the hell didn’t you say so from the beginning?” Ryder asked, scratching the back of his neck. “We could’ve been halfway through the place by now.”
The other vampire grinned. “Then you should’ve worded your question more precisely. You know as much as I do how people tend to…scream.”
Ryder sighed and rubbed a hand down his face. “Fine, fine, whatever. Sorry to bother you. Thanks for the tip, Alec.”
The only response he got was a look of pity and a door in his face.
“That…turned out rather well,” he said and then looked at me. “Ready?”
I’d been ready to leave since Alec mentioned it had been a female scream, but saw no point in saying so. “Let’s go.”
The next underground level was just as elegant, just as subdued as the previous, although no one responded to Ryder’s knocking. He tried the doorknobs, but none of them turned and the ugly, metallic taste of desperation was starting to make me queasy.
“This is not good,” I said.
“I’d say something about that being an understatement, but I don’t really feel like kicking a dead donkey,” he replied and sighed. “Look, have you considered the fact he might’ve just walked out?”
I had considered it, yes. “He wouldn’t have. Not without telling me. He’s under my protection. He’s not foolish enough to just leave me and walk out on his own.”
Our footsteps rattled on the metal staircase as we came to the final landing. There was another flight of stairs, but even from where I stood, it only led to a dimly lit door firmly chained close with a rusted padlock that looked like it hadn’t been open in a century. “I suppose there’s no point in asking you what’s down there?”
“Dunno,” he said. “And even if I did, not sure if it’s worth my skin to tell you.”
“Figured as much.”
This hallway was larger, with a large, common room and sofas scattered artfully here and there. It looked like the lounge to a very expensive hotel. Then again, wasn’t this just what it was? “How many rooms on this floor?”
“I wish I knew,” he said with a sideways glance, almost as though he were embarrassed to admit to such a failure. “Look, a lot of people…they kind of come and go. While they’re here, they’ve got everything, anything they’d want. But…but we’re not really the kind of people to settle down in one place for too long. So Vincent arranged a sort of…safe house. Some people stay.”
“Like you?”
He shrugged. “Don’t really know where else I would go, to be honest.”
A hand on my wrist stopped me from walking any further. Thankfully, it was the wrist with nothing strapped to it. “I think we need another strategy.”
I stared at the hand until he grew uncomfortable enough to withdraw it. “I am, as always, open to suggestion.”
This far down, the quiet reigned supreme. That there was a dance club three stories above with hundreds of people dancing, laughing, shouting, bleeding…it was unthinkable.
And yet, it was true.
He let out a heavy breath, ran a hand through his thick, unruly blond hair that glimmered like gold under the lights. “Just…just let me think about this for a second, okay? If Vincent finds out I let you down here, he’s going to go spare. I just got to think about this for a second.”
A high pitched scream shattered the stillness, the quietness and I bit my tongue in surprise.
He quirked a brow. “Well, it’s not your man, but on second thought, perhaps we should investigate this, after all?”
The cry had come down the right wing and Ryder ran ahead, arms pumping effortlessly at his sides. I followed him, considerably less graceful, but no less faster. I am not a vampire, will never be, but if I tried, I could attempt to keep up with them.
“Do you think it’s the same one Alec was talking about?”
“We’ll find out soon enough,” he answered, voice terse.
A door halfway down the wing gapped open, the door blocking our view from the inside of the room and Ryder stopped a couple of meters away, not even breathing heavily. “Get behind me.”
I did. There were times to argue, but this was not one of them.
He knocked at the door, still standing behind it. Perhaps he was giving whoever it was in the room a modicum of privacy. Or the illusion of it, in any case. “Hello? Is everything all right there?”
And in the quiet of the gently air-conditioned hallway, I heard it.
A terribly organic, almost obscene sound.
A woman