Chapter 16

This vampire "lair" was several steps up from the last one. Not that the last one had qualified as a lair, really. I didn't know what to call them. Hideouts? Dens?… Habitats?

I lurked in a shadowy doorway across the street from the building Zora had marked on her map. Tucked deeper in the shadows behind me was Zylas. His heat radiated into my back as he studied the building over the top of my head. Traffic zoomed past, headlights glaring in the misty rain.

We were in the heart of downtown. In fact, we weren't far from the storm drain I'd escaped through last night.

Neither the tallest nor the nicest building on the block, the tower was anonymous among its neighbors. It could be full of offices or condos, and stood out from the rest only in that the front doors were blocked off by construction barricades and the second through fifth floors had plywood in place of windows.

"What do you think?" I whispered to Zylas.

"Too many hh'ainun here. They will see me."

Though darkness had fallen, it was still early evening and the remnants of rush-hour traffic was whizzing by. Zylas, with his horns, tail, red eyes, and armor, was a tad noticeable.

"I'll go around to the back," I told him, "and let you know when it's safe to come out again."

Crimson light rushed over him and his power returned to the infernus. I hugged my arms to my chest—having lost my coat, I was wearing three sweaters instead—and ventured into the light rain.

A few minutes of nonchalant ambling later, I entered the back alley and whispered, "Okay, Zylas."

He materialized beside me, and together we studied the new view—a blank wall with a loading bay and a single, featureless steel door. Red light flared up Zylas's arm, forming a pattern of runes, and he pressed two fingers to the thin gap between the door and frame. Crimson power blazed out of the gap, then he pushed on the steel.

The door swung open.

I squinted suspiciously. "Where did you learn to do that?"

"It is how the metal box in the summoner's house was opened."

Uncle Jack's safe, broken open with demonic magic. Zylas learned too fast for comfort.

A dark hallway waited for us. The dusty smell of drywall hung in the air, and a layer of white grit covered the concrete floor, yet to be finished with carpet or tile. I followed Zylas, my heart thudding so loudly I wouldn't have been surprised if it was making more noise than my shoes.

The corridor led us to an unfinished lobby, lit only by the streetlamps outside. The ceiling was full of missing tiles, and bundles of wire and unattached ductwork hung from the dark space above. Steel studs were piled beside a stack of drywall, buckets were scattered around, and extension cords snaked across the floor. An industrial fan pointed toward the closed and blockaded front doors.

I nudged my toe through the dust. The half-completed construction appeared abandoned.

Zylas angled toward the opposite end of the lobby, his steps silent. He paused at a door, then pushed it open. The soft clack of the latch echoed through the dark concrete stairwell on the other side as he started up the steps.

"Up?" I whispered, hesitating with one hand on the door. The basement seemed more bloodsucking-monster-friendly. "Are you sure?"

He glanced back, eyes glowing. "I smell fresh blood."

Gulping, I eased the door closed. The instant it snicked shut, utter darkness plunged over the stairwell. There were no windows and no lights.

"Zylas?" I whispered faintly. "I can't see anything."

His softly glowing eyes reappeared as he turned. Judging by their location, he was already halfway up the first flight of stairs. His eyes drew closer as he returned, then warm hands touched my wrists. He drew my arms around his neck, then hooked his fingers under my knee and tugged. I pulled myself onto his back and locked my legs around his waist.

As he trotted up the stairs, I sighed glumly. "I really am useless, aren't I?"

"Yes."

I lightly smacked his right shoulder—the unarmored one. "Don't agree with me. You should say something encouraging."

He glided up the next flight. "Why?"

"To make me feel better."

A pause. "Why?"

"Do you ever do anything that doesn't benefit you somehow?"

"Like what?"

His gait leveled out as he turned away from the next flight. His shoulders shifted, then I heard a door open. The faintest light, leaking around the plywood blocking the windows, scarcely penetrated the darkness of what looked like a hallway.

Seeming to realize it wasn't enough light for a human to navigate by, Zylas didn't try to put me down. He continued onward with cautious steps.

I wiggled against his back, getting more comfortable, and he hooked his arms under my knees to better support my weight. "Okay, here's a hypothetical situation."

"I do not know that word."

