It had been one of my stranger weeks.
Rafael, the Rat King, said, "You may turn on your lights."
I did, instantly. My eyes seemed to leech on the light, eager to see. The ratmen stood in small groups in the wide, flat-roofed tunnel. There were ten of them. I had counted them in human form. Now the seven males were fur-covered and wearing jean cutoffs. Two wore loose t-shirts. The three women wore loose dresses, like maternity clothes. Their black button eyes glittered in the light. Everybody was furry.
Edward came to stand near me. He was staring at the weres, face distant, unreadable. I touched his arm. I had told Rafael that I was not a bounty hunter, but Edward was, sometimes. I hoped I had not endangered these people.
"Are you ready?" Rafael asked. He was the same sleek black ratman I remembered.
"Yes," I said.
Edward nodded.
The wererats scattered to either side of us, scrambling over low, weathered flowstone. I said to no one in particular, "I thought caves were damp."
A smaller ratman in a t-shirt said, "Cherokee Caverns is dead cave."
"I don't understand."
"Live cave has water and growing formations. A dry cave where none of the formations are growing is called dead cave."
"Oh," I said.
He drew lips back from huge teeth, a smile, I think. "More than you wanted to know, huh?"
Rafael hissed back, "We are not here to give guided tours, Louie. Now be quiet, both of you."
Louie shrugged and scrambled ahead of me. He was the same human that had been with Rafael in the restaurant, the one with the dark eyes.
One of the females was nearly grey-furred. Her name was Lillian, and she was a doctor. She carried a backpack full of medical supplies. They seemed to be planning on us getting hurt. At least that meant they thought we would come out alive. I was beginning to wonder about that part myself.
Two hours later the ceiling dropped to a point where I couldn't stand upright. And I learned what the hard hats they had given Edward and me were for. I scraped my head on the rock at least a thousand times. I'd have knocked myself unconscious long before we saw Nikolaos.
The rats seemed designed for the tunnel, sliding along, flattening their bodies in a strange, scrambling grace. Edward and I could not match it. Not even close.
He cursed softly behind me. His five inches of extra height were causing him pain. My lower back was an aching burn. He had to be in worse shape. There were pockets where the ceiling opened up and we could stand. I started looking very forward to them, like air pockets to a diver.
The quality of darkness changed. Light - there was light up ahead, not much, but it was there. It flickered at the far end of the tunnel like a mirage.
Rafael crouched beside us. Edward sat flat on the dry rock. I joined him. "There is your dungeon. We will wait here until near dark. If you have not come out, we will leave. After Nikolaos is dead, if we can, we will help you."
I nodded; the light on my hard hat nodded with me. "Thank you for helping us."
He shook his narrow, ratty face. "I have delivered you to the devil's door. Do not thank me for that."
I glanced at Edward. His face was still distant, unreadable. If he was interested in what the ratman had just said, I couldn't tell it. We might as well have been talking about a grocery list.
Edward and I knelt before the opening into the dungeon. Torchlight flickered, incredibly bright after the darkness. Edward was cradling his Uzi that hung on a strap across his chest. I had the shotgun. I was also carrying my two pistols, two knives, and a derringer stuffed in the pocket of my jacket. It was a present from Edward. He had handed it to me with this advice: "It kicks like a sonofabitch, but press it under someone's chin, and it will blow their f**king head off." Nice to know.
It was daylight outside. There shouldn't be a vampire stirring, but Burchard would be there. And if he saw us, Nikolaos would know. Somehow, she'd know. Goosebumps marched up my arms.
We scrambled inside, ready to kill and maim. The room was empty. All that adrenaline sort of sat in my body, making my breathing too quick and my heart pound for no reason. The spot where Phillip had been chained was clean. Someone had scrubbed it down real good.
I fought an urge to touch the wall where he'd been.
Edward called softly, "Anita." He was at the door.
I hurried up to him.
"What's wrong?" he asked.
"She killed Phillip in here."
"Keep your mind on business. I don't want to die because you're daydreaming."
I started to get angry and swallowed it. He was right.
Edward tried the door, and it opened. No prisoners, no need to lock it. I took the left side of the door, and he took the right. The corridor was empty.
My hands were sweating on the shotgun. Edward led off down the right hand side of the corridor. I followed him into the dragon's lair. I didn't feel much like a knight. I was fresh out of shiny steeds, or was that shiny armor?
Whatever. We were here. This was it. I could taste my heart in my throat.
Chapter 46
The dragon didn't come out and eat us right away. In fact, the place was quiet. As the cliche goes, too quiet.
I stepped close to Edward and whispered, "I don't mean to complain, but where is everybody?"
He leaned his back against the wall and said, "Maybe you killed Winter. That just leaves Burchard. Maybe he's on an errand."
I shook my head. "This is too easy."
"Don't worry. Something will go wrong soon." He continued down the corridor, and I followed. It took me three steps to realize Edward had made a joke.
The corridor opened into a huge room like Nikolaos's throne room, but there was no chair here. There were coffins. Five of them spaced around the room on raised platforms, so they didn't have to sit on the floor in the draft. Tall, iron candelabra burned in the room, one at the foot and head of each coffin.
Most vampires made some effort to hide their coffins, but not Nikolaos.
"Arrogant," Edward whispered.
"Yes," I whispered back. You always whispered around the coffins, at first, as if it were a funeral and they could hear you.
There was a neck-ruffling smell to the room, stale. It caught at the back of my throat and was almost a taste, faintly metallic. It was like the smell of snakes kept in cages. You knew there was nothing warm and furry in this room just by smell. And that really doesn't do it justice. It was the smell of vampires.
The first coffin was dark, well-varnished wood, with golden handles. It was wider at the shoulder area and then narrowed, following the contour of the human body. Older coffins did that sometimes.
"We start here," I said.
Edward didn't argue. He let the machine gun hang by its strap and drew his pistol. "You're covered," he said.
I laid the shotgun on the floor in front of the coffin, gripped the edge of the lid, said a quick prayer, and lifted. Valentine lay in the coffin. His scarred face was bare. He was still dressed as a riverboat gambler but this time in black. His frilly shirt was crimson. The colors didn't look good against his auburn hair. One hand was half-curled over his thigh, a careless sleeper's gesture. A very human gesture.
Edward peered into the coffin, gun pointed ceilingward. "This the one you threw Holy Water on?"
I nodded.
"Did a bang-up job," Edward said.
Valentine never moved. I couldn't even see him breathe. I wiped my sweating palms on my jeans and felt for a pulse in his wrist. Nothing. His skin was cool to the touch. He was dead. It wasn't murder, no matter what the new laws said. You can't kill a corpse.
The wrist pulsed. I jerked back like he'd burned me.
"What's wrong?" Edward asked.
"I got a pulse."
"It happens sometimes."
I nodded. Yeah, it happened sometimes. If you waited long enough, the heart did beat, blood did flow, but so slow that it was painful to watch. Dead. I was beginning to think I didn't know what that meant.
I knew one thing. If night fell with us here, we would die, or wish we had. Valentine had helped kill over twenty people. He had nearly killed me. When Nikolaos withdrew her protection, he'd finish the job if he could. We had come to kill Nikolaos. I think she would withdraw her protection ASAP. As the old saying goes, it was him or me. I preferred him.
I shook off the shoulder straps of the backpack.
"What are you looking for?" Edward asked.
"Stake and hammer," I said without looking up.
"Not going to use the shotgun?"