Dangerous Games Page 0,3

Not alone, anyway.

"Rhoan, he's gone inside building number four. Rear entrance, right-hand side."

"Wait for me to get there before you go in."

"I'm foolhardy, but I'm not stupid."

He chuckled again. I slipped around the corner and crept toward the door. The wind caught the edge of it and flung it back against the brick wall, the crash echoing across the night. It was an oddly lonely sound.

I froze and concentrated, using the keenness of my wolf hearing to sort through the noises running with the wind. But the howl of it was just too strong, overriding everything else.

Nor could I smell anything more than ice, age, and abandonment. If there were such smells and it wasn't just my overactive imagination.

Yet a feeling of wrongness was growing deep inside. I rubbed my leather-covered arms and hoped like hell my brother got here fast.

"Okay," Rhoan said eventually, the suddenness of his soft voice running through my ear making me jump. "I'm around at the front. The main door is locked, but there's several broken windows. I'm going in."

"Can you smell anyone other than our vampire?"

"No." He paused. "Can you?"

"No. But there's something - or someone - else here that feels evil."

He didn't question my certainty. Over the years, my instincts for trouble had saved us from as many situations as they had gotten us into. The only difference now was the fact that my developing clairvoyance gave us some warning of the type of trouble we were heading into rather than us discovering it the hard way.

Which I guess made it of some use, no matter how frustrating it was otherwise.

"Use the laser, then," he said. "Better safe than sorry."

I reached into my coat pocket and slipped the weapon into my hand. It was the latest in laser technology - a palm-sized weapon that packed enough power to blow the shit out of the thickest brick wall. Needless to say, it had a pretty nasty effect on humans and nonhumans alike.

"Jack will have our skins if we laser that vamp before he questions him about his maker." Because the maker had the responsibility of care, and by letting his baby go rogue, he'd basically signed his own death warrant.

"I'd rather face his wrath than have a dead sister."

I grinned. "You just don't want to face doing the laundry by yourself."

"I can sweet-talk Liander into doing my laundry. It's your charming early morning cheeriness I'd miss."

"I'm fine as long as you feed me coffee first thing," I replied mildly. "And I wouldn't be placing bets on Liander doing your clothes. He sounded pretty pissed off with you last time I talked to him."

"Yeah, well, he shouldn't try placing unreasonable restraints on me."

"Didn't we have this very same discussion four months ago?" I did a quick peek around the doorway. Nothing but darkness. I blinked, flicking to the infrared of my vampire vision. Still nothing but rubbish-strewn emptiness. "I'm ready to head in."

"Me, too." He paused, "And yeah, we did have this same discussion."

"So, did you talk to him like I told you to?"

"Sort of."

Meaning he'd gone for the ignore-everything-and-give-good-sex option. No wonder Liander had a smile a mile wide the next morning.

And no wonder he was back to being an unhappy camper now.

"Can I remind you that a good man is hard to find?"

"Can I remind you're here to capture a vampire, not to lecture your older, more experienced, brother?"

I grinned. He'd beaten me into this world by a whole five minutes. "Heading in now."

"Me, too."

I snuck around the corner, keeping low and close to the wall as I scanned the immediate surroundings. The room was large, and had a wide platform running around the edges. It looked like a loading bay, one where the trucks just reversed to the ramp and the goods were wheeled directly out. Two double-swing doors were visible, one directly ahead and one to my left. The left one swung slightly - an obvious indication that someone had gone through it recently.

So why did the scent trail lead straight ahead?

I wasn't sure, but I wasn't trusting visual evidence, not in a place that smelled so much like a trap. I padded right, keeping to the walls, following the muted odor of death up the ramp and through the door.

A long hallway dotted with doorways greeted me. The air here was close, and had a stale, almost rotten smell. Like something had been decaying here for a very long time.

I wrinkled my nose and hoped like hell it was just