The entire cell was full of dirt. I knelt, plunging my hands into the ground. About a foot down I hit wood. It was some kind of trapdoor. “Do you use this often?” I asked, glancing over at him. “It doesn’t seem like a super-duper idea to have a permanent escape hatch in the floor of a prison cell.”
“It is not nice … below,” he answered. “You must … beware.”
That sounded ominous.
My wolf snarled. After the creatures we’d encountered fighting Selene, I wasn’t looking forward to meeting any new surprises. “Care to shed a little more light on that before I head down into the depths of despair?”
“Trows,” he answered.
“Trolls?”
Gads! I didn’t want to fight a troll.
He shook his head. “No, Trows. The Queen employs them … to keep intruders out and … us in.”
“You mean like fairies?” I replied, flipping quickly through my mind for my limited knowledge of a Trow. If I was right, I had a vague recollection of them from old books I used to page through in my father’s library when I was a kid.
“Much worse than fairies … evil … small … mixed with troll … lives in water.”
Water. That’s right. New Orleans was at sea level. I’d been so stupid. I felt like slapping myself between the eyes. Of course we weren’t in a basement. Down meant water.
I ran my hand around the wooden trapdoor, searching for a way to pry it open. I found it in the form of an old iron ring and pulled. The old wood hatch creaked as it bowed, caught by matted earth around the edges. I yanked harder, careful not to rip the iron ring off completely.
It finally swung fully open.
The smell was horrific.
I gagged, covering my mouth. “You have to be kidding me!” I coughed through my closed fingers. “It smells like death lives down there.” Eudoxia was going to get an extra sock in the jaw for making me go through this. “Maybe I should just tear the main door off its hinges and we can all go free right now? That sounds like a much better option.” I let go of the trapdoor and made a motion to stand.
“No!” Yuri’s voice held a strong note. The first I’d heard from him. I looked over at him. He was totally healed, still cradling his bride. “If you do that, the vampires will swarm. An alarm will sound and we will all be punished. Down is the only way.”
Damn. He was right. Swarming vampires would not be ideal at the moment. I couldn’t free anyone with a horde of vampires after me. I reluctantly knelt by the hole and pulled the hatch up again and glanced down into the putrid darkness.
This time I heard movement. “What’s the trick to defeating a Trow? And once I do, how do I know where to go?”
Alana stirred, moaning. Yuri petted her hair as he spoke. “There is only one way. Once you reach the end, there will be a gate.” His voice cracked, but it was almost back to normal. He cleared his throat, his heavy Russian accent still pronounced. “You will need to break the ward. Once you do, you will have only seconds to pass through or you will be trapped inside the gate forever.” His eyes danced with adventure. Yuri was definitely on the mend. “Remember … it must be done quickly.”
“How come you’ve never broken out?” I asked from my position crouched over the opening, studying the darkness below. “You obviously know what’s down there.” Being trapped here for that many years would teach you a thing or two. I was surprised he hadn’t been driven to escape, if anything for the sake of his bride’s sanity.
“Breaking the ward will take everything you have, and much more power than I have ever possessed,” he confessed. “Though I have tried to disastrous results. Mending the ravages of the Trows is no small thing. Keep them from biting you if you can.”
I raised an eyebrow. “Are they poisonous?”
“No,” he answered. “But their teeth are jagged and honed to tear the meat off your bones. Move swiftly. And once you breach the gate, you will not have time to tarry. The ward will try to hold you if it can.”
“Anything else?” I asked. “Run faster than the Trows and make sure I bolt through the ward.”
He nodded, satisfied.
His improved demeanor was nice to witness, but he still looked like a ghoul. If he really was Ivan the Terrible’s brother, he was the true blood tsar to the Russian throne. If Russia still had one.
I eyed the hole again.
My wolf had not stopped growling since I’d opened the trapdoor and exposed the hideous smell. We have no choice. We have to get through whatever is down there in order to find Naomi. Once we break through the ward, I hope to locate her quickly, and when we do, let’s hope she hasn’t been hurt too badly. There’s no more time left to discuss this. My wolf paced in my mind. She was as agitated as I’d ever seen her. Knowingly jumping into danger wasn’t on the list of things that made her the happiest. Time to go.
“Wish me luck.” I saluted Yuri once before leaping through the trapdoor, falling about twenty feet and landing with a huge splash in three feet of rancid water.
The smell threatened to overtake me.