House Rules - Chloe Neill Page 0,28

disadvantage.”

“Horace Wilson,” the vampire said, extending a hand. “Corporal, if you prefer it, although Horace is fine, too.”

“You serve?” Catcher asked.

“Served,” he said, emphasizing the past tense. “Eleventh Maine Volunteer Infantry.”

That would have made him a soldier in the Civil War, and at least a century and a half old.

“We’re sorry to hear of your losses,” Catcher said.

“Appreciated, although I didn’t know them myself. I’m just here to help. Rogues have a public service corps—purely volunteer, but we take care of things that need to be done. Some of them grimmer than others.”

Horace glanced around the neighborhood, which seemed quiet and asleep, but we were odd-looking enough that we’d attract attention eventually.

“Let’s get inside,” he said. “We’ve taken care of the kids.”

“Kids?” I asked.

“Oliver and Eve. They were relatively young. Kids to me and most in my circle.” He waved us toward a bit of fence that was rumpled, then lifted it so we could sneak beneath. When we were inside the barrier, we followed Horace toward the building and a set of double entrance doors.

He looked over at me. “You’re a kid yourself.”

“Vampire since April,” I said.

“Good transition?”

“It’s had its moments,” I said.

The doors, heavy and industrial, hung poorly on their hinges. Horace pushed them open with two hands, sparks flying up from the grate of steel against the concrete pad below. When he’d made a gap large enough to squeeze through, he switched on a flashlight.

We followed him into the building and directly into a stairwell. We climbed up to the third floor and emerged into a gigantic empty space, presumably where the documents had once been stored.

It might have previously been a warehouse, but its storage days had long since passed. No furniture, no shelves, no operating lights. Graffiti marked the exposed brick walls, and water dripped from ceiling tiles into puddles on the scarred wooden floors.

Horace shined a flashlight across the huge room to other side, where the door to the hidden room that James had found stood open.

“That’s it,” he said, then offered the flashlight to me. “I’ve been in once, and that was plenty for me. I’ll wait out here.”

I took it and nodded. Catcher beside me, the circle of light bobbing in front of us, we walked across the room, footsteps echoing across the worn wooden floors.

We reached the secret door, a tidy slab of faux brick that, when closed, would have slotted neatly into the rest of the wall. But for the blood, James never would have found it.

The door rotated on a single point that balanced its weight. A brick to the right of the door stuck out a bit farther than the others. That, I assumed, was the hidden latch that opened the door.

“It’s an interesting contraption,” Catcher said.

“For someone wanting to hide something, sure.”

The scent of blood spilled from the vault, and I was glad I’d had blood before I left the House. Intellectually, I had no interest in the spilled blood of two murdered Rogues. But my baser predatory instincts didn’t much care for ethics, and the blood’s origin didn’t diminish its desirability. I was a vampire, and blood was blood.

We stepped inside.

Oliver and Eve—as Horace had promised—were gone. But the evidence of their brutal murders remained. Their deaths had been marked by the pool of dark blood on the floor, still damp in the night’s humidity.

A wave of scent washed over me, and I closed my eyes for a moment against the instinctive attraction.

“Keep it together,” Catcher whispered, moving ahead of me toward the puddles.

“In the process,” I assured him. When I was positive I was in control, I opened my eyes again, then ran the beam back and forth across the room in the event any clues might be found there. The room was big enough on its own, probably thirty by thirty feet square.

There were no windows, no shelves, no goods a warehouse would actually store. As in the rest of the space, the walls were made of exposed brick. Other than the size, and the hidden door, there was nothing here that differentiated it from the rest of the warehouse.

“Maybe they used this for secure storage?” Catcher asked.

“Maybe,” I said. “Customers pay a little more, and their goods get locked into the hidden room.”

“If this place was built in the forties,” Catcher said, “that means wartime. We aren’t far from where the Manhattan Project operated. There could have been sensitive scientific information here, which would explain the security measures.”

I nodded, walking back and forth,