The cage shook and dropped two feet. I stumbled and grabbed the ancient handrail to steady myself. “Going down,” I said. “Hopefully not at gravity speed.” I thought I heard Alex chortle, but someone cut off the sound.

The elevator ground its way down with no more drops. It opened on a floor I didn’t recognize, however, a musty area with no lights and a scent I remembered. I was one floor too high, on sub-four, the storage floor. And I was in a small, closed space. In the dark. I switched on my flash and saw clothes hanging in rows, circa somewhere in the early nineteen hundreds. The cloth was rotting and the clothing was falling off the padded hangers. I was in a closet. Still using the flash, I found the closet door and opened it to reveal a bedroom. No windows, lots of rotten wall hangings and wallpaper falling off the walls. It smelled of dust, dead insects, rot, black mold, and vaguely of a vamp I recognized. Adrianna. The room’s door was locked from the outside. Had the flame-haired beauty been kept prisoner here? Or kept a prisoner here?

Fortunately it was an old, old door. I drew on a little of Beast’s power and put one hand on the jamb. With the other hand I yanked on the knob. The hinges fell off and the door broke in splinters. I leaped back as it fell inward, and then forward through the broken opening. I was in a dark hallway. The Judge in a two-hand grip, held low at my thigh, the flash Velcroed to my wristband, I opened squeaky doors to the left and right, seeing nothing new, everything old, with lots of storage rooms stacked with trunks and furniture, smelling of things that were no longer in use.

Then I opened a door that didn’t squeak. Inside, the room was clean and modern. And a security console was set there. I tapped my mic and said, “Alex. I just found the physical location of the second security console you hacked and merged. I have no idea what to do with it. But mark my location and send someone down here later to officially hard-wire it into the routine one. On the orders of the Enforcer,” I added, in case Leo got ticked off when he heard about it and wanted to tear someone a new one. He could try that on me.

“Roger that, Janie,” Alex said. “And, hey, Jane? We might have a problem. Soul and about a dozen cop cars just pulled into the open gate and up to the front door.”

“Crap,” I said into the mic. “Do not try to stop them. Repeat, do not. Get Del up there to tell her what’s going on. Let them know it’s vamp business. Maybe that will keep them in one place until the legal beagles decide how to handle the sounds of gunfire on U.S. soil.”

“Will do.”

I backed out of the secondary security room and found a branching hallway with stairs up and down. I went down, my feet against the wall where the rotten treads might still be strong enough to support my weight.

It took me less than a minute to discover that the stairway went all the way to the lowest subbasement and a small pocket door. Carefully, silently, I lifted up on the small latch and slid the door open. Beyond was complete darkness. Which I totally did not expect. My body protected behind the jamb, I used my flash to inspect the room, and it was indeed the room where Joses lived—or hung undead on the wall, a rack of bones in a man-shaped bag of worn and torn leathery skin. I moved the flash across him for a moment—making sure he was still secured there—before taking in the rest of the room.

It was vacant, smelling of blood and death. The clay floor where the dead had lain was empty, only dark stains everywhere to show the recent deaths. Again, I shined the light on the wall where the prisoner hung. He was watching me, black eyes glittering in the dark, the metal of the wall picked out by the glare of the light.

I moved the flash back and forth, taking in everything. The thing’s talons were embedded in the brick of the wall; rusted iron and tarnished silver bands held him in place, the bands running horizontally around the room, attached to vertical I beams retrofitted in the corners. The holes where his fingers were buried, deep in the brick, showed exposed copper wires. I smelled the stink of burned flesh and ozone on the air. That hadda hurt. Yeah. He was nutso. But that might explain why there were brownouts and electrical problems.

Gee DiMercy appeared in my flash, just inside the room, but hovering, a foot off the floor. I jumped back in shock, and he laughed, his voice bouncing off the walls. I wanted to hit him, but he wasn’t really there. Just a shadow of himself, spectral as any ghost. “What!” I demanded, forcing my heart rate to slow, trying to catch my breath.

“The priestess speaks lies. She is full of deceit.” And he vanished.

I brought my heart rate under control and blew out my tension. Dang Mercy Blade.

I pushed the thought of Gee DiMercy away and chose where I would wait, to the left of the elevator. I stepped through, pulling the door behind me. I shot the flash over Joses and caught him smiling. It wasn’t a pretty sight. His fangs were like a sabertooth cat, upper and lower, and his tongue was a black strip jutting between his jagged incisors. Yuckers. I flipped the light away from the prisoner and stepped into the room.

“Aaaaah.” The breath echoed, bouncing back from the walls.

I flinched and spun, shining the flash back on the prisoner.

“I am visited yet again by U’tlun’ta, warrior of The People,” he said.

That didn’t sound insane, or not the gibbering insanity of the usual rogue vamp. Not wanting to actually chat, I grunted at him.

“Do you not bow? Do you not genuflect in the presence of one worshipped as a god?”

“Shut up,” I said as I considered the elevator door. This close, I could hear the sounds of gunfire and the shrill screams of the injured. And the thump as something or someone landed on the floor of the elevator shaft. But the door didn’t open. The gunfire continued. I crossed the room.

“Release me and I shall give you a third of my kingdom.” I heard the breath grate in his lungs and realized he was about to shout.

Midstep, I pulled a silver-plated throwing knife and focused the flash on him.

“I shall—”

I threw the blade. It spun through the dark and sank into his throat. He made a soft squeaking sound and went silent. “War Women do not miss,” I whispered, only partway lying, “not with knives.” Though he wasn’t dead, not even now. A vamp that old could heal from a dose of silver. However, it did take care of the annoyance factor.

I took my place beside the elevator door and steadied Wrassler’s Judge. The kick was gonna be bad, but if I managed to blow Peregrinus’ head off before the battle started down here, it would be worth it. That was the plan. Like I’d said, it was lousy. And simple. But sometimes lousy and simple were best.