Our footsteps, quiet as they were, sounded hollow in the stairwell. The air was dry and dusty. Andre opened the door at the bottom and the scents in the air changed abruptly.
Now I smelled Stefan, Adam, and Samuel as well as Littleton—but the strongest scent of all of them was the demon. As it had at the hotel, after only a few breaths, the reek of demon drowned out everything else. The door at the bottom of the stairway had kept the scents contained.
We walked even more quietly now, though, as Andre had said, if Littleton was here, he'd have heard us come in.
The basement was darker than upstairs, and someone without preternatural sight might have had trouble seeing at all. We were in an entryway, similar to the foyer upstairs.
There were a pair of bathrooms next to the stairway; and the men sign fell off when I pushed open the first door. Streetlights filtered through glass block windows allowing me to see that the room was empty except for a broken urinal leaning crookedly against one wall.
I let the door close. Andre had checked the other restroom and was already walking past a cloakroom and into a short hallway, the duplicate of the one upstairs complete with doors.
I left him to it and started on the other side of the stairs. The first room I walked into was a generous-sized kitchen, though there were only empty spaces where a refrigerator and stove had been. The cabinets were hanging open and bare. Along the inside wall there was a folding half-door covering the top of the counter. With it open, the church members could have served food from the kitchen to the room on the other side without walking back out to the foyer.
Something scuttled behind me and I spun around, but it was only a mouse. We stared at each other for a moment before it went on its way. My heart was beating like a drum in my ears—stupid mouse.
I came out to find Andre standing in front of the double doors next to the kitchen. The door was chained shut and locked with a shiny new padlock.
He put his hand on the door and something beyond the door growled softly—a werewolf.
"He won't have left them free," Andre said, though he made no effort to break the chain. "That door would never hold a werewolf who wanted out."
"Andre?" Stefan called out. "Is that you? Who's with you?"
"Stefan?" Andre whispered, frozen in place.
"Open the door." I pushed on his shoulder urgently. Stefan was alive. If I could have ripped the doors off the hinges myself, I would have. Stefan and at least one of the wolves were still alive.
Andre took hold of the chain gingerly and pulled until one of the links broke.
I reached past him and jerked on the chain, letting it fall to the floor as I pushed one of the heavy doors open. I slipped past Andre and found myself in a gymnasium the size of the sanctuary upstairs. The small windows on one side had been covered with black paper and taped with duct tape, but there was a torchiere lamp with a dim bulb hooked up to a car battery that provided enough light to see by.
In the very center of the room, Stefan sat cross-legged inside a large dog crate, the kind you can buy at a pet store. About ten feet away there were more crates lined up next to each other. Something tight and angry eased as my eyes found a leggy red wolf, a muscular silver and black wolf, and a huge white wolf with crystalline eyes: Ben, Adam and Samuel.
Andre rushed past me and knelt in front of Stefan's cage. He touched the latch and the dim bulb flickered. Magic sometimes has an odd effect on electricity—I heard a humming noise and Andre jerked his hand back, shaking it briskly.
"The cages are spelled," said Stefan dryly. "Otherwise don't you think my companions over there would have torn them to pieces?"
I noticed then that he was being very careful not to touch the bars on the side of the cage. He looked drawn and as pale as I'd ever seen him. His usual T-shirt was splattered with old blood, but other than that he looked like himself.
"A lot of people think you're dead," said Andre.
"Ah," said Stefan, turning his brooding gaze toward me. "They are mistaken."
Stefan was alive and well, but I wasn't so certain about the rest.
I took a step toward the wolves, and the red wolf in Ben hadn't wanted out. He'd wanted to eat me. Uncle Mike had been right. Demons had a bad effect on werewolves.
"The demon's magic makes it quite impossible to escape these cages," said Stefan behind me. His voice was mild, but somehow I knew he was angrier than I'd ever seen him.
"Sam?" I said approaching the white wolf. He was too big for the cage and had to bend oddly in order to avoid touching it. As I came closer, he began to shake. He whined at me, then snarled.
In the farthest cage, Adam growled but he was looking at Samuel, not at me.
"Adam?" I asked and he looked back at me. He was angry all right, the scent of the werewolves' frustrated rage rose over the scent of demon. But his brown eyes were clear and cold. It was Adam in control. Samuel, I wasn't sure of.
I reached out and touched Adam's cage. Nothing happened. No flash of power, no blinking lights. The magic didn't bother me though the bars felt warm under my fingers. I set the stake down on the floor and tried Zee's knife, but I couldn't get it to touch the bars—all it did was make the light go out again.
The door was locked with a stout padlock, but there were lynch pins in all the corners, holding the cage together. I tried to pull one out, but I couldn't budge it.
Adam whined. I reached my fingers through the bars and touched his soft fur.
"When Littleton is here, Adam loses it, too," warned Stefan. "If I'd known the effect the demon would have on the werewolves, I'd have left them out of this. Warren and Daniel are dead."
"Warren's not dead. He's badly hurt, but he's recovering at Adam's house," I said. "And I knew about Daniel."
Andre gave me a strange look, and I realized I hadn't told him that Daniel was dead.
"I am glad to be wrong about Warren. I was expecting Andre sooner or later"—Stefan leaned toward me and his voice took on a chiding note—"but Mercedes Thompson, what in the name of Hell are you doing here?"
Suddenly, as if they were all puppets on the same strings, the werewolves jerked their heads toward a door I hadn't noticed on the outside wall. Adam growled and Samuel hit the side of his cage. Slowly, carefully I pulled my fingers out of Adam's cage, but he paid me no attention. I picked up the stake again, but it seemed a flimsy weapon to use against a vampire.
The door opened to the night outside, and a dark figure hesitated a moment, then strolled in. The door slammed shut behind him.
"Andre, how lovely to see you," crooned Littleton. As his face came into the light I saw that Zee had been right—sooner or later, all sorcerers stop being demon riders and become demon ridden. Littleton was still in control, because his prisoners were still alive, but he wouldn't be for much longer.
"I'm sorry that you came while I was out getting a snack." The T-shirt he wore had a dark stain on it. He stopped before he was halfway across the floor and smiled at Andre. "But I am here now so all is well. Come here."
I'd let Andre convince me that he was right, that Marsilia had managed to give him enough power to handle Littleton. I was so certain of it, that I thought he had some plan in mind when he walked around Stefan's cage.