Dan stared up at her, panting as she gently brushed the hair on his forehead, and I shuddered as he fell unconscious.
Ivy’s expression was tight with a hard anger when she rose, her grip white knuckled on her katana. “It’s not supposed to be like this,” she whispered, eyes black.
But it often was.
I followed her into the kitchen and the small elevator just off it that led to the lower rooms. Half the industrial ovens had been removed to make space for a big, comfortable table that could seat twenty people. Vampires were homebodies, keeping their “children” close and fostering a dependence that was attractive and felt safe. But it was a lie, and the danger usually came from within the same walls. “We’re taking the elevator?” I asked, though it was obvious.
Ivy hit the down button and the doors slid apart, the car having returned to the surface to rest. She strode inside, her katana in hand and her hair pulled into a ponytail as she put herself at the back of the lift. Arms crossed, she waited for me. The elevator looked awfully small.
“I’m taking the dumbwaiter,” Jenks said as he saw her black-eyed, tense state.
Seeing me balk, Ivy tried to find a less aggressive pose, and with my thoughts on finding David, I got in. Jenks hovered at the closing doors, darting away as they slid shut. “What’s your plan?” I said as the lift descended.
Ivy’s posture tightened. “Felix dies, Nina lives. That’s my plan.”
Yeah, I had a similar one. “You can’t kill him,” I said, knowing she wouldn’t like that.
“You don’t understand,” she almost snarled.
Angry, I made a fist and hit the stop button. “Don’t you dare tell me I don’t understand!” I whispered, getting in her face and backing her up a step. “Not three years ago I came over here looking for revenge after Piscary blood raped you. I let him live, and you will not kill Felix!”
Even if they’ve killed David? a tiny voice whispered, and I couldn’t answer it.
Her clenched jaw eased, and she dropped her eyes.
“Felix is the only undead vampire awake,” I said, backing off before she found her anger again. “We need to find out why and if that’s the only reason they’re interested in him.”
Ivy’s chin rose. “I’m here for Nina. I don’t care about Felix or Free Vampires.”
“If you kill him, Nina will spiral out of control.”
Ivy lurched forward to hit the button to make the lift move. “Nina is fine,” she lied through clenched teeth.
Heart pounding, I smacked the stop button again. “She is not fine,” I said, and then pity cooled my anger. “I’m sorry,” I said softly. “The only way Felix could take control of her like that is if Nina let him, which means she’s been allowing him access behind your back.” Head down, Ivy pulled away from me. “You said it yourself that she was doing better than you expected. Well, it’s because she’s been sipping the blood of the dog that bit her. She’s still tied to him.”
“Nina doesn’t need him!” she shouted.
My shoulders slumped. Hope died hard, and the lie was easier to bear. “Two steps forward,” I said softly, and Ivy’s jaw tightened again. One back, echoed in my thoughts. I knew Ivy was thinking it too. She’d been where Nina was now, and she balanced on the edge every day.
“If you kill him, she goes with him,” I said, and Ivy nodded, tears making her eyes blacker. “Probably at the wrong end of a gun. If we get her back, we can keep taking two steps forward until she can let go. She’s strong. She’ll make it.” God, I hoped she made it.
Ivy nodded, wiping her tears as if surprised to see them. “I won’t kill him.”
I could almost hear her unspoken “yet.” It was the acknowledgment I needed, and I pushed the button to continue. Ivy exhaled, and then the elevator dinged. My chest hurt. What the undead demanded of their children was hell. But at least she hadn’t been involved in the madness upstairs. There hadn’t been enough time.
“Stay behind me,” Ivy whispered, ghosting out, her balance perfect and every motion one of grace as she looked first to the ceiling and then to the sides. The large room seemed empty. She beckoned me forward, her gleaming katana dipping in a show of nervous tension. I edged to the door to look out and keep the elevator from closing.
Still holding her sword, Ivy flung a chrome and white leather chair to me. I lurched to catch it and wedge it between the doors. The elevator protested and whined, then went silent. Our access to the surface was open, but no one would be coming down that way.
