++For reasons that continue to baffle scholars, the sewers of our cities remain utterly infested by monsters. They will inexorably attract such creatures or, according to some particularly paranoid theories, actually generate them out of thin air should there be none nearby to draw in. The result is the same in either case, they are among the more dangerous places in any city…and the most magical.++

  Chapter 42

  Someone hit Reggie across the side of the head hard enough to kill a person. Fortunately, he wasn’t a person, or else he might have been killed. He did go down though, legs deciding to take a leaf out of Norman’s book and going on strike for better working hours. Those damned arms of his joined their siblings and started flopping around when he ordered them to form up into a block.

  The guards saw Reggie’s plight, and decided to help by beating him into unconsciousness so he wouldn’t be bothered by it anymore. Their batons got in each other’s ways and it took the morons a good few seconds to even think of just stomping him, by then he’d recovered.

  Reggie let them know by kicking out, not seeing where his foot went but feeling it impact something a good deal less sturdy than it was. Someone screamed and fell down, a space opened up, and Reggie leapt through it, scrambled up to his feet, kept throwing punches that got higher up as he did and finally ended connecting with faces, jaws and necks. Less of the latter. Reggie wasn’t trying to kill anyone, in his limited experience killing people was a really good way to create more problems for yourself.

  [Is it? Most of your problems would have been solved if you’d killed the right people sooner.]

  Dvo had a point, so Reggie ignored it and kept fighting.

  Someone reared up before Reggie, a guard. A huge one. He hit Reggie with a closed fist and surprised him by actually matching Reggie’s own strength.

  Only matching it, though, and Reggie bounced right back with a punch of his own aimed at the guy’s chest. With Strength in the low 20s, it was like if Reggie’s Classless self had swung a sledgehammer into his ribs.

  Which sent this one back. He got a funny look in his eyes, kind of sharp and challenging, then threw a particularly telegraphed blow for Reggie’s face. This guy wanted a straight punching contest, then? A test of physical ability and manliness alone?

  Reggie headbutted him in the fist right as it impacted, breaking fragile knuckles against his thick skull. The man looked confused. Poor thing, he probably didn’t have to worry about eating tonight. Probably couldn’t understand why someone wouldn’t take a chance with their own victory instead of seizing it with whatever tricks were needed. Reggie hit him again, then again while he was still reeling.

  In the end, it took three straight punches right to his jaw before the man went down for good. By then a space was clearing out around Reggie, and he had the chance to observe the conflictaround him.

  Probably, it wasn’t a very well-organised one by the standards of actual military people. That much couldn’t really be helped though, it wasn’t really a battle as much as just a large number of people being abruptly attacked.

  The strikers had all either left or fully devolved into violence, which were both fine options to Reggie. More notably, he’d underestimated just how many would be willing to fight. Even now they had easily a ten-to-one numerical advantage over the remaining guards.

  Not as many as it could’ve been, and they were still fighting uphill against enemies averaging several points above their own Strength and Toughness, but sheer volume was winning the day for team poor people.

  For the time being, that was.

  More guards were showing up, and those already there were starting to galvanize. Reggie saw a few key figures in the midst of it all—no elves, thankfully— and gave them a once-over. Each of the leaders had a uniform emblazoned differently than his subordinates, which made them stand out easily. This wasn’t such a good thing. Reggie saw the way they moved and recognised how each was a rival for his own untransformed powers.

  If he was spotting that, the humans fighting on his side probably were too. Reggie felt panic start to move through the crowds as people so sure of victory just moments earlier feared defeat. It was, he had to admit, an entirely reasonable worry, because holy shit those guys were moving like God had personally sent them down to the world with a baton and a quota.

  Reggie couldn’t afford to see that quota filled, so he made himself useful and started heading for the closest of the men. Obvious insignias were a double-edged sword. While the guards were still scrambling to identify and snatch ringleaders from the strikers—ringleaders who’d already fucked off to safety—everyone on Team Reggie already knew exactly who they wanted to go for. More people reached the guard captains before Reggie could.

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  It went as he might have expected. These people were definitely enthusiastic, and by now they were starting to arm themselves with improvised weapons made of wood planks or street cobbles, but the hardened veterans given rank among the guards were a cut too high. Each one dropped attacking men one after another, not even exerting themselves, not even struggling. It was like watching children try to fight adults, except the adults weren’t pulling punches here. People hit the ground hard like wet slaps, stone catching them harshly as it became slick and crimson.

