Getting out, he shut things back up so that she’d stay warm, and walked over to the rear door of what he intended on being their temporary refuge. Unfortunately, the very modest two-story house was just as rough as that apartment building—and he had a thought that someday, he’d take her someplace nicer.
Which, considering where he was starting from, might include locales with such exotic luxuries as running water, reliable electricity, and central heating.
The back entry into the kitchen had an overhang that was barely hanging on, and he tested the door’s lock. When it held firm, he turned his shoulder to the panels—
And broke the fucker open.
The air that wafted out was as cold as the night, and not moldy at all—which meant there were so many windows broken, there was always plenty of breeze going through the rooms. He’d been inside once before, back when the prison camp had taken up its new residence. He’d roamed the landscape constantly back then, his wolven side desperate to get out and move under the moonlight after so many decades of forced, subterranean confinement. He’d always come back to that sanatorium, however.
The Executioner had started right off with the leverage shit.
Then again, when you had levers to pull and stuff you had to get done, you didn’t sit on your ass if you wanted to create an empire.
Lucan stepped into the kitchen. The house had been abandoned sometime in the seventies, he was guessing—because the rusty, avocado appliances and mustard-yellow linoleum floor were in the style that was popular right before he’d been thrown into the prison camp. The windows and walls were a matchy-patchy of faded sunflowers, and without any furniture to speak of, it was like a museum exhibit on rural, aspirational living that had been robbed.
A quick check through the other four rooms on the first floor yielded nothing. Quick walk around of the five-room second story was the same. He wasn’t surprised; his nose had told him up front what it took his eyes six minutes to confirm. But he wasn’t really interested in what was aboveground.
The cellar door was under the stairs and it was shut solid, yet opened just fine. As he looked down into the darkness, his hand went to get inside his jacket—but then he realized he wasn’t wearing his own clothes. And it wasn’t smart to use a phone for a flashlight, anyway. Tracers happened, which was why he’d turned his burner off.
Going over to the cabinets and drawers, he didn’t expect to find anything, but there was a surprising collection of crap left. By a stroke of luck, he found a candle, and lit it with a match from a box marked “Joe’s Steak Shack.”
Okay, fine, the candle was actually the number “5” and it had dried frosting on its foot, the forgotten marker of someone who was that age. Or 15. 25. 35 . . .
Pinching the bottom of the number between his fingers, he was careful going down the rough staircase.
Well . . . what do you know. There was a candelabra on a stand right at the base, as if the owners had had their electricity go off a lot and wanted to be prepared. Using the 5, he lit the cobwebbed four-arm and felt like Vincent Price as he moved the anchored flames around.
Fabric, everywhere. And tubs, which he assumed were for dyeing. Also long tables that looked like they’d been built in the cellar from assembled wood.
“Pretty fucking perfect.”
Putting the candles down, he gathered up bolts and bolts of fabric, and shook them out to make a soft bed. He chose behind the stairs as a location—so that if anyone descended the steps during the day, Rio’d have time to hear it and be ready to shoot whoever it was.
She would be safe here—at least that was what he told himself.
And he wasn’t going to be gone long.
At least not while it was still dark out.
The next time Rio woke up, she was stretched out on a bed in a candlelit room. As she went to sit up, the world spun around so she laid back on the mattress.
Except it wasn’t a mattress. It was . . . heavy sheets. Layers and layers of—no, fabric, like you’d find at a Jo-Ann’s, all kinds of different patterns, weights, and colors.
Totally disorientated, she tried to see beyond the halo of golden light thrown by the grouping of candles. Where the hell was she—
It all came back in a waterfall: The white-haired man with the switchblade coming at her as she was bound and gagged on the floor. The dog attack. Luke freeing her and carrying her out to a car. This abandoned house, which she had a hazy recollection of being moved into.
Now she was here, in the cellar, on this bed of multi-colored fabric—
Voices up above. Now footsteps that made dust fall from the boards over her head.
A door opening and a beam of light piercing down the steps ahead of her. “Rio, it’s me.”
At the sound of Luke’s voice, she shuddered in relief—and became aware that she’d lifted up a gun and pointed it at the open-board staircase in front of her.
The reality that he hadn’t left her undefended meant that he, and anybody with him, did not intend to hurt her. But considering how much rescuing he’d been doing over the last little bit, did she really still doubt his savior act?
Then again, old habits of self-protection died hard.
“I’m here,” she said in a rough voice.
“I have help.”
There was a pause, and then she saw his legs at the top of the rough wooden stairs. She knew they were his because he was wearing those strange, tight, too-short black pants—and through the open frame of the stairs, she watched him take things one step at a time. Was he injured?
No. He was helping someone in a tan-colored robe, someone who seemed to have bad balance.
It was slow going.
And when he was finally on the concrete floor, he put out his arm for whoever was with him and brought them around, into the light . . . oh, so it was a limp, the person had a limp, a bad one—and their whole head and body were covered, nothing showing of the face, a mesh drape hiding the features.
“She’s here to help you,” Luke explained.
Rio glanced at him, needing to refresh everything she knew about his face, his body, his energy. In the flickering light, he looked ferocious and his body seemed huge. Next to him, the robed figure was slight and came up to his pecs.