Dark Nights: Mistress of the Underground / The Vampire Affair

Chapter 7

“What the hell—” Sebastian’s heart slammed against his ribs as he ran down the hall to where Paige and her friend stood at the door.

“Sebastian,” Paige said, turning toward him. She threw her arms around his neck. “I’m so sorry….”

“Sorry?” Patting her back, he stared over her head at what the detective had done to the lock. Scratches marred the steel surface, but the door remained shut. And locked?

“About your car,” Paige said. She pulled back and lifted her gaze to his, her blue eyes wide with regret. “Did you see it or have the police already taken it away?”

“Oh, yeah, my car,” he said with a brief wince.

“You got my voice mail then?”

He shook his head. “No, I talked to Ben. He told me what happened.”

“Where is Ben?” Kate asked, finally turning her focus away from the door to stare at Sebastian.

“He was with me,” Paige said, her face flushing with color, “when we discovered the damage to your car. But then he had to rush off. He had an emergency.”

“What are you two doing?” He gestured behind them.

“Something strange is going on around here,” Paige said. “And Kate’s going to investigate.”

“Would you open this door for us?” the detective asked. “You’ve been managing Club Underground for a while. You must have a key.”

“There’s a key somewhere in the office,” he admitted. “I could probably dig it out if we had a while.”

“I can wait,” Kate said, folding her arms across her rather impressive chest.

He shrugged. “Fine. I’m pretty tired myself. Haven’t been to bed yet.”

“Really?”

He chuckled. “Well, I haven’t been to sleep yet. I doubt Paige has, either. And don’t you work nights, Detective?”

“So what are you suggesting?” Kate asked. “That we all sleep on this? Why would that be necessary if you have nothing to hide?”

The woman was too damn smart, and that made her a danger—to him and herself.

“It’s really not a problem,” he said. “I’ll dig out the key and open it.” He glanced up, at the camera hidden behind a heat duct register, and wished he could see inside the secret room.

He hoped like hell his vampire friend had been saved and they’d all slipped out the other exit as he stepped inside the office. After banging the desk drawers open and closed a few times, he rejoined the women who had not budged from their spot. He pulled out the ring of keys he always carried. “I think it was right here all along,” he said with a forced laugh. “Per the fire department ordinance, I’m supposed to carry it with me all the time since it opens up the other exit from the club.”

“Other exit?” Paige asked. “But you said nothing was behind that door.”

“Yeah, I didn’t want to mention what it really was, or I thought that you might not want to invest in the club,” he admitted. Honestly.

He had kept a lot from her—ever since he’d entered her life again. But, without her money, the building manager would have shut down the club. Ben had been unable to save the last owner, who’d been fatally wounded in a fight in the club. Sebastian couldn’t have asked Ben for the money; he’d already asked too much of him, forcing him to keep secrets that had cost him his marriage. And with nowhere else to go in Zantrax, most of the society would have moved away—to more welcoming cities and eras. Sebastian hadn’t wanted to leave her.

But she would have been safer had he left.

“Why wouldn’t you want to mention another exit?” Paige asked, her blond brows furrowed in confusion.

“Because it’s an exit to be used only when the other one is blocked. It goes into the sewers,” he said.

“Sewers?” Paige asked, her nose wrinkling with distaste.

“It’s the only other way out of a basement club. So you ladies might want to step to the side of the hall in case some rats run out when I open the door.”

Paige clutched at the sleeve of his suit jacket. “Rats?”

He slid the key into the lock. As he did, Paige dropped her hand from his arm and moved behind him. Kate, however, stepped closer. And covered his hand with hers.

“Uh, that’s okay,” she said. “You don’t need to open it. I can see now that this would open into the sewers.”

“Well, there’s actually another door behind it,” he admitted, “to the stairwell, which takes you down deeper into the sewer. Then you have to follow that tunnel to the ladder that leads up to a manhole cover in the street.”

All of which was true. Zantrax sewers were legendary as passageways for those who wanted to remain unseen. And undead. Club Underground bridged the world between mortals and immortals. A bridge that few should dare to cross.

“Are you sure you don’t want me to open it?” he asked, turning the key in the lock.

The detective tightened her grasp on his hand. “No, it’s not necessary.” She was clever and perceptive. “As you said earlier, it’s late. You should take Paige home.”

It was too late for that. The sun was just rising as he’d slipped inside the club moments earlier. “I can’t,” he said. “Can you see her home? Make sure she gets there safely?”

“But you said you were tired,” Kate reminded him. “Aren’t you going home? So that you can stay with her?”

“Just because I’m going to bed doesn’t mean I’m going home,” he teased with a wink at the obviously disapproving detective. “Besides which, she’ll be safer with you. You carry a gun.”

“I don’t need anyone to see me home,” Paige said, her chin lifted with pride and independence.

He suppressed a grimace over his pang of guilt and regret. Ben was right—he shouldn’t have involved her at all. She should have been the one coming to him for help—not the other way around—but he’d never been there for her like she deserved. She deserved so much better than to have him in her life…

“You don’t have a car, remember?” he called after her.

“Neither do you,” Kate reminded him with a faint smile.

He forced his cocky grin and stepped closer to the sexy detective. “But I never have a problem getting a ride.”

“You’re wasting your time flirting with me, Sebastian,” she warned him.

He only flirted with her because he knew she’d never take him up on his many offers. It wouldn’t take a woman like her long to learn everything.

“I’m too much for you to handle, Detective,” he teased.

She laughed but didn’t deny it. “I already have more than I can handle, Sebastian.” She turned to Paige, who’d stepped out of the office clutching her purse. Instead of joining them where they stood at the door, she headed off down the hall. “But the most important thing is to find who’s stalking your sister.”

