"Emergency lighting," Rhoan commented. "That's unfortunate."
"And that's an understatement if I've ever heard one."
He walked past me and pressed an ear to the door. "I can't hear any noise close by, but we'd better be ready for trouble anyway." He glanced at me. "You did bring your gun, didn't you?"
"Yes, I brought it. I'd be stupid not to carry after the near miss with the silver-bullet-bearing rooftop assassin." Of course, I was also still carrying my shoes, which made better weapons for close-in fighting than a laser did—in my opinion at least.
I could—and would—use the laser if I had to, but only if it was absolutely necessary. I might feel safer with the weight of it in my hand, but I wasn't so blindly down the guardian track that I'd shoot on instinct. Not yet, anyway.
"You've been shot at before and it hasn't prompted any great need to carry a weapon," he said mildly. "Just thought I'd check."
I didn't bother responding. He turned the handle and cautiously opened the door. Pale yellow light splashed across his feet and seeped into the room.
Definitely emergency lighting—it wasn't bright enough to be anything else.
The air stirring past my nose carried the warmth of the morning, along with hints of diesel and oil. Perhaps the stair went down to some sort of maintenance area.
Rhoan slipped through the door and began to ease his way down the concrete steps, After ensuring the door closed quietly, I followed. Our journey downward was slow and filled with tension. We were far too visible on this stairwell, and that made for easy targets.
Though why I thought they'd risk shooting us I didn't even want to think about. And I just hoped it was fear of the unknown rather than pesky clairvoyance stepping in with some cheerful news.
Thankfully, we made it all the way down the stairs without discovery. The door at the bottom was unlocked, and there seemed to be nothing but silence beyond it.
Rhoan opened it carefully. A warm wind rushed in to greet us, and the scents of oil and diesel were heavier on the air. But underneath them ran the tangy scent of males. Human males.
The scents weren't sharp, weren't defined, meaning there was some distance between us and them, but it was a warning that we had to proceed carefully.
"Loading bay," he said softly, "The main door is only half down."
I slipped through the doorway and stopped beside him. Sunlight filtered through the gap between the floor and the top of the roller door, highlighting the oil stains splattered all over the concrete. The loading bay itself was empty of vehicles, but not of boxes. Most of them were alcohol filled, if the writing on the side was anything to go by.
Rhoan glanced at me and nodded toward the right. He headed left. The bright sunlight streaming in through the half-open doorway left little in the way of shadows, and I could only hope that whoever was doing the talking didn't suddenly decide to come out into the loading bay. We'd be sitting ducks. Or dogs, as the case may be.
I ran lightly up the stairs and walked along the wall, stepping past the boxes before edging my way to the door. Rhoan, pressed against the wall on the other side, raised three fingers, and began counting down. When there were no fingers left, I reached out, grabbed the door handle, and pulled it open. Rhoan was little more than a deadly blur that flowed inside. I could barely see him, so the humans inside had little hope. The talking stopped abruptly, but there was few other sound. With Gautier gone, Rhoan was now the top guardian at the Directorate, and what he did better than anyone was killing. Not that he killed the two men—just knocked them out cold.
I stepped over their collapsed forms. The room was small, and filled with various machine parts, though there were tools and oils and other stuff scattered about the shelves.
I looked down at the two men. "We can't leave them here. Someone will trip over them coming through the door."
He raised an eyebrow, amusement glinting in his gray eyes. "Safety concerns for possible assassins? How sweet."
I slapped his arm. "No, asshole. I'm worried about them being tripped over and found. Let's not make it too easy."
"I wasn't intending to." He motioned to the door on the other side of the room. "Go check that. I'll move these two into the shadows."
I walked across the room and pressed an ear against the door. The mechanical sounds we'd been hearing seemed to come from here. Certainly they were stronger—so much so it was almost impossible to hear anything else over them.
I glanced at Rhoan to make sure he was ready, then gripped the handle and carefully opened the door.
It slammed right back into my face and sent me reeling backward. I barely had time to swear before it was opened again and two wolves in human form were lunging toward me. I hadn't even scented them—but they'd obviously smelled me.
I scrambled backward, trying to collect my wits, trying to keep out of their reach. Out of the corner of my eye I saw Rhoan move, and realized my attackers hadn't grasped the fact I wasn't alone. So I stopped moving, letting them get close, moving just fast enough to avoid their blows, then dropped my shoes and released a quick one-two jab of my own, hitting one in the gut, the other across the chin.
Chin boy reeled backward—straight into Rhoan's waiting arms. I grabbed the other, spun him around, and threw him backward. He hit the concrete wall hard, his head smashing into it with a crunch that made me wince. As he slid unconscious to the ground, I spun to see if my brother needed help. I shouldn't have bothered.
"How's your nose?" he said, not looking at me as he stepped over the body of the man to the still-open door.
"I'll live." The door had squashed my nose back against my face, but it wasn't broken and wasn't even really bleeding. Not much anyway. "What's beyond?"
"Machine room." He paused, cocking his head slightly. "I can hear distant footsteps. I can't tell where exactly they're coming from."
"The office areas won't be near the machine room, I wouldn't think."
"No." He glanced at me. "Ready to move on?"
I nodded. He slipped out the door and, after picking up my shoes, I followed. The room beyond was lit by globes high in the ceiling, but there were enough shadows to provide some cover should we need it.
We walked down a set of metal stairs, the sound of our footsteps seeming to echo across the silence. The room below wasn't actually full of machines. Sure, there were generators and water pumps, but there was also a vast array of switchboards, electrical stuff, computer stuff, metal boxes of various shapes and sizes, and God knows what else. Calling it a junk room would have been more appropriate.
We reached the floor and ran across to the nearest machine, keeping close to the various bits and pieces as we made our way through the room.
The sounds of nearing footsteps were becoming evident, but it was still hard to pinpoint a location. At times, they seemed to be all around us, though if that were the case, we surely would have seen them as we ran from the cover of one machine to the other. Only the dead could move fast enough to confuse a werewolf's sight—and we weren't normal werewolves. And even if we had been, we surely would have smelled them. Most vampires tended to be smelly beasts at the best of times.
We were nearing the far end of the machinery room when goose bumps began to scamper across my skin. I scanned the immediate area, then what walls were visible beyond it, seeing nothing out of place. Yet I couldn't escape the sensation we were about to walk into danger.
I stopped.
It was then I smelled him.
A vampire, stepping up behind me.
I spun and lashed out with a stiffened hand. He caught it hard and fast, amusement flashing across his thin lips. Or maybe that was contempt. Hard to tell sometimes with suckers.
I twisted and slashed out with the heel of my shoe. The wooden stiletto scraped across his face, and sparks flickered as the smell of burned flesh bloomed.