“How horrible . . .” Nasrin whispered.
I knelt by Christopher and put my arms around him.
“No . . .” he moaned.
Nasrin crouched by me, her voice calming. “It will be fine, Christopher.”
“We’re not staying,” I told him. “You are not in a cage. You are free.”
He tried to rock back and forth. He couldn’t even hear me.
Behind us, the vampiric horde swelled somewhere in the walls, like an avalanche ready to break and bury us whole.
“We can’t linger,” Ghastek said, shifting in the vampire’s arms. His other two bloodsuckers halted.
“No . . .” Christopher murmured.
“Shhh,” I told him. “Look at me. Look at my eyes.”
I let my magical defenses slip a little. My power curled around Christopher. He raised his head and looked at me. “Mistress . . .”
“I won’t let anything bad happen to you.” I was getting very good at making promises I couldn’t keep. “I won’t let you get stuck here in a cage. Come on.”
I pulled him to his feet.
Curran looked at Nasrin. “Carry him if you have to. We need to go.”
Nasrin took Christopher’s hand. “Here, hold on to me. It’s okay. It will be fine.”
We began jogging past the cells. Corpses watched us pass with empty orbs. The putrid smell choked me. Dear God. So many people.
“Child!” a female voice called.
I stopped in midstep. I knew that voice.
An arm in a dark sleeve thrust between the bars, above a rotting corpse pressed against the iron. A woman looked at me from inside the nearest cell. The last time I saw her she had been middle-aged, with a stocky powerful build and a face the color of walnut. She looked decades older now. Her cheeks sank into her skull, hollow and withdrawn. Her skin hung off her bones. Dirt and dry blood stained the indigo mesh veil covering her dark hair and forehead. She was a ghost of her former self.
“Naeemah.”
“Child.”
She came from an ancient family of shapeshifters who served as bodyguards. Months ago Hugh had hired her to guard me, though not out of the goodness of his heart. He had begun to suspect that there was something off about me, but Roland sent him on another assignment, so he instructed her to watch over me and keep me alive until he could come back and pick up where he’d left off. My aunt had chosen that particular time to waltz into town. Without Naeemah’s help, I would’ve been dead.
I turned to Curran. “We have to get her out.”
He grabbed the bars and let go. “Silver. I need the saws.”
“We’re short on time,” Jim said.
“I’m not moving until she’s out,” I said.
Jim gave me a hard look.
“She said she wants her out,” Andrea told him. “Don’t give her any crap.”
“Take your time,” Ghastek said. His vampires moved to cover the way we had come. “Nobody should starve to death in a cell.”
Jim pulled out the saws and he and Curran began slicing through the bars. Metal screeched.
Naeemah watched me with feverish eyes.
“What are you doing here? Did Hugh put you here?”
“Yes. For helping you,” she said. “And for my son.”
“What happened to your son?”
“He refused a job for d’Ambray. I’m a lesson he wants to teach my children.”
I added one more item to my “Reasons to Kill Hugh” list. It was getting long.
One cell bar hit the floor.
A vampire shot into the passageway. Ghastek’s ancients moved like the two blades of a pair of scissors. Two coordinated slices of their talons and the invader’s head rolled to the floor.
I hadn’t realized how tired I was while I was moving. I was standing still now and the exhaustion was trying to pull me to the ground. And once I landed, I would stay there.
The second bar dropped down. One more and the gap would be wide enough for her to get out.
The avalanche of vampiric minds was getting closer.
Third bar. Naeemah squeezed through the opening.
“We need to run now,” Ghastek said, his voice very calm.
“Which way?” Curran asked.
“This way.” Naeemah ran down the hallway. “I know the way out.”
“Do you trust her?” Jim asked.
“Yes!” I ran after her, stumbling.
We dashed across the room. Behind us the door shuddered—the undead were trying to break through. My legs decided this would be an awesome time to stop supporting my weight. Curran grabbed my arm, steadying me.
A dark hole gaped in the wall in front of us. Naeemah dove into it. The wererats followed her.
A vampire fell from the ceiling, cutting off Nasrin and Christopher. The healer reared back and slapped the undead upside the head, ramming it against the cell on the left. The vampire’s skull broke like an egg dropped on the pavement. I turned to Curran. “What is she . . . ?”
“Iranian lion.” He pointed at the hole. “Go!”
I reached the hole and looked down. All I could see was a shaft leading down at a sharp angle. Here goes nothing. I jumped in legs first and slid down on my ass, rolling through complete darkness. My butt hit something wet. I smelled algae. My hands slid over slime. I hurtled down through the tunnel. If there was a concrete floor waiting for me below, I’d make a lovely splat.
Light flared ahead. I planted my boots into the bottom of the tunnel, but the slick, algae-coated stone offered no resistance. If this had been a movie, this would be the part where I was supposed to yank a knife out and dig it into the stone to slow myself down. Except I’d break my nonexistent knife, hurt my arm, and still end up as a wet human pancake.
The tunnel ended. I went airborne for two terrifying seconds and plunged down into warm water. Yay, survival. I kicked up to the surface and swam away from the hole in the ceiling.
A huge room spread before me. Above, an ornate yellow ceiling, beautiful and gilded, soared in elegant arches, as if someone had opened a portal in time and Renaissance glamour spilled out. The golden swirls glowed, bright enough to bathe the entire chamber in soothing light. An enormous dusty chandelier hung from the circular recess in the ceiling, like a collection of crystals suspended from the roof of a cave. The remnants of red curtains sagged on both sides of me. Beyond them the room widened, its bottom flooded with emerald-green water. Plants covered the water’s surface. Cream and ivory lotuses, the tips of their petals touched with pink, floated next to larger bright yellow lotus blossoms. Star-shaped lilies bloomed among wide leaves, some lavender, some scarlet, some with petals of light orange darkening to copper-red near the center. Ten feet above the water a balcony, cushioned in greenery, dripped vermilion and moss-green vines.
What the hell?
Curran swam up next to me.
“Are you seeing this?” I asked.
“Yep.”
“So I’m not hallucinating?”
“Nope.”
“Think if we crawl on that balcony, those plants will eat us?”
“If they try, I’ll eat them first.”
Naeemah climbed up the side wall and jumped onto the balcony, disappearing behind the plant growth. Thomas and Robert followed.
“We’re in the Orpheum Theater,” Ghastek said behind me.
“You’ve been here?” I asked.
“No, but I’ve seen the photographs, when I studied for my trip to Mishmar. This is Slosburg Hall, one of Omaha’s historic buildings. It was among the structures Roland had bought.”