Page 22 of The Bloody Ruin Asylum & Taproom (Sam Quinn #7)

Seventeen

Please Don’t Eat Me

“Yeah. Okay. I get that, but I don’t think you understand how crazy fast and strong they are. I don’t want your pack to be wiped out because you showed up to a gunfight with a knife,” I said.

Her brow furrowed as she tried to make sense of that analogy.

“Meaning they have you outmatched. This town needs you as guardians. If you get wiped out, who’s going to protect them? Right now, it’s easy for the vamps to ignore you. If you go after them, they’ll destroy you.”

“Not if we destroy them first,” she said with a sneer. “And we wouldn’t be very good guardians if we ignored the biggest threat our home has, would we?”

She had a point there. I held up my hands in surrender.

“This isn’t my town. I’m not a member of your pack or of the G—group of vampires, so I know I have no say in any of this.

It’s just if the pack wasn’t around, who would I have brought all those humans to last night to watch over?

If you hadn’t been there, they could have fallen prey to other humans.

Instead, you kept them safe. I’d hate for the locals to lose your protection. ”

Viktoria stood and took another chocolate. “I’ll talk with my Alpha. We’ll see what he says.” She turned and left me wondering if I’d screwed up the delicate balance here by opening my mouth. Damn it.

I went out the back of the Bloody Ruin, into the side street, and quickly ducked behind the dumpster.

When I got to the end of the tunnel, I listened at the door and then checked my mind for blips.

I didn’t want anyone, Renfield or vamp, to see me coming out of the super-secret tunnel.

I waved my bag holding the ring in front of the door and it slid open.

I stepped out, went to the large, metal screeching door, and opened it just enough to slip out.

I hated that the damn door told anyone interested where I was.

The hall was quiet. I couldn’t hear heartbeats like the vamps could, but I could hear footsteps, and I didn’t hear any of those.

Stopping at the door to the basement, I tucked the pastry box and book under my arm and looked for a way in.

Nothing. The door was almost impossible to see, but I’d gone through it twice in dreams.

The San Francisco nocturne had release points in the walls beside hidden doors.

You had to know where to touch, but when you did, a door popped open.

I sniffed around the faint outline of the door, looking for a spot fingers had touched, but couldn’t find it.

I was standing directly in front of the door, on tiptoe, running my fingertips through the grime above the door when I heard a quiet snick.

Stepping back, I saw that the door was now ajar. How had I done that? Then I remembered Vlad’s ring in my crossbody bag. Like the secret tunnel, this, too, must have been keyed to it.

I pulled the door open and stared into pitch-black. Taking my phone out of my bag, I hit the flashlight and found the stairs I’d seen in my dreams. The railing was gone, but the wooden steps remained, though one was missing halfway down.

Stepping over the hole, I tried to keep my focus on the sketchy staircase, but the creepy graffiti on the walls was distracting, as was the stench of rotting things. When I reached the bottom step without falling through rotted boards, I considered it a win.

I wanted to put the box and book down, but there was no way I was putting food down in here. A thin cardboard box wasn’t enough protection against a century of filth and disease.

How odd. The smell of vampire was fresh, not like a vampire once came down here.

It was more like a vampire regularly visited this place.

The vamp smell was getting muddled with dead rats, insects, and an overwhelming stench of mold, though.

I didn’t see standing water, but it smelled as though the basement had been flooded at some point.

I turned down the hall toward the tub room, book and chocolates still under my arm, trying to ignore the prickling at the back of my neck. Was something down here with me?

What I focused on was the wolf—if they indeed had imprisoned one. She had been hidden down a hall past the tub room.

When I passed the first open door to a cell-like room, I paused to shine my light inside and jumped.

A woman was standing beside a bed. Her hair was a snarled mess around her sallow face.

The stained shift she wore hung on her emaciated body.

She turned, her eyes sunken, her gaze hot.

She curled a lip, snarling as she moved toward me.

Megy!

She paused, tilting her head, the sneer turning into a leer as she looked me up and down. She said something, but it didn’t sound like Hungarian. Shit! I didn’t know how to say Go! in any other languages.

Holding up a hand, I pushed with my necromancy. She stumbled back a step and then moved toward me again, her mouth gaping, broken, blackened teeth glistening. I pushed again, but she didn’t pause.

Lashing out like a snake, she bit my jaw, her broken teeth digging in. Curling her arms around my neck, she held me close, trying to rip the flesh from my bones. The stink was repugnant. What she was doing stung, but the smell was far worse.

“What are we up to?”

I jumped again and spun, finding Vlad in the light from my phone. “Jeez, dude. A little warning would be nice.”

“You’re the one lurking outside my door. I heard a heartbeat and came to investigate. The question is, what are you doing down here?”

“Oh. Uh.” The ghost was still trying to eat my face. It was horribly distracting. “Nothing much. Just sightseeing.”

