House Rules (Chicagoland Vampires 7)

Horace glanced around the neighborhood, which seemed quiet and asleep, but we were odd-looking enough that we'd attract attention eventually.

"Let's get inside," he said. "We've taken care of the kids."

"Kids?" I asked.

"Oliver and Eve. They were relatively young. Kids to me and most in my circle." He waved us toward a bit of fence that was rumpled, then lifted it so we could sneak beneath. When we were inside the barrier, we followed Horace toward the building and a set of double entrance doors.

He looked over at me. "You're a kid yourself."

"Vampire since April," I said.

"Good transition?"

"It's had its moments," I said.

The doors, heavy and industrial, hung poorly on their hinges. Horace pushed them open with two hands, sparks flying up from the grate of steel against the concrete pad below. When he'd made a gap large enough to squeeze through, he switched on a flashlight.

We followed him into the building and directly into a stairwell. We climbed up to the third floor and emerged into a gigantic empty space, presumably where the documents had once been stored.

It might have previously been a warehouse, but its storage days had long since passed. No furniture, no shelves, no operating lights. Graffiti marked the exposed brick walls, and water dripped from ceiling tiles into puddles on the scarred wooden floors.

Horace shined a flashlight across the huge room to other side, where the door to the hidden room that James had found stood open.

"That's it," he said, then offered the flashlight to me. "I've been in once, and that was plenty for me. I'll wait out here."

I took it and nodded. Catcher beside me, the circle of light bobbing in front of us, we walked across the room, footsteps echoing across the worn wooden floors.

We reached the secret door, a tidy slab of faux brick that, when closed, would have slotted neatly into the rest of the wall. But for the blood, James never would have found it.

The door rotated on a single point that balanced its weight. A brick to the right of the door stuck out a bit farther than the others. That, I assumed, was the hidden latch that opened the door.

"It's an interesting contraption," Catcher said.

"For someone wanting to hide something, sure."

The scent of blood spilled from the vault, and I was glad I'd had blood before I left the House. Intellectually, I had no interest in the spilled blood of two murdered Rogues. But my baser predatory instincts didn't much care for ethics, and the blood's origin didn't diminish its desirability. I was a vampire, and blood was blood.

We stepped inside.

Oliver and Eve - as Horace had promised - were gone. But the evidence of their brutal murders remained. Their deaths had been marked by the pool of dark blood on the floor, still damp in the night's humidity.

A wave of scent washed over me, and I closed my eyes for a moment against the instinctive attraction.

"Keep it together," Catcher whispered, moving ahead of me toward the puddles.

"In the process," I assured him. When I was positive I was in control, I opened my eyes again, then ran the beam back and forth across the room in the event any clues might be found there. The room was big enough on its own, probably thirty by thirty feet square.

There were no windows, no shelves, no goods a warehouse would actually store. As in the rest of the space, the walls were made of exposed brick. Other than the size, and the hidden door, there was nothing here that differentiated it from the rest of the warehouse.

"Maybe they used this for secure storage?" Catcher asked.

"Maybe," I said. "Customers pay a little more, and their goods get locked into the hidden room."

"If this place was built in the forties," Catcher said, "that means wartime. We aren't far from where the Manhattan Project operated. There could have been sensitive scientific information here, which would explain the security measures."

I nodded, walking back and forth, moving the flashlight a few inches with each sweep, like a TV crime scene unit. And just like in a forensic television show, I didn't hit pay dirt until the end, when a bit of something on the floor caught my eye.

"Catcher," I called, freezing the beam on the spot. There in the dust and grime was a small sliver of wood.

Now that I knew what I was looking for, I scanned the area . . . and found more of them. Two, then a dozen, then a hundred scattered in a triangle about ten feet across at its base.

"What did you find?" Catcher asked.

I picked one up - no larger than a toothpick, but much more jagged - and extended it in the palm of my hand. "Wood slivers. And I'll bet they're aspen."

"McKetrick?" Catcher asked.

"It could be shrapnel from one of his aspen bullets," I reluctantly agreed. McKetrick had invented a gun that shot bullets of aspen intended to quickly dispense of vampires by turning them to ash. He'd tried to shoot me with it. Fortunately, the gun had backfired. He'd caught the worst of the resulting explosion of metal and wood shrapnel, and I hadn't seen him in person since. I also hadn't assumed we'd seen the last of McKetrick, but nor was I thrilled about the possibility he was making a move again. Unfortunately, this evidence pointed that way.

Catcher knelt on the ground and picked up another sliver. "Oliver and Eve were decapitated. If he had a gun, why didn't he use it to kill them? Was he trying to scare them first?"

"I don't know. Maybe it was his first stage of attack, his warning weapon. Maybe that's what got them into the room. If he did this . . ." I murmured, my anger beginning to rise at the possibility McKetrick was involved and that he'd taken the lives of two innocent vampires.

"We don't know McKetrick killed them," Catcher said. "Maybe he used the weapon; then someone else finished the job. There's no direct evidence he's involved."

But I had a hunch. "This is exactly the kind of thing McKetrick would do. Taking out vampires attempting to register? Proving that we're damned even if we try to abide by human rules?"

"You're absolutely right," Catcher said. "But that's not good enough."

And I knew he was right, but that didn't make me feel any better.

* * *

We thanked Horace for his help and drove back to my grandfather's house. Noah, Rose, and Elena were gone. They'd helped Jeff garner what information he could before taking Rose, who was overwhelmed with grief, home again.

Jeff was at the computer when we walked inside. I offered up the wood sliver.

He knew of McKetrick's penchant for aspen, and he whistled at the sight. "Is that what I think it is?"