Page 26 of How to Stake a Vampire (Diary of a Reluctant Werewolf #2)

UNDER THEIR NOSES

I frowned at the building in front of us.

Though it was daytime, the Chamber of Commerce still looked the same as it had the last two occasions I’d been there—imposing, official, and soul-crushingly boring. Which, I realized grimly as we approached the main entrance, was probably part of its appeal as a hiding spot.

“ This is where he was hiding all along?” Didi asked skeptically.

Mindy had been trying to track down the wraith all weekend. No one had been more surprised than Barney at the location where she’d identified a trace of its passage that morning.

The ghost had already confirmed Ludvik was currently not on site.

Samuel frowned. “It kinda makes sense. The building’s warded against unauthorized supernatural intrusion, but?—”

“If you know the ward patterns, you can get in fairly easily,” Barney said darkly.

“Plus, there’s all that human and supernatural traffic,” Detective Johnson observed thoughtfully.

Gavin nodded, horns popping out slightly. “There’d be different supernatural scents every day. They’d make for a perfect cover.”

Bo’s tail wagged. “It’s like hiding in plain sight.”

“How long does Mindy think he was down there for?” I asked uneasily.

“At least two weeks,” Nigel replied. “Possibly longer.”

I lowered my brows. Two weeks of Alliance meetings while Ludvik sat in the basement, probably listening to every word. In fact, he was probably in the building the first time I came here.

Barney clenched his jaw. “He’s been playing us from the start.”

A different security guard from the usual guy emerged from the building as we reached the doors. He had a clipboard in his hands and a busy expression. He frowned at the sight of us.

“Building’s closed for maintenance,” he called out. “Come back tomorrow.”

Detective Johnson flashed his badge. “We’re here on police business.”

The guard squinted at it, then at our group. His gaze lingered on Gavin’s smoking horns, Barney’s stony face, and Bo’s overenthusiastic expression.

“Yeah, I’m gonna need to see some paperwork,” he said slowly. “Official authorization and all that.”

Samuel narrowed his eyes. “We don’t have time for paperwork. And you know damn well who I am.”

The guard straightened to his full height. “Rules are rules, Mr. Hawthorne. I can’t make exceptions for—” He stopped abruptly, his eyes rounding. A choked gurgle left him. He dropped his clipboard and backed away several steps.

We looked around. Detective Johnson paled.

Half a dozen tentacles writhed semi-menacingly around Nigel’s head. His face had sprouted five extra pairs of eyes.

“We really need to get in there,” the boogeyman said, chin jutting forward. “The fate of this town rests on it.”

The guard fumbled for his keys, his back pressed so hard against the wall he looked like he was about to climb it.

“Yeah, okay, whatever you need!”

He dropped the keys in his panic and squealed.

Samuel picked them up. “Thank you. Your cooperation is much appreciated.”

“You were like a superhero,” Bo told Nigel in an awed voice as we filed past the pale, sweating, and now hyperventilating guard.

“It’s nothing special,” Nigel said shyly.

“How about you lose the tentacles and extra eyes before I lose my breakfast?” Detective Johnson said weakly.

“Oh. Right. Sorry.”

Mindy materialized beside us when we were halfway across the foyer, her translucent form flickering with excitement.

“Great, you’re here. I’ve been analyzing the residual ectoplasmic frequencies in the building and cross-referencing them with the ambient supernatural energy readings from around Amberford. If I factor in the temporal decay rates of wraith essence?—”

Didi grimaced and put a hand up. “English, please.”

Mindy sagged a little.

“I tracked the wraith,” she admitted semi-sullenly.

“You could have led with that,” Detective Johnson said skeptically.

“It’s more complicated than normal tracking,” Mindy protested. “The wraith’s energy signature was creating a hybrid resonance pattern that?—”

“How about we save the science lesson for another day?” Samuel interrupted with a heavy sigh.

Mindy’s eyes flashed brightly, a sure-fire sign she was getting irritated.

“She’s not going to start doing spooky stuff, is she?” Detective Johnson whispered to Didi. “Poltergeist activity freaks me out.”

“Not if she knows what’s good for her,” Didi muttered, eyeing Barney’s darkening expression. She squinted at the detective. “And how come a werewolf is afraid of ghosts?”

“Childhood trauma. I don’t want to talk about it.”

Barney looked like he was considering exorcising people.

“Where to?” I asked Mindy hastily.

“One of the subbasements. You guys need to take the elevator.”

The service corridors Mindy led us down were dimly lit and smelled like industrial cleaning supplies and old coffee. The building was eerily quiet. Our footsteps echoed as we navigated the passageways, the sound bouncing off the concrete walls.

“It’s a good thing we’re not aiming for the element of surprise,” Didi murmured.

“When do you think they were last here?” Samuel asked Mindy as the elevator came into view.

“My best guess? Six to eight hours ago. I tried to follow the wraith’s trail from here but it goes cold outside the building.” The ghost hesitated and shot an uneasy look at us over her shoulder where she floated ahead. “It looks like they left in a hurry.”

The elevator ride to the subbasement was tense and silent. The doors finally opened with a grating squeak.

We were hit with a wave of stale air that made my nose wrinkle. Underneath it was something else. Something that made my wolf’s hackles rise.

