Blood Rights (42 page)

‘I know another way in.’ Chrysabelle squinted and rubbed her forehead as though a headache pounded the back of her eyes. ‘There are underground tunnels that connect the major estates. I can get us in, so Solomon can stay behind.’

‘You’ve known this all along?’ Anger flickered in Dominic’s eyes. ‘Why didn’t you say something sooner?’

Chrysabelle’s hands went to her hips and the pulse in her neck jumped. ‘You of all people should understand about comarré keeping secrets.’

‘Stupido.’
Dominic threw his hands in the air. ‘Apologize, Dominic.’ Mal’s temper flared hot beneath his skin. The beast lifted its head. He understood Dominic had a personal stake in this, but Mal would not abide Chrysabelle being
disrespected. ‘Talk to her like that again and I’ll break your neck. Or she can do it herself.’

Looking less than penitent, Dominic sketched a shallow bow.
‘Scusi.’
Blowhard. The vampire must have been a real joy before he turned anathema. What had Chrysabelle’s aunt ever seen in him?
More than Chrysabelle will ever see in you.

Mortalis flicked a piece of skin off one of his horns. ‘Well, I’m out. There’s no way I can go in there smelling like this. They’ll scent me immediately.’

Mal pointed at him. ‘You stay here and protect Fi and Solomon. Solomon, cyphers can set wards as well as break them, correct?’

Solomon bowed his head. ‘Yes, of course.’

‘Then set one around this perimeter. Chrysabelle, I assume you know how to get to these tunnels from here?’

Her eyes stayed on the ground. Clearly, she was not happy to have revealed this secret to so many. ‘I can guide us in from the village sewers.’

‘Good.’ Mal glanced at Doc. ‘You and Dominic need to put the past behind you for tonight.’

Dominic stood at the edge of the road, staring into the head-stones and monuments. He looked back and shrugged one shoulder. ‘For Marissa, of course.’

Doc nodded. ‘So long as I get to kill something.’

‘All right then, Mortalis, you’re in charge here. You’ve got the map Chrysabelle drew. Get the car in the proximity of the estate in an hour.’ Mal glanced at the others as they gathered around him. ‘Let’s go.’

A half hour later and the four of them slogged through ankle-high brown water and debris that Mal didn’t want to look too closely at. Weak solars spaced every few yards offered little light and dripping water echoed through the dim tunnels.

He was surprised Chrysabelle could see to lead them as well as she was. She hadn’t faltered once, only slowed. A rat scurried past along the pipes bolted to the wall, squeaking its displeasure at the strange intruders.

Doc’s stomach rumbled. Mal shot him a look.

Doc shook his head. ‘Don’t go there with me, vampire. You drink blood.’

‘Quiet.’ Chrysabelle held her hand up and stopped before a fork in the tunnel. Both sides of the divergence were gated. ‘I need better ears. Do you hear voices coming from either of these tunnels?’

Mal heard a lot of things – the buzz in his head, the pleasurable hum of her pulse, the drip and splash of the water, the patter of vermin feet – but he listened past all that and focused on what the paths held. Faintly, like rain falling on a distant window, the drone of conversation reached him. He nodded. ‘I hear voices coming from both.’

She frowned. ‘That means they’ve kept the staff on at Algernon’s. I thought they’d have shut the house up.’

‘Do you know which direction or not?’ Dominic asked.

‘Chill, man. Let the girl do her thing.’ Doc flicked open his switchblade and began cleaning under his nails, carefully avoiding Mal’s direction since he’d obviously violated the temporary peace treaty.

Dominic muttered in Italian.

She ignored both of them and asked Mal, ‘Can you smell death from either direction? Algernon’s house should carry that odor. Tatiana’s … hopefully not.’

Mal inhaled. The sewer stank, but nothing like the exploded Nothos. Again he nodded. ‘I smell death.’
You should know.

‘In which direction?’

He hated his answer. ‘Both.’

Her face crumpled for a brief moment, then steeled. ‘Very well. I will have to guess – no, wait. Is the scent of comarré mixed with either one? Maybe more strongly than another?’

He pulled the air in, unraveling the layers of scent as if they were intertwined strands of thread. The honeyed perfume of comarré was strong in both, but only one tunnel carried the particularly sweet fragrance he’d come to know as Chrysabelle. The other carried an oddly familiar scent. Not completely unpleasant. It reminded him of something or someone from his past. The noise in his head ticked up. He sniffed again. The scent was familiar, but also different. Off. He ignored it for the moment. Chrysabelle needed him to get this right.

‘There.’ He pointed to the left. ‘That way carries your scent.’

She offered him a sliver of a smile before shifting her gaze to the other tunnel. ‘Then we go right.’

Mal stepped in behind her but grabbed Doc’s arm. ‘Keep it civil with Dominic. I mean it.’

Doc flipped the switchblade closed and tucked it away. ‘Noted.’

She turned to face them all. ‘From here on in, no talking. If you can hear them, they can hear you. Understood?’

Apparently satisfied with their nods, Chrysabelle walked up to the locked gate and stood very still in front of it. A moment later, a small snick signaled the gate had unlocked. She pushed it open, stepped over the raised threshold and headed into the tunnel. Mal stayed close to her, with Dominic and Doc keeping some distance from each other.

‘How did you unlock that?’ he whispered.

She just shook her head and kept her silence. Another comarré secret?