“No,” he said.

She glanced at him in surprise.

“The most important thing is to keep her safe.”

Kate opened her mouth, as if she had questions for him. But then she only nodded and headed after her friend.

Sebastian leaned back against the steel door and exhaled a ragged sigh of relief. Then the metal creaked and the door opened. He shifted his weight forward and turned, so that he wouldn’t fall into the room.

God, he hated that room—hated the smell of death that clung to it. Ben had saved many people, himself included, but he’d lost many, too. Like the man who lay atop the table, the stake protruding from his chest.

This was Sebastian’s fault, too. He’d called in a favor to have Owen protect Paige—and the man had died carrying it out. Guilt and self-condemnation gripped him, tightening the muscles in his stomach.

Condemnation filled Ingrid’s dark eyes, for a moment crowding out the madness, as she met his gaze. “You’ve done it again, Sebastian.”

“I stopped them from entering,” he said, and he stopped himself now, holding back from crossing that threshold into the room of death. Blood stained the floor beneath Ben’s makeshift operating table. The surgeon was gone, but he’d been there, trying to save another patient.

“Those mortals wouldn’t have even been here if not for you,” Ingrid persisted.

“No,” he agreed. “None of them would have, including Ben.”

“Who is she—this new mistress of the Underground?” Ingrid asked, her usually husky voice even thicker with disdain.

“Someone important to me,” he said. “I don’t want her getting hurt. If you know who’s threatening her…” Or if she were the one threatening her…

Ingrid’s hatred of humans was well known. “And if I did…?”

“You’d be wise to let them know that I’m going to stop them,” Sebastian said.

“Stop them?” Her dark eyes widened with curiosity and amusement. “How?”

He glanced over her shoulder, to the body with the stake through the heart. “I will do whatever necessary to protect her.”

“So she is important to you,” Ingrid said. “She’s not your sister, as she thinks. Who is she really?”

“She’s my daughter.”

Frustration nagged at Paige as she jammed the key into the lock and opened the door…to her condo. She shuddered at the thought of opening that other door and having rats run out.

Maybe it was better that she didn’t learn whatever made her feel unwelcome—and out of place—at Club Underground. Catching sight of her reflection in the mirror above the hall table, she winced at the dark circles beneath her eyes and the lines fanning them and her mouth. She looked like her mother, not just because of her blond hair and fair skin, but because she looked older than she actually was—courtesy of all the stress and pain she’d had in her life. “Forty’s the new thirty, my ass.”

Her age was probably why she felt so out of place at Club Underground. Everyone else, patrons and staff, including Sebastian, seemed so much younger and more beautiful. Kate was wrong; no one was stalking Paige. No one would want to….

Then she tilted her head, listening…to the sound of running water. The walls were thick in the old warehouse that had been converted to condos; the noise could not be coming from an adjoining unit. It had to be coming from her bathroom. Her pulse raced with fear. She should have had Kate walk her to the door, as the detective had wanted. But Paige had insisted that no one would have gotten past the doorman in the lobby or her security system.

She glanced to the alarm panel near the door. The lights were off; someone had already disabled it. How? Only she and Sebastian knew the code, and he’d remained back at the club.

She fumbled inside her purse for her cell phone. She could call Kate again; she might not have left the parking lot yet. But why would someone break in to use her bathroom?

She dropped her purse onto the hall table and reached instead for one of the bottles on the wine rack beneath it. As she had back at the club, she intended to use it as a weapon. She lifted it, like a bat, over her shoulder as she stepped inside her bedroom. When she crossed the hardwood floor to the open bathroom doorway, the water sputtered and cut off. Steam billowed from the room.

Paige tightened her grip on her weapon of choice. Her intruder would need another shower after she broke the bottle over his head.

But then the man stepped out, water sluicing over his naked skin—all that naked skin. And she dropped the bottle onto the floor. The neck spun until the cork pointed toward him.

“So today’s game is spin the bottle?” Ben asked.

“Game?” she repeated, her eyes wide as her gaze traveled up and down his body.

Ben tensed, every muscle taut with desire at her blatant interest in him. He would have figured he was too worried—and too tired—to want her again. But none of that mattered now. He would want her even if he was dead, which since he’d learned of the secret society had become an inevitable fate.

“Is this a game,” she asked, “your breaking in here and scaring me again?”

“I didn’t break in.” But had it been necessary he would have, so that he’d been able to secure the place before she’d come home.

“Sebastian’s not here,” she said. “He didn’t let you in.”

“He didn’t need to,” he explained. “He gave me a key.”

“He gave you a key?” she repeated. “To my place? And he gave you the security code, too?”

“I guessed the security code.”

Color flushed her face, making her blue eyes even brighter. “It…it’s just easier to remember,” she sputtered.

While she was embarrassed that she’d used the date of their wedding as the code, like they had at the home they’d shared, Ben was encouraged that there might be hope for them. At least he had been until he reminded himself that he had nothing to offer her but secrets and danger.

“Of course,” he agreed, “it’s easy to remember.”

“So you just let yourself in,” she remarked, then gestured toward the bathroom, “and helped yourself to my shower?”

“I needed it.” He’d needed to rid himself of the blood and the scent of death that always clung to him when he went to the Underground.

“Why didn’t you use the showers in the locker room?”

He turned away and reached for a towel. He ran the terry cloth across his skin before wrapping it around his waist. “Locker room?”

“At the hospital. You had to leave me at the club to treat a patient, right?”

He hadn’t given her much of an explanation when he’d had her lock herself inside the office to wait for the detective. But while she’d been looking at the damage to Sebastian’s car, he had seen the mortally wounded vampire and had known someone needed him more than she had.