All five of them gazed innocently up at me.
‘She Who Loves Sunbeams?’
Her whiskers quivered but otherwise she didn’t respond.
‘She Without An Ear? You obviously like that silver boy and…’ The tabby cat interrupted me with a soft hiss. ‘Fine,’ I said. ‘He’s not a boy.’ Calling the Maine Coon a man felt inappropriate, though. ‘What can you tell me about that silver … cat?’
All I received was a long stare of typical feline derision. Oh well. I’d tried.
I put down five bowls of kibble, lacing each one with some of the expensive cat caviar that Thane had made the mistake of leaving behind in one of my cupboards, then I took another bowl outside. There was no sign of the Maine Coon but I placed the bowl down by the rose bush; doubtless he’d reappear soon enough. I suspected I’d be seeing a great deal more of that handsome silver demon in the near future.
I waved a friendly good morning to my next-door neighbour Dave, who was scowling at me through his window, then ambled inside. Vampires were naturally nocturnal and I wasn’t due to enter the Understream until much later, so the day was mine to spend as I wished.
I grinned. Oh, the hard, hard life of an early retiree.
I presentedmyself at the clocktower on the fringes of the Glebe a little after eight o’clock in the evening. According to Alan, there were no direct entrances to the Understream in Danksville itself, though I doubted that was true. It was more likely thatthe vampires didn’t want me to know the location of the nearest doorways, but I had no reason to argue and I didn’t mind the walk.
The sun wasn’t due to set for another hour and the air was warm despite the breeze rolling in from the nearby River Tweed. It was true that occasional whiffs of something unpleasant and rotting reached my nostrils but that was par for the course in this neighbourhood. It simply meant that I walked a little faster.
The clocktower had been constructed by the Church of the Masked God around thirty years earlier. At the time people had declared it an ugly monstrosity, and it was certainly remarkably phallic in appearance; it didn’t help that the clock face was purple or that the stonework on the outside looked like bulging veins from a distance. Despite that, locals had grown to embrace the building and view it with deep affection. When the Church of the Masked God had proposed tearing it down in favour of building a grander tower, there had been loud protests.
I wondered if some of those protestors had included vampires. If the clocktower contained an entrance to the Understream, they would want it to remain untouched. Either way, I was rather fond of it myself – even if its nickname was the mildly crude ‘The Tadger’,Scottish slang for a penis.
There was a wooden door on the north side of the clocktower that I’d never given much thought to before now. If Ihadnoticed it, I’d have assumed it was for an horologist to gain entrance to maintain the clock’s workings. Usually it was secured by a magicked padlock that Alan had told me was warded to deter trespassers, but this night it had been left unlocked.
‘That’s because you’re special, Kit,’ I muttered under my breath. I grinned with a tinge of self-consciousness, then gentlypushed open the door to reveal the narrow, darkened interior. I cast a glance behind me to make sure nobody was nearby to witness my entry before I ducked my head to avoid hitting the door frame and walked inside.
Closing the door behind me, I reached into my rucksack and pulled out the glass bottle I’d put into it earlier. When I tapped it, there was a pleasing clinking sound; a moment later the bottle started to glow as the dancing witchlights inside it woke up.
Their light wasn’t particularly strong but it was more than enough for my needs, and it would help my eyes adjust to the dimness that I would encounter once I was in the Understream.
There was little to see inside the clocktower. I ignored the narrow winding staircase that led upwards and focused on the floorboards. If I hadn’t known better I’d have ignored them because they merely looked like scuffed wooden planks. I knelt down, brushed my fingertips across their surface and, when I concentrated, I felt the faint hum of contained magic. The vamps took the secrecy of the Understream very seriously.
I straightened up and thudded my heel against the wood. The resulting sound wasn’t one of a hollow space. Impressive; they’d thought of everything when they’d concealed this entrance.
Until now, I’d believed that all the doorways to the Understream were contained within the vampires’ houses – and only a fool with a death wish would walk into a vampire’s home without an invitation. This more public, albeit near-invisible, doorway intrigued me and I wondered how many other concealed passageways there were in Coldstream. All you needed was to know where they were and how to open them.
I chewed my bottom lip then shrugged. I wasn’t stupid; after my last experience underground, I would never try to enter the Understream without explicit vampiric permission soit didn’t matter whether there were doors in Danksville, doors in Crackendon Square or doors on every corner. It wasn’t my business – unless the vampires made it my business.
I moved back, sat on the lowest stone step and waited.
The first signs of life started at exactly half past eight, which surprised me. I’d arrived early because it was in my nature to do so; it was an old habit borne out of years of working as an assassin when it was prudent to arrive before your appointment to check that you weren’t walking into a trap. What I hadn’t expected was that my vampire host would be on time because forcing me to wait would have been a show of power on their part. Plus it was early September and darkness wouldn’t descend for another hour or so. I’d anticipated a lengthy wait but here she was, bang on time.
The floorboards creaked and stirred while the air around me thrummed with power. There was no puff of smoke or flashy whizz of light; instead, the wooden planks folded smoothly into each other as if they were part of a well-oiled machine. Within two breaths, I was staring into a dark hole leading downwards.
I could make out the top rungs of a ladder and beyond that a faint glimmer of light, but I couldn’t see anything else. I wasn’t immediately sure what to do.
‘Are you coming down or not?’ called up a clear female voice with a cut-glass accent.
I eyed the darkness then stood up and tucked away the witchlight bottle. I hoped I wouldn’t regret what I was about to do.
The ladder was sturdy enough for me to descend quickly, but even so the woman at the bottom was huffing and tapping her feet. I ignored her all-too-obvious impatience, suspecting it was intended to throw me off balance. I’d been invited here and, cat lady or not, I wasn’t a slow poke. I might not be able to turn into a bat but I could move as swiftly as any vampire –alright,almostas swiftly. And with more random aches and pains. But even so.
In any case, I wasn’t daft enough to rise to her bait. If anything, I moved more slowly. It wouldn’t be a bad thing if the vampires underestimated me. In fact, I was counting on it.
I jumped down from the final rung and turned to face her. She was holding a torchlight, its flickering flame giving her pale face an eerie glow. ‘What is your name?’ she asked, sounding bored.
I smiled, playing my harmless, middle-aged cat-lady role to the best of my ability. ‘Kit,’ I said. ‘Kit McCafferty.’ I wiped my palms on my trousers and held out a hand for her to shake. She gazed at it as if I’d offered her a fresh turd. Okay then. I lowered my hand.
