Whirling, she pelted down the tunnel and lunged into her cell. All the cell doors opened inward. Letting the water and food fall where it would, she slammed the door shut, yanked out her makeshift lock pick and with shaking fingers dug into the lock.

Please please please please.

Out of the corner of her eye, she could just barely see down to the tunnel’s end. The feral Vampyres clawed the tunnel gate open and raced toward her.

She gave the pick in the lock a final, desperate twist. Even as the tumbler inside the lock turned, the piece of hairpin bent.

Sobbing, she threw herself backward as the Vampyres reached her cell and tried to snatch her through the bars. Claws raked down her left forearm, and she stumbled and fell. Jarred from her teeth, the flashlight bounced along the floor. The thin, cold beam of light flashed over fangs, arms straining toward her between the bars of the cell door, and bloody, distorted faces.

There were so many of them. Dozens, well over a hundred.

Over the sound of the Vampyre’s snarling, she became aware of the high, almost inaudible whimpering sound she made as she tried to catch her breath, and she made herself stop. Rolling stiffly onto her hands and knees, she gathered together the water jug, the food packet, and the flashlight.

She had dropped the bent piece of hairpin, but she didn’t bother to look for it. It had fallen somewhere too close to the cell door and those deadly, groping hands. If the Vampyres wandered off, she could look for it then and see if it was salvageable.

Clutching her meager possessions, she scooted backward until her shoulder blades connected to the wall opposite the cell door. Then she slid along the wall sideways until she reached a corner. It didn’t give her any more distance or safety from the Vampyres, but she needed to brace herself against the steadiness of the two walls.

After she set down her supplies, she crawled over to the cot, grabbed one end and dragged it to her corner. It was probably made from aluminum, and it was as lightweight and flimsy as it looked. It bounced along the floor until she reached her corner again.

She flashed the light over the Vampyres still straining to reach her. Unlike the cheap cot, the cell door was strong and heavy, and it held solid against their combined weight.

Halle-fucking-lujah.

She grabbed the scratchy, wool blanket and wrapped it around her shoulders. Upending the cot onto its side, she pulled it close until the ends connected with the walls of her corner, and she sat inside the triangle it made.

Childish? Possibly. Certainly it didn’t serve any better purpose other than giving her the thinnest of fragile psychological barriers to hide behind, but hey, it had been a truly rotten night, and right now she would take any positives she could lay her hands on.

Patting the edge of the cot, she took several deep breaths.

Then she turned off her flashlight. It was even more important to conserve the batteries as much as possible now.

She did end up getting an answer to one question. Now she knew where she was.

For decades, she had heard stories of the tunnels that ran underneath San Francisco. In the 1990s, when she and Julian had been at the hottest part of their scorching affair, Julian had taken Nightkind troops to burn out a nest of them that had gathered below the city. Melly had spent a sleepless night, aching for him to return.

Vampyres turned feral when they fed often enough from drug-addicted humans. She would have thought that fact alone would be all the detriment they needed to keep from doing it, but as Julian had told her, human problems didn’t just vanish when one became a Vampyre.

If they were an alcoholic or a drug addict as a human, they still had those cravings as a Vampyre, only then neither alcohol nor drugs had any direct effect. Not only did Vampyres need human blood for sustenance, they needed blood as a carrying agent.

They could only get drunk from feeding from humans who were inebriated, and they could only get high from humans who were high. And Julian never could keep the tunnels completely clear. The ferals always came back eventually.

Melly was in the tunnels, somewhere underneath San Francisco.

The feral Vampyres kept making incoherent, snarling noises and trying to get to her through the cell door for a very long time. She pulled one corner of the blanket over her head.

Rocking, she whispered, “Mom’s going to be so pissed when she finds out.”

She huddled in on herself, until the warmth from the rough blanket took away the chill of shock that had set in. Then she turned on the light again and inspected her packet of food.

Food, ha. Her lip curled. Someone had picked up a few random items at a gas station. There were a couple of packets of jerky, a bag of mixed nuts and a couple of candy bars. Still, it was calories and better than nothing. She would have been really worried about her relative worth if they hadn’t given her any food at all.

Opening a packet of jerky, she chewed each bite slowly and thoroughly, sucking every bit of taste and satisfaction she could out of it. While it didn’t fill the gnawing hole in her belly, at least it was something. While she had a terrible sweet tooth and wanted one of the candy bars badly, Justine’s words echoed in her mind.

Most likely bring more food and water.

She didn’t dare eat anything else, because she had no idea how long she needed to make what she had last. Firmly, she set aside the food and opened her bottle of water to drink only what she felt she absolutely needed.

After that, she got to work again.

Inspecting her cot, she found the mechanics of it were simple. It folded in the middle and sat on four legs that were hinged so they could be folded against the bottom of the frame. After studying the legs, she narrowed her eyes at the Vampyres still straining at the bars of her cage.

Taking hold of one of the legs, she bent it against the hinge, back and forth, until the hinge broke. Hefting the aluminum piece, she stood and walked over to the bars to stand just outside the reach of those grasping hands. As she walked up and down in front of the Vampyres, she watched and waited…

Until there. That one.

Moving fast, she darted forward to snatch the wrist of one of the Vampyres and yank on it as hard as she could.

Snarling, the Vampyre’s body slammed against the bars of the cage.

In that same moment, Melly struck, stabbing her makeshift stake into the Vampyre’s chest. It wasn’t easy. The cot leg didn’t have a sharp enough point, so she had to throw her weight into driving the tip through the Vampyre’s chest wall. If she had been less fit or a human woman, she might not have been able to do it.