I shot up the stairs. The body of the blood-spawn had been pushed to the wall. A pile of rags covered the floor from attempts to clean it. The fireplace still burned with the remains of broken furniture. With a shrug, I dragged the monster to the door with me.

I had to unbar it from the furniture someone had piled in the way, then carried the monster up the stairs and to the open windows. With a grunt, I threw the monster corpse outside, letting it fall to the ground with a wet splat that echoed from outside.

The room full of hanging coffins was even more disheveled than previously after last nights rain and wind. Water crossed the worn brick floor in a line through the room, soaking the hoarded possessions of the vampires that used to live here. Old paper and clothes fluttered in the wind.

The air smelled like ash and iron.

Tentatively, I walked to the nearest square of light, stretching an arm inside.

My arm began to glow, sparkling as sunlight seemed to dance off it. It glowed brighter and brighter and then —

I screamed as I recoiled, jumping back to the door as my arm burst into flame.

I felt my skin regenerate, knitting itself back together.

Sunlight was bad. Really bad.

The door burst open behind me as Russo threw himself into the room. His chest was heaving as his eyes spun to lock onto me. I raised my eyebrows.

“Are you alright?” He asked.

“I’m fine.” I said.

Russo stepped forward, walking directly into the light. He didn’t set aflame, though in the sun he seemed even more deathly pallid than before. He put his hands on his hips and looked around the room before kicking a pile of a vampire’s belongings.

“You want us to board these up?” Russo asked, looking over at me.

“Looks like we’re going to be here for a while.” I said, staring out over the city. It was still drizzling outside. The fires that had raged had long gone out.

“We’ll see if we can’t find some mortar in the store.” Russo said, still looking on the ground. “So, what, you walk into the sunlight or something?”

“Yes.”

“Seriously?” Russo shook his head. “You holding on okay?”

I flexed my hand. I had suddenly lost and gained so much all at once. I hadn’t had time to process it. And I still felt like I hadn’t lost enough to be sorry for myself.

“You should ask Steve that.” I said.

Russo shook his head.

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“Are you ready to see what’s in the basement?” Russo asked.

“Let’s go.”

Downstairs was quiet. People were heading to sleep, finally catching some uninterrupted rest with the doors barricaded. Amber was sitting on the floor by the entrance to the basement, lit cigarette in hand.

“You made it.” She said.

“Are you coming with us?” I asked.

“Hell naw. I’m going to lock the door behind you then go to sleep.” She said, ashing the cigarette on the ground and rising to her feet. She groaned and stretched, then lifted the bar barricading the door. It opened out toward us.

Purple sconces illuminated the stone brick walls descending below.

“Eli?” Amber said. “Sorry for shooting you.”

“It’s okay.” I replied, not taking my eyes off the dark passages.

“Yeah, sure.” Amber said. “Smoke?”

She fumbled with her pockets, holding the pack out to me. I stared at the cigarettes for a moment. I didn’t speak.

Russo grabbed one and descended the steps into the cellar. He lit it on one of the purple sconces, taking a drag and looking back up at me.

I stepped over the threshhold and followed behind him.

“Don’t die.” Amber said behind us.

I heard the doors slam shut, then the scraping of wood on wood as she lowered the barricade back into place.

The room spiraled, angled downward at only a few degrees as the castle’s basement carved through the stone. This place looked much newer than the inside of the castle above; the bricks were carved with the occasional relief, and the arches rising intermittently through the hall were much more gothic, like the vampires had built them rather than looking like an ancient castle they had just taken over.’

We stopped at the first closed door way. Russo looked at me, and I nodded. He removed the barricade blocking it, and took the first step inside.

A chandelier of purple flame floating in midair burst to life above us, revealing a circular room. Wine racks covered the walls. They were mostly empty; only sporadically pocketed with bottles of opaque, crimson liquid.

“Blood.” Russo said, pulling a bottle from the shelf and holding it up to the light.

“Huh. A wine cellar with bottles of blood.” I said, pulling a bottle off the shelf myself and looking at it. “It’s not labeled. No idea what’s in it.”

I set the bottle back down. I could explore these later. They would be perfect if I ran out of other blood sources while still at the castle. A voice in the back of my head reminded me that I still had plenty of blood sources living at the castle, and I shuddered before we continued our trip down the tunnels.

The purple sconces were dimmer — I had no idea if they were refreshed magically somehow, if that was maintenance I needed to do. On my castle. That I owned.

This would’ve been a dream come true for my twelve year old self.

A second door opened farther down the hall into a circular room that must have been directly below the wine room above. This room was the one where they bottled the wine. There was a horrifying metal contraption covered in sharp spikes of black metal and set to drain into a series of receptacles.

I shivered at the sight of it, closing the door without investigating further.

As we descended another level, the halls changed. Dark tinted windows lined them, and the mortar was flecked with streaks of glowing red. Outside the windows, I saw the sprawling college campus and some of the buildings beyond that had been sucked underground.

The outer wall disappeared as we circled downward, replaced by pillars carved from the stone, affording a view of the now underground portion of the city.

The college campus was now a mix of buildings and towering stone columns bursting through the concrete of the campus, some even reaching all the way to the ceiling.

Archways of stone expanded off the site of the spiraling ramp down, leading into rooms carved into the stone. We investigated the first few, but they held little more than ancient rotting trash. Perhaps this had been a dungeon once, filled with individual cells. The doors to them were lost, now.

“Do you hear that? Russo asked.

We were one turn from the bottom of the spiraling ramp where it connected to the ground. I stopped to listen. Somewhere in the distance, a man was shouting for help.

“Let’s go.” I said, running down the ramp and to the source of the noise.