Moon River

Poor Mary Lou.

Once again, I wished desperately that I could reach out to her in some way, but my sister and I were not in telepathic contact with each other, and neither were Danny or Fang; at least, in Fang’s case, not anymore.

What have you done, Fang?

The opening was not obvious, even if a hiker had managed to work his way to this spot, which I suspected few had, and those who had might not live long enough to talk about it. Indeed, the boulders were surprisingly free of graffiti, which was a rarity anywhere in Los Angeles.

The three of us had climbed onto them and were presently looking down into a small opening. I could have been Alice looking down into the rabbit’s hole. Except there were no rabbits down there, nor even a hallucinogenic Wonderland. No, nothing but murderous vampires.

And my sister. And Danny. And Fang.

Lord help us all.

Anyway, I could see through the darkness to a dirt floor below. I could also see imprints of shoes. Fresh imprints, too. Women’s running shoes included. If I had to guess, those were Mary Lou’s running shoes.

Seeing them now, and knowing she was close by, sent a fresh wave of panic through me.

I reported what I saw to the others, knowing that the entrance would lead down into a natural tunnel system.

“Tight squeeze,” said Allison, “even for us girls.”

She was right. How a grown man, no, a werewolf man, could expect to drop down into the hole, I didn’t know.

“Yes, this is a very big problem,” he said again.

“No,” said Allison, “you are the big problem.”

Believe it or not, I might have detected some flirtation in Allison’s voice. Yes, she’d always had a crush on the big oaf. Anyway, Kingsley grunted at that, then reached down into the hole, grabbed hold of the edge of one of the flatter rocks, and did something that surprised even me. He pulled the sucker out. The huge rock—which was a borderline boulder—flipped out and tumbled down the pile, landing with a heavy thud in the dirt below.

We all looked down into the now-much-bigger hole.

“It’s not a problem anymore,” he said a little smugly.

Allison literally melted. “That was very impressive.”

Kingsley looked at her, his eyes glowing wildly, blinked, and then shrugged. He might have just realized my best friend was smitten with him. “Yeah, well, I’m a bit of a monster.”

“Well, it was just so…very impressive.”

Cool your jets, I shot to her telepathically, and to Kingsley, I said, “It was also loud as hell…so much for the element of surprise.”

“I thought we agreed that we weren’t going to surprise anyone,” said Kingsley, slightly annoyed at my reprimand.

“Well, not anymore,” I said, and shot Lady Goo-Goo Eyes another hard stare, and then I leaped down into the tunnel entrance. “Come on,” I said up to them, stepping aside, and soon my friends, one after the other, landed next to me.

Chapter Forty-one

We were all in.

Although Kingsley and I could see just fine, Allison, despite her newfound witchy gifts and her ability to remote view, could not see in the dark. Which is why, presently, she was using the flashlight app on her Galaxy Note.

Kingsley, I couldn’t help but notice, filled the narrow tunnel completely. In fact, he had to turn his massive shoulders slightly to stand reasonably comfortably. Even still, he hunched forward a little and looked, in general, miserable. Like a caged beast, perhaps.

The walls of the tunnels were mostly natural, but the ceiling, I saw, had clearly been carved out by someone. When this had been done, I wouldn’t know, and, since none of us were archaeologists, we probably would never know. In fact, I wasn’t even entirely sure vampires had hacked their way through this tunnel system. It could have been hobos or even a WWII bunker, for all I knew.

Of course, the only thing that mattered was who—or what—was using the caverns now.

And that would be vampires, and according to Allison, there were at least three of them.

Under the glow of Allison’s cell phone app, I closed my eyes a final time and cast my thoughts out, down through the narrow tunnel, sweeping around a procession of ghosts—a host of lost spirits haunting the tunnels themselves…and into the caverns beyond, which were well within my range.

Once in the caverns, I noted the many torches flickering along the rock walls. No, vampires didn’t need light, but light wasn’t a bad thing, either. Perhaps these vamps wanted some additional light, perhaps the light was even for their human guests. I didn’t know, and I didn’t really care.

Next, I saw the first chamber. The room was decorated with a ragtag collection of furniture: old lounge chairs, garish couches and stools. Actually, the furniture looked like something from an old nightclub, which it very well might have been. How, exactly, the furniture had made it down here, I hadn’t a clue, although I suspected there might be another entrance somewhere. I didn’t know.

Anyway, on a purple camelback couch with an exaggerated hump sat a very old man who wasn’t a man at all. He was a vampire, in fact, and I recognized him from Allison’s own scan of the cavern. Of course, I recognized him from elsewhere, too. He was a vampire with a death wish. A vampire who, quite frankly, didn’t want to be a vampire anymore, and had been willing to kidnap a boy—a boy he’d thought was my son—to force me to give him the ruby medallion, which would have reversed his vampirism, thus rendering him mortal. His plan hadn’t worked, and now here he was, sitting casually on the couch, looking like an old creep at a nightclub, wearing black slacks and a white dress shirt, legs crossed. He appeared to be waiting for someone. Who that someone was, I could only guess.

I expanded my awareness out and into the next room, where I saw my ex-husband still secured to the desk. But this time, he wasn’t alone. This time, Detective Hanner of the Fullerton Police Department was standing next to him, her hand on his head…and there was my sister, sitting in a straight-back chair, guarded by, of all people, Fang, who stood next to her.

Her arms were tied behind her back, her head was covered by a burlap sack. Her chest shuddered with each sob. Bile rose in my throat at her terror. My sister!

Hanner was holding a long blade away from her body, a blade that Danny kept his widened eyes on closely. My ex-husband, who had once been a loving and caring father, who had actually once even been a good husband before life—and the afterlife—had become too much for him, was scared shitless. I knew Danny and I knew that look. It was a look he’d given me many times after my turning.