“I … I was trying to feel your desire for calm,” Zack replied. He was steadier, but the fear was still clawing at the back of his throat. His thirst was returning with an eager need. “Sorry if I pushed into your head too much.”
“You didn’t.” Takashi touched his cheek where Zack had touched him. “I’m not sure what you did, though.”
“Are you all right?”
“Yes. You?”
“Except for being the pride and joy of a master manipulator—the answer’s still no.” Zack examined the shelves of journals. Moving a collection like this around the globe must have taken some effort. How much had Seamus committed to paper? “Fuck, the information lurking in just this room is astounding, but we can’t spend all night in here. I was reading Seamus’s entry from the other night. I think there’s another vampire in the mansion. Not a guard or anything. Someone Anton recently sired.”
Takashi stilled. “I haven’t seen anyone. It wouldn’t be hard to hide someone in this place, though I think I have an idea of where to start looking.”
They covered their tracks as they left the secret office and then the outer study. After going out into the hallway, Takashi led the way to an ordinary locked door with a silver handle in one of the plainer hallways on the first floor. It reeked of an acrid scent, and a shiver went down Zack’s spine.
Takashi pulled out two thin pieces of metal that looked like they’d belonged on a pair of sunglasses once upon a time and then set to work on the door’s lock. While he did, Zack took a moment to double-check that there were no magical runes on the doorframe and found none. In a moment, Takashi managed to open the door.
It led to a bland stone-and-concrete staircase and a basement, which was more of the aggressively simplistic same. Steel doors with plain silver handles dotted the hallway. Zack was glad for the gloves as he tried the first handle. The door swung open to reveal a ten-by-ten room with no windows and no hint of comfort. “A prison cell?”
“Some might call this a dungeon,” Takashi said quietly. He continued down the hall, lightly testing door handles. “Not uncommon. Nell has one.”
“She does?” Zack followed. Along the way, he spotted a shotgun shell on the floor. He picked it up. Panic threatened toswell again as he recognized the shade of green plastic. “This is Cal’s.”
“Are you sure?”
“Yeah. Silver shot’s a custom thing. This is what we use to make them. What the hell is this doing here?”
“While you were in your grave, Roger infiltrated the mansion to find us, remember?” Takashi said. “Cal must have been one of the people I saw him flee with.”
Zack closed his hand around the empty shell. “What if he didn’t leave? What if he’s …”
“Then we will deal with that outcome.” Takashi put his hand on Zack’s shoulder and squeezed. “But we won’t know what’s down here unless we continue.”
Zack nodded. When Takashi turned to head down the hall toward the intersection, Zack tucked the shell into his pants pocket. The feel of it was as reassuring as it was nerve-racking. Roger had somehow convincedCal, of all people, to come for him? Of course, Cal had believed he was still human at the time—no way would Cal rescue a vampire ever—but he’d come along. Had he been the only one? Had Zack’s mom or dad been part of the failed rescue?
And what the fuck was Roger planning? First, working with hunters, then ripping off Seamus? What was the endgame?He knows that his life’s been one big game for Seamus and Anton. He doesn’t know what’s happening to me or Takashi. Maybe he’s out for revenge.
At the intersection, they chose the left hallway. Several more of the same steel doors were on either side, and another one was at the end. The further they progressed, the greater a strange odor bothered Zack’s nose. It was heavily metallic and like blood, but not appetizing the way a freshly bit mortal was. “What is that?”
“The smell?”
“Yeah.”
Takashi tried the door handle at the end of the hall and discovered it was locked. He took his makeshift lockpicks and began to work on the lock. “That’s what it smells like when fear and desperation have soaked into a place.”
“It doesn’t smell like mortals’ fear. Or what I thought stale mortal fear would,” Zack replied.
“I’ve never run into it this pungently.”
With all the steel doors and silver handles, the dungeon wasn’t designed to hold mortals. “Maybe it’s vampiric fear?”
“Hadn’t thought of that.” Takashi twisted the lockpicks, and the door sprang open.
The smell worsened beyond the door, but the sight before Zack drove the ability to concentrate straight out of his mind.
In the center of the chamber was a wooden rack that had a dark stain underneath it. The rack had sigils running along the edges, especially around the cuffs that would bind a person to it. Sections of wall between the doors held a variety of torture instruments, most gleaming with silver in the dim light.
Unlike the rest of the dungeon, the doors in this large room were bars instead of solid steel. Each led to a tiny cell, no more than three feet across and six feet in depth. The occupant of the one nearest to the door leapt at Zack and shoved his hand out between the bars to attempt to grab him. He might have been more like a man at some point, but his skin was pale enough that his veins were plain to see. He snapped and growled at Zack. His teeth were nothing but fangs, and his fingers had long, curling nails. His eyes were black voids.
The prisoner in the next cell was sitting at the back of his chamber, curled up and rocking back and forth. At some point, he’d scratched a word into the wall.Cursed. The one in the cell after that was a corpse just standing and staring at the wall.Another cell contained a half-man, half-bat creature that was drawing on the floor with a long clawed finger.
