Page 8 of The Bloody Ruin Asylum & Taproom (Sam Quinn #7)

Five

It’s Time to Go

“Darling?” Clive murmured. “Is everything all right?”

Pull it together. They can’t see ghosts and you look like a crazy person.

“Of course,” I replied overbrightly. Ignoring the black-eyed creep leering at me from the portrait, I placed my hand on my stomach and added, “It’s been too long since I’ve eaten.

I think my system is going into overdrive.

” I leaned in and kissed him on the cheek.

“Have a good evening. I believe it’s time for me to visit the town and taste the local cuisine. ”

Turning to the rest of our group, I said, “It was lovely to meet you all. I wish you a good evening as well. Please, excuse me.” Trying not to appear as though I was hurrying, I plastered a pleasant expression on my face as I made for the door.

Sam?

I’m good. I just need to get out of here, breathe some fresh air, and eat something.

All right. If you need me, just call.

Of course. Good night, love.

Cadmael studied me as I walked past. I could do stoic too and my candy-coating hadn’t been cracked, so he could just wonder.

It wasn’t easy to take long strides in stilettos, but I did my best. Once I passed the entry and hit the hall, I paused to unstrap the shoes and carry them in my free hand so I could walk more easily, run if I had to.

The sandy-haired vampire was out here somewhere, and it would be easier to use the stilettos as weapons if they were in my hands.

I made it halfway down the hall when the wall sconces flickered.

That same woman in the long gray dress grabs my shoulder and spins me around. She says something, but I don’t understand her. Shaking my arm, she shouts in my face, spittle foaming on her chapped lips.

I say something in Hungarian. Unfortunately, as I don’t speak Hungarian, I have no idea what I said.

I try to unsheathe my claws, but nothing happens; my hands remain clasped in front of me because this isn’t me.

I’m living someone else’s experience and have no ability to protect myself.

I tremble. I’m not sure if it’s her or me, but I assume both of us.

The woman’s expression changes from anger to confusion and then she marches me down the hall two doors. She unlocks it, shoves me in, and then locks it again. Pressing my face to the small square of glass in the door, I watch her walk away.

When I turn, I see a room very like the one that creepy Renfield took us to when we arrived, minus all the cobwebs and mold. It’s small with used-to-be-white walls and stained tile floors. A very thin pad is rolled up on a metal bed frame.

As I walk across the floor to the window, cockroaches scurry out from under the bed and squeeze between the cracked baseboard. I’m trying hard to hold it together, but it’s difficult to reason with abject terror.

I look out the window and see a very different Budapest. All the modern buildings are gone. The town is smaller, the government buildings even grander by comparison—

The door swings open, bouncing off the wall, as three people burst through the door: two women in gray dresses and one man in a white coat. The women say something to me and I respond, and then each one grabs an arm, dragging me to the bed.

MEGY! I scream it over and over, but nothing changes. I’m trapped in a nineteenth century mental asylum. The women are talking to me again as they strip off my dress and take my shoes.

Shivering in nothing but a slip, they force me onto the bed and then strap my arms and legs down.

Nonononono, I can’t be held down. Please, no.

The man in the white coat leans over the bed, studying me.

He has thinning dark hair, a trim mustache, and intense eyes.

Expression mildly disgusted, he gazes at me as though I’m a bug to dissect.

Beneath assessment, though, there is a kind of glee that terrifies me.

He has a new test subject, and his brain is racing with the possibilities.

The women move back, and he smiles down at me.

I opened my mouth to scream, but I was standing in the hall again, my room key in my trembling hand. Chanting megy, megy, megy in my head, I changed my grip on the shoes and then fumbled the key, dropping it on the carpet. The back of my neck prickled. I was being watched.

Scooping it up, I unlocked the door and bolted inside.

As I slammed the door shut, I saw a dark-haired vamp with a thick mustache at the far end of the hall, watching me.

Pressing my head against the back of the closed and locked door, I let out a deep breath, praying the ghosts were done with me for the night.

