The main entrance to the parking lot that surrounded the Casino lay to the west. We were at the southwest corner.
A pair of vampires trotted along the edge of the parking lot. I held my breath. They passed out of sight. They were the third pair I’d seen in the last five minutes. The People were on high alert. I could feel eight vampires patrolling the parking lot and three more stationed at random points, one to the north and the other two to the west and south of us.
Robert slid down and landed next to me without making a sound.
“Where is the observation post?” I whispered.
“There.” He pointed to the east at the crumbling remains of the Centennial Drive overpass jutting against the night sky. At some point three overpasses had crossed there, one above the other, but now the top two had collapsed onto the lowest one. Frost had slicked the concrete and parts of the overpass, and enameled in silvery moonlight, they almost glowed. The whole thing didn’t look particularly stable.
“There are two entrances,” Robert breathed into my ear. “One in the east and one in the south. The southern entrance is there.” He pointed to a pile of rubble across the street on our left. A vampire sat on top of it.
“How far is the east one?”
“On Marietta.”
A mile away, half of it in plain view of the Casino. If we doubled back to draw a wider circle around it, we’d have to go around the wreckage of Phillips Arena, which would cost us another half an hour or more. Getting this far unnoticed was a miracle. Trying to circle the Casino with that many patrols out would be impossible.
I turned to the vamp perched on the rubble. Even if we managed to take it by surprise, this close to the Casino it would do us no good. When a vampire died suddenly, its navigator usually went catatonic or panicked, because his mind, still connected to the undead, became convinced that it was the navigator who had died. Experienced Masters of the Dead honed their reflexes enough to disengage in time and some navigators survived the sudden death, but most ended up as vegetables. The moment we killed that vampire, one of the navigators inside the Casino would either scream in panic or start drooling, and the Casino would vomit enough vampires to turn us into jerky.
“We need a diversion,” Robert murmured.
If we backtracked, we could possibly set something on fire, but it wouldn’t guarantee that the vampires would move from their posts. More likely they would send a recon team. We were stuck.
Think. Think, think, think . . .
Desandra ducked her head. “Where are we going after this?”
“Centennial,” I whispered. “If we make it, we’ll need to pick up my donkey.”
“See you there.”
“Don’t!” I reached for her. My fingers missed her by a hair. She darted out and sprinted across the street. Damn it.
Desandra cleared half of the road. The vamp spun around to face her. She swung her mace and brained it. The vamp fell on the pavement, jerking, half of his skull caved in. Desandra kicked it. “Eat shit and die!”
She was officially insane and she had decided to do Jennifer a favor and kick the bucket.
Four lean shadows shot out across the parking lot, heading for her, two from the north and the two by the overpass. Desandra spun and sprinted away, running east, long legs moving fast, feet pounding the pavement.
I dropped to the ground, by the wall. Robert flattened himself next to me. Behind us Ascanio and Derek froze, trying to blend in with the rocks.
Four vampires tore past us, eyes glowing, talons scraping the pavement.
We had mere seconds before reinforcements arrived.
In the distance Desandra’s throaty laugh echoed from the ruins. Apparently she was having fun.
I jumped to my feet and sprinted like my life depended on it. Robert and the kids shot by me like three bullets out of a gun. The apartment building flashed by. Sidewalk . . . street . . . I just had to get behind the pile of rubble. Circles swam in front of my eyes.
The door of the nearest minaret opened and vampires spilled onto the wall, scrambling over it like pallid lizards.
I dove behind the rubble, slid on icy dirt, and nearly collided with Robert leaning against a huge chunk of concrete. A dark hole gaped under it. Robert jabbed at the hole with his hand. I leaped into it, fell about twelve feet, and landed on hard ground in a shaft about six feet wide. The impact punched my feet.
In my head I could feel six undead moving toward us, their minds spreading wider apart as they fanned through the parking lot in our direction.
Ascanio jumped into the hole. I shied back against the wall and his feet missed me by half a second. Derek was next.
One of the vampires headed straight for us.
Robert leaped into the hole and yanked a metal lever in the wall. Above us, a metal platform moved, carrying the concrete boulder with it. The platform slid into place, plunging us into complete darkness.
We stood completely still.
The vampire mind was right on top of us.
My body screamed for air, starved of oxygen after the run. I opened my mouth and concentrated on breathing slow and quiet. Inhale. Exhale. Quiet.
A faint scrape came from above, claws sliding on concrete. The undead was sitting right on the boulder.
My lungs were on fire.
Go away.
A minute dragged by. Another.
“Team Two Leader to Mother,” a muffled female voice said above. “Home envelope sealed, no pulse, no bogey, repeat no bogey, advise?”
Go home, I willed. Go home.
“Roger. Team Two, sweep complete, bingo to Mother.”
The vampiric mind turned and fled, heading toward the Casino.
Everything went quiet. I remembered how to breathe properly.
“Go forward,” Robert whispered to me. I put my hands out around me. My fingers found stone walls on either side. The opening between them was barely wide enough to pass through. Dark, cramped, and scary. My favorite.
I squeezed into the narrow hallway and blundered forward. The walls narrowed even further. My shoulders scraped the rock. You’ve got to be kidding me. When I got out of here, I’d kill Hugh for this. Slowly. With something dull.