Eyes scanning, I slowly explored the spacious room as Ivy padded from door to door, listening. Cormel had done little to change Piscary’s underground apartments: pillars, white carpet, high ceilings, fake windows with long curtains, and one of those huge vid screens that let him safely see the outside during the day. It was expansive, decorated sparsely but with taste, and my eyes went to the informal dining nook placed before the vid screen where I’d beaten Piscary into unconsciousness. Anger still lingered at what he’d done to Ivy, and the vampire was long dead, really dead. Ivy’s former lover, Skimmer, had killed him. I understood Ivy’s fear, her frustration. I’d loved Ivy. Still did. Letting go had been the right thing to do.
My hand went to the small of my back, and I pulled my splat gun. I reached out a sliver of awareness, touching a line. We weren’t too far underground. Piscary had liked his magic.
Ivy turned from the last pair of tall oak doors. “They’re not in this room,” she said, but it was obvious. My brow furrowed. Dan had said Felix had refused to leave. They were down here somewhere.
As if my thoughts had drawn him, Jenks hummed out of a hallway, looking out of place among the carpet and drapes. “Are you sure Piscary didn’t have a second way out of here?”
“They aren’t gone,” Ivy said. Vampire fast, she strode into a corridor. My heart pounded as I jogged after her, being careful to look for attack since she wasn’t. “They’re in the safe room,” Ivy said as she stopped before a formidable door. It was old, made of wood, and had been hacked, burned, and dented in the distant past, the damage under at least two clear varnishes by all appearances. No attempt had been made to erase them. Badges of honor, perhaps, or trophies?
“Piscary’s safe room?” I asked, wondering where the electronic safeguards were when Jenks dropped down and wedged his sword into the keyhole.
“It’s his bedroom,” she said, fidgeting as Jenks worked. “The safe room is somewhere in it. I think I know where, but I’m not sure.” Her eyes met mine, black and beautiful. “He never trusted me with it. I’m surprised Felix found it.”
“Got it!” Jenks sang out, the dust spilling from him turning a bright silver.
“But the undead tend to think alike.” Ivy waved us to be quiet and I retreated a good eight feet back. Seeing me ready, Ivy opened the door just enough for Jenks. I listened, ears straining as Jenks flew in, inches above the floor.
“It’s empty,” he called, and Ivy flung the door open. “It’s just a bedroom,” he said, shrugging as I followed her in. “A really freaky bedroom. You want me to do another sweep?”
I shook my head. Slipping a frustrated brown dust, he hung at the doorway to watch the hall. Freaky was the word, and I edged in, my feet silent on the thick rugs with patterns of faces in the flowers. It looked like an Egyptian bordello, maybe, with palms and pillars, and gauzy drapes falling from the ceiling to enclose the heavy-looking circular bed holding court in the center of the room on a raised dais. There was only one other door that I could see, and it led to a bathroom as evidenced by the tile and fixtures. A chandelier, yellow with age and almost as big as the bed, hung to the side, casting a faint light.
“I told you there’s no one in . . . there,” Jenks said from the doorway, his last word faltering when Ivy pointed her katana at him to shut up.
“Help me move the bed,” she said, and I tucked my splat gun in my waistband.
“There’s a secret room under the bed?”
Ivy had put herself at the headboard, and she nodded as I came up the wide, shallow steps. “I think so,” she said, and Jenks snorted, arms over his chest as he hovered in the doorway. “I’ve never seen it, but I once found his room empty when I knew he hadn’t left. There’s either a room or a way out of here, and the bed is the only thing that could hide it.”
The bed was substantial, and I tried not to think about Ivy splayed across it in a blood-induced stupor as I grabbed the frame and lifted the foot. At least, I tried. The thing weighed a ton. It didn’t move even a hairsbreadth, like trying to move the fountain at Fountain Square.
Ivy gave up before I did, frowning at the ceiling and the gauzy drapes. There were cords wrapped in velvet at the four corners, and with a dark expression, she plucked one. It was suspension-bridge tight. My eyes ran from the ceiling to the bed. Were they designed to lift the bed? Someone could go down, then replace the bed and no one would be the wiser.
I looked for anything that might control them, spinning back when Ivy grunted and a sliding sound broke the stillness. She was ending a power-filled strike with her katana, the rope before her snaking up into the ceiling as if being pulled by cheetahs. The cord vanished into a hole with a snap. Faint through the walls came the heavy thump of a counterweight falling.