Too tired and hungry to fight them off, I needed out of this place now. I peeled off the dress, secured the jewelry, and changed into jeans, a t-shirt, and running shoes. I grabbed my little crossbody bag, stuffing my phone, wallet, and key inside.

Rattled, I almost left without protection.

Finvarra, the fae king, still wanted me dead.

I wasn’t going to make it easy for him, so I’d brought my axe to Budapest with me.

I’d won it when I bested his dwarf assassin.

I put on the leather straps, securing the axe like a backpack, before donning a light jacket over the top. With my hair down, no one would notice.

I did my best to brace myself for whatever was out there and opened the door.

The vamp was gone. I closed the door, checked to make sure it locked, and then followed the directions Clive had mumbled this morning.

He hadn’t told me how to get back in, but I was strangely okay with being barred from this place.

When I got to the main hall, I turned left, away from the entry area and meeting rooms. After twenty yards or so, the carpet stopped and there were no more dim wall sconces.

The floor was the cracked tile of the asylum that had almost been white a hundred years ago.

The walls carried the filth of decades of disuse, black splotches of mold growing rampant.

The remodel clearly hadn’t made it this far.

A framed black and white photograph hung on the wall.

I almost walked past it, but something about it made me stop.

An older version of the man who had just leered down at me while I was strapped to a bed now stood on what looked like the steps of this building when it had been new.

He wore a white coat and a stern expression.

Head tilted, he smiled manically. Behind him in the photo, blood dripped from the windows, spattering his white coat.

Stumbling back, I hit the opposite wall, staring at the photograph. The blood red was gone. It was once more a grainy black and white photo featuring a stern-looking man in a white coat standing in front of the asylum.

Not wanting to turn my back on it, I kept glancing over my shoulder to make sure it hadn’t started bleeding again.

At the end of the hall, I found a dented metal door.

Concerned as to what had put the dents in it, I paused, trying to decide if this really was the best way out.

Stomach growling, I decided Clive wouldn’t have sent me into danger and if this turned out to be a horrible mistake, I could call him for an extraction.

I had to yank hard, but the door finally gave way on a screech.

It was pitch-black and the smell of cold, wet earth was overwhelming.

I pulled out my phone and hit the flashlight.

Okay. Stairs down, to what must have been an underground tunnel from the asylum to town.

I let the door close on another metallic screech and headed down.

This was probably one of the ways they’d moved patients in and out of the facility.

It had been common, from what I’d read, to have girls and women committed when they didn’t behave the way their fathers and husbands deemed appropriate.

Not because they were mentally ill, but because they weren’t as biddable as the men would have preferred.

This tunnel was probably how they’d been secreted in.

The lower tunnel was narrower than the one above, and unfinished.

There were timber crossbeams at intervals to stave off cave-ins, but as I was stepping over large chunks of dirt, they hadn’t been entirely successful.

I was never using this exit again. There had to be a better way in and out.

This route was probably Sebastian’s FU to having a werewolf stay in the Guild.

The screech of the heavy door at the top of the stairs brought me up short. Who was following me? I thought of the sandy-haired vampire in the meeting room and then of the mustachioed one I’d seen lurking in the hall outside our room.

Searching my mind, I found his cold green blip descending the stairs. I tried to figure out who it was, but he was too powerful. I couldn’t easily slip into his mind, and he was coming up behind me. Turning, I used my flashlight, but he was too far back. I saw eyes glowing, but nothing more.

Time to run. Not wanting to trip on clots of dirt, I kept the flashlight trained on the ground and sprinted.

Were vampires faster than me? Mostly yes, but not by much.

Of course, that was when I’d been in top form.

Ten yards in, my thigh began to twinge. Damn it!

Maybe a quarter of a mile later, my limp more pronounced, I hit the steps going up.

Leg aching, I dragged open another rusting door and rushed down a short corridor, leading to yet another door.

Behind this one, though, I heard the low murmur of voices.

I checked my mind and found the vampire climbing the stairs.

Blowing out a breath, I opened the door a crack and saw a darkened passage.

Slipping through, I glanced up and down a short hall.

The walls were spray-painted in words and symbols I didn’t recognize.

The lock clicked as the door closed behind me.