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“Damn it. I’m sorry,” she said, shaking away angry tears. “I missed, and my hand landed against one of the cuts on the creature.”
“Great Mother, that’s a nasty wound. You can’t stay here. We’ll just have to come back another day—” I started to say, but she shook her head.
“No! We can’t let them regroup. Find me something to wrap this up with, and I’ll just stay near the back.” She glanced over at Roz, who was digging through his coat. “You got any more of that salve you carry around with you?”
He held up a little jar. “Here,” he said, opening it and slathering a good spoonful over the open wound. “This will stave off the worst of the pain and infection for now. Just don’t get it dirty.” He pulled out a small roll of gauze from another pocket and began to wrap her hand.
“You’re not only a walking armory, but now you’re an infirmary, too?” I couldn’t help but smile. “Someday, I want to see everything you keep hidden in that coat.”
He gave me a long look. “Everything?” he said softly with a smirk.
“Give me a break. You know what I meant.” I let out a sigh. Once an incubus, always an incubus. He’d never change. I was just glad he was on our side. “Okay, change of plans. Camille, in back with Smoky. He can protect you best if we come across another big beastie. Morio, up front with me. Roz and Vanzir, take the middle.”
Vanzir pointed at the open door where the hellhound had busted through. “All right, but I think we found our nest. This is the door to the basement, it looks like, and there’s definite demonic energy radiating up the stairwell.”
I peered down the stairs. The light was dim, probably only a twenty-five-watt bulb. The stairs vanished into the darkness below. The scent of dung and fetid meat and sour milk rose from the depths.
“Cripes, that’s a nasty scent. My stomach’s testy enough as it is,” I said as I moved to the edge of the staircase. “I guess we go down?”
Vanzir nodded and handed me a broom he found in the corner. “You might want to test the way as you go, in case there are any traps or broken steps. The last thing we need is for you to go crashing down the stairs and break your neck.”
With that thought to cheer me up, I grabbed the broom, and we headed into the basement, one step at a time.
CHAPTER 5
My dagger in one hand, broom in the other, I stood at the top of the steps. I gingerly tapped the first one with the handle of the broom. The light flickered, the bulb old and ready to die. I glanced back at Morio, who followed me.
“Do you have a light spell in case that bulb goes out? I don’t want to go plunging into dark water, so to speak.” Truth was, I didn’t want to go down into this basement at all. For one thing, I was worried about Camille. For another, the thought of taking on poisonous creepy-crawlies didn’t interest me at all. Especially not after our run-in with the Hunters Moon Clan a few months ago. And third, well, I was hungry. My stomach rumbled at that moment, as if punctuating my thoughts. I ignored it.
Morio nodded. “I can use my fox fire. But if the light goes, everybody stop where you are. I can’t very well cast a spell while I’m tumbling down the steps.”
“Good point.” I cleared my throat and glanced over my shoulder. “Well, here goes nothing.” I put my foot on the first step. A little squeak, but nothing too terribly untoward. I gathered my breath and tapped the second stair. The third. The fourth. I was about to tap on the fifth when the light suddenly vanished. The bulb had burnt out.
“Everybody stand still.” Morio’s voice came out of the darkness.
I felt like I was poised on the edge of a chasm. The stairway into the basement was well over fifteen stairs down, because that’s as far as I could see when the light was still flickering. There might be another door waiting for us, or maybe a hallway or maybe a guard lurking in the depths below. I tried to reach out, to sense danger, but all of my senses were on overload.
Morio shouted and the dark well exploded into light as a green phosphorescence flickered from a foot-long wooden dowel he was holding. It lit up the passage a little better than the dim bulb had, though everything took on an eerie hue. I grimaced, thinking about all the late-night monster movies I’d made Menolly sit through with me. What we were facing was ten times worse, but still, images of nubile young women creeping down into underground tombs without a stitch of protection plagued me.
As I tapped my way down the next ten stairs, I had to duck my head as I passed beneath a crosshatch of beams that stretched over the stairwell to form a low overhead. I was the tallest one here except for Smoky—and Morio, in his demonic form. My head almost skimmed the bottom of one of the beams. Roz was two inches shorter than me, and Camille and Vanzir quite a bit shorter than that.
“Heads up,” I called back. “Low beam—watch yourself.” As I ducked to avoid another, a cobweb dangling from the beam brushed against my shoulders, tickling my neck. As the hanging dust catcher caught me off-guard, I let out a little shriek.
“Holy crap. Spiders. What the hell are they doing here? I hate spiders.” Truth was, I was on the verge of developing arachnophobia.
“What kind of webs?” Camille said from the back.
“The wrong kind,” I said grimly. “Keep your eyes peeled for hobo spiders.”
Morio grunted. “This is their kind of hangout, all right. I thought most of the Hunters Moon Clan was dead, though.”
We’d fought a powerful clan of werespiders not long back. Though we’d tried to take them all out, no doubt some had escaped, and they weren’t likely to be very happy with us.
“We can’t be too sure about that. Just keep your eyes peeled.”
As we descended into the lower region of the basement, more steps came in view and, about eight more feet down, a door at the end of the stairwell. Nestled next to the door was an alcove. I could already smell the stench of rotting meat coming from it. It was of the size and shape to house the hellhound, and a thick silver chain told me that the creature had served as a guard dog. The chain was smooth, the links strong and unbroken. Somebody had unleashed him to come after us. Whatever it was hadn’t stuck around to open the door at the top of the stairs. I figured they were probably as scared of their sentinel as we had been.
The door itself looked reinforced. As I neared it, the energy reached out and slapped me in the face. Hell. The door had some sort of heavy iron alloy in it—too much for our comfort zone.
