Page 35 of The Bloody Ruin Asylum & Taproom (Sam Quinn #7)

Twenty-Nine

The Prince’s Secret Punishments

I spun and found Vlad smirking. “Sure. Cool. Go ahead and give me a heart attack.”

He gestured to my face. “I thought the healer took care of that.”

Shrugging, I said, “I’m assuming it was worse. I wasn’t awake for it. Clive said the guy knitted my skull back together. My ribs don’t hurt, so he must have worked on them too.”

“Fragile, aren’t you?” he said.

“Dude, are you going to come with me or not?” I was really hoping yes. I didn’t want to go back alone.

“Where to this time?” he asked, brushing his fingers over his mustache.

“This way.” I waved him with me and headed to reception and the hidden door. “Léna still needs something from me.”

“Yes,” he said, walking beside me. “She came to me too. Not as strongly as before, though.” When we got to reception, he paused at the door of the gathering room, gesturing in. “She showed me the fireplace.”

I looked in and saw my axe embedded right between the prince’s eyes. Dang. Was I going to have to leave that there? I didn’t want to lose my axe.

“Not that one,” I said. “We’re going to the prince’s study upstairs.”

Vlad grabbed my arm, stopping me. “Isn’t that where all of this happened?” He gestured to my face.

“Technically, no. He caught me in the hall and slammed my head onto the floor there, not in his room.” I stopped right inside the hall to the Guild offices and looked at the walls. “Cadmael popped open one of these walls to reveal the stairway up.”

“Oh, that’s here.” Vlad tapped a panel on the left and the panel opened.

I turned on my phone’s flashlight and headed up, Vlad right behind me.

I shined the beam on the wall. “See that clean line?” Knowing I had leaned against that filthy wall made my stomach flip.

“That was my shoulder. And that lighter line above was my head.” I wasn’t sure how many showers it would take to feel clean again.

“You’re talking to the wrong person if you’re looking for sympathy. Have you any idea the kind of disgusting conditions I’ve had to stay in during daylight hours over the centuries? And unlike others of my kind who are at least insensate, I was wide awake for it.”

“You win,” I said, coming to the top of the stairs.

I shined the light left and right. A hall opened up to the right with a large common area directly in front of us, mirroring the reception space below.

There were doors to what might have been offices across from us and then another hall on the far left.

Pointing to the left hall, I said, “The prince’s room is at the end of that one.”

Vlad gestured to a pool of blood and bile on the broken tiles. “Yours, I assume.”

“Unless someone else got their ass kicked up here recently, I’ll say yes.” I started down the hall and felt the sticky evil again. Still. I’d hoped the axe would have killed off the remains of the prince. “Do you feel that?”

“I feel something uncomfortable, something setting off an itch between my shoulder blades. Might that be what you’re referring to?” he asked.

“Probably. For me, it feels like a sticky sludge of evil, coating my skin.” I shined my light down to the end of the hall, wondering if the tall wooden doors were only in my dreams.

Two eyes shined back at me.

Yelping, I almost dropped the phone.

Vlad steadied me. “It’s Léna.”

“I guess that means we’re in the right place,” I said, wishing for nothing more than to be downstairs, safe in bed with Clive.

Vlad gave a grunt of assent and we continued on. When we got to the end, we paused in front of the tall wooden double doors. Vlad and I looked at each other and he pushed one open.

Shining the light around, I saw the room was all wrong.

It wasn’t a room in the prince’s palace anymore.

It was an office—or had been anyway. There was a desk to the right, with two chairs in front of it.

Mold grew on the wall behind the desk like a giant Rorschach test. Dust and grime covered every surface.

A wall of floor-to-ceiling bookshelves cut the room in half. The few books remaining had been torn and chewed. Nests of paper filled the corners of the room. Huge webs hung like fog, making it hard to see details.

Vlad took it all in. “I see no fireplace.”

I pointed straight back. “Behind those shelves. This is only about half the size of the prince’s room. There’s more back there.”

Vlad looked between me and the shelves. “Are we thinking that’s where he’s been hiding?”

I took an involuntary step back. “I wasn’t until now,” I whisper-shouted.

We moved slowly into the room and then Vlad had me stand to the side while he went to the center bookshelf. He punched a hole in it, put his hand through the hole, and ripped it down.

There was no wall behind it. The other half of the room was open. The smell, though, hit like a sulfurous punch.

“Demon?” I whispered.

Vlad looked back at me, his brow furrowed, and shook his head. “Thermal spring.”

“Oh.” Right. I forgot. There were hundreds of thermal springs below Budapest. Why was the smell so strong here, though?

The prince’s side was empty of furniture. My running shoes scraped over centuries of accumulated dirt, droppings, and other things I didn’t want to think about. Moving closer to the fireplace, I tripped on something. Vlad was there, his hand on my arm to steady me.

Sweeping my flashlight over the floor, I realized I was standing on a board. I stepped off and crouched down. Why was there a half-inch-thick board in front of the fireplace?

Vlad ran his hands along the mantel and then tested stones inside the fireplace. “Sometimes loose stones cover hidden pockets for secreting treasures. I’m not finding anything, though.” He stood and brushed off his hands. “Why did Léna show us this?”

“Can you move a second?” I asked. “I want to see what’s under here.”

He stepped off the board and lifted it before I could. We were hit with an even stronger wave of sulfur and rotting fish.

I slapped my hand over my nose and mouth. “Why?”

