“Push!” I yelled as I hit the door with my shoulder, using my own body weight against that stupid ram.
The door inched closed.
Fingers reached through the gap, wrapping around the edge of the door. “Harder!” I hollered.
Ethan stepped back and pointed his wand at the fingers. “Bravisium!”
His wand shot something dark green at the skeletal hands, and they yanked back. The weight lifted from the door, and we slammed it shut. “Gregory, can you jam the lock?”
“On it!” His fingers worked over the lock, and a moment later he stepped back.
Something heavy—most likely the undead ram—hit the door again, and the center of it bowed toward us.
I took a step back. “Time to go.”
I turned and found myself staring at a damn ladder that went straight up. “Pete, how did they get you down here?”
“No idea. I was blindfolded and zap strapped, but I don’t remember a ladder,” he grumbled, but he went straight for the bottom rungs and started climbing.
The door boomed again with another hit. “Hinges are going,” Gregory said.
“Hurry up, go, go.” I pushed them ahead of me. Ethan paused, and I shook my head. “Go.”
The three of them scrambled up the ladder, and I waited at the bottom, watching the door bow inward with another hit, the sound of the metal screeching as it loosened. Could I kill Barnaby? Maybe. But with my fingers broken, it would be dicey. We needed a better option.
I blinked a few times. Wally had gotten stronger under the Shadowkiller’s attack. So had Gregory.
What if all of their abilities had ramped up?
“We need Orin,” I said, turning and leaping partway up the ladder before taking hold of a rung with my good hand and scrambling upward. I didn’t know how I knew. My head and instinct said to get to our vampire, and he’d deal with Barnaby.
Even with a head start and only one good hand, I caught up to Ethan and the guys. Because they weren’t moving. “What’s the holdup?”
“Trapdoor,” Pete barked down, and a laugh circled up to us.
“You can’t escape me now, and I get to eat all of you!”
This was not how I wanted to end my week.
“Ethan or Gregory, now’s the time!” I looked up to see Gregory climb up and over Pete’s back, hanging off him as he worked on the lock. “It’s a spell holding it, not metal,” he reported. There was shuffling above me as they changed positions and a few curses thrown between Gregory and Ethan.
I looked down the ladder in time to see a pair of glowing red eyes staring straight back. Barnaby opened his mouth, and his fangs picked up the dim light.
“Can’t get worse,” I muttered.
A loud clang rippled upward, and the ladder shuddered underneath us.
“Holy cats, what’s happening now?” Pete hollered.
“Ram skeleton,” I yelled back as Barnaby got close enough to make a grab for my legs. I kicked out, catching him in the face. He swung out into open space but didn’t let go of the rung. Instead, he dangled for a moment and then snapped back to the ladder as if he were made of elastic bands and not barely held together rags and bones.
He snapped his teeth. “Yummy, yummy.”
“How did you even get here?” I kicked out, but he dodged the blow.
“I have friends in high places,” he whispered, his eyes fading to a solid black. “They brought me here to find you. And drain every last drop of your lovely blood.”
“Nope, not today.” I twisted around so my back was against the ladder and my left hand wrapped around the side. Dragging my knees to my chest, I waited for him to get closer. One boot to the face hadn’t worked.
Maybe two would.
“Ethan, hurry your ass up!”
“Almost! The spell is heavy!”
Heavy, what the hell did that even mean? I focused on the vampire lunging up at me. Waiting for him to make a stupid move. And a starving vampire would. I just had to make sure I was ready. And maybe I could hurry it up.
“You want to bite me?” I purred down at him.
“Yes,” he growled.
“Well, you can’t. It’s not appropriate for me to discuss biting in any sort of a way that could possibly be construed as sexual. Unless I said . . . bite me, you dumbass.”
He snarled and let go of the ladder with both hands and pushed toward me, his remaining fingers outstretched to grab me. A blur of stinking death. A stupid move.
I kicked out with both feet, catching him in the chest and sending him flying out into space. His fingers raked down the outsides of my legs like hot pokers, and I hissed through the pain. But the pain was worth it. Barnaby fell ass over teakettle all the way down to the bottom of the ladder.
He howled as he fell, then went quiet when he hit the ground. His ram buddy limped around him, lifting that skull up and looking at me with his bleeding eye sockets.
Not creepy at all.
The only problem? It seemed that I’d really pissed him off rather than disabled him.
A starving, half-crazed, and now very angry vampire wanted to kill me.
He twisted around to stare up the ladder . . . and smiled.
20
“I got it!” Ethan yelled at the same time Barnaby all but flew up the ladder toward me, mouth wide open like a shark going for a seal.
I climbed backward as fast as I could, eyes locked on the incoming vampire. My legs burned, my fingers ached, and just as I was starting to think we wouldn’t make it, I was grabbed from above and dragged through a circular thick metal trapdoor.
It boomed shut as my feet cleared, and I sat there on the ground, breathing hard as Ethan wove a spell over the trapdoor. “That should keep it shut.” The pride in his voice was no small thing.
I barely took note though as my eyes adjusted to the dim light that spread out over the room full of tables. Tables? Was it some sort of classroom? Somehow, I doubted that.
Around the edges of the room, candles lit the space, and for just a brief moment, I thought we were clear of vampires in general. Until I realized what the tables actually were.
“Oh shit,” Gregory breathed out. “Wild . . . we’re in the catacombs, I think.”
Catacombs.
Coffins.
Vampires.
Sure, there hadn’t been any loose shifters in with Pete, but call me crazy, I didn’t think we’d get that lucky again.
Fear spiked through the four of us, circling around and around and ramping up with each pass.
“Everybody take a deep breath and chill out,” I said. “We get Orin, and we get the hell out of here.”
“Agreed,” the other three said in unison.
I pushed to my feet, wincing, but following the pull toward Orin. He wasn’t far. I stopped in front of a coffin that wasn’t even locked. “Help me,” I said as I tucked my good hand under the lip and lifted with my legs. Ethan, Gregory, and Pete all got hold of the lid.
“Seriously, are they all this heavy?” Pete gasped out. “Cats on fire, this is ridiculous!”
I didn’t disagree, but if there was no lock and the vampires were weak, a heavy lid would do the trick to keep them trapped inside.
Slowly we pushed the lid up, stopping about halfway. I could just see Orin’s pale face and wide, staring eyes. But there was no reaction to my face being in his line of vision. “I can’t go farther! I’m on my toes!” Gregory yelped.