"Hypothetical? In this case, it means imagining an event as if it's real, so you can decide how you would react. So, imagine you're walking through the woods and you hear someone calling for help."

He paused, inhaled through his nose, then turned down a corridor that led away from the boarded windows and their weak light. "This sounds zh'ūltis."

"Just play along, okay?" I put my mouth closer to his ear so I could whisper more quietly. "You hear a call for help in the woods. What do you do?"

"I would see who is calling."

Surprised, I allowed a spark of hope. "What if you found… a woman? She's trapped under a fallen tree. What would you do next?"

He paused again and released one of my knees. The clack of a door. He leaned forward, sniffing at the air, then withdrew and walked on. Away from the windows, the darkness was eerily complete, and I doubted Zylas could've navigated it without his infrared vision.

"Who is the woman?" he asked.

"What do you mean?"

"The trapped female. Do I know her?"

"No, you don't. She's a stranger."

"Is she a demon or hh'ainun?"

"Uh… a demon."

"Then I would flee before she saw me." He dropped into a crouch and I squeaked, clutching his back. I felt his arm move. "There is old blood here."

"Are there vampires close by?"

"They have walked here, but not in many days." Rising, he hitched me higher on his back and continued on. "I can hear voices. They are close but I do not know how to get to them."

We must have come in the wrong door. I was betting there was a closer stairwell to wherever the owners of the voices were stationed.

"We'll find a way eventually," I assured him. "We don't need to rush."

"The longer it takes, the longer I have to carry you."

"Oh, come on. I'm not that heavy."

His shoulders twitched in annoyance. "You are not heavy at all, but you keep talking in my ear. Mailēshta."

I smiled into the darkness and leaned close to his ear again. "So why would you run away from a trapped female demon?"

"Because she might kill me."

Oh, right. He'd told me that female demons had magic more powerful than males. "Maybe she would be grateful to you for saving her."

"Or she would kill me."

I rolled my eyes. "Okay, fine. Let's say it's a female human. What would you do?"

"Hnn." He walked a few steps in silence. "How is she trapped?"

"Under a tree. You could lift it no problem," I added to make this easy for him.

Another thoughtful silence. "Why is she there? In the woods under a tree?"

"Does it matter?"

"It is suspicious."

I huffed with impatience. "Pretend there's nothing suspicious about her. She isn't armed or dangerous. She's just a trapped human who needs help or she'll die."

He rounded an invisible corner and prowled onward.

"Well?" I persisted. "Would you save her?"

"You want me to say yes."

"Of course I do!" My heart was sinking, leaving an unpleasant burn in my chest. "Why wouldn't you? You could save her life with almost no effort. It would cost you nothing."

He crouched again, inhaling through his nose. "Your hypothetical does not make sense, drādah. I cannot be seen by any hh'ainun or you would be in danger. You told me this."

"What if you could save her without being seen?" I asked desperately.

He held himself still, either thinking or listening. "Why are you upset?"

"I'm not upset."

A soft scuff behind us, and I imagined his tail swishing across the floor.

"You are lying."

Damn it. I'd forgotten he could tell when I lied. "I want you to say you would save the woman, because if you wouldn't save her, then you're…"

"I am what?"

"Evil," I whispered.

He said nothing, and in his silence was the answer I feared. He wouldn't save a helpless person from certain death. His questions revealed his thought process. Did he know the person? Were they dangerous? Why were they there? In other words, he wanted to know the risks or rewards for him.

Selfish. A selfish demon who only cared about himself.

"Why?" I whispered miserably. "Why wouldn't you help someone who was hurt or trapped?"

Another scuff of his tail. "I hear voices behind this door."

I gripped his shoulders. "What door? Where?"

"The one right here. If I open it, they will probably see."

Pushing the hypothetical scenario out of my head—he was right, it had been stupid—I focused on our mission. How would we get into the room without being seen? Squeezing my eyes shut since I couldn't see anyway, I tried to think of a different way in. The unfinished lobby materialized in my mind's eye.

"Zylas," I whispered. "What does the ceiling in here look like?"

He looked up, his head so close that his hair brushed across my cheek. His muscles tensed, then he stood.

"Var," he whispered. "Good idea, drādah."

* * *

Finally, there was light. It streaked up from the room below through rectangular openings where the ceiling's plastic panels were missing. Thick wiring and shiny gray ducts wound among steel crossbeams, and a metal grid stretched into the farthest corners of the building, unbroken by the rooms and halls underneath.

