he would be every bit as dangerous as Wilder, and would have the advantage of knowing the battleground.
“And the good news?”
“I’m pretty damn sure I figured out where they’re holding Nate.” He touched one of the grenades.
“What’re these?”
“Explosives. Laced with silver. Expensive, but the damage is impressive.”
“That would come in handy for clearing out a room.” Wilder surveyed the rest of the array she’d laid out. “If it comes down to it, we can fight.”
Confident, she reminded herself. She needed to be confident. “If I know Nathaniel, he’ll have been planning for rescue.”
“Is it possible to plan for a rescue like this?”
Perhaps not, but he’d be ready, and that was all that mattered.
Almost. After setting the grenade carefully on the ground, she rocked to her knees and framed Wilder’s face with her hands. “No one could plan for us, Wilder. Not even Archer.”
“They could plan for me easily enough.” He kissed her and rested his forehead against hers. “You’re the wild card, sweetheart. The ace in the hole, and you’re going to win it for all of us.”
“Just get me to Nathaniel,” she whispered. “There’s nothing the two of us can’t think our way out of.
Especially if we have a bloodhound around to help with the heavy lifting.” Wilder kissed her again, this time parting her lips with his tongue. So easy to melt at the taste of him, especially with the recent memory of pleasure fresh in her mind. He’d done things with and to her that still made her blush to think of, but none she had enjoyed as much as the simple heat of his kiss.
When he pulled away, his voice had gone low, hoarse. “Once this is over—” Satira pressed her fingertips to his lips. “Levi would have told you not to waste time making plans before over gets here.”
“Yeah, I guess he would have.” He slipped the bag over her head and helped her secure it against her hip. Then he took her hand and hefted his gun. “This way.”
For a large man, Wilder moved quietly. Satira watched his boots and tried to step where he did as he led her behind several roughly constructed buildings that looked to be in poor repair. More than one showed the evidence of violence—bullets lodged in wood and snapped timber. Black scorch marks climbed the back of one wall, as if a fire had been narrowly averted. The vampire who’d taken over the town clearly cared little for any home but his own.
And the hotel was immaculate. Fresh paint all but shined in the early-morning light. Tools lay in a neat row on the north side, where a new addition to the building was underway.
It was there that Satira saw the first stirrings of life. A ghoul, from the vacant expression, one who wandered in a jerky, uneven arc back and forth in front of the main roadway, his hands hanging limply at his sides. Avoiding him was laughably easy. Wilder hustled them both around the south side of the building, past a stable where horses whinnied restlessly.
Satira made note of the location of the stable door. Nathaniel would need a mount, if he was well enough to ride on his own. Please let him be well enough to ride on his own.
Wilder stopped near the edge of the building, next to a door that blended in so well with the wall that Satira might not have noticed it. Pulling it open revealed steep stairs carved into stone that twisted down into darkness.
“Stick close,” Wilder whispered as he began to descend the stairs. His boots fell on the stone with soft thuds, and he winced and stepped more lightly. “Echoes down here. Be careful.” The stairs went down and down, until the darkness was all but absolute. Wilder had no trouble seeing—or perhaps whatever heightened senses bloodhounds enjoyed helped him pick out a path. Satira put one hand against the wall and braced the other on his shoulder, feeling her way slowly behind him as her heart hammered in her ears.
It seemed like forever before she saw a flicker of light ahead of them. Wilder stepped away instead of down, and her foot hit solid dirt. She stumbled a little, then caught her balance with a curse she only gave voice in her head. “We must be a hundred feet underground.” The tunnel was still dark, and another, brighter flare of light followed the scrape of a match. Wilder looked around and shook his head. “It’s an honest-to-God dungeon.” Satira reached into the bag at her hip and fumbled until she came up with a slender tube made from a clear resin. One of the first projects she’d worked on with Nathaniel, inspired by their modified rounds.
Twisting a knob on the side combined the chemicals within, and she gave it a good shake to mix them together before clipping it to the strap of her bag.
The glow grew in intensity with each passing second, until Satira could clearly make out the long row of metal bars. Cages, carved into stone, large enough to accommodate one prisoner with no more room than they might need to stretch out.
Wilder stepped closer to the nearest one, and the flame of his match illuminated a desiccated corpse within. “Jesus.” He snuffed the match and cursed again.
Her handlight wasn’t bright enough to pierce the darkness at the backs of the cells. “That wasn’t—” She couldn’t force herself to form his name.
“No, not Nate.” Wilder reached for her hand again and continued around the curving tunnel, toward a heavy door at the end.
Movement in the last cell on the right stopped her. “Wilder, I think—” A body shot toward the cage bars so hard they rattled, and Satira stumbled back out of instinct.
Wilder stepped in front of her, his nostrils flaring. “I don’t fucking believe it.”
“What don’t you—”
The low growl that rumbled through the hallway sent fear skittering up her spine. Satira unhooked the handlight and lifted it high enough to illuminate the figure gripping the cage bars.
A man—mostly. Dark hair hung in shaggy locks over blue eyes that held not a glint of humanity. His chest was bare, revealing scratches and scars and a spattering of ugly yellow bruises. He sucked in a breath and fixed his gaze on Satira, and she recognized something in the feral madness staring out at her.
Bloodhound.
“Go away,” the man rasped. “Go.”
“He’s not part of the Guild.” Wilder clenched his jaw, his hands tightening into fists. “Did they turn you here?”
The man—the hound—didn’t answer, but he hardly needed to. The process by which the Guild made their warriors was a well-protected secret. Surely that couldn’t have been Nathaniel’s secret project…
Experimentation had been outlawed for decades, ever since the Guild’s inception.
Satira reached for Wilder’s shoulder. “Should we free him?”
“No.” A hand swiped between the bars, a menacing gesture undercut by the wild fear in the man’s eyes. “Leave. Go. Not safe here.”
His terror made Satira’s chest ache. Made her wonder what horrors Nathaniel might have suffered. “I could undo the lock if he let me.”
Wilder faced the other bloodhound, and they stared at each other for long minutes. “We’ll come back once we find Nathaniel. It’ll be safer then.”
“Nate.”
A scratchy sound, seemingly torn from the man’s throat. Satira ducked under Wilder’s arm before he could stop her. “Do you know him?”
“They put him in his lab. Always do, at dawn, now.”
Wilder breathed a sigh. “Do you know where it is?”
She barely heard the instructions— in his lab. In his lab.
Nathaniel was alive.
“We’ll be back,” Wilder promised the man—the hound—inside the cell.
Another person to rescue, but they could do it. Together, she and Wilder could do anything.