Brushing his foot over what looked like a carpet on the hearth, he dislodged built-up dirt and dust, leaving what appeared to be a metal grille in the floor.

I moved forward to look in, but he pushed me back. “Stay there. Clive will kill me if I let you fall in.”

“I’m not a moron,” I said. Did he think I was just going to toddle into a shaft to Hell? Jeez.

An eyebrow lift was all the response I got to the moron question. Jerk.

He rattled the grille a moment but then stood up and reached under the mantel. “There’s a worn spot in the corner. I felt it a moment ago, but the board was on top of the grate.”

We both stared down while Vlad touched the smooth spot. The grate clicked and swung into the shaft.

“Oh,” Vlad said. “I know what this is.” He stepped up to the hole and looked down.

I did the same, shining my light into it. “Damn. That looks deep. Does this go to a dungeon?”

Vlad nodded. “I’d guess the prince had the chute created to dispose of his enemies deep underground, into thermal baths.

That’s why the smell is so strong in here.

” He nodded as though he approved of the tactic.

“Cruel and effective.” Vlad looked up and smiled.

“I left my enemies’ bodies to rot on display.

” He looked back down the hole. “I suppose he preferred hiding his.”

“Quit being creepy.” I knelt, bracing one hand on the edge, and looked down. I heard that sloshing sound again, like I’d heard in the tub room. “Hey,” I said, looking back up at Vlad, “is the slow heartbeat louder now?”

He dropped beside me, his brows furrowed. “What did he imprison down there?”

I leaned out farther. “And how is it still alive hundreds of years later?” Two eyes shined back at me in the dark and I about had a heart attack.

“It’s Léna again,” Vlad said.

“Well, if she thinks I’m just going to jump down the Hell shaft on her say-so, she’s lost it.” Just leaning over this thing was making me light-headed. I stood and considered the problem.

“Do you know where we can find a rope?” I asked.

“No,” Clive growled, making me jump. “You are not lowering yourself into an ancient dungeon with a dying immortal.”

“Where did you come from?” I demanded, anger covering my moment of panic, having someone sneak up behind me again.

“And I wasn’t going to go down.” I pointed at Vlad.

“I was going to hold the rope so he could go down. I’m sick of you people acting like I’m stupid!

I don’t get all these injuries because I’m dumb. I’m trying to help.”

My eyes filled with tears and then I was pissed off at myself.

Blinking, I swallowed and cleared my throat.

“Léna is still here, still trapped in this hellhole that killed her because her father wanted his evil hidden from the world. She led me to Aliz, so we could return her to her family. And she wants us to help whoever is down there. Trying to help others doesn’t make you stupid! ”

Vlad moved away while I shouted, but Clive moved in, wrapping his arms around me.

“I’m sorry,” he murmured. “Of course you’re not stupid.

You almost died yesterday, so I’m on edge.

I woke to find you gone. When I followed your scent through a hidden door, I found the pool of blood from your most recent near death, and now here you are, face still blackened, leaning over a sulfurous pit. ”

“I know,” I said, “but someone’s down there. Has been for hundreds of years. We need to get her out.”

He leaned back and brushed light fingers over my bruised face. “Her?”

“It’s a hunch,” I said. “Maybe it is a blue whale, like you said, but Léna showed me the prince and Cordelia for a reason. And when the servant brought in Cordelia from her punishment, she was wet. Sopping wet.”

I ran my hands up and down his sides. “Maybe I’m wrong. Maybe there’s nothing down there, but if that poor fae woman has been imprisoned for centuries in pitch-black hot water, we have to help her.”

“And we will,” Clive said, “but not by following her down a bloody long drop into who knows what.”

“I believe that’s why she asked about the rope,” Vlad said.

Clive nodded. “Point taken. Besides going down there”—he gestured to the hole in the floor—“do we have any other ideas?”

“The tub room,” I said at the same time Vlad said, “Basement.”

We started to move out and then I caught Clive’s arm. “Wait a minute. We need to cover the hole so no one falls in.” I leaned over it again. “We’re coming!”

Clive picked up one side of the board and slid it back. Before it covered the hole, though, he shouted something as well. After he dropped the board in place and brushed off his hands, he wrapped an arm around me. “I translated for you.”

Vlad led the way back down the hall.

“Are there any ghosts here?” Clive asked.

Both Vlad and I shook our heads. “I had that creep attendant who raped Léna corner me in the kitchen,” I said, “but I haven’t seen any other male ghosts around. I wonder why that is.”

“I’ve noticed that too,” Vlad said.

“Given how you said the prince feels about possible suitors around his daughters,” Clive said, “he may have run them off, ignoring the women lingering on the other side of the asylum.”

When we walked around the blood pool, Clive’s arm tightened around me.

“Should we be concerned that Cadmael didn’t find us?” I asked. “Is he okay?”

“That would depend,” Vlad said, holding open the door at the bottom of the stairs, “on your definition of okay.” He turned his head and stared into the reception area. “For instance, would we consider him standing in the gathering room doorway, staring at that infernal portrait, okay?”

Shit. That was all we needed.

The three of us stood together, watching Cadmael stand unmoving.

“Maybe we just sneak by him,” I whispered.

Cadmael turned his head and stared straight at me. “You, again,” he sneered, turning toward us, my axe in his bloody hand.

Clive and Vlad moved together, standing shoulder to shoulder to block me.

Cover me for a few, okay? I asked Clive. Let me see if I can push the prince out.

Hurry, darling. We’re no match for him.