“Let’s be careful,” he said quietly, echoing my thoughts. “Sarren knows we’re here and that we’re very close. He has had time to prepare for our arrival. When we go into the lab, it is likely that he will attempt to whittle us down first, either with traps or living creatures. We must be prepared to face whatever horrors he is sure to throw at us. Sarren himself is at his most dangerous face-to-face, and his mood can shift in the blink of an eye. Even after decades of knowing him, learning his patterns and how his mind works, I still could not tell you exactly what he will do in a fight.”

“Well, I can answer that,” Jackal said breezily, and bared his fangs in a lethal grin. “He can die. Painfully. After I rip his other arm from the socket and shove it so far down his poetry-spouting piehole that he chokes on it. What I don’t understand is why we’re standing up here yapping away when we should be down there kicking in his door. So, come on, team.” Jackal’s gaze was mocking but dangerous. “Let’s go kill ourselves a psychopath.”

The lab was quiet as we scaled the chain-link fence and made our way toward the long white building at the end of the lot. Nothing moved; no rabids roamed around the lab, at least not on the outside. The windows were empty and dark, but the closer we got to the building, the more convinced I became that Sarren was watching us. Kanin avoided the front doors, taking us around the back, though I didn’t know why we bothered with stealth. If Sarren knew we were here, we might as well kick down the doors and start killing anything in our way.

Instead, Kanin used his elbow to break a window, somehow managing to do it silently, and we slipped into the dark rooms of a madman’s lair.

Once inside, Kanin turned to Zeke.

“Where to now?” he asked softly, as I scanned the room warily. It was white and sterile, with long counters lined with many small things that glinted in the darkness. I shivered, re- membering another lab, another set of precise, sharp instruments, winking at me from a pool of Zeke’s blood.

“I’m not sure,” Zeke whispered back, unaware of my sudden, gruesome recollections. “But if I had to guess, I would say the basement level. That’s where the scientists did a lot of their experiments. Where I stayed most of the time when I was here.”

My stomach turned, thinking of all the things they might have done to Zeke, but Kanin only nodded. “Then lead the way,” he said, nodding to the door. “And let’s be careful.”

We slipped into the lab, following Zeke down endless narrow hallways, through white sterile rooms filled with counters, computers and strange machinery. Nothing looked broken or out of place. There were no bodies, no blood, no hints that anything was out of the ordinary. Except for the emptiness and eerie stillness, you wouldn’t guess that anything was wrong.

And yet, the lab still made my skin crawl. It was too clean.

Everything was overly white and gleaming and polished, smelling faintly of chemicals and disinfectant. Not only sterilized, but lifeless. My world—the world outside—was broken and falling apart, full of rust and rubble and decay. But, despite that, it was still alive. This place was almost offensively pristine and undamaged, too perfect to be real. It felt like a hospital, cold and antiseptic and dispassionate, as if terrible things had happened here but were quickly scrubbed away and forgotten.

Somehow, it was even more disturbing than if we’d opened that door to find blood-drenched walls and mutilated corpses.

I expected that of Sarren. Carnage, not cold, polished rooms and silence. He was changing the rules on me, and I didn’t like it.

Apparently, I wasn’t the only one who thought so.

“Huh,” Jackal remarked, his voice echoing weirdly down the empty hall. “Well, that’s kind of disappointing. We come all this way to kill Sarren, and he can’t even be bothered to leave a few traps or bleeders wandering around? I’m almost offended.”

“Maybe he didn’t have time,” I mused hopefully. “Or maybe he’s not here after all.”

Kanin shook his head.

“No.” The Master vampire gazed around the silent lab, narrowing his eyes. “Do not be deceived by this tranquility.

Whatever Sarren was planning here, he needed to ensure that he was not interrupted. That’s why he set the rabids loose on Eden. With all the chaos outside, he could work in peace, unchallenged and undisturbed. He has had plenty of time to prepare for our arrival. I expect we will discover what he has in store for us anytime now.”

“Let’s hope so, old man,” Jackal said, and casually knocked a case of vials to the floor, where they shattered on impact, scattering bits of glass across the tiles. I tensed, half expecting the room to erupt into chaos with the sudden noise, but everything remained as still as ever. Zeke shot him a look of annoyance, and Jackal grinned. “I didn’t get all dressed up for nothing.”

We came to the elevators and found they still worked, though both Kanin and Zeke were leery of going into a small, enclosed metal box with nowhere to escape to. It would be the perfect spot for a trap, an explosive, or another nasty surprise. It would be, Zeke pointed out, the spot where he would set up a trap for vampires; a mine on the underside of the box would be lethal in such a tight, cramped space. Or if they decided to climb down the shaft, one spark in a metal tube filled with hydrogen would produce a firestorm that would turn even a group of vampires to ash instantaneously.

That pretty much convinced us to take the stairs. Though we were still extremely cautious as we made our way down, remembering that the last time we’d been in a tight stairwell looking for Sarren, it had exploded. But nothing happened, no explosions, no traps, nothing. We came to a door, opened it easily, and stepped into a labyrinth of dark, empty hallways.

The silence was deafening here, and Jackal turned to Zeke.

“Are you sure you have the right lab, puppy?”

Zeke nodded, leading us forward. “I’m sure.”

The door shut behind us with a hiss, plunging the corridors into absolute darkness. My vampire sight shifted to compensate, and we trailed Zeke through the long, narrow halls that crisscrossed each other and angled around corners, passing swinging doors and pitch-black rooms, until I was completely lost.

“Getting tired of this, puppy,” Jackal muttered as we turned down another hallway, identical to all the others. “Do the bloodbags here have some sort of complex, or do they like living like rats in a maze? Feels like we’re walking in circles.”

“I know where I’m going,” Zeke replied coolly.

“Good to know. Maybe there’ll be a piece of cheese waiting for you at the end.”

“Did you hear that?” I whispered into the stillness.

Everyone froze. Silence descended, throbbing in my ears.

But just ahead, around the next corner, I heard the faintest swish of a door closing.

My skin prickled. Weapons out, we edged up to the corner, Kanin leading this time, and peered down the hall. A simple gray door sat at the end of the corridor, swinging slowly into place. We weren’t alone down here.

Kanin motioned us to stay put, glided silently to the door, and pushed it open to look through the crack. I gripped the hilt of my sword as he peered into the darkness, waiting for something to explode through the frame or yank him through the door. After a moment, Kanin glanced back and motioned us forward. Behind me, Jackal let out a sigh.