to Rabidism, too,” he tossed over his shoulder. “Oh, but wait, you don’t care about that, do you?”
A large group of rabids slid from between two buildings, directly below Jackal. He ignored both them and me as he studied the map. For a moment, I had the murderous thought of shoving him over the edge, letting him fall into the group of rabids, seeing if he could survive. The monster within approved of this plan, urging me to step forward, to attack when he wasn’t looking. Yes, it whispered. Do it. Jackal would, and he will someday. As soon as he doesn’t need you anymore, he’ll hit you from behind without a second thought.
But that would make me just like him, wouldn’t it?
The opportunity passed before I had a chance to decide. The rabid pack moved away, and the moment was lost. I watched them skulk across the street, hissing and snarling … and then vanish beneath a rubble pile.
I blinked. “Hey,” I said, and Jackal lowered the map, watching as I walked to the edge of the roof and crouched down. “I think I found it.”
We dropped carefully into the street, glancing around for rabids lurking behind cars or around buildings. Warily, we crossed the road and examined the spot where the pack had disappeared. The building next door had partially fallen, and the ground was strewn with broken glass, steel and cement. But beneath a collapsed overhang, a tiny, nearly invisible hole snaked down into the darkness.
Jackal grinned at me, hard and challenging. “Ladies first.”
I bristled. The tunnel entrance sat quietly, like the open gullet of something huge and evil, waiting to swallow me whole. I crouched down and peered inside. Darkness greeted me, thick and eternal, difficult to pierce even with my vampiric night vision. Cold, dry air wafted from the crack, smelling of dust and rot and decay.
“What’s the matter?” Jackal’s smug voice echoed behind me. “Scared? Need your big vampire brother to go down first?”
“Shut up.” Scowling, I reached back and drew my sword, sending a faint metallic rasp into the darkness. If something came leaping at me out of the black, I wanted to be prepared. Holding the hilt backward so that the flat of the blade pressed against my arm, I crouched down, rabid style, and slid into the hole.
My fingers touched rock and cold metal and, when I straightened, I found myself at the top of a long flight of stairs leading down into the unknown. The stairs, partially buried under earth and stone, were metallic, uneven and had a strange rippling effect to them, as if they hadn’t been firmly grounded. If you looked at them a certain way, you could almost imagine they had once moved.
Jackal slid in behind me, feetfirst, dropping to the stairs with a grunt. “All right,” he muttered as he straightened. Unlike me, he had to bend over slightly to avoid scraping his head on the ceiling. Being small did have its advantages sometimes. Shaking out the map, he squinted at it in the dark. “So, according to this, we have to take the red line North to get to the nest, which will be somewhere around this area …” He tapped the paper with a knuckle, looking thoughtful.
“Where, exactly?”
“Doesn’t say.”
“So we’re going in blind. Searching for a lab that may or may not be there. In the middle of a nest of rabids who will trap us underground if we can’t find a way out.”
“Exciting, isn’t it?” Jackal grinned and folded the map again. “It’s moments like this that really make you appreciate immortal life. Don’t you love it, sister? Doesn’t it make you feel alive?”
“I’ll pass, thanks.” Sheathing my sword, I started down the stairs. “Right now, I’ll settle for finding the lab and getting out of here in one piece.”
The staircase descended deeper underground, opening into an enormous tunnel. The familiar rails lined either side of the platform, once having shuttled metal cars back and forth between stations, now quite empty. The ceiling of the huge domed tunnel was strange—a motif of concrete squares, some fallen in large chunks to the platform, stretching all the way down the corridor.
Jackal walked to the edge of the platform and dropped to the tracks, peering down the tunnel. “No sign of rabids,” he muttered. “At least not yet.” He glanced at me over his shoulder. “You coming or not?”
I leaped onto the tracks behind him. “What’s the matter, Jackal?” I sneered, wanting to repay him for that last quip. “Need me to hold your hand every time we go down a dark hole?”
He laughed, the sound bouncing off the domed roof of the ceiling, surprising me. “See, this is why I like you, sister. You and me, we’re exactly the same.”
I’m nothing like you, I thought, but his words continued to haunt me long after we entered the tunnel.
“Man, these things go on forever, don’t they?”
I winced as his voice echoed loudly in the looming silence, a wave of noise traveling down the endless corridor. “Mind keeping it down?” I growled, listening for the shuffle of feet or the skitter of claws over rock, rabids alerted to our presence. We’d encountered a few of the monsters already, and I had no desire to cut my way through another wave. The dark subway tunnels reeked of them, their foul stench clinging to the walls. Nothing else moved here, not even rats. Sometimes, we encountered bodies of rabids, ravaged corpses torn apart by their own kind. Once, we came across what we thought was another dead body, only to have it leap at us with a shriek, swiping at us with its one remaining arm. Jackal seemed to enjoy these encounters, swinging the steel fire ax hidden beneath his duster with vicious force, crushing skulls and snapping bones with a savage grin on his face. I was far less enthused. I didn’t want to be in this underground labyrinth of death, with this vampire I didn’t like and certainly didn’t trust. Because watching him fling himself at the rabids, grinning demonically as he tore them limb from limb, reminded me too much of myself. That thing that I kept locked away, the beast that goaded me into raw animal rage and bloodlust. The part that made us dangerous to every human we encountered.
The part that kept me from ever being with Zeke.
My blood brother grinned at me, swinging his bloody fire ax to his shoulder. “Aw, sister. Don’t tell me you’re scared of a few rabids.”
“A few rabids is one thing. A massive horde in a narrow tunnel is another. And dawn is just a couple hours away.” I glared down the crumbling cement tube in frustration. Old D.C.’s underground was a never-ending maze of tunnels and pipes and corridors that snaked and twisted and stretched away into the darkness. The night was waning, and the tunnels just went on and on, forever it seemed. We’d even stumbled into what looked like an underground mall, with ancient stores crumbling to rubble, strange items rotting on near-empty shelves. I’d once thought the sewers beneath New Covington were confusing; they were nothing compared to this. “Where is this stupid lab?” I muttered. “It feels like we’ve been walking in circles all night.”
Jackal started to reply but suddenly paused, a slight frown crossing his face. “Do you hear that?” he asked me.
“No. What is it?”
He motioned me to be quiet, then crept forward again. The cement tube that we were walking down narrowed, and then I did hear something—something that raised the hair on my neck. If the low growls and hisses didn’t rouse my suspicions, the dead, rotting stench that slithered down the tunnel confirmed it.
Weapons out, we eased forward,
