up to my throat, almost choking me.
Ryder felt my arm stiffen and he looked at me, a curious expression on his handsome face. “You okay?”
I tried to swallow a painfully throat. “I’ll live. Let’s go.”
It seemed colder down that narrow passageway and I shivered in my overcoat. “Don’t you vampires feel the winter at all?”
Ryder smiled. “Perhaps. Maybe we like it. Fools us into thinking we’re still alive.”
“I thought you didn’t want to be human?”
The smile faded away until it seemed as though it had never been there from the very beginning. “As you can see, that’s not always the case.”
The stairs were uneven and had it not been for Ryder’s steadying grasp, I would have fallen and broken my neck countless times.
Finally, finally, my foot hit the solid ground, the stone feeling slightly unsteady underneath my boots and I heard Jason do the same from behind us.
Here it was not so dark as torches were lit every ten feet or so, casting macabre, dancing shadows over the stone walls. There was a slight incline going deeper into the interior of the mansion and I counted myself lucky to merely be afraid of the dark, not close spaces. This was not exactly the kind of place a claustrophobic individual could hope to survive.
Ryder hummed something under his breath, something soft and slow, something that sounded almost familiar, but not quite. “What is that?”
“Hm?”
“What you’re humming.”
He seemed vaguely surprised to be caught. “Oh. That. Damn, I don’t know. Guess it’s just one of those things you pick up from TV.”
I didn’t think so. I hadn’t even known TV existed until I was thirteen and I knew that lullaby for far longer. “I don’t think –.”
“Shut up!” hissed Shannon as we came to an end to the wall.
I had wondered about how to progress as clearly there were three walls and then the way we had come back. “Is this it then?”
Jason cleared his throat. “I suppose you’re going to tell me this wall goes back into some kind of hidden passageway. Otherwise, things might get a little...uncomfortable.”
Ryder put a hand on the wall and Jason’s theory proved to be desperately wrong when the wall did absolutely nothing.
“Um.” Ryder splayed both hands on the wall and ran his fingertips over the wall. If I stretched out, I thought I could brush the ceiling with my hands. “Wow. Well, this is kind of interesting.”
“You don’t say,” said Jason dryly. “Are they just going to kill us, then?”
“Took you all long enough. I’d just about given up on waiting.”
Shannon let out an expletive and whirled on her heel at the long, empty passageway.
No. Not empty.
Not anywhere.
Someone stood at the mouth of the hallway where we had come in from, arms crossed over a chest full to bursting. Was it just genetics or steroids? Did steroids even work on the undead? An interesting question and one I intended on asking Ryder.
If we ever did come out alive. “Is he supposed to be there?”
The man walked towards us, a strange expression on his wan, lean face and I felt Ryder stiffen next to me. “No. He’s not. Hell, we’re not supposed to be here.”
I heard Shannon swallow. “Actually, fuckwits, we’re exactly where we should be. They want us dead. Seems like this is the best place to get this done. Four people walk in, no one comes out.”
Of course we had walked into this far too easily, far too willing.
Then again, the choice had been made for us.
Either die right away or die later.
And like cowards, we had taken the harder way out. Or perhaps it was the easier way out.
Ryder shucked off his coat and rolled up the sleeves of his casual white shirt, his intention clear on his handsome face. “There’s only one of him. There’s four of us. If three vamps and Ran can’t take him, we deserve to die like rats in a dog house.”
“A pleasant image,” said Jason dryly. “I suppose you couldn’t have worded that any differently?”
Ryder put an arm out, stopping me from moving forward. “Don’t.”
I looked at him. He no longer seemed like the happy go lucky dimwitted idiot, no longer seemed like the hormone driven vampire I had encountered back at Vincent’s club.
So, which was the real Ryder? “Why not?”
He smiled. “You should give me a chance.”
“To?”
Shannon snorted. “For fuck’s sake. We’re five minutes away from turning into splotches on the wall and you’re still playing the hero card, Ryder. Are you ever going to grow the