Schooled by Hollywood horror movies, I dropped to the floor. Nothing happened. I felt like a fool as I got to my feet. I hoped Adam hadn’t felt the way my heart had pounded.
“Warren?” I said. “I think I found the missing encyclopedias. And possibly the ghosts that should be here.”
He didn’t say anything.
I thought of that thump I’d heard. The one I thought meant that he was looking under the bed. An unconscious body falling to the floor would sound like that, too. I drew my gun but stayed where I was.
“Warren?”
I couldn’t feel any distress from him through the pack bonds. He wasn’t dead. He wasn’t feeling pain or stress—I was pretty sure I’d know it if he were. If this was another joke, I’d shoot him. My gun wasn’t loaded with silver bullets so it probably wouldn’t kill him.
All of the lights went out.
13
Adam’s words rang in my head. “Don’t split up. Don’t get complacent.”
We had done both, Warren and I. My fault more than his. But I didn’t have time for “should haves” and “what-ifs” right now. I concentrated on here and now.
“Guns don’t work in the dark without specialized equipment,” Adam had told us on some training session or other. “If you can’t see your target clearly, you’re too likely to shoot your friends.”
The werewolves and I could see just fine at night, outside where there was always some sort of light. In this house with no windows, I was blind.
I holstered my gun and drew the sword. I didn’t bother to be quiet about it. Whoever had taken down Warren already knew where I was. It was as dark as a cave, and my enemy thought that these conditions would benefit them. It was my job to make them wrong.
I wasn’t helpless without sight. Movement would make floorboards shift, fabric rub, and my ears were very sharp. I concentrated on what my senses could tell me. I heard one person breathing and hoped it was Warren.
We were in a vampire’s house. It might be midafternoon, but I had seen Wulfe awake and moving during the daytime before. Vampires only have to breathe when they want to pretend to be more human or when they want to talk—which requires air. I had a very good nose, even among the werewolves. I opened up my other sense, too, the one that let me feel magic in the air.
I heard and smelled nothing. Moreover, when I tried to reach Adam using our mating bond, I could not get through. It was still there, but I couldn’t touch it. The same was true of the pack bonds and my bond with Stefan—which I tried in a fit of desperation. Someone was interfering. Something. I knew what it was.
“Soul Taker,” I said.
A brush of air current had me raising the katana across my body. After I held it there, something hit it. A touch, not a blow, metal on metal that rang softly rather than a proper clang.
Wulfe was mocking me.
I had to assume that my opponent knew exactly where I was. Maybe Wulfe had some of that specialized equipment Adam had talked about. Maybe vampires didn’t need any light at all in order to see. Either way, standing around waiting to be attacked when he could see me and I couldn’t see him seemed stupid.
I bolted out of the bathroom, finding the doorway by memory. My shoulder caught something that yielded like flesh, but not hard enough to do more than send me sideways for a step until I caught my balance. I didn’t let the brief misstep slow me down much.
I had assumed that the lights had gone out all over the house, but the light edging the bottom of the bedroom door said differently. My attacker had shut the door, trapping us inside, and turned off the lights just in this suite. The light under the door was not enough to penetrate the darkness, even for someone like me who could see in the night. But it gave me a goal.
The bedroom was very sparsely furnished, and everything was pushed up against the walls—there was nothing to trip me up as I sprinted to the door. But it was a huge room, maybe twenty feet by thirty feet that I was crossing on a diagonal.
Wulfe chased me. I couldn’t hear him, couldn’t smell him, but I could feel the floorboards move under my feet. And I knew that he was just behind me.
I slapped my hand on the switch, illuminating the room once more, and bounced off the wall like a swimmer on a turn. When speed is your only superpower, you learn to keep moving. This time I ran toward where I’d heard the sounds of breathing. Toward Warren.
Behind me something hit the door hard—as if to slam it shut when I’d never tried to open it. That sound told me I’d done the right thing by going for the switch instead of the door. I hadn’t considered escape with Warren apparently incapacitated, but it was nice to know that the morally reprehensible choice would not have worked anyway.