The crawlspace, hidden between the ceiling of the room below and the floor of the level above, was barely two and a half feet high, forcing me to lay face down with my arms and legs braced on metal supports. The steel bruised my skin as I held my torso off the flimsy white panel under me. Zylas had disappeared into the darkness, crawling noiselessly across the beams. The ceiling was too low for a piggyback ride.

As I waited, voices drifted to my ears, their words inaudible. One male voice, one female. Conversational tones.

Crimson eyes appeared as Zylas crawled under a silver duct. He moved cautiously, navigating over and around heavy crossbeams and bundles of wiring. The muscles in his arms and thighs flexed with strength I didn't have as he shifted across the awkward, fragile obstacle course.

He braced himself on the grid beside me. "Vampires in three rooms."

"How many?"

"I cannot see into the third room. In the others, there are rēsh. Ten," he corrected, translating for me.

Ten vampires plus an unknown number in another room? Well, this would probably break Zora's record for the largest nest she'd ever encountered.

"In one room," he whispered, shifting so close his warm breath teased my ear, "there are… papers. Do you want to see this?"

"Yes," I breathed. "Which way?"

He started cautiously across the ceiling. I crawled after him, trying to keep up but not rushing. The slightest noise could betray our presence. My muscles burned from the effort of holding my body rigid above the panels as I ducked under hanging wires and cables. The murmuring of voices from below grew louder.

Zylas crept up to a missing panel, the rectangular opening lit from below. I wobbled over to him, arms trembling. Talk about a workout. It was like nonstop planking and pushups.

As I puffed out a pained breath, I realized I couldn't hold myself above the panels. My muscles were too tired—which left me only one option. Brow scrunching and cheeks already heating, I put an arm across Zylas. His head tilted in my direction as I pulled myself on top of him and lay across his back, letting him support us both.

He had said I wasn't heavy. I refused to feel guilty.

Holding his shoulders, I peered into the spacious room below. Surrounded by closed doors and scattered with abandoned construction supplies, it would probably be filled with cubicles once the reno was finished. The farthest end was set up like a slumber party—rows of sleeping bags, pillows, yoga mats for mattresses, and a few extra blankets.

In a different corner, someone had laid a sheet of drywall across a double stack of twenty-gallon buckets, and loose papers and folders were arranged on top in three tidy piles.

A few feet from the makeshift table, a man and woman sat on the floor. They'd propped an old lamp, its lone bulb glowing half-heartedly, on top of a dusty piece of equipment with a yellow tank on the bottom. An air compressor? Three red jerry cans were lined up nearby, as though the tool's owner had expected to return the next day to resume work.

The woman was peering at a monitor, set up on the floor beside a black computer with severed cords hanging off it. Claude's computer, stolen from his townhouse.

The man threw a handful of papers into an empty bucket. "Found anything yet?"

His companion glanced up from the monitor, her brown ponytail bobbing. "Everything important is encrypted. This isn't my area of expertise."

"You're a computer science major."

"That doesn't make me a hacker. I didn't even get to graduate," she added, bitter accusation layering the statement.

The other man shrugged as he skimmed another paper. "We can't change what happened to us. Just be glad you were turned around the time Lord Vasilii arrived."

Lord Vasilii?What kind of name was that? It sounded like a cartoon villain.

"You're too new to know," the man continued in a low voice, "but we used to hide in sewers all day hoping the hunters wouldn't find us. All we could think about was blood. But in the last two months, Lord Vasilii changed all of that."

"How?" she asked uncertainly.

"When he's nearby… can't you feel it? Maybe you can't yet, but it's like being new again. It's like my head is clear for the first time in years. I can think about more than blood." He tossed another page into his discard bucket. "He makes this life almost bearable."

The woman's shoulders drooped as though she were discomforted rather than reassured by his words.

He tilted a few papers toward her. "This looks promising."

She hunched more. "Add it to the pile."

Pushing to his feet, the man placed the new pages on the makeshift table. He returned to his spot and read the next document. Were those papers also from Claude's townhouse? Or could they be from Uncle Jack's safe?

Zylas, I thought clearly, not wanting to speak aloud with the vampires so close. I need those papers.

