Once he reached the bottom, he realized it wasn’t so bad. Inside the steel-lined room at the bottom of the ladder, he could still look up and see stars and open sky. The narrow, low-ceilinged tunnel might be another story.
His breath grew labored the second he stepped into the entry room and his view of the open trapdoor was obscured. He would not hyperventilate in front of the Slayer, by God, if he had to stick his fangs into his own lip to distract himself.
Not necessary, as it turned out. The blood scent hit him the instant he got two feet from the tunnel entrance. “What the hell is it?”
“Dunno, but it’s the blood of a vampire. I thought we better go in together.” Mirren’s uncharacteristic caution was in itself worthy of panic.
Mirren grasped the wheel that opened the steel door into the tunnel. Whoever had been behind that door had bled. A lot. Recently.
He looked back. “You ready?”
Cage nodded. “Sure.” Hell no, he wasn’t ready.
Mirren wrenched open the door to the tunnel, and the blood stench hit them like a physical blast. Cage lost his balance and had to lean propped against the wall a few heartbeats to make sure he could stay upright. Even Mirren had to pause and catch his breath.
“Okay, let’s see what we’re dealing with.”
Cage followed him through the door and for several long seconds they stood side by side, silent, trying to understand what lay before them.
Two long wooden beams, probably taken from the collapsed tunnel beyond them, had been erected in an X shape and nailed to the wall.
Pinned to the St. Andrew’s cross with long silver knives that had been used to pierce her hands, shoulders, thighs, and ankles as if she were a butterfly being attached to a board, was a woman. Those wounds had bled, but most of the blood appeared to have come from her chest, which had been splayed open. The front of her clothing was drenched with blood, and it had formed large dark pools on the concrete floor.
Her head hung forward, dark hair obscuring her face.
“Holy fuck.” Mirren looked at Cage as if asking permission to touch her. Cage nodded. They had to see, God forbid, if she was anyone they knew.
Mirren stepped beside her, placed two fingers beneath her chin, and raised her head. He flinched. “Fuck me. She’s still alive.”
They still hadn’t gotten a good look at her. Holding his flashlight with his left hand and directing the beam at her face, Cage reached out with his right and brushed her hair aside.
Fear shot from his scalp to his boots. “Britta?”
CHAPTER 23
What’s eating you? Or should I say who?”
Nik grabbed Robin’s hand on their way out of the mill and tucked it into the crook of his elbow as if they were prom dates. He hated seeing her unhappy, so whatever Cage had done, the vampire better undo.
“Where’d Cage and Mirren go again?” Robin pulled out her cell phone and checked the time. “It’s almost two a.m. Let’s see if they’re still there.”
So completely not what he had in mind. “You heard Mirren. We need to be on shifter watch during daylight hours—so, you know, sleep?” He was so tired he could probably zonk out standing barefoot on the cracked and broken pavement of the mill’s parking lot.
“I’ll sleep when I’m dead.” They’d almost reached the steps to Mirren and Glory’s comm-house, but Robin stopped and pulled him back toward the street, where his SUV sat beneath the streetlamp. “C’mon. At least drive me by there, wherever it is. Then we’ll sleep. It’ll be relaxing.”
“What are we, in junior high? You want me to drive you past your boyfriend’s house and see if he’s home?”
Nik did know where they’d gone, though. Mark had given him the grand tour of the Penton-That-Was on their errand-filled afternoon, one of the highlights of which was the street where Aidan, Mark, and Melissa used to live, and the greenhouse where Aidan grew night-blooming plants to keep him connected to the soil and to life.
Oh, what the hell. She’d brought up the subject, and now his curiosity was aroused. It wouldn’t hurt to drive by there. If Mirren shot them for intruding, at least then he’d get some rest. Unless he died.
“They’ve been gone for two hours, so chances are we’ll have missed them,” Nik pointed out, climbing into the SUV. “You had to have a snack. Then you had to play with the punching bags.”
“Blah blah blah. Just drive.”
He headed north, hoping he’d recognize the location of the turnoff in the dark. The juice had been cut off to everything north of the clinic. “So, what was it like? Did Cage do it?”
Robin stared at him, a slow grin lighting up her face like one of those dimmer switches being turned up to illuminate a room. “You want sex details? Why Niko, I’m shocked.”