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“You—” My voice had developed a bullfrog croak. I cleared my throat and tried again. “You have to go down a ladder.” I nodded at the opening. “There’s a sleeping bag down there, and food and blood-wine.”
He straightened up, visibly pulling himself together. “Ready.”
“Okay. Me first.” I helped him to the bench. When he was seated on the edge, I swung myself into the hole and braced my feet on the ladder’s second rung.
Zaq followed. He had trouble getting his leg over the bench’s short concrete wall, but he managed it. I guided his foot to the ladder’s top rung.
“That’s it. Now the other leg.”
He swung his second leg over and slipped down two rungs, ending between me and the ladder. I pressed my body against his to keep him steady.
Out of nowhere, a chuckle bubbled up. A chuckle that was a shade hysterical, but it relieved my tension. “That’s one way to do it.”
Zaq gave a rusty laugh.
My face was up against his back. Unable to resist, I drew a lungful of Zaq-spice.
“Keep going. Four more rungs and you’re there.”
“Aweshome,” he said in a sleepy slur.
Somehow we made it down the last few rungs without falling, me supporting most of Zaq’s weight. His feet touched the dirt floor.
He turned and smiled into my eyes. “Did it.”
Then his knees gave out and he crumpled to the floor in slow motion. I caught him and eased him the rest of the way, making sure he didn’t hit his head on the hard dirt. He sighed, turned onto his side and went limp.
I shrugged out of my backpack and left him there to shimmy up the ladder. I moved the lid back over the opening, then dropped to the floor beside him. The underground room had fresh air from a PVC pipe I’d inserted in the ceiling, but almost no light; the cypress trees blocked the rising sun. My dhampir vision meant I could see, but everything was shadowed.
The only “furniture” was the sleeping bag and a narrow table against the wall that held dried food and two bottles of blood-wine. Above the table was a battery-powered camping lantern on a shelf I’d chiseled out of rock. I flicked on the lantern and put the bread and cheese I’d brought on the table along with Zaq’s sandwich and the open bottle of wine.
I stowed the backpack under the table. It held a change of clothes, underwear, and extra switchblades. In a hidden inner pocket were two tranquilizer-filled syringes in case things with Zaq went south.
Pulling off the dark wig, I tossed it on top of the backpack and turned back to Zaq.
Jesus, Ridley. I stared down at his curled-up body. Have you lost your mind?
I’d gone so far off-script, I’d landed in a whole different play with a setting and characters I didn’t recognize. Starting with myself.
Especially myself.
I’d pushed for Zaq’s release from the cell. Karoly Kral hadn’t tried to rescue him, and it looked like he didn’t intend to. According to Moreau, the primus had slipped into Paris under cover of a glamour. If he had, he’d evaded the traps set for him. Either way, he’d dropped off the radar. Even our informants in the Kral Syndicate didn’t know his current location.
So I’d suggested we enlist Zaq’s help.
“Karoly will let him get close,” I’d told Moreau. “If we explain to Zaq how Karoly has left him to twist in the wind—and possibly his two brothers as well—he’ll stake Karoly for us.”
Moreau and Co. had already primed the pump. Zaq had gone from waiting for his father to rescue him to doubting Karoly. It wouldn’t take much to nudge him further along the spectrum to resentment and anger, and from there it was a short hop to kill-or-be-killed. Especially if Zaq believed it was the only way to save his brothers.
Initially, Moreau had appeared skeptical, but he’d liked the irony of sending the man’s own son to slay him. He’d taken my idea to Prima Victorine, and when she’d approved the change in tactics, I contacted Crow and presented the new plan as their idea, not mine.
She’d immediately seen the possibilities. “I’ll have to get the Board’s approval, but I think they’ll agree. You’ll go with him, keep him on task. And if he fails, you know what to do. Eliminate them both if possible, but the father is more important.”
“Acknowledged.”
At my feet, Zaq hadn’t moved. I unrolled the sleeping bag and unzipped it to make it wide enough for two, then rolled him onto it. He turned onto his back, one arm bent up by his head, the other by his side.
I knelt next to him. Beneath the dark facial hair, he looked…harmless. Relaxed, his expression open.
