Bound to Shadows

Which supported my own findings. I took a step down. The stair creaked softly and I paused, listening. The stillness remained, nothing moved, and yet… I suddenly wasn't so sure we were alone.

I padded down more stairs, my gun held at the ready and my muscles jumping with tension. The house remained still and free of any unusual scent or sound.

We reached the bottom step. I pressed my back against the wall, noting the glass littering the hallway. Someone had thrown a mirror—it lay in broken pieces near the front door.

Goosebumps fled up my arms as I stared at the broken shards. Two women had been killed by something that had probably come through their mirrors, I'd been visited in my sleep, and now we had a broken mirror here. Coincidence? More than likely not.

A quick scan of the front two rooms didn't reveal anything out of the ordinary. We turned and made our down the hall, our footsteps as silent as the house.

But as we neared the back room, the sensation hit me—an uncomfortable and all too familiar wash of heat. The sort of heat that came from lust. The sort of heat I'd felt when I'd followed the man who'd come out of Vi

I stopped abruptly. Rhoan glanced at me, one eyebrow raised in question. I signaled that I could sense someone inside and he shook his head, meaning he couldn't. Which was odd, but it didn't make me doubt what I was sensing. I learned long ago to trust what I felt. It might never have gotten me into less trouble, but at least it did give me