He was waiting by a foliage-hidden hall at the back of the building.
“What the hell happened to you two?” he asked once he saw our bloody clothes.
“Savannah took things into her own hands,” I growled, ignoring the way her body tensed with anger.
Damian held up his hand as a guard appeared around a corner and stopped in front of a door. The guard punched some buttons into a keypad, waited, and then turned and left.
“Let’s go.” He slipped into the hall.
Savannah stepped around me and grabbed my arm. “We’ll deal with your drama later, Jax, but right now, we focus on getting the damn fingerbone and staying alive. Got it?”
I glared at her and growled again. She was right, though. My mind and body wanted to rage, but we needed to focus on the task at hand if we were going to survive this party. “Stay close to me. And if I give you an order, you listen. Got it?”
“I’ll try.” Flashing me a look that could kill, she turned and headed toward Damian.
The door was made of solid steel, and the magic from its enchantments zinged the air around us.
“We have fourteen minutes before the guard checks the vault again.” Damian moved his hands in an arc, and a series of glowing runes appeared in the air. Like moving pieces on a chess board, he rearranged the symbols by touching and dragging them into position. I’d seen him do this once, and I’d heard rumors that he could sense objects like a Seeker.
“Then we move quickly,” I said.
The runes flickered and disappeared, and the door opened with a snick. I started my watch timer, and Savannah and I slipped through as Damian nodded and shut the door behind us.
Sweet citrus incense burned my nostrils. We descended a narrow set of stairs into a rock-hewn room lit by golden flames that licked out of dagger-like sconces arranged along the walls. Tendrils of steam rose from a central pool of dark water, wafting over the walkways on either side like fog.
Savannah paused and shuddered. “Are those bats?”
I followed her gaze to the ceiling, where I counted at least a dozen large creatures hanging motionless in the corner. A devilish cross between a bat and a monster, their feet were all claws, and two single talons adorned the edges of their wings.
“Something like that,” Damian whispered. “Let’s not find out.”
She nodded and started around the pool, moving quietly, then hissed, “Shit!” and staggered as her left leg bowed. I caught her waist before she landed on her knees, but something rolled off the walkway into the pool.
Plunk.
“Damn.” She felt around the steam that covered the floor and picked something up. She glanced over her shoulder at me, fear flashing in her eyes. “A bone. It looks like…part of a femur. Human?”
A few squeaks, and then the fluttering of wings reverberated above us.
I shoved her forward. “Go!”
Sharp pain sliced my shoulder blades as a heavy weight landed on my back. Reaching around, I ripped the hellish creature off me, but not before it sunk its talons into my arm. I snapped its neck and cast it aside as another swooped in.
Damian plucked it from the air and slammed it into the wall, knocking it out cold.
Ahead of us, two creatures dove for Savannah. She ducked under one and swung the bone like a baseball bat, hitting the other and sending it careening into the pool.
She glanced over her shoulder at us as I noticed darkness snaking in from the walls. “Run! I’ll draw my shadows.”
We slipped around her into the hall ahead, slashing the wings of two more bats, while she drew the darkness. I’d seen her weave shadows many times now. With each attempt, her skill seemed to be growing. In seconds, the room behind was pitch black, the light from the sconces blanketed by her magic.
She stepped out of the dark, her lips pursed in worry when her eyes landed on the blood dripping from the puncture wound in my arm. It was already healing.
The bats quieted in the other room.
A dozen chambers opened onto the hall, all barred with grated iron doors that buzzed with magic that allowed us to see inside.
Caged objects, prisoners as much as the artists in the auction.
Savannah peered inside several of the rooms. “Holy shit, he has a lot of stuff.”
Dismay darkened my thoughts as I glanced inside the closest chamber. Stacked to the ceiling along all walls of the twenty-by-twenty-foot room were Mesoamerican antiquities—ceramic masks, stone sculptures, and a giant circular astronomical relief.
“Damian?” I growled, frustration edging into my voice. “Where is it?”
The fallen angel’s signature pulsed, and he strode down the hall. For a moment, he hesitated, then stopped in front a door. “It’s here. But it’s going to take me a while to get in. A word of advice: don’t touch the iron doors. They have some sinister enchantments on them, and I don’t know what they do.”
He didn’t have to warn me. The strange magic vibrating off them made me want to retch.
This was an accursed place.
Damian knelt by the enchanted door and began to work his magic. I was about to join him when the astringent stink of rotting meat with fruity undertones drifted into the room.
Something wasn’t right.
My ears twitched at footsteps coming up behind. Ducking, I spun and blindly rammed into the attacker, my shoulder connecting with his gut. A shrill woman’s voice pierced my ears as I landed on her.
I pinned her arms down as she tried to claw my face, and that’s when I noticed her ashen skin and fangs. Vampire. And not the civilized kind.
“Jaxson, behind you!” Savannah screamed.