CHAPTER 121: Hell in Berlin-14

CHAPTER 121: Hell in Berlin-14

Alucard let out a low, rumbling laugh that echoed off the damp tunnel walls, dry and merciless.

"Ha!" he said, straightening up with a casual air. "Well then, Alex. You might have done me a nasty little favor, but don't forget who I am. I'm still the strongest one here. And I'm going to sweep you off the floor as easily as I step on flies."

As he spoke, internally Alucard reflected, and his thoughts were as cold as the night.

*Interesting,* he thought. *So this is what the other side feels: the helplessness of seeing a wound that won't close, time sticking like a knife. Phoenix must have known this during his worst hours; now I experience it, even if just for a while. I don't like the feeling of slowing down... I find it humiliating.*

He shook his head to dismiss the distaste. Humiliation wouldn't teach him anything useful if he didn't turn it into an advantage.

He turned his attention back to Alex with a sharp smile:

"No, I'm not going to dirty my hands," he said. "But I have friends who enjoy this kind of feast."

Alucard took a step back and, with theatrical calm, his lips uttered words in a rough, ancient Hebrew, the old cadence filling the air as if tearing echoes from the earth. It wasn't an explained incantation; it was a summons, a chain pulling at things buried beneath the city.

The tunnel floor began to vibrate slightly. First, it raised dust; then, the earth gave way and pale hands broke through the slabs. Gaunt bodies, empty eyes, and faces that no longer remembered life emerged as if the city was giving back what had been taken from it. They weren't vampires: they were zombies, statues of flesh and bone walking with a terrible but determined rigidity.

Alucard watched with cold satisfaction as more than a dozen of these figures rose, lining up behind him like loyal soldiers.

"Every time I consume someone," he explained in a low, almost didactic voice, as if sharing an anatomical secret, "their soul remains bound to me. It doesn't disappear: it stays on the threshold, subdued. I can call it. I can order it to move the body again. Useful beings for simple tasks and for fighting. They are slaves with reduced memory. They are my dead dogs."

Alex looked at the scene with a mixture of horror and fascination; his laughter caught in his throat.

Alucard fixed his gaze on him and, without losing his smile, gave a concise order:

"Attack."

The zombies advanced like a thick tide, dragging feet that no longer felt cold or fire. They lunged at Alex without hesitation, biting, hitting, overwhelming with numbers and persistence where strength alone might fail.

Alex stopped laughing and, for the first time that night, showed a cold, almost professional expression. His hands tensed and the movements that followed were quick, precise, and brutal: he tore pieces of metal from a loose beam, sharpened them with the impatience of a craftsman, and charged the line of zombies.

It wasn't a pretty fight. It was an efficient slaughter. Spinning blows that split skulls like coconuts, knee strikes that bent necks, bites that tore already withered flesh. The bodies landed in pile after pile; the rhythmic steps of the horde became a silence punctuated by the crunching of bones. Alex showed no mercy: his smile was now the gleam of a predator returning to its element.

When the dozen or so dead seemed to dwindle, Alex tore one of the bodies from the pile like someone taking a trophy and, with a theatrical gesture, hurled it forcefully towards Alucard.

"Take this, old man!" he shouted, reveling in the spectacle.

Alucard, with the calm of one who knows his ground, took a step sideways and the zombie flew past, crashing into a column without touching him. His eyes sparkled with a mixture of irony and contained respect.

"Clever," he murmured. "But predictable."

In a more distant corner of the platform, amidst smoke, broken glass, and the shell of a split train car, Phoenix regained consciousness like someone emerging from a dive that was too deep. A dagger of pain pierced his head; his body weighed tons. His breathing was short and ragged; his tongue tasted of dirt and iron. He tried to open his eyes fully. The world took a few seconds to steady itself: the subway lights flickered, shadows moved, distant screams, the smell of blood and oil.

He tried to sit up. A muscle in his leg responded with a violent cramp; his back burned as if he had been beaten against a thousand stones. He raised himself an inch, then another. His head spun and he fell back again, gasping. Every attempt was a race with the pain, and the pain always won.

His trembling hands sought support on the cold ground. He moved his fingers. They barely worked. He tried to drag himself; a pull in his side wrenched a choked groan from him. He could hear, very close, the clash of bodies and the echo of voices that couldn't form coherent words. He could smell the blood in the air, and that smell brought him an icy certainty: he wasn't okay. He wasn't whole.

With his face pressed against the concrete and his vision blurred, Phoenix murmured to himself, his voice broken:

"Damn it... I can't... not now..."

A thread of determination, like an exposed nerve, told him to persist. He lifted his head a little more and, with superhuman effort, managed to drag himself a couple of inches. It was little, ridiculous... but it was movement.