He glanced at me. “So you have nothing in your past you would rather forget?”
My smile held little in the way of humor. “Haven’t we all?”
He half shrugged. “I suspect you and I have more than our fair share, though.”
That was undoubtedly true. “I was speaking generally rather than personally.”
“I know.” He motioned to the right of the building. “The blast shaft is over this way.”
We made our way down the hill. The grass was still dew-kissed despite its being close to ten, meaning we left a very clear trail behind us. But as Jonas didn’t seem worried about it, there was little point in my being so.
The grass gave way to gravel as we neared the base. The pitted concrete walls loomed above us, thicker and higher than they’d seemed from the valley’s rim. We kept to the shadows of the wall, moving in single file toward the western edge. The silence seemed heavy and oddly uneasy this close to the building, and I had a feeling we were not the only ones awake and aware in this place.
I flexed the fingers of my free hand and tried to relax. If there were watchers here, then surely Jonas would be aware of them. He was a ranger, after all, and trained for this sort of thing. Given that he wasn’t reacting in any way, either I was imagining things or our watchers were friendly.
He stopped about ten feet shy of the end of the building and motioned upward. “We can access the break from here.”
“And just how are we going to get up there? Neither of us have wings, and you didn’t bring any ropes.”
“Cats don’t need ropes, and I can boost you up.”
I had cat genes and I certainly couldn’t have leapt that high—the top of the wall was a good twenty feet or more away. That was one hell of a boost up.
“Come on,” he said, hunkering down and cupping his hands. “We’re running out of time.”
In more ways than one, I suspected. But I slung my rifle back over my shoulder, then placed a foot into his hands and lightly touched his shoulders for balance.
“Ready?” he said.
I nodded, my gaze on the building’s edge high above us. Without warning, he thrust up, and I was suddenly soaring into the air. A heartbeat later, something sleek and black raced past me, seeming to defy gravity as it ran up the pitted concrete wall and disappeared over the edge. An edge, I suddenly realized, I wasn’t going to make . . .
I made a grab for it anyway, but missed and, just for an instant, I seemed to hang in midair, going neither up nor down. Then gravity reinforced itself, and I began to drop. I slid my fingers against the concrete, trying to find something to grab on to, but there was nothing . . . then another hand wrapped around mine and my fall came to an abrupt halt.
“Got you,” Jonas said and, with a grunt of effort, hauled me up and over the edge.
The minute I was safe, he released me and rose. “Wait here. I’ll go check the break.”
I nodded, not about to admit that I really couldn’t have done anything else right then. While I’d never been afraid of heights, I wasn’t a fan of falling from them, even if my genes generally meant I landed on my feet.
I took several deep breaths to calm the butterflies in my stomach, then pushed to my knees and looked around. The roof was concrete like the rest of the building, but it w
as mostly covered with long drifts of leaves and other forest debris. At this end of the building, however, the concrete that was visible was black and riddled with cracks and large potholes. Bomb damage; obviously, though, the bombs used here had not been the ones they’d used on Carleen and the other satellite cities. This place would not be standing here in this condition if they had.
“Okay,” Jonas said. He was squatting next to what looked to be a particularly large fissure near the other edge. “It looks like we’re in the clear.”
I rose and walked over. The break was about three feet wide and double that in length, and it dropped down into a darkness that was thick and foul, but free from the scent of vampire.
“Are you sure this leads into the main base?”
“Yes.” He glanced up. “You ready?”
No, I wasn’t. Although I was well aware that we needed to figure out whether this place was the base I’d discovered earlier, I had no desire to enter it. And it wasn’t just the fear of the vampires. There was something within the darkness, an awareness that edged toward anger.
There were ghosts here, ghosts who were not only resentful but, I suspected, violent.
“Tiger?”
My gaze rose to his. “Vampires are not the only things we have to worry about in this place.”