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“I lost the bobby pin.”
I stepped over the door onto a concrete platform with no safety railing and followed the narrow steps down into darkness. Holden remained at the top until I’d made it safely down. Only then did he follow.
“All right, Hound of the Baskervilles. Point the way.”
His indignant look spoke volumes. “That doesn’t even make sense. If anything, the hound in Doyle’s story was a ghost. At best a were—” His lecture on the fundamentals of English literature was cut short by another piercing scream.
I didn’t need to follow his nose to pinpoint the direction the cry had come from. Holden and I bolted down the hall with superhuman speed. His quick reflexes put him well ahead of me, while I narrowly avoided running face first into several walls. Holden stopped so abruptly I collided with him, and only a strong arm around my waist kept me from falling flat on my ass.
Real smooth.
Holden helped right my balance. The scent of fresh blood was unmistakable from the open door where we stopped, but it took no time at all to recognize there was nothing alive in the room, or anything that had once been living. A small cot was pushed up against one wall and there was a basin on the floor I wasn’t keen to look in once I got a whiff of it. On the back of the door were deeply embedded claw marks and a thin coating of fresh blood.
Was it possible someone could have been kept captive in the basement of one of the most prominent universities in the country? Surely someone must have noticed this room before now. Right? The bowl on the floor and the rumpled sheets told me the unpleasant truth.
Grabbing my elbow, Holden guided me out of the room. We still needed to find the person who’d been screaming, and while they might have once been in this room, they obviously weren’t anymore. He took off at a run again, and I followed like a faithful puppy until he stopped. We both stood staring at yet another door as if it might be the actual source of the screams. We’d run so far I didn’t think we were under the English building anymore. The air down here was colder and smelled of chemicals that had nothing to do with cleaning.
Sulfur. The whole hall stank of sulfur.
I got a chill remembering my night at the museum, because I doubted anyone had left an egg-salad sandwich down here, meaning something else was responsible for the stench.
The door was basic particleboard and would have easily yielded to a kick, but it proved unnecessary when Holden twisted the knob and found it unlocked.
Inside, the rotten-egg reek was so overpowering my eyes watered. We were in a large storage room with aged brown and clear bottles cluttering the shelves and a fine coating of sawdust on the floor.
“There.” He pointed to a cupboard in the corner. I was about to question his judgment when I noticed the smear of blood on the door. How he’d been able to smell it over the stink of chemicals was beyond me.
I crouched in front of the cupboard and yanked the small door open. Wedged within was Lucy Renard, who had managed to fold herself into a tiny ball and was sobbing quietly, her tremors broken by an occasional hiccough.
“Lucy?” Reaching in, I touched her shoulder. She was dressed in pajama pants and a tank top. Her feet were bare.
When my skin grazed hers, she jerked and lifted her head. Once she got a good look at my face, she recoiled. Recognition turned to terror, and she began to scream.
The force of Lucy’s wailing knocked me backwards into Holden’s legs. I’d never met her before, yet she looked at me as if she already knew me. And had a reason to be afraid of me. Holden edged around me and hauled the girl out of the cupboard with one hand. She writhed and fought against him with more strength than I’d expected her to have, but Holden didn’t look too put off by her efforts.
Lucy continued to shriek and lashed out several kicks that nearly connected with my chest.
“Stop,” I hollered. “We’re here to help you.”
“Don’t kill me,” she cried, oblivious to what I’d said. “Please don’t kill me.”
“Lucy.” Holden caught her chin and cupped it in his large palm, turning her face so she was forced to look at him. “We were sent by your aunt. We’re here to protect you.” Usually the thrall was used to make victims believe a lie, or admit to something they otherwise wouldn’t. In this case Holden was using the vampire gift to make the girl believe what her fear wouldn’t let her accept. The truth.
She passed out, sagging in his arms like a rag doll, and he held her as if she weighed as much as one.
“What now?” he asked me.
I stared at Lucy’s inert body. Her feet were cut, and the open wounds were crammed full of filthy sawdust. She was going to scar badly and likely face serious infection if we didn’t get her to a hospital. The bottles on the shelves might contain something that would have once been helpful, like peroxide or iodine, but I didn’t trust any of the long-expired chemicals on her.
“We need to get her to a doctor. See what else is wrong that we can’t see.”
“She’s got a bad bite on her shoulder.” He lifted his fingers, exposing a patch of skin that looked to have been gnawed on by a wild animal. Not a vampire, they were too neat, and a were wouldn’t stop at one bite. Holden’s fingers were coated with blood, and his nostrils flared when he showed me the wound.
“When was the last time you fed?”
“I’m fine.”
“Holden.”