“That’s slicker than snot on a frog,” Jenks said in admiration, and Ivy slashed the others, a thin sheen of sweat showing. It was fear, not exertion.
“Again,” she said as she took up her place at the headboard, and this time, the bed moved when I steadied myself and lifted. Oh God, it was still heavy, but we managed it. “There,” she gasped, looking toward the bathroom, and we slid it right down the dais’s wide, shallow stairs.
It thumped halfway down and stopped. So much for stealth, I thought, but the falling counterweights would have given us away already.
Ivy was already halfway down the hole in the floor. “Wait,” I whispered, renewing my hold on the line and making a globe of light. I couldn’t touch it lest I break the charm, but Ivy and Jenks could, and the pixy flew it to her. Shadows made her face harsh with fear and uncertainty as she took it. My heart thudded, and she turned back to the stairway. It was a vampire’s safe room; I was scared to death. But there was no way I was going to let Ivy go down there alone, and as Jenks took a last look in the hall and followed her down, I pulled my splat gun again.
My light in Ivy’s hand was a comforting glow, and our steps were silent. There was another door at the bottom of the stairs, and I looked up at the dim square of light. Too many doors. There were too many doors between us and the sun, and I strengthened my hold on the ley line.
Ivy motioned for me to stay back, but Jenks was tight to her ear when she pulled the door open. In a hum of wings, Jenks darted inside.
“I-I-Ivy-y-y!” he shouted, and with a small moan, Ivy ran inside. The stairway went dark but for the thin slice escaping past the slowly closing door. Heart pounding, I reached out and stopped it. Inside, my globe of light rolled about the floor of the small room, making weirdly shifting shadows.
“She’s okay!” Jenks was shrilling as he hovered over Ivy as she frantically felt for Nina’s pulse, the blood-smeared, pale woman in her black nightgown slumped out cold in a lavishly embroidered chair. “Ivy, she’s okay. Pick her up and let’s get out of here!”
Someone had put her down here and left. I wanted to get out before that someone came back. Slowly I retreated to the stairs, taking in the room with its fainting couch, small table, and bank of monitors. Most showed the predawn sky and peaceful streets of ten minutes ago, but two showed a slightly brighter sky with FIB vehicles and ambulances. Stretchers holding vampires and handheld IV bags of blood were being carted out. Apparently Jenks had missed a few cameras. A pile of bedding, sundry clothes, knives, and what was probably blooding toys had been shoved in a corner, and the head-size hole in the floor had an obvious function. For all its lavish furniture, the room reminded me of the room under Cincinnati where we’d found Ivy’s old I.S. boss and Denon. It was a place of hiding, of last stand, and it felt like a trap.
“She’s okay,” Ivy said, her voice almost a sob.
“Let’s go,” I said, making motions to get the hell out of here.
Jenks hovered over that pile of clothes, dusting heavily as Ivy hoisted Nina over her shoulder. Blood from unknown vampires smeared the both of them, and Ivy tossed her head to get the hair from her eyes as she stood. “You going to take Cormel out of here, too?” Jenks said, stopping me cold. “We got ten minutes until sunup. They probably got light-tight bags up there.”
“Cormel?” I whispered, seeing the pile of clothes in a new way.
“Ivy?” Nina murmured, and Ivy’s breath came and went in a frustrated sound.
“Get her out of here,” I said, my insides knotting as I shoved the bloodstained, torn clothing aside until I found the round-faced businessman who had once run the entire free world.
“You think you can carry him?” Jenks said, hovering close.
“No.” Tossing blankets aside, I unearthed Cormel, the well-dressed, somewhat short vampire, pale and unresponsive. “Wait for me outside this hole.” Please don’t leave me here . . .
Jenks’s wings hummed. “Go,” he said to Ivy. “I’ll stay with her.”
I gave Cormel a smack. He wasn’t a huge man, but I couldn’t lift him. He made no response. Ivy still hadn’t moved, and I frowned at her. “I said take her out,” I said, and Ivy let Nina slip to the floor, her expression pained. “Ivy!” I cried out as she elbowed me aside and shoved her sleeve up to her elbow.