The Thief (Black Dagger Brotherhood #16)(116)

Jane took them down into an office that looked—well, perfectly normal. Like the kind you’d see in a school. A business. A home when the person worked out of their house.

There was a chair. A desk. Cabinets. A phone and a lamp. An overhead fixture with fluorescent lights in it.

As Jane opened the door to what appeared to be a supply closet, Sola shook her head at all the essentially average—and decided it was just like Assail. On the surface, nothing seemed different or unusual. But the underlying purpose, the truth beneath the appearance of “usual,” was a wormhole from which there was no escape.

Vampires. In Caldwell—

Shit, they had to be other places, too. All over the world—

“Through here, Sola,” Jane prompted.

Sola followed the command on autopilot, her higher reasoning too engaged on the extent and implications of everything to concern itself with why she was walking into a shallow space of shelves full of pads, pens, and printer cartridges. But then the back wall, which certainly looked to be solid, opened to reveal a dark space.

“Nothing will hurt you,” Jane said. “Come on.”

Sola stepped through…and found herself in a tunnel. A…tremendous tunnel that was big enough to drive two SUVs side by side through, and long enough so she had absolutely no sense of where it ended in either direction.

“I’m not supposed to do this, but I don’t care.” Jane started walking off to the left. “It’s not going to hurt anyone.”

Sola fell into stride with the woman and put her hands in her fleece’s pockets. She looked around incessantly even though the walls were smooth and unadorned, the floor was concrete and nothing else, and the rows upon rows of ceiling lights were just the identical boxes of fluorescents over and over again.

“The species has existed for as long as humans have been on the planet,” Jane said. “They’re an evolutionary offshoot of us—or, depending on who you ask, they were created by the Scribe Virgin as a superior species. For me, as a scientist, I reconcile the two creation theories by believing that the mother of the race probably interjected a little of herself at a certain time in human history, introducing a variation to our double helix that took things in her direction.”

“The Scribe Virgin?” Sola asked weakly.

“My mate’s mother, actually. But that’s a story for another time.”

They came up to a shallow set of stairs that led to a steel door with a pass-code pad next to it—but Jane just kept going.

“The thing is,” the woman continued, “you’ve got to ask yourself why all the vampire myths? Everything has a basis in truth—and the two species have been coexisting and interacting for eons. Vampires, however, don’t want to be known. They have no interest in courting notice—they have enough to worry about with the Lessening Society.”

Sola glanced over at the woman. “Lessening…?”

“It’s the enemy. The Omega has been trying to eliminate the vampire race for centuries. It’s a family thing—again, long story.” Jane shrugged. “I found it all hard to believe, too, trust me. It’s also very scary to learn that something you thought was only a Halloween joke is in fact just like you and me. Except with fangs, of course.”

As they came up to a second set of shallow steps, Jane paused. “The thing you have to remember is that they only want to live their lives in peace. They’re like all of us in that regard. They want to grow up, and fall in love, and settle down—have a family. Deal with the ups and downs of life. They keep themselves separate because, let’s face it, as much as the human race tries to pretend otherwise, at its core, we are self-interested, dangerous, and unreliable. We can’t even treat each other with respect and tolerance—and vampires are a micro-minority.”

Jane turned away, did something, and a bolt shifted free with a clunk. Then they were leaving the tunnel for a small stairwell that opened up into a…

Sola recoiled.

It was a wood-paneled hallway…that was full of clothes. No, really, she thought. She was looking at racks of what seemed to be—yes, they were men’s clothes—and the suits and slacks, shirts and jackets, were hanging on a series of metal department-store racks that ran the distance of the tall, thin space.

“Don’t mind Butch’s wardrobe. He tries to keep it in his and Marissa’s room, but it’s just gotten to be too big. We’ve learned to live with his shopping addiction.”

Jane went to the left again and Sola hurried to catch up, although it wasn’t like there was far to go.

It also wasn’t as if she were walking into a Vincent Price–worthy Gothic mansion or anything. Nope, this was just a simple house. A perfectly normal single-story kind-of-cabin-ish place, with an open space and a galley kitchen in the front, and what was clearly a couple of bedrooms in the back—

“A foosball table?” Sola murmured.

“Butch, V, and Rhage love to play.” Jane went into the little cooking area. “How’d you like some non-caffeinated herbal tea? I think you’ve had enough jolts for this evening, don’t you agree?”

Sola didn’t answer, but went over to check out a desk full of computers…and then the black leather sofa…the rug…the lamps…the coffee table with copies of The New England Journal of Medicine, Sports Illustrated, and the Sharper Image catalog on it…