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He raised an eyebrow. “Ghosts?”
I nodded. “They’re filled with anger. We need to step lightly around their resting places and make sure we do not disturb their bones.”
“I’ll be as respectful as possible. Are you ready?”
I nodded. He gripped the edge of the fissure and dropped down. After a moment, he said, “Okay, your turn.”
I took a deep, somewhat shuddering breath, then gripped the edge of the fissure and fell into the heavy darkness.
Chapter 11
I landed in a half crouch and swept my gaze across the deeper shadows beyond the small puddle of light filtering in through the fissure. The air was thick and foul here, and entrenched with the scent of death. Old death, not new. There was no indication of vampires, however, nor did there appear to be anyone or anything else in the near vicinity.
I rose and stepped away from the light. The room was large and square and contained nothing more than forest and concrete debris. There were no furniture remnants, no evidence that there had ever been power or light in this room, and only one door—a big sturdy metal thing that had been torn away from its hinges and now lay on its side to the left of the doorway.
It wasn’t a room I was familiar with. But then, as a déchet, I’d been escorted into this place via the tunnel in the woods, and kept to the lower service and medical areas.
“Where are we?” I unslung my rifle and held it ready.
“The gas chamber.” His voice was soft, but it held a note that chilled me to the core.
“The gas chamber?”
“That’s what we called it.” He glanced at me. His expression was set—cold—but his eyes gleamed with a rage as old as the scent that surrounded us. “We lost a lot of people in this place the first time we breached it.”
I frowned. That had almost sounded as if he’d been here . . . and yet, he wasn’t that old. He couldn’t be that old. It would make him easily more than one hundred years old, and even shifters didn’t hold their age that well. “We?”
He waved a hand dismissively and moved to the doorway. “It was a historical ‘we,’ not me personally.”
That made sense, but I had a feeling it wasn’t exactly the truth. That he’d actually meant what he’d said, impossible or not.
“So why was it called the gas chamber?” I followed him across the room and peered over his shoulder. His rich scent filled my nostrils and provided brief relief to the foulness otherwise filling my lungs.
The hall beyond was about four feet wide and seemed to roll on endlessly, with no other exits evident. It was a perfect place to trap someone if ever I saw one.
“Because that’s what they did, both in this place and in that hall.” He moved forward cautiously.
I went with him, watching every step, being careful not to stand on or kick any debris that might give away our position if there was someone hiding within the bowels of this place.
“Gas only works once,” I said. “Wearing masks the second time would surely have fixed that problem.”
“Except they used Draccid, and we had no protective gear against that drug at the time.”
Draccid. I shuddered and briefly closed my eyes. Tears stung my eyes as the screams of the little ones once again echoed through my memories, and I clenched my fists against the urge to lash out at the man moving so silently in front of me. He wasn’t responsible for that destruction, even if he belonged to the race that was.
But at least I now knew how the shifters had gotten hold of that gas—when they’d finally defeated this place, they’d obviously found stores of it.
“How was base taken, then, if not through this breach?”
“We found the secondary tunnel. It was protected with more traditional methods, but a few well-placed mortars soon fixed that.”
“I’m guessing by then, the humans had evacced.”
“The humans had, but not the déchet.”
Of course, I thought bitterly. Rifle fodder was what déchet had been designed for, after all.
“There’s another door up ahead,” he continued, “and an exit into the main bunker not far beyond it.”
