I stopped at the first cage where I could still hear a heartbeat. I swallowed down my bile and ripped the door open. A druid child of maybe five years of age hung from six different ropes. Her skeletal body was bare, and she was barely breathing. I quickly sliced through the ropes and carefully held her body against mine, her flesh near blue with tiny pinpricks scattered everywhere.
The druid child didn’t open her eyes. Didn’t twitch.
“I’ve got you,” I whispered on a choke, my eyes welling with tears once again tonight. I cradled her head against my neck and kissed the top of her filthy head. “They won’t hurt you anymore. I promise.”
I practically flew through the base to the perimeter’s outskirts where a tent was set up for the wounded. I hissed when a vampire doctor stepped before me, baring my fangs at the man. “There are more coming. Prepare yourself. And if this child dies, I will kill your most-loved loved one.”
He snapped to attention. “Yes, Your Majesty.”
Delicately, I handed her over to the doctor. “Call for more doctors. You will need them.”
“Yes, Your Majesty.”
I stayed a moment, watching closely as he laid her on a makeshift cot. When I was satisfied he wouldn’t harm her, I turned and raced back through the fighting. My mission was to protect the weak, and so many inside that building were now that and would need help surviving to the next day. It was going to be a long, horrible evening, wreckage doled out by human hands.
I shouted at the sky, “You sick, fucking bastards!”