The hallway needed to end. The walls were closing in on me.
What if the ceiling collapsed? I didn’t even know what the hell was above me. I’d just end up buried here, under tons of dirt and rubble.
Any time now with the ending.
Now would be good.
How long did this place go on?
Suddenly the walls parted. I froze. With my luck, taking a step would land me into a pit of rabid vipers or molten lava. No wait, lava would be good. At least I’d be able to see something.
“Reach forward,” Robert murmured behind me.
I groped blindly and touched something metal. A ladder. Okay. Now we’re in business. I grabbed onto it and climbed upward in total darkness. Robert was right. I wouldn’t have found this place in a million years.
My head connected with something hard. Ow.
The ceiling above me moved, letting in a pale glow. A hand with long clawed fingers grabbed my wrist and yanked me up. A horrifying face swung into view, illuminated by the faint blue light of a feylantern: pale, with patchy fur and a pink nose at the end of a tear-shaped muzzle. Long stiff whiskers fanned from a mouth studded with finger-long incisors. Dark, disturbingly human eyes stared at me.
My mind cycled through a chain of thoughts in a space of half a second. Kill. Wait. Wererat in a warrior form = friend. Stop.
I stopped the throwing knife a quarter of an inch before stabbing it into the wererat’s windpipe. It’s good that I had fast reflexes.
“Conssshort,” the nightmarish creature said. “What are you doing here?”
I made my mouth move. “Looking for you.”
The wererat smiled. My body flinched and tried to run away out of sheer self-preservation, and if I hadn’t been hanging suspended over a dark hole, it would’ve succeeded.
“You found me!” the wererat announced. “I alwayshh wanted to meet you. I am sshhho ffflatterred.”
Robert’s head poked out of the hole. “Jardin, put the Consort down before you dislocate her shoulder.”
“Alpha!” Jardin deposited me to the side. “Itshh shhuch an honor.”
Robert pulled himself up into the room. Derek and Ascanio followed. I looked around. We were in a narrow, rectangular space about as wide as an average van. Three walls looked like concrete; the fourth was covered by a dark curtain.
“Any activity?” Robert asked.
“Not in the lasssht ten minutesh. Before that, very exshiting. I shaw Wolf Beta run by. There were vampiresh chassing her. She was yelling, ‘Bill me, bloodshuckers!’”
Yep, that’s the wolf beta, alright.
“I think I’m in love,” Ascanio said.
Derek smacked the back of the bouda’s head. Ascanio snapped his teeth at him.
“Stop it,” I growled under my breath.
Jardin tossed a rag over the lantern. Darkness drowned the room. The curtain whispered as he moved it aside, revealing a long narrow space, filled with moonlight. Jardin hunched over, bending his six-and-a-half-foot body, and slipped through the opening. Robert followed and I did, too. My eyes acclimated to darkness and I saw Robert and Jardin leaning against the wall by a narrow gap in the concrete. The space was barely large enough for the five of us.
I crouched next to them and glanced through the gap. A hundred yards to the left the Casino glowed. Vampires scoured the walls, crawling on the textured parapets. We were inside the overpass.
“How did you even find this place?”
“By accident,” Robert said so quietly, I barely heard it. “Before the overpasses collapsed, they crossed in this spot. This is a reinforced section, designed to hold the weight of all three in case a collapse occurred. When the top overpasses crashed, the magic began eating them from the inside, and eventually the three sections of the road fused, forming this hole.”
“To what to I owe zhe pleashure?” Jardin asked.
“We’re at war,” Robert told him. “Someone in the Pack killed Mulradin.”
The wererat blinked. “Oh. I ssshaw him leave the Casino tonight.”
“How long ago?” Derek asked.
“Five houuursh.”
Mulradin must’ve bailed right after Ghastek left for the Conclave. What could’ve been so urgent?
“You said you saw him in the Warren before as well,” Robert said. “Where?”
“Corrrner of Marsharet and Joneshhboro.”
Robert’s eyebrows crept up. “The Fox Den?”
“Yessh.”
“Did you see with whom?” Robert asked.
Jardin shook his head. “But I sshaw him there twice.” He raised two long fingers.
“The Fox Den is a hit-’n’-split,” Robert said to me.
A hit-’n’-split was a lovely post-Shift euphemism. It wasn’t exactly a whorehouse and it wasn’t exactly a hotel. Most of the hit-’n’-splits were run out of converted apartment buildings. If you wanted to have sex with something that grew fur, scales, or feathers and you wanted to do it privately, you went to a hit-’n’-split, worked your kinks out of your system, and left with your humanity mostly intact. Nobody would be the wiser.
I’d run across a couple of hit-’n’-splits in my time with the Guild and the Order. Most operated under the radar. A prospective client somehow got hold of a phone number, called the management, stated their preferences, and paid the quoted price. In return he would receive a key in the mail. At designated times he’d show up at the apartments, use the key, get his freak on, then leave. It was an “at your own risk” kind of venture. No security, no front desk, no witnesses. The management charged both parties a flat fee, but there was no pimp and no madam. Everyone operated independently. If Mulradin frequented a hit-’n’-split, he had a fetish and he wanted to keep it hidden.
“Red brick building,” Jardin said. “Second one from the easht.”