The Undead Pool (The Hollows #12)(50)
Author: Kim Harrison

“They aren’t gone,” Ivy said. Vampire fast, she strode into a corridor. My heart pounded as I jogged after her, being careful to look for attack since she wasn’t. “They’re in the safe room,” Ivy said as she stopped before a formidable door. It was old, made of wood, and had been hacked, burned, and dented in the distant past, the damage under at least two clear varnishes by all appearances. No attempt had been made to erase them. Badges of honor, perhaps, or trophies?

“Piscary’s safe room?” I asked, wondering where the electronic safeguards were when Jenks dropped down and wedged his sword into the keyhole.

“It’s his bedroom,” she said, fidgeting as Jenks worked. “The safe room is somewhere in it. I think I know where, but I’m not sure.” Her eyes met mine, black and beautiful. “He never trusted me with it. I’m surprised Felix found it.”

“Got it!” Jenks sang out, the dust spilling from him turning a bright silver.

“But the undead tend to think alike.” Ivy waved us to be quiet and I retreated a good eight feet back. Seeing me ready, Ivy opened the door just enough for Jenks. I listened, ears straining as Jenks flew in, inches above the floor.

“It’s empty,” he called, and Ivy flung the door open. “It’s just a bedroom,” he said, shrugging as I followed her in. “A really freaky bedroom. You want me to do another sweep?”

I shook my head. Slipping a frustrated brown dust, he hung at the doorway to watch the hall. Freaky was the word, and I edged in, my feet silent on the thick rugs with patterns of faces in the flowers. It looked like an Egyptian bordello, maybe, with palms and pillars, and gauzy drapes falling from the ceiling to enclose the heavy-looking circular bed holding court in the center of the room on a raised dais. There was only one other door that I could see, and it led to a bathroom as evidenced by the tile and fixtures. A chandelier, yellow with age and almost as big as the bed, hung to the side, casting a faint light.

“I told you there’s no one in . . . there,” Jenks said from the doorway, his last word faltering when Ivy pointed her katana at him to shut up.

“Help me move the bed,” she said, and I tucked my splat gun in my waistband.

“There’s a secret room under the bed?”

Ivy had put herself at the headboard, and she nodded as I came up the wide, shallow steps. “I think so,” she said, and Jenks snorted, arms over his chest as he hovered in the doorway. “I’ve never seen it, but I once found his room empty when I knew he hadn’t left. There’s either a room or a way out of here, and the bed is the only thing that could hide it.”

The bed was substantial, and I tried not to think about Ivy splayed across it in a blood-induced stupor as I grabbed the frame and lifted the foot. At least, I tried. The thing weighed a ton. It didn’t move even a hairsbreadth, like trying to move the fountain at Fountain Square.

Ivy gave up before I did, frowning at the ceiling and the gauzy drapes. There were cords wrapped in velvet at the four corners, and with a dark expression, she plucked one. It was suspension-bridge tight. My eyes ran from the ceiling to the bed. Were they designed to lift the bed? Someone could go down, then replace the bed and no one would be the wiser.

I looked for anything that might control them, spinning back when Ivy grunted and a sliding sound broke the stillness. She was ending a power-filled strike with her katana, the rope before her snaking up into the ceiling as if being pulled by cheetahs. The cord vanished into a hole with a snap. Faint through the walls came the heavy thump of a counterweight falling.

“That’s slicker than snot on a frog,” Jenks said in admiration, and Ivy slashed the others, a thin sheen of sweat showing. It was fear, not exertion.

“Again,” she said as she took up her place at the headboard, and this time, the bed moved when I steadied myself and lifted. Oh God, it was still heavy, but we managed it. “There,” she gasped, looking toward the bathroom, and we slid it right down the dais’s wide, shallow stairs.

It thumped halfway down and stopped. So much for stealth, I thought, but the falling counterweights would have given us away already.

Ivy was already halfway down the hole in the floor. “Wait,” I whispered, renewing my hold on the line and making a globe of light. I couldn’t touch it lest I break the charm, but Ivy and Jenks could, and the pixy flew it to her. Shadows made her face harsh with fear and uncertainty as she took it. My heart thudded, and she turned back to the stairway. It was a vampire’s safe room; I was scared to death. But there was no way I was going to let Ivy go down there alone, and as Jenks took a last look in the hall and followed her down, I pulled my splat gun again.

My light in Ivy’s hand was a comforting glow, and our steps were silent. There was another door at the bottom of the stairs, and I looked up at the dim square of light. Too many doors. There were too many doors between us and the sun, and I strengthened my hold on the ley line.

Ivy motioned for me to stay back, but Jenks was tight to her ear when she pulled the door open. In a hum of wings, Jenks darted inside.

“I-I-Ivy-y-y!” he shouted, and with a small moan, Ivy ran inside. The stairway went dark but for the thin slice escaping past the slowly closing door. Heart pounding, I reached out and stopped it. Inside, my globe of light rolled about the floor of the small room, making weirdly shifting shadows.

“She’s okay!” Jenks was shrilling as he hovered over Ivy as she frantically felt for Nina’s pulse, the blood-smeared, pale woman in her black nightgown slumped out cold in a lavishly embroidered chair. “Ivy, she’s okay. Pick her up and let’s get out of here!”

Someone had put her down here and left. I wanted to get out before that someone came back. Slowly I retreated to the stairs, taking in the room with its fainting couch, small table, and bank of monitors. Most showed the predawn sky and peaceful streets of ten minutes ago, but two showed a slightly brighter sky with FIB vehicles and ambulances. Stretchers holding vampires and handheld IV bags of blood were being carted out. Apparently Jenks had missed a few cameras. A pile of bedding, sundry clothes, knives, and what was probably blooding toys had been shoved in a corner, and the head-size hole in the floor had an obvious function. For all its lavish furniture, the room reminded me of the room under Cincinnati where we’d found Ivy’s old I.S. boss and Denon. It was a place of hiding, of last stand, and it felt like a trap.

“She’s okay,” Ivy said, her voice almost a sob.