Available Darkness Season 2

his enemy despite the large opening above them. John imagined the men aiming their weapons down, and firing.
    “My people turned on me. They brought Harbinger here.”
    “Why?” John asked.
    Shadow looked Tiny up and down. “Who’s he?”
    “He’s a friend,” John said, figuring Shadow could get four from two and two together, see that Tiny was also a vampire, and maybe even sense he was John’s. “Why did your people turn on you?”
    “Because my father, until he died two weeks ago, was a vessel. Now someone wants what he had.”
    “What the fuck is a vessel?” Tiny asked, before he turned sarcastic. “You sayin’ your dad was a boat?”
    “We don’t have time for a long story. All you need to know is that I, and four others, are all that stands in the way of the world’s utter destruction. Help me escape here, and I’ll tell you everything you need to know.”
    Tiny said, “And you ain’t gonna try an’ kill us again?”
    “I wasn’t trying to kill you,” Shadow said. “I was trying to get away from you. I don’t know who I can trust, and when John here rolled up on my hotel with the men in black, what the hell was I supposed to do?”
    “So, how do we escape?” John asked. “Can you make another portal?”
    Shadow laughed, “I’m good, but I’m not that good. Those things take time to prepare, and ingredients I don’t exactly carry around. There’s a network of underground tunnels which lead into the city’s sewers. We make our way through them, find a way back topside, and get to where I stashed the list.”
    “What list?”
    “The list with the names of the other vessels. If Harbinger is after it, that means they’re looking to kill everyone on that list.”
    “We’re in,” Tiny said before John. “But first, you need to give us our powers back.”
    “Don’t worry, you’ll be OK once we get out of here. I put damper spellstones at the bottom of the well to prevent feeders from escaping.”
    “Damper spellstones? That some kinda kryptonite or something?” Tiny asked.
    “They won’t kill you, so not exactly, but yes, you can say that.”

    **

    The walls inside the tunnels were slimed with moss and something black, which smelled like death at its dankest. They moved across the slippery ground, squinting through the dark amber glow of Shadow’s lightstone, not that John needed it, as his senses had quickly grown accustomed to the lack of light once he’d gotten away from the dampening effects of the well.
    They wound their way through the old man-made structures, mostly going straight, but taking a right once, and a left twice, walking in mostly silence for nearly 10 minutes.
    “I didn’t even know these tunnels were here,” Tiny said.
    Shadow explained, “They were built back when the city was made. They were used by Otherworld Smugglers who would traffic artifacts, and people, into and out of town. Some were used during prohibition, with a lot of the tunnels leading to the basements of places that had been speakeasies. Most of the exits have long since been sealed off, but there’s a few that are still active. We’re not too far from where the tunnels split into three different paths. The one in the middle leads to old sewage systems.”
    “That’s probably where they’ll be waiting,” John said.
    “For sure,” Tiny agreed. “They have these freaky magick knives like you?”
    “I don’t know,” Shadow said. “I doubt they figured they’d need anything other than guns against me. Bullets will do the job just fine. I’m half-human, and all human weakness.”
    “So you might wanna stay back and let the vampires take care of business,” Tiny winked.
    Footsteps suddenly splashed through the shallow water from too close ahead. Lights bounced off the wall — Harbinger soldiers, no doubt.
    “Stand back,” John thrust his hand in front of Shadow, then took a step forward to block his movement. The splashing grew louder as Shadow extinguished the red glow of his stone.
    Eight guns with lights rushed at John, Tiny, and Shadow. “Get down, hands in the air!” one of the Harbinger soldiers shouted as if they had any authority whatsoever.
    “Stay back,” John repeated to Shadow, then turned to the soldiers.
    John sensed the first soldier’s itch for his trigger before he pulled it, so he pivoted out of the way as Shadow dipped into a swath of the tunnel’s natural darkness, pulling it like a cloak around his body.
    Shots fired from a soldier’s