Embraced By Darkness (Riley Jenson Guardian 5)

"Do we need to go through it?"

"The basement, storage areas, and probably the main offices are accessible through the stairs in that half of the room." I paused, and reached into the guard's mind again, trying to get some idea of the floor plan. Unfortunately, he couldn't tell me much. Guards like him - employed to guard certain rooms, nothing more - rarely ventured beyond the staff rooms on the lower levels. "There are probably other stairs down, but we'd waste too much time trying to find them."

And this particular guard always took the elevator I'd seen in the hall earlier.

Rhoan flexed his fingers, his knuckles cracking lightly, then waved his hand at the wall. "So lead the way."

I did. Energy caressed my body as I went through the wall, once again making my skin tingle and my hair stand on end. The room beyond was unchanged, the cameras still on the tables, still pointed at the false wall. Ready for the action being planned for tonight, no doubt.

I headed right, following the faint breeze that stirred the air. The door was hidden in the shadows, but light seeped out from underneath it. It wasn't bright, but any light was a pain. It made our ability to shadow virtually useless.

"Emergency lighting," Rhoan commented. "That's unfortunate."

"And that's an understatement if I've ever heard one."

He walked past me and pressed an ear to the door. "I can't hear any noise close by, but we'd better be ready for trouble anyway." He glanced at me. "You did bring your gun, didn't you?"

"Yes, I brought it. I'd be stupid not to carry after the near miss with the silver-bullet-bearing rooftop assassin." Of course, I was also still carrying my shoes, which made better weapons for close-in fighting than a laser did - in my opinion at least.

I could - and would - use the laser if I had to, but only if it was absolutely necessary. I might feel safer with the weight of it in my hand, but I wasn't so blindly down the guardian track that I'd shoot on instinct. Not yet, anyway.

"You've been shot at before and it hasn't prompted any great need to carry a weapon," he said mildly. "Just thought I'd check."

I didn't bother responding. He turned the handle and cautiously opened the door. Pale yellow light splashed across his feet and seeped into the room.

Definitely emergency lighting - it wasn't bright enough to be anything else.

The air stirring past my nose carried the warmth of the morning, along with hints of diesel and oil. Perhaps the stair went down to some sort of maintenance area.

Rhoan slipped through the door and began to ease his way down the concrete steps, After ensuring the door closed quietly, I followed. Our journey downward was slow and filled with tension. We were far too visible on this stairwell, and that made for easy targets.

Though why I thought they'd risk shooting us I didn't even want to think about. And I just hoped it was fear of the unknown rather than pesky clairvoyance stepping in with some cheerful news.

Thankfully, we made it all the way down the stairs without discovery. The door at the bottom was unlocked, and there seemed to be nothing but silence beyond it.

Rhoan opened it carefully. A warm wind rushed in to greet us, and the scents of oil and diesel were heavier on the air. But underneath them ran the tangy scent of males. Human males.

The scents weren't sharp, weren't defined, meaning there was some distance between us and them, but it was a warning that we had to proceed carefully.

"Loading bay," he said softly, "The main door is only half down."

I slipped through the doorway and stopped beside him. Sunlight filtered through the gap between the floor and the top of the roller door, highlighting the oil stains splattered all over the concrete. The loading bay itself was empty of vehicles, but not of boxes. Most of them were alcohol filled, if the writing on the side was anything to go by.

Rhoan glanced at me and nodded toward the right. He headed left. The bright sunlight streaming in through the half-open doorway left little in the way of shadows, and I could only hope that whoever was doing the talking didn't suddenly decide to come out into the loading bay. We'd be sitting ducks. Or dogs, as the case may be.

I ran lightly up the stairs and walked along the wall, stepping past the boxes before edging my way to the door. Rhoan, pressed against the wall on the other side, raised three fingers, and began counting down. When there were no fingers left, I reached out, grabbed the door handle, and pulled it open. Rhoan was little more than a deadly blur that flowed inside. I could barely see him, so the humans inside had little hope. The talking stopped abruptly, but there was few other sound. With Gautier gone, Rhoan was now the top guardian at the Directorate, and what he did better than anyone was killing. Not that he killed the two men - just knocked them out cold.

I stepped over their collapsed forms. The room was small, and filled with various machine parts, though there were tools and oils and other stuff scattered about the shelves.

I looked down at the two men. "We can't leave them here. Someone will trip over them coming through the door."

He raised an eyebrow, amusement glinting in his gray eyes. "Safety concerns for possible assassins? How sweet."

I slapped his arm. "No, asshole. I'm worried about them being tripped over and found. Let's not make it too easy."

"I wasn't intending to." He motioned to the door on the other side of the room. "Go check that. I'll move these two into the shadows."

I walked across the room and pressed an ear against the door. The mechanical sounds we'd been hearing seemed to come from here. Certainly they were stronger - so much so it was almost impossible to hear anything else over them.