Katie reached for his hand, but before she could clasp it, Luther turned his back to her and opened the door.
“Come,” he said quietly and walked into the corridor.
She followed him, her eyes darting up and down the corridor. She couldn’t hear anything. It was eerily quiet. She’d always assumed that it would be noisy in a prison. But maybe that was only the case for a human prison.
The corridor was lined with doors. As she walked past them, keeping close to Luther, she read the signs on them. It appeared that they weren’t cells, but rather supply rooms, mechanical and electrical areas, and most likely administrative offices. This had to be the area of the prison the V-CONs had no access to.
Luther guided her through a maze of corridors, turned left, then right, again and again. Within minutes, she had lost all sense of orientation. But Luther seemed to know exactly where he was heading.
At the next corner, he ducked into one of the many niches that held closets. He ripped open one of the doors and jerked her to him, shoving her behind the open closet door. Her mouth was already opening to voice a protest at the rough treatment, when he pressed a hand over her mouth and shielded her with his body. His eyes told her what he couldn’t express with his voice: to keep quiet.
She blinked in acquiescence and he removed his hand from her mouth, yet continued to hold her tightly to his broad frame. A few seconds later she heard it: several people came marching down the corridor. Involuntarily she held her breath. But her heart began to pound so loudly in her ears that she was sure every vampire in the entire prison could hear it.
Beneath her fingers, which she realized were suddenly clawing into Luther’s shirt, Luther’s chest muscles were flexing. Despite the fear of discovery that gripped her, she couldn’t help but marvel at the strength that pulsed beneath her trembling fingers. If she were strong like him, she would never again have to be afraid. A yearning went through her and made her aware of her own shortcomings: she was a witch without powers, and right now she hated her mother for having robbed her of the magic she’d been given at birth. If only…
Luther released her.
The corridor was empty again. The guards had passed without noticing them.
“Why didn’t they smell me?” she murmured to Luther.
He motioned to the open closet.
She stared at the shelves and noticed the bottles of bleach, soaps, sponges, and rags used for cleaning.
“You really know your way around here.”
He put a finger to her lips, before taking her hand to lead her away wordlessly. The spot where his finger had been for such a brief moment tingled, and she wanted to rub her hand over it, not because she didn’t like the feeling, but because she wanted it to spread to the rest of her body.
That’s crazy, she cursed herself silently, when Luther suddenly stopped and looked at his watch. She cast him a curious look then assessed her surroundings. There were three doors on one side of the corridor, and one on the opposite side. REC-1 was stenciled in black letters next to the door, right above a keypad.
Katie exchanged a look with Luther, who now turned away from the door and opened the middle door of the three on the opposite wall. He pulled her with him, stepping into the dark room, then pulled the door toward him, leaving it slightly open. In the dim light of the room, which, from the little she could tell, was some sort of storage area, she noticed him looking at his watch again.
She was about to ask him what he was waiting for, when she heard a door opening. She peered past Luther to try to glance through the tiny sliver between door and frame and saw a man, clad in heavy Kevlar gear, emerge from the room opposite, REC-1.
A recreation room? It didn’t appear so. The vampire wasn’t dressed as if he’d just come from a gym.
As soon as the vampire disappeared Luther sprang into action. He flung the door open, charged toward the door with the keypad and typed in a six-digit number. When a click sounded, he pushed the door open and marched inside, waving Katie to follow him.
The door shut behind her.
“We have about four minutes until he’ll be back,” Luther said.
“How do you know?”
Luther rounded the large desk and plopped down into the office chair. “I know everybody’s routine. When you spend twenty years in this joint, you find all kinds of things to pass the time.”
Katie looked around. This wasn’t a recreation room. The room was packed with filing cabinets, computers, and servers. A records room, yes, that’s what this was.
“And the code to the door?”
Luther was already typing away on the computer and clicking with the mouse. He didn’t even look up when he answered, “I have exceptional hearing and a musical brain. Every number on that keypad makes a slightly different sound. I can recognize the numbers by their sounds.”