Shifting back from the opening, he canted his head in a silent command. I slid off him and onto the nearby crossbeam. He drew his legs up, positioning himself in a compact crouch at the edge. Faint red magic veined across his hands.

He hopped through the gap and landed on the concrete with barely a thump, but both vampires turned at the sound. He was already flashing toward them. His hands closed around their throats, crushing their windpipes so they couldn't cry out, then crimson talons sprouted from his fingers and he rammed them into the vampires' chests. Catching both his victims as they collapsed, he eased them silently to the floor.

My heart twisted as the young computer science major slumped lifelessly, and I reminded myself about Zora's hard-earned wisdom: Killing them was a mercy.

I clambered off the beam, scooted closer, and dangled my feet through the hole. Returning to the opening, Zylas reached up. I pushed off the edge. He caught me and set me down.

Too many blank doors—probably leading to future executive offices—looked into this large room and it made me nervous. I turned to the papers. The sheet the male vampire had added contained a handwritten list of names and phone numbers titled "Emergency Contacts." I recognized Uncle Jack's messy scrawl.

I scooped the papers up and clamped them to my chest. For good measure, I snatched the other piles too.

"This is what I need," I whispered. "Let's—"

"Do you smell that?"

The sharp question, muffled by a wall, echoed from somewhere nearby, but I didn't know which room the sound had come from.

Zylas snatched me by the waist and boosted me toward the ceiling. I grabbed the lip and scrambled into the gap, and he jumped up after me. He rolled away from the opening, tail sweeping up into the darkness.

Footsteps thudded across the concrete.

"What?" a shocked voice barked. "They're dead?"

Not daring to move, I peeked sideways through the gap. All I could see were the slain vampires' legs. At least three new figures had gathered around the bodies.

"Stabbed through the heart," another vampire gasped, crouching to examine the body. "I've never seen wounds like this."

"What could have…" Stiffening, the third vampire faced something I couldn't see.

The crouching vamp shot to his full height, going equally rigid as footsteps much quieter than the others drew closer. A long pause.

"Find the intruders."

The low, dry voice issued the command without inflection, and the vampires leaped to obey. I held my breath as they spread throughout the room, opening office doors and searching amongst the construction supplies. They didn't react to my and Zylas's scents, so I was guessing they were only sensitive to the smell of blood. Good thing neither of us was bleeding.

Zylas,I thought, we need to get out of here.

He scanned the darkness, tense and focused. Holding the bundle of papers against my chest, I looked around for the quickest way out of the crawlspace. Not far to my left, two large, round duct lines descended from a square hole in the floor above us. I crawled closer, mentally calling Zylas to follow me. Beside the ducting, I peered up. Was that an unfinished opening above?

As vampire voices and the clatters of their search filled the room below, I cautiously pulled myself up. Ducting and wires ran through the spacious gap—large enough for Zylas to fit easily. I reached up and found the open edge above.

"Drādah," he hissed.

"I can fit," I breathed, feet braced on a beam as I pulled myself up one-handed, holding the folders tightly with my other arm. "The wall up here isn't finished. I can get onto the next floor."

"Drādah—"

Adrenaline flowing hot in my veins, I clambered onto the edge and squinted into the room of the floor above. A small office, perhaps? The empty doorway across from me was a black rectangle, too dark to make out anything beyond it.

Zylas, hurry up and…

My thoughts fizzled. My mind went blank.

In the doorway, a shape darker than the shadows had appeared. Larger than any human, armor glinting faintly—and crimson eyes burning like seething magma.

The demon entered the room in a silent prowl. I recognized his powerful build, his sharp face, his curving horns and dark hair, his long tail and huge bat-like wings. The last time I'd seen the demon, he'd choked Amalia and Travis unconscious at Claude's command.

Moving with deadly silence, he crossed the small room. Perched on the edge with the opening behind me, I couldn't even recoil.

The demon stopped in front of me and a cold, cruel smile curved his dusky lips. He reached out and my lungs locked with terror. His huge hand closed around the bundle of papers I clutched.

He dragged the papers from my grasp with no effort at all. Satisfaction tinged his smile—then his open palm struck my chest.

I pitched over backward, plunged into the gap, and smashed headfirst through a plastic panel in the ceiling below.