Her mouth was empty. No teeth, no tongue, nothing. It was just a wet, red cavern. The woman seemed to be staring at the pistol in Mayme’s hands. She moaned quietly, her wrist rolled slightly as her twig-like fingers flexed weakly to the gun. She did not regard Mayme otherwise.

Mayme followed her gaze to the pistol. “Elisabeth..?” She asked, only realizing after the word would make no sense to the bony figure. “My gun—“ the words stopped flowing from her mouth when she saw just how the woman reacted.

Her head had fully raised, her one visible eye was wide and this time stared at Mayme instead of the pistol. She made a noise, it squeaked uselessly from her throat. ‘B-e-uh b-e-uh’. 

“B-e-uh,” Mayme repeated.

The woman just repeated the garbled sound again, but as Mayme stared at her and thought she realised something. Had the woman looked up because she spoke, or did she look up because of what she said?

“Belle?” Mayme asked cautiously, but as soon as the word left her mouth the woman’s eyes began to sparkle with welling tears and a smile cracked across her peeling lips. Mayme felt her stomach drop. Belle. That was her mother’s name. And this woman had responded to ‘Elisabeth’. Elisabeth the pistol had been named after Elisabeth, her mother’s sister. The pistol once belonged to Elisabeth, but when she sacrificed herself to save Belle she had given the gun over as well. Mayme may not have known every detail of the story, she had always been under the impression her aunt Elisabeth had died that night. Yet…

Mayme’s hand covered her mouth to stop her from crying out in horror. This woman, this husk of a woman had mistaken Mayme for Belle. Even if they looked nothing alike, who could blame her given her state? So enveloped with shock and terror, Mayme failed to hear one of the cupboards creek open behind her and two two footsteps creep out.

A sudden gasp followed by a low groan broke the silence of the medical bay. Percival had awoken with a splitting headache. The foul stench he could not place permeated the room and only made his pain worse. It did not smell biological, nor like anything he has ever smelled before. It made his world spin and his guts twist. He felt incredibly stiff and cold, the pool of his own blood did not help with either feeling. It began to crust at his edges, firming his clothing. The furious pain of his gunshot wound had faded to a dull throbbing. He slowly sat up, his eyes did not need much time to adjust. The tiles that enveloped the entirety of the medical bay told him exactly where he was, no other building would possess such a maddening and uninspired wall and floor pattern. He spent a long moment just staring into the glossy tiles, trying to remember why he was even in the church. Slowly memories came back, pittering discombobulated across his mind. He was shot. Mayme brought him here. Mayme had stood over him while he faded. That look she gave him… cold, uncaring, nothing like the meek girl he had grown to know.

That was right, he recalled, she had manipulated him with faux gnathonic behaviour.

Tsk.

Even after all he did for her.

Now, however, was no time to dwell. Mayme’s transgressions towards him could not be avenged in this state. Percival’s body felt empty and light, but his extremities remained incredibly heavy and hard to move. He rolled his head only then realizing half his coat and shirt had been sliced away. He felt no abrasions on his neck, meaning she hadn’t bitten him. She had not turned him into a vampiric monster— if a half breed could even manage that— nor had she taken advantage of him to feed. Though he was thankful she had not sunk her teeth into his vulnerable flesh, he still mentally criticized her for being such a failure of her vile, vampiric kind. Any self respecting leech would have taken the opportunity to drain him dry. These thoughts occupied his head purposefully,  eclipsing the knowing feeling that he should not be alive that racked at the back of his mind— nagging like a wife.

Percival’s head lolled forward as he let out a long breath, preparing himself  for whatever sight his shoulder would sear into his retinas. It took several more breaths and clenching his teeth before he could force himself to look at the wound. It had been crudely sewn up and some kind of emollient was haphazardly slathered over his shoulder. What a good girl, he thought. She didn't turn him and she nursed him back to health.

Truly, a poor excuse for a monster, but such a good girl…

Why did she leave after, though? He let out an embittered snort. She was gone. There was nothing to be done about it. He had to leave, get home. He didn’t want to be in the church come morning. Besides, he was incredibly thirsty and doubted the room he was in had anything besides medicine that was more likely to knock him out rather than quench his thirst.

Percival forced himself to his feet, stumbling towards the bay doors with the grace of a drunkard, however he had crushed something underfoot only one step into his journey. He took a moment to try and gain control of his swaying body before he raised his boot. Broken glass from a syringe’s window littered the floor. Nearby a funnel laid still in the congealing, browning blood— as did another syringe. His stomach dropped as his eyes widened. He scanned the floor frantically for an empty blood bag, fear filling his whole being. There was no bag at all. Maybe she had just used some other medicine, he tried to assure himself. But why use a blood transfusion kit for anything besides blood? And if there were no blood bags, what blood did she use?

His mind knew the answer. It was evident from the stream of “No”s that tumbled from his purple lips, each ‘no’ slurred together.

His heart should have been racing. Why wasn’t it racing? His blood was chill in his veins. It felt foreign as it meandered its way through his form, like a plague overtaking a city. However, it was too late. The corruption was already in every inch of his body. It was in his nose, turning incense smoke into a repellent as if he were a mosquito. It was in his mouth, filling it with hot saliva and a deep thirst. It was in his heart, refusing to respond to his feelings.

Percival threw himself at the door, falling face first though and barely catching himself with his good arm. 

That should have hurt more.

Why didn’t that hurt more?

He crawled a few paces before he got himself back to his feet and rushed towards the entrance. The swirling smoke of the incense caught in his throat and threw him into a hacking fit— the saliva flowing from under his tongue splattered across the floor and dribbled down his chin. As he reached the maw of the church his body slowed and her voice echoed in his skull over and over until he couldn’t think. His good hand flew to his head and grasped a handful of hair as he fell back into the building. This time his heart was racing, his body shook in excitement against his will. A sick twisting of alacrity at her voice in his head and his utmost terror at that feeling ripped apart his sense of being. His body flopped backwards, rolling like a dog happy to see its owner as it squirmed towards the wide open door at the back of the church. His mind screamed in protest, his fist tightened, a clump of hair was yanked from his scalp. Her voice played over and over again so loud he finally screamed until his lungs ached to try and drown it out.

”Please, come back to my side.”