“You smell that?” I asked Samuel cautiously.

He frowned. “Yes. But I can’t quite place it.”

Didi narrowed her eyes. “That’s magic. Old magic.”

“She’s right,” Barney confirmed sourly. “He’s definitely been practicing his ritual down here.”

The subbasement was a maze of storage rooms and utility corridors. The low lighting cast everything in harsh shadows as we navigated the passages, the air possessing the dead quality of places that never saw natural light.

“This way,” Mindy said.

She hurried around a corner, Nigel following closely.

We found the ghost and the boogeyman in front of the door to what had once been a storage room.

It was currently hanging off its hinges.

Inside, boxes of documents were scattered across the floor, their contents spilled and trampled as if by someone in a fit of rage. Filing cabinets stood open, drawers pulled out and dented.

My stomach clenched at the sight of the dark stains splattered across the walls and ground. Bo pressed close to me, his tail down.

“Is that—?” I asked.

“Blood,” Barney confirmed. He took a careful sniff of the air. “Fresh. Maybe six hours old, which matches Mindy’s estimation of when they were last here.”

“Human or vampire?” Detective Johnson asked, his tone suggesting he didn’t really want to know.

Barney knelt beside one of the larger stains, touched it, and rubbed his fingers.

“Vampire,” he said flatly.

I studied his troubled expression warily. “What is it?”

“I can smell an artifact.”

That was not the kind of news I wanted to hear. I had a bad history with artifacts.

“I bet it’s the magic device he’s been using for his ritual,” Didi said.

Bo had been cautiously sniffing around the edges of the room. He froze all of the sudden.

“I think there’s something here.”

My pulse quickened as we joined him.

“We could do with some light,” Didi muttered.

Nigel obliged and brightened a little. The faint outline of a door appeared in the wall.

Bo sat down, tail sweeping the floor. “I was right.”

“Can you go through and see what’s on the other side?” Samuel asked Mindy tensely.

She nodded and headed for the wall, only to bounce right off it.

“Mindy!” Tentacles shot out of Nigel’s body as he tried to catch the ghost.

“I’m okay.” Mindy straightened and shook herself, looking confused.

“What the heck was that?” Detective Johnson asked uneasily.

Mindy approached the wall and traced spectral fingers across it.

“There’s a barrier. I think he had the wraith put it up.” She frowned. “He must have known I would come looking.”

I clenched my jaw. “Mindy, is this barrier metaphysical?”

She shot a startled look at me. “Yes. Why?”

“Good.” I let my wolf slip under my skin, gathered our strength, and punched the wall.

It exploded inward. Bricks crumbled, outlining a large opening.

The smell of blood and magic that came from inside made Barney scowl and the rest of us gag. The vampire headed inside first.

The room was small and dark. Nigel gave us some more lighting. I looked around as the shadows retreated, revealing more blood on the floor and walls. Mindy watched us anxiously where she floated on the threshold, still unable to come through.

“Shit,” Didi mumbled.

We followed her gaze to where Barney squatted in front of a makeshift altar at the far end. My chest tightened as we approached. A circle of strange symbols were carved into the floor. Dark candles sat in pools of their own wax around it.

The whole thing was giving me bad-juju vibes.

Samuel studied the setup with a hard expression. “Looks like he got pretty far into his preparations.”

“But he didn’t complete it, right?” I said, unable to mask the hope underscoring the question.

“No.” Barney rose, his face locked in a thunderous expression. “He’s still missing a key ingredient. A pureblood vampire.”

“Hey, guys,” Detective Johnson called out from a corner of the room. “You should see this.”

We headed over to where he’d dropped on his haunches.

Papers were scattered across the floor. But these weren’t old Alliance archives. They were documents with familiar logos and names on the letterheads.

“These are the medical records he stole from the blood banks he targeted.” Samuel’s voice was tight with anger.

“There’s more,” Detective Johnson said grimly.

He was holding a detailed map of Amberford. Red X’s marked various locations throughout the city.

Didi scowled. “Blood banks, the hospital, the homes of vampires.”

I fisted my hands. “He’s been planning this for weeks.”

“Months, more likely,” Barney corrected. His eyes gleamed crimson as he looked around the secret room. “This setup took time to prepare. He didn’t just decide to hide here on a whim.”

I swallowed heavily at his meaning. This wasn’t just a hiding place. It had been Ludvik’s base of operations, where he’d studied his targets, made meticulous plans, and waited for the right moment to strike.

The more I got to know about this vampire, the more I felt like ripping his throat out.

“We have to tell the Alliance.” I met Samuel’s and Barney’s gazes, my heart thundering against my ribs. “We’re going to need extra help if we want to track him down before the full moon. Besides, they need to know Ludvik’s been in the building all this time.”

Samuel pinched the bridge of his nose. “Something tells me they’re not going to take the news well.”

I noticed Bo nosing at a stack of paper. “What is it?”

“I smell something,” he huffed excitedly. His ears suddenly flattened. He whined and backpedaled behind me, his tail down.

I leaned down and picked up what he’d unearthed.

It was a blank piece of paper. My belly twisted when I turned it over.

Someone had scrawled “burn the doll” in blood on the other side.