Immortal Unchained(13)

"What?" Sarita gasped with dismay. Thirteen? That's how old she was when her mother died. It was also when she and her father had moved to Canada. She tried to think of any restaurants they'd visited here in Venezuela before moving to Canada, but it had been fifteen years. Besides, with the trauma of what had happened to her mother, that year was kind of a blur in her memory anyway.

Sighing, she glanced back to the letter, reading the part about this life mate's deciding to let her live her life and grow up. Big of him, she thought with disgust. As if she didn't have a say in it? As for putting a private detective on her tail for the last fifteen years . . . well, that was just creepy. Stalkerish even. But just because Dressler said it, didn't mean it was true. Not once in fifteen years had she noticed anyone tailing her around town or anything, and she was a cop, trained to observe things.

Sarita frowned briefly, but then continued on with the letter. "Yada yada, reports on your life . . . there it is."

His name is Domitian Argenis. He is below.



"Below what?" Sarita muttered, and then read the next line.

I left the refrigerator downstairs stocked with blood for him.

For your own safety, I suggest you wait for him to wake up, feed him at least four bags of blood, and ensure he understands that you are not responsible for his being chained to the table, and that you are a victim and as helpless as he-




 

 



"Helpless my ass," Sarita growled.

-before you unchain him.

Good luck. I expect to learn a lot from your stay at my home away from home.

Dr. Dressler



"Before I unchain him?" she muttered with disbelief. Some poor guy was chained in the basement? At least she assumed he was in the basement. "El Doctor" had said he was below and then mentioned a refrigerator in the basement, so she was guessing below was the basement.

"But where the hell is the basement?" Sarita muttered, scowling at the letter for not adding that bit of information. She hadn't seen stairs anywhere in her tour of the house.

Dropping the letter, Sarita started around the desk, thinking she'd have to go through the house again. But she paused as she noticed a bookshelf at an angle in the opposite corner of the room. The edge of it was out an inch or so past the shelf next to it.

Eyes narrowing, Sarita walked over to the bookshelves, grasped the side of the one sticking out and pulled.

"Eureka," she murmured as the shelf swung out like a door. "Hidden doors. Just what I should have expected from Dr. Whackjob."

Stepping into the opening left behind, Sarita eyed the set of stairs leading down into darkness and scowled. "Cozy."

A glance to the wall on either side did not reveal a light switch. Feeling along the wall on either side of the door frame itself didn't either. It seemed she was expected to creep down blindly into the dark like an idiot.

Sarita stared briefly into the black hole, wondering about the man chained up down there. She wasn't buying this life mate business Dressler had written about, but she was curious to find out what this supposed life mate looked like.

With her luck, he'd be some cross-eyed drooler with a cowlick, Sarita thought and then shrugged. Whatever. It didn't matter. She wasn't interested in being some vampire's vampiress. She was curious to see him, though. But there was no way in hell that she was creeping down into that darkness without some sort of light.

Spinning away from the hidden entrance, Sarita headed back to the kitchen to search for a flashlight. But, of course, there didn't appear to be one.

Slamming the last cupboard door with an irritated bang, she hesitated, and then sighed and moved to the drawer beside the sink. Opening it, she retrieved the box of matches she'd spotted there during her search. It was one of those big boxes of wooden matches with a striking strip on the side, and it was full, she noted, opening the box.

Taking them with her, Sarita walked out to the living room. She had a vague recollection of spotting candles in here on one of her trips through and-

"Aha!" she said with triumph, hurrying to the fireplace mantel where there were four large candles in holders lined up with some sort of brass decoration in the middle as the centerpiece. Snatching up one of the candles, she returned to the office. 

Setting the candleholder on the desk, Sarita quickly lit it, and then tucked a couple of extra matches between her lips just in case her candle went out. She then snatched the candleholder and her butcher knife and headed for the secret door.

The stairs were tight and steep she discovered with the first step, and Sarita caught up as much of the cloth of the nightgown as she could in the hand holding the knife and raised it above her knees. She would never admit this, but she had been known to be a bit clumsy at times, and tangling her feet in the gown and taking a fall was not something she wanted to experience.