“Right room one, clear.”
“Entering door at hallway end. Going silent.”
“Stairway, clear on this level. No bogeymen noted on first landing. Starting up. Going silent.”
I said, “In the Damours’ private quarters there was an entrance to a hidden stairway that ran from the top of the building to the garage, providing a secret passage for vamp slavers to move their human cargo. Entrance is in a closet or a wardrobe, if I remember right.”
Sweaty Bollock said, “Copy that. Voodoo and I’ll check it now.”
Thema said, “Checking garage. One interior door for entry to garage is unlocked.”
Kojo said, “Garage is clear. No vehicles. Garage exterior door is locked and secure.”
Koun said, “Outside fire escapes are clear. No doors or windows open. No movement. Leaving two outside guards and entering level-one door.”
Koun was here. Good.
From upstairs I heard, “Stairway clear. Second floor hallway clear.”
Sweaty said, “Found entrance to hidden stairway. Going silent.”
Then the guard who had entered the room at the end of the hallway said, “Room at end of first floor hallway, clear.”
I felt Bruiser relax at my side, and an answering relief washed through me. That room. That was where we had found the long-chained—the insane vampire children shackled to their cots...
I didn’t smell vamps, except the long-ago stink of the Damours and the Rousseaus. No fresh blood. The building was empty except for New Orleans’s ubiquitous roaches and rats, which I could smell, even with a human nose. Fast, the team took up firing positions at the landings, the door, the garage, on the roof, and outside.
Sweaty Bollock said, “Hidden stairway down, clear.”
Blue Voodoo said, “Stairway up to roof, clear.”
Thema stepped up close and scratched Brute’s ears. “The building is safe, My Queen.”
I was watching her hand on Brute’s head when the words “My Queen” penetrated. Slowly I raised my eyes to Thema. She never called mequeen. Never offered me her loyalty. She was doing that now. A possibility entered my mind, and I quashed it, not because it was without merit but because now wasn’t the time. Yet the possibility was there, nonetheless.
She turned her gaze to Bruiser. “I am the Dark Queen’s personal security. You may have chosen another, but I will be the one who keeps her safe.” She turned her black eyes on me and her fangs clicked down. The silver piercings in her ears caught the light. “You will stay behind me, My Queen.”
It was not a request, but an order. Quint stepped in frontof me, between us, weapons out. Beast bristled at the smells coming off the two women, but I held her down.Thema’s powerful,I thought to my other half.Let her lead.
Beast is not kit to be led. Beast is not prey. Beast does not like where Jane’s thoughts go.
Too freaking bad. We’re neck deep in quicksand.
Beast does not understand sand that moves fast.
Yeah? You’re keeping secrets about our lives. You share all the secrets, and I’ll explain quicksand.
Jane is mean.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Whatever.
Bruiser said, “Quint, take our six. Thema, take point.”
Instantly Quint backed up. No reaction this time. No scent change.
We moved forward. Inside, into the dark.
I saw the room as it had been and as it was now, the present overlaid with the past. The windowless room was fifty by forty, give or take, with a fifteen-foot-tall ceiling. The walls were still painted soft coral, but there were no rugs, no leather furniture, no tables or lamps scattered in small groups, as if for playing cards or chatting or drinking tea. The far corner was empty too, where the concrete floor sloped gently to a drain. The ten blackened steel cots that had once held the shackled long-chained vampire children were gone. The room was empty.