“I see,” he said, moving my hand so the flashlight was aimed at our feet and not his face. “Instead of walking around in the fresh air and sunshine of Budapest, you found a hidden door and went for a tour of a reeking basement filled with vermin. Yes?”

I nodded, which proved awkward with the scary woman hanging off my jaw. “Yep. I like visiting those off-the-beaten-path places.”

“I see.” He glanced around and then back at me. “And are you enjoying this new experience, having your face gnawed upon?”

My hand dropped, the flashlight mostly illuminating the side of my leg now. “You can see her?”

He nodded. “That one belongs here. Cannibalism seems to be her thing.”

“Do you know what language she speaks?”

“Romanian. Why?” he asked.

“I need to get her off my face, but I don’t speak Romanian. How do I say go away?”

“Pleaca de aici should do it,” he said.

I had him repeat it a few times and then I gathered my magic, unspooling it and wrapping it around my hands. I pushed, shouting PLEACA DE AICI in my head.

The ghost zoomed back into her room and disappeared.

“Thanks. That worked,” I said. “Wait. How do you see them? I thought vampires couldn’t see ghosts.”

His mustache twitched. “Haven’t you read the stories about me? I am extraordinary.”

I gave him my squinty look. “That’s not it.”

His expression darkened, his eyes turning black, but I wasn’t buying it.

“Cut it out. You’re not really angry.”

His hands went to his hips as he glared. “What makes you think I won’t take your head for gainsaying me?”

I couldn’t very well tell him that my necromancy allowed me to pick up on his emotions, so I just shrugged. “I know things. Do you carry wicche blood?”

His expression turned thunderous.

I had a moment to worry I’d read him completely wrong before it fell away.

“I do. On my mother’s side. Not much, though. Just enough to see ghosts.” He studied me a moment. “Has Léna visited you yet?”

“Léna? You’ve seen her too?” Relief washed over me. I wasn’t alone in this haunted madhouse.

He tipped his head down the hall to the left of the stairs, a direction I’d never gone in a dream. A door stood open and he waved me in, closing it behind us.

Oh. This was Vlad’s room. The walls were papered in a dark pattern.

Wood floors had been put in. A large bed stood to the side, but Vlad walked to the far wall, tapped a button, and the fire roared to life.

Beside the hearth was one chair and one sofa, with a coffee table in between.

Bookshelves lined a wall. Around the fireplace were mounted swords, axes, assorted daggers, and a mace.

“Kind of a fun warlord chic vibe you’ve got going here,” I said, plopping down on the couch.

Vlad took the chair and put his feet up on the coffee table. “So happy you approve,” he grumbled.

“Why are you down here, away from all the other vamps?” The fire felt nice after the chill of a ghost plastered to me.

“You answered your own question.” He shook his head.

“I hate this place. I told them not to buy it, that we could find any number of abandoned castles to turn into Guild headquarters. Unfortunately, as I’m the only one who sees ghosts—not that I’ve told them that—I was outvoted.

They wanted to be closer to a city and an airport. ”

I sniffed the couch but didn’t pick up a rodent scent. “How do you keep the rats out?” I kept glancing into shadowy corners for tiny black eyes.

He raised an eyebrow. “You read Stoker. Don’t you remember? I control rats.”

I rolled my eyes at that.

“Fine,” he said. “My kind repels living things—except you, apparently.”

“Wrong again. Our dog Fergus loves Clive.” Maybe Vlad repelled things, but Clive didn’t. Then again, Clive had said he missed riding horses, that they didn’t tolerate vampires.

“And what kind of dog is Fergus?” he asked, relaxing into the conversation.

“Irish Wolfhound. We brought him back from Wales, along with his dragon friend Fyr.” That wasn’t a secret, was it? There was something about Vlad that made me spill more than I should have.

I put down the box and book on the coffee table and pulled up photos on my phone, showing him Fergus. He was on the beach, at the end of one of our runs, the ocean behind him.

Vlad leaned forward to see the image and nodded, “A very handsome beast.” He was quiet for a moment. “Why again?”

“Hmm?”

“You said I was wrong again. When was I wrong the first time?”

“Oh,” I said, mirroring him and putting my feet up on the coffee table. “You said you thought Clive was just a pretty boy, using his face to curry favor. That’s not him at all.”

“No?”

I knew I should shut up, but I liked Vlad. Granted, being as powerful as he was, he could have been manipulating me, but I didn’t think so. I’d kept my candy-coating in place. The man had laid waste to legions, but I trusted him, and I didn’t like him not thinking well of Clive.

“Is he handsome? Of course,” I said. “I’m not blind. That’s the least of his gifts, though. He’s brave and not just in the I’ll-take-on-the-monster way. He’ll do what’s even harder. He’ll stand down and let me fight my own monsters. I know how much he wants to do it for me, but—”

“He knows, for your own piece of mind, your own confidence, that you have to do it yourself,” he finished.

“Yes,” I breathed. “That’s it exactly.”