  There’d not been a great unifying effort behind the assault, more like a few dozen opportunists seeing a chance to win things for their side. It crumbled fast, and people scattered away as the veterans and their surrounding subordinates started marching deep into the crowd. That was going to be the difference, not physicality but unity and order. Training. Already the strikers were breaking apart, and Reggie knew there’d be a great deal of brutality before the guards considered themselves avenged for the slight of this breaking out at all.

  And then Reggie reached the nearest veteran and drop-kicked him right in the chest.

  He’d not gotten to use a flying drop kick in a while, convinced for some time now that if he were to do it on most people they’d have died. Chest caved in, ribs turned into knives and sent splintering through all the soft shit that kept a person living. Reggie didn’t think that had been wrong, but he grinned as the Toughness of the guard captain met that of his own heels.

  Strength in the 20s met Toughness in the 20s, and though there wasn’t a fatality Reggie sent the asshole punting backwards to smash hard into one of his friends and throw them both down. Reggie landed a moment later, then rolled up to his feet with a baton he didn’t remember snatching up. A guard came for him and fell away as Reggie smashed him in the belly and folded him over, then retreated to parry the subsequent blows that followed.

  Wouldn’t do to take too much of a beating, someone might figure out that he was taking damage and just didn’t care about it like a living thing would.

  By this point the veteran was getting up, clearly unhappy about the sucker-punch, and starting for Reggie. That was fine, because a lot of the retreating strikers were starting for him too.

  Reggie melted back from the veteran as he started swinging one way and the other. Baton fighting wasn’t something Reggie had experience with, and he didn’t want to be punished for that lack against an expert. Instead he tried to lure the guard captain back towards his own approaching allies.

  It didn’t work. Clearly this man was experienced in big group fights, too, because he knew better than to get separated from his own boys in the middle of it. Fortunately, the union people were able to coin a cunning tactical counter to this caution by slamming a whole mass of them right against the guards all at once.

  The fight became somewhat clumsy following that, and Reggie was caught right in the middle of it with nowhere to go.

  Except the enemy, his path of least resistance.

  Reggie smashed a baton down on someone’s shoulder and actually broke the thing right in half. Broke something else, too, by the feel of it, a collar bone maybe. The guard went down swearing, then got trambled under a sea of boots. Death by human stampede wasn’t so big a problem for the Classed as it’d been for dear old Reggie growing up, and certainly not one as trained as a guard. He’d live. Probably.

  As long as only a few dozen people bounced their bodyweights off him.

  More guards were holding up behind the first one, and they had their shit together a lot more. Shoulder to shoulder, forming a big wedge that broke most of the charging union across it and held even despite being faced with five or six times its combined mass in bodies.

  What followed kind of slid off Reggie’s memory, and kind of didn’t. His cold vampire brain apparently recalled things better than his meaty human one ever had, but he felt like he wasn’t a part of the proceeding events. Like he’d come untethered and was watching them all from above, a guardian angel.

  Angel of vengeance maybe, that was probably the only kind that broke open as many jawbones as Reggie did. By the time the fighting was done he’d probably put a dozen people in the hospital just by himself, and felt like he’d taken about that same amount of damage in turn. Everything was aching the dull, irritating way that vampiric wounds did. A deep throb beneath his skin and lingering at the back of his mind, tugging on his consciousness.

  Easily ignored for the time being though. Reggie didn’t push his Regeneration for fear of being noticed as a vampire, he didn’t know how much of him was exposed.

  And speaking of exposure, his skin was in agony from the sun now. People were trying to thank him, but he just barged past and ran off. Didn’t have time for them.

  Reggie couldn’t make it to his apartment in time. His skin was heating up enough that the fabric around it was actually beginning to shrivel and burn, he reckoned he’d be fully exposed within a few more minutes and then the burning would only get faster. A feedback loop, was that what the alchemists called it? No time for that now, he had to focus on not burning to death.

  Again.

  But Lorwick had a lot of benefits over Norvhan, and Reggie had already discovered one a few days earlier. Sewers. Wonderful, underground sewers accessible only by ladders built beneath the earth and covered by heavy slabs of stone. They were probably made to be lifted up by teams of men, or one man with some sort of tool. Reggie didn’t have a friend or a tool, so he settled for just jamming his fingers under the lip and hoisting hard.

  Even he struggled, forcing up three times his weight in stone, but not for more than a moment. Reggie followed the light down, jumping rather than climbing and trusting his knees to soak up the ten foot drop. They did so easily, and he scurried from the sun’s glare like another of the rats swarming around down there.

  It stunk. It stunk exactly like a tunnel system designed purely to carry shit-flooded water out of a city of millions. That stink was like heaven beside the smell of his own burning flesh, though, so Reggie weathered it and waited to heal.

  Except, one problem. A big one.

  “Sycily, I’m not healing.”