"It had furniture the last time I was here," Brand told the others. "I think it would have been used as a parlor if it was owned by a family. As it was, it only had a sofa and a couple of chairs—not in the best shape." He pointed to the side window. "My escape route." An obvious statement since the bottom pane was shattered.
Antton nodded. "He kept you in the basement, you said."
"Yes." Going back to the kitchen, Brand opened another door, revealing a pantry with the back door of the house facing them. To one side was a second door. "Through there are the stairs. I'm… I'm not sure I want to go down there."
"You should," Antton said firmly. "Facing your fears is better than avoiding them."
Mag took Brand's hand, gripping it tightly. "We'll be with you."
Swallowing hard, Brand nodded. The stairway was narrow, ending at a concrete-walled room with a furnace in one corner. "There." He pointed to a steel door in the opposite corner that stood slightly ajar.
"Nice of him to leave it unlocked," Antton said scathingly as he opened it the rest of the way.
There was a short hallway with four more steel doors, two on either side. Each one had a small barred window. Brand walked to the first one on the right. "My home away from home," he spat out, his anger coming to the forefront, overriding his fear.
"Also unlocked," Antton said after testing the lever that served as a handle then opening the door. "Love the accommodations."
There was a metal bed, bolted to the floor, with a thin mattress on it, restraints at each corner. Four chains were bolted to the wall opposite it with manacles at the end of each one. The only other item in the windowless room was a lidless toilet.
Mag's breath hissed in as he surveyed the cell. "How the hell did you manage to survive?"
"Half the time I was unconscious. The rest…" Brand shivered. "At first I had no way of knowing how many days were passing. I could have been here for a week, or a year. Of course he never bothered to tell me. He only said that in time I'd be free. 'When I was ready' was the way he put it. Freedom didn't include my daily exercise regime, once he began allowing that." He stepped back into the hallway. "Can we get out of here now? Please?"
"Mag, take him back upstairs," Antton said. "I want a few minutes more down here to see if I can pick up on anything that might help us find out where he's moved on to."
"Are you all right?" Mag asked once he and Brand had returned to the ground floor.
"Fuck no!" Brand regretted his angry reply when Mag flinched, saying more calmly, "Not really, but I will be." Then he barely smiled. "Come on, let's explore a bit while Antton's doing whatever he's doing. I'd like to see the rest of the place. Okay, maybe 'like' isn't the right word but…"
"I understand. Upstairs first?"
"Yeah, sure." Brand actually managed a chuckle. "Maybe we'll find a casket or two."
"That myth is true?" Mag asked, following Brand out to the stairs going to the second floor.
"Not really. No caskets, no 'earth from the homeland'. Usually nice, comfortable beds behind well-secured doors and windows."
"Can I ask something?"
"Sure."
"If you hunt vampires, how do you kill them if they're sleeping in a really safe place?"
"Take their heads."
"That's not what I meant and you know it."
"Sorry. I hunt them down while they're out at night. It's surprising how many of them either don't know about dhampir, or believe they're invulnerable because they can go invisible if they think I'm around. They should know I can sense them, no matter what." They were upstairs by then. Brand tried the first door they came to, which opened under his touch. "See, fancy accommodations."
Mag snorted. "If you go in for minimalist décor."
The room was empty, as were the others they checked out, although from the marks in the carpets, it was apparent there had been furniture in each of them at one point in time.
"I wonder which moving company he used," Mag said after they exited the fourth room.
"United Vampire Lines," Brand replied with a smirk.
"I suspect," Antton said, startling them when he appeared at the top of the stairs, "he had his minions—as Brand calls them—hire a van to transport what he wanted to keep. The rest is probably in a dump somewhere."
"Did you find anything that'll help us locate his new lair?" Brand asked.
"I know his scent now. Unfortunately, unless I'm within a mile or two of him, that really doesn't do us much good."
"Still better than what I can do, as far as sensing him," Brand said.
"But you will be able to pick up on any of his followers when we find him. That will be an inestimable help. You can tell us how many others we'll be dealing with."
"There's still one problem," Mag pointed out. "How do we find him in the first place?"
"Use you as bait," Antton replied.
"Hell no!" Brand put a protective arm around Mag's shoulders.
"He'll be quite safe. I plan on bringing in a few people to help us, now that I've found you," Antton told him.
Mag cocked one blond eyebrow. "I hope the 'people' are like you."
"Two are. The other two are vampires. As I told you, there's a death sentence on Fedor's head. It was placed there by the ruling council, which consists of two vampires and two werewolves, all of them quite powerful in their own rights."
"Are you, for lack of a better word, this council's enforcer?" Brand asked, when he realized he had no idea where Antton fit in the scheme of things.
"I am, and that's what we call ourselves. Enforcers."
"That's sort of… Mafia like." Brand smiled slightly. "But whatever you call yourself, it makes me feel a bit better about Mag's safety, especially if the others are as well."
"They are. The vampires are not as old as Fedor, but then very few are. However, between the five of us, we should be able to take him down once we find him."
"If we find him," Brand said.
"We will. For now, however, I suggest we get back to my place and come up with a specific plan for doing that." Antton took out his phone as he led the way back to where they'd parked. From what Brand could tell, he was alerting the others to meet him there.
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