The whole thing had fallen apart. I wondered if it was too late to grab Ben and run away.
"You recognize that guy," Hardin said, glancing over.
"Yeah. I think we're all screwed."
"We'll see about that. He a vampire, too?"
"No. He's a lycanthrope."
"Everyone's got silver bullets this time. I checked."
"Great. I'll make sure I'm standing behind you all."
"Probably a good idea."
This was insane.
I called Rick again, to tell him about Dack, but he still didn't answer. Then I called Ben. Who didn't answer.
Obsidian was in a nicer part of downtown, a street filled with chic restaurants and funky boutiques, halfway between artsy and gentrified. The art gallery was a front; the interesting bit was the basement. Stairs around back led to the heart of Arturo's empire.
I checked where Rick had told us to park, and Ben's car wasn't there. Ben wasn't there. Maybe that was a good thing. Maybe it was all already over. Maybe they were okay.
Hardin distributed equipment from the trunk of her car to her people: crosses, stakes, hand crossbows with wooden bolts, spray bottles of what I assumed was holy water. I took a handful of stakes and a cross, steel, the size of my hand. I decided that if all else failed, I would depend on my ability to run like hell. I slung my backpack over my shoulders.
Thus armed and prepared, we approached the building. I couldn't imagine what this must look like from the outside. Five cops, stalking purposefully toward a dark building, carrying crossbows and crosses—they could only be hunting vampires.
The place was an isolated box surrounded by parking lots. I hesitated, hoping to smell something, sense something. But the street was silent, and the building looked dead.
Hardin pointed at her officers. "You two, watch the front. Don't let anyone leave."
The rest of us headed for the stairs in back.
She said, "You're a civilian. I'm not going to ask you to do this if you don't want to. But if you think you can help—"
"Maybe I can, maybe I can't. But I'll go." I'd started this thing, I had to see it through.
Rick's Beamer was parked in back. He was here, somewhere, fighting for his life or already dead. A couple of other cars were here. Not Ben's.
Hardin repeated instructions to the remaining officers. "Don't let anyone down those stairs, don't let anyone leave."
The last two cops—our rear guard as well as our backup—stayed behind, while Hardin and I made our way into the pit.
"You've been here before, right?" For all her efforts with the anti-vampire gear, she'd reverted to habit and held her gun at the ready. Shocking myself, I recognized the type—a nine-millimeter semiautomatic.
"Yeah," I said. "But it's been a while."
"Tell me what to expect."
"There's a metal door at the bottom of the stairs. It opens on a hallway. There's a closed door on each side. I don't know what's behind them. There's another door at the end of the hall. It leads to what I guess you'd call his living room."
Actually, it was more like a throne room, or a receiving hall—a holdover from an age of palaces and courts. There wasn't a modern equivalent. This was where Arturo held court, and where Carl would come to pay his respects, negotiate a dispute, or do what he needed to do to keep peace between our kinds. Usually, Carl would bring his own retinue, enough of his pack to make a show of strength, to balance the dozen or so vampires Arturo displayed on his side. Sometimes, he'd bring me, when he needed a pretty young thing at his side to boost his own ego. An alpha could increase his standing by showing off how many helpless cubs he could protect. That was what I'd been to him—a helpless child. I'd hated those outings. I'd hated being put out for show.
One of those times, I'd met Rick. I'd been young—both agewise and wolfwise. I'd only been a werewolf for a year. Rick had been standing watch at the basement door, and I'd sneaked out when Carl wasn't paying attention. I couldn't leave without Carl entirely, so I stuck around, sitting on the concrete steps, and chatted with Rick. He was the first vampire who ever deigned to speak to me at all. He could tell I was new to it all, and he was kind to me. After that, the whole place had seemed a little more real. More believable. Vampires became a little less scary.
If Arturo had returned from the hospital before us, I'd expect to find him in that room, surrounded by his minions. I had no idea where Rick might be. Almost, I expected him to still be standing guard at the door at the bottom of the steps. I'd sit down again and have a nice chat. He'd tell stories about Denver during the gold rush: The displacement in time, the sense of dйjа vu, was visceral.
Hardin led the way down the stairs. I followed, continually looking over my shoulder.
At the base of the stairs, the metal door stood open.
Behind us, in the alley we'd just left, a man screamed.
Then another voice: "Officer down!"
Two shots fired. Hardin charged back up the stairs. I charged after her. I didn't even get a chance to look through the door to see what might follow us.
At the top of the stairs, Hardin shouted, "Freeze! Freeze right there!" Then, "Dammit!"
She'd pressed herself to the wall and looked out at the alley. I crouched beside her, using the stairwell for shelter.
One of the two cops—I recognized Sawyer—turned back and forth, as if searching for quarry that was no longer visible. He held a gun in one hand and a spray bottle in the other. His arms were trembling. Nearby, the other cop lay still, facedown on the ground. I didn't see any blood on him, no wounds. That didn't mean anything. I looked up, back and forth, all around. Vampires could fall on us from above.
"Sawyer, where'd he go?"
"I don't know, he just…just disappeared. Vanished."
I closed my eyes and took a deep, steady breath. The air was still tonight, all the summer heat leached away leaving a calm, damp chill. Good. Without a breeze, the assailant couldn't stay downwind.
Vampires smelled dead, but only partly. They were dead without the decay, the rot. They lacked heartbeats; they were cold. Any blood and warmth they had was stolen from a living body. They smelled out of place in the world, like they'd stepped out of it somehow.
I searched for that now, tasting the air, letting that little bit of the Wolf into my conscious mind so I could use those senses. I only needed a location, a direction where I could point Hardin and Sawyer.
I smelled vampires everywhere.
My heart racing, I pushed myself against the side of the concrete stairwell. Until something moved, until we spotted one of them, we couldn't do anything. We'd be wasting what pathetic ammunition we brought by shooting at shadows. Firing blasts of holy water at nothing.
Sawyer knelt by his partner and touched his neck. He had to set down one of his weapons to do it, and to my dismay he set down the spray bottle. Not that I had faith in the spray bottles, notwithstanding the holy water in them. But the gun probably wouldn't do any good.
"He's alive," Sawyer called to us. "Just knocked out, I think."
"Can vampires do that?" Hardin whispered to me. "Just knock someone out?"
I didn't answer because I saw a flicker of something dodging from one shadow to the next. "Sawyer, behind you!"
He whirled, saw the figure who had appeared instantly and silently behind him. The assailant, a pale man dressed simply in dark slacks and a shirt, raised his arm in preparation of delivering a blow. Sawyer reacted instinctively, driven by panic, bringing his gun to bear and firing. Trigger-happy bugger, wasn't he?
Caught in the chest by the shot, the vampire staggered back a step. But he didn't fall. I didn't smell blood. He didn't react again, except to square his shoulders and focus his gaze on Sawyer. He closed the distance between them in a second. He was a flash of movement.