Not for Turning

This is a follow up from 'Breaking the Cycle'. I'm planning on a chapter a month until Series 5 kicks off... Spon x

I own nothing but my OCs - who I love, cherish and terrorise in equal measure .

Part 1: "And one by one the nights between our separated cities are joined to the night that unites us."

Chapter 1: 4362

Somewhere in a basement, just to the left of nowhere, there is a corridor. It is long, cold and smells of old air. Black fur creeps up the walls, as if the old plaster work has been dipped into the earth and soaks up the sodden ground like a rotten dye. The walls are painted a kind of baby-sick green, punctuated with perfectly square enamel doors from floor to ceiling for as far as he is able to see. Each door is three feet wide, three feet high. Their metal bottoms drip a river of brown water onto the floor. Worst of all, it is cramped.

Milo dislikes cramped spaces. Though, truthfully, he dislikes everything about this place. He dislikes the depths towards which he has had to fight his way. He dislikes the wet. He dislikes the cold. He dislikes the colour, the mould, the half-lit darkness. He dislikes not knowing what is behind those doors, and moreover, the suspicion that he carries in his balls about what he might find. He is not afraid. No, Milo is never afraid. At most he is unsettled, at worst he is eager to pee.

Unfazed, he cricks his neck one way and then the other. His thick bones shift comfortably into place. He heads to the first door.

Each door is perforated by a small metal window, no bigger than a letter-box slot, covered by a tiny door. He could open it to look inside, but decides to just go for it. Stake in hand, he takes the handle by force and rips it open. Inside there is darkness, and a drawer. Light barely creeps into the crevice left behind. Nothing happens. Milo lays his heft upon the drawer within and opens it. Lying, open-eyed upon the metal before him is a body. He knows a vampire when he sees one. The eyes of the creature are upon him. They are blue. They are pleading. They are starved. The vampire does not move. It cannot.

Milo's stony face cracks a little. One small corner of his bottom lip twitches into a smile for barely a second before it is gone. The vampire sees it. Then Milo shuts the drawer.

"One down," he growls beneath his breath. He wipes his nose upon his sleeve. The scent of the place is cloying. It stabs at the back of his nose, behind his eyes. It tickles his throat like lye. He recalls the notes upon his hand and turns his palm up to face him. There, in scrawled biro, he reads the number: '436'. He spits on his palm, half of the number is obscured by the blood of some grey-suited man he slaughtered on the way down, and wipes. "4362" he reads.

Grabbing the low hanging light from the ceiling, he angles it at the drawer he has closed, and sees a small chalk mark upon a painted swipe of black-board paint. An elegantly scribed '3' smiles back at him. He growls and begins the long walk down the corridor.

Counting off the wall marks as he goes he is on the second floor down, halfway between 2130 and 2140, when endless trial of doors is interrupted by a wall of ancient switches, dials and levers. He opens the furthest panel and bluntly types in the number he had been given, as instructed, into the old plastic keyboard. A small diode blinks red. Steam spits from a pip above. It's so low tech it hurts. He wouldn't have been surprised to find out that half of this place was powered by horse. Behind the wall something clunks, like old heating pipes in the night. The distance noise travels away from him. The floor rumbles under his heals. Then there is a scream. It comes up from somewhere far below and yet it is so loud it pops within his inner ear like a pin jammed into an over-inflated balloon. He has never heard anything like it but he knows what it means.

The sound continues, like an unstoppable force ricocheting off the claustrophobic walls. There is a terrific banging, a horrific, raw shouting. It is the sound of wild animal, trapped. He knows what that's like. That's how he feels every day he wakes to find himself locked up inside a half-usless human form. The small hairs upon the back of his neck elevate as he thinks of what he will find at the end of it. He follows the din. Stomping straight down into the lowest floor, once he finds himself with his feet in an inch of cold water the noise has ceased. There is an eerie nothingness down here. He must be at least fifty feet below. He fumbles across the wall for the light switch, and flips it. It sparks and sputters in the wet atmosphere. One by one, with some failures in between, the ceiling lamps blink into life. In the low light Milo sees that most of the doors down here are ajar. The little hotels await occupants; sleeping uglies. Milo steps forth from the stairs onto the sodden floor. The lights flicker. Soon he reaches, 4100. Soon after, 4200. Finally, 4300. His steps slow down now as he squints at the wall marks and grunts out-loud to pierce the silence, "30, 40, 50, 55, 60, 61 … 62". There it is: 4362. This time he cranks open the little window. He peers into the darkness inside.

Something moves across his field of vision. A dark thing in a dark space blinks at him darkly. It looks back. It smiles. He doesn't know what kind of vampire awaits him on the other side of the door. He hasn't been told what, who, he has been sent to get. Just where, how, a number. He used to work for the worst of them. Milo is not used to feeling nervous, perhaps, he admits to himself, it is exciting to feel something so strange.

He steps back to prepare. No stake allowed this time. He tucks it in the back of his army trousers. He can't kill this one. He only has the blood in his veins to defend himself. His instructions are to revive and extract vampire 4362 from the vault. That's it. Do it clean. Keep it simple. In and out. Should be easy. Just another vampire. Just another day. Do it Milo, just do it. He hears Snow in his head. When ever he needs to find that brave corner of his soul it's that calm, condescending, cruel sound that settles his heart. It brings out the beast in his human form.

Milo opens the door.

Barely a breath passes before she is on him. She springs out of the darkness like a powerful snake, wraps herself about him and pins him to the damp floor with a splash. He fights back. He kicks at the weakened creature. She lands against the wall, cracks her head on the metal but it barely slows her. She's up immediately. So is he. Her features are distorted by hunger. Her eyes dark, teeth bared. What could be beauty is twisted into something animal, something hungry, something vile.

"How long?" she snarls. Her voice is raw, scratched dry. Like a fifty-a-day smoker. "How long!" she demands, grasping the wall. Her legs shudder beneath her. Milo does not answer. Her rage boils over at his silence. She is on him again. If this is her when she is weak, he can imagine she is formidable with blood in her. That must be why they chose her. They fight fiercely, knocking the lights. The bulbs pop and break, forcing the pair to duel in darkness. Eventually she betters him. That hasn't happened in a long time. She slams him, chest first, against the wall. His head pressed against metal like it is a walnut to be cracked against a table-top. She twists his arm behind his back, forces his legs from under him so that he lands on his knees with a pain that shoots up his hips and into his back teeth. He can feel the weight of her pushing against him. Her cheek rests against his ear. She is about to bite down. Doesn't she know what a bad idea it is? Is she mad, or just naïve? He tries to throw her off, but not because he is afraid for himself. They need her in one piece, apparently.

"Wolf blood," he tells her, "I don't recommend it."

"Babes, do I really look like I care?" she croaks. He can hear her hunger as loud as a heartbeat.

But she does not bite. Something has distracted her hunger. She holds him tight still but rests her ear on his shoulder, almost lovingly. It is cold, damp, and strangely delicate. To his surprise she begins to hum. In the darkness, her aching larynx opens. She begins to sing, though her voice barely reaches above a whisper.

"They say our love won't pay the rent,

Before it's earned, our money's all been spent"

Her tone rings with soft laughter. "There, there, calm yourself Miss Weaver. I'll look after you. We'll get through this. I'll get us both through this." She laughs again.

Milo realises then that this particular vampire probably lost its mind a long time before he arrived. Controlling it was going to be more difficult than he had expected. He just hoped the lawyer had a plan.