As the minutes ticked by, the path descended lower and lower and the tunnel narrowed. Water rushed by. The solars disappeared, replaced by gently pulsing phosphorescence that reminded Mal of the hallways that led to the Pits at Seven. The subtle sounds of occupation strengthened deeper in, and the soft voices of servants penetrated the thick barrier of stone between them and the residence. A few times, Chrysabelle’s eyes shifted upward. Could she hear them? Or was she thinking of her aunt and what the next few hours might bring?

At last, when they were somewhere in the dark underbelly of Corvinestri, they came to a four-way split. The path directly across from them led into a small, dark room. Chrysabelle motioned them in.

The empty space was carved from the surrounding rock and still bore the marks of whatever tools had hewn it. Moisture seeped from the walls. Nothing denoted the room as anything special and, more interesting, there was no way out except the way they’d come in. He glanced up. Nothing on the ceiling either. Judging by the look of frustration on Dominic’s face, he’d figured that out too. If this was the way into Tatiana’s estate, they were going to need dynamite, shovels, or magic. He held his hands out to Chrysabelle in question.

Exasperation thinned Chrysabelle’s mouth. She splayed her fingers, pushing her palm toward the floor. Mal nodded. She wanted them to wait, be patient. He could do that. He’d waited this long to exact his revenge on the nobles who’d cursed him, he could wait a little longer.

She positioned herself in front of the back wall and off to one side.

He tried not to stare, but even in the gloom, she shimmered with the soft glow only a comarré could produce. Her braid
bared the sides of her face, revealing the delicate gold lacework tattooed there, and despite the twinkling silver body armor covering her neck, the ache in his gums made him bite down until his fangs jutted into his lower lip. Not the time.
Always the time.

She pushed up her tunic sleeves to roll the silver mesh back past her elbows, exposing her signum, then bending her arms, she locked them together vertically in front of her face like a shield, fists facing inward, the flats of her forearms facing the wall. She closed her eyes and mouthed words. He couldn’t see her lips, but it seemed like she was praying.

Dominic sighed. Mal glared at him. If he didn’t shut up, Mal would give him a bloody reason to. He turned back in time to see the wall shimmer in front of Chrysabelle. She opened her eyes as it wavered for another second then melted away to reveal a doorway into an extensive wine cellar. Weak light spilled into the space.

The cellar held more than wine bottles.

Near the back of the room, amid the racks and oak casks, another older comarré limped toward them. Her clothes were dirty and torn, her face bruised and bloodied, her weapons raised in a fighting stance. Her eyes widened and her mouth fell open as she took in the group of them.

Dominic rushed forward. ‘Marissa!’

‘Holy mother,’ Chrysabelle whispered, reaching for the wall. ‘You can walk?’

F
i wandered the cemetery, reading names and dates as best she could by the light of the moon. How many of these people owed their death to a vampire like she did? She traced the carving on one headstone, her fingers catching on the weathered stone as she glanced back toward the cars. She would have felt better if Doc had stayed. Hanging out with the fae was fine, but the drivers were still vamps. Vamps she didn’t know. Friendly or not, she wanted some distance. Especially since one of the drivers, Leo, had managed a few minutes on hallowed ground to toss his cookies, even if he had come out smoking like a burned pot roast.

She shivered and pulled her coat tighter. If Doc were here, he’d have his arm around her, keeping her warm. Hopefully he was okay, wherever he was. Mal would protect him, wouldn’t he?

Sighing, she strolled past the rows of tombstones. The relative safety of the holy ground didn’t stop the old cemetery from being a smidge creepy, especially at night, but it wasn’t enough to suppress her interest. This was exactly the type of
place that would have piqued her curiosity when she’d been studying to be an anthropologist.

She frowned. That stupid drive to unearth some exciting, previously undiscovered thing had gotten her killed. Why couldn’t she have been a computer engineer? Or an accountant?

Her mind wandered to the day she’d discovered those ruins in northern England. The terror that followed. She shook her head to make the memories go away. This was not the place for those kinds of thoughts. Her feet carried her farther away from the car and the four othernatural males who were currently playing some kind of dice game. There was a huge crypt in the corner of the cemetery she was dying to see.

She smiled.
Dying to see.
Now that was funny. Doc would have thought so.

The crypt was illustrated on all sides with flowers and people and depictions of life, all brightly painted like the head-stones in the famous Merry Cemetery in Sâpãn¸ta. Had this family moved to Corvinestri from that part of Romania? What would make them do that? It must pay very well to work for the nobility. It would have to. She walked around the crypt slowly, studying the pictures and wishing for a headlamp and a sketchbook. How many of the family were still alive? Still working for the vampires who controlled this hidden city?

A soft mewling caught her attention. She looked in the direction of the sounds. Beyond the wrought iron gates of the cemetery sat a tiny striped kitten. He cried again and Fi missed Doc more than ever, remembering the day Mal had brought a torn-up Doc in cat form back to the freighter. Mal had thought the cat would give her something else to focus on besides tormenting him. He’d been right, but neither of them had known
Doc’s true nature. He’d been too wounded to shift into human form. Once he had … well, not exactly the pet Mal had been counting on.

She grinned and hurried to the gate. ‘You poor thing. Where’s your mama?’

The kitten sneezed and blinked at Fi, meowing for attention. She stuck her hand through the gate but couldn’t quite reach him. ‘Aw, c’mere, baby. Do you have a wittle cold?’

But the kitten stayed put and answered her with more pitiful meowing.

‘Hang on, I’m coming.’ She glanced back at the men. Still busy with their game. The tall fae had warded the whole area. There had to be some overflow that covered the area beyond the gates too.

She opened the gate and stuck her head out to scan the area. No one lying in wait, nothing unusual in either direction. The kitten flopped onto its side and began to purr.