39 - Traumas of a dark past

«Even if you are not thirsty, drink some more. We don't know when we will have the chance to feed again,» Ginevra urges me, handing me a glass bottle full of water.

Once we descended the steep staircase leading to the underground – with me on her shoulders, due to the sharp pain in my back caused by the recoil of Blood Word: Interius, which still prevents me from moving – we immediately locked ourselves inside a narrow and dark storage room, barely illuminated by the light of the few still-functioning lightbulbs filtering through the cracks in the door.

I am sitting with my back against the wall of the storage room, and Ginevra is sitting in the same way in front of me, but slightly shifted. We are tired, exhausted, our breaths short and heavy, as if we had just finished running the New York marathon. Our faces and clothes are blackened with dust and soaked in both human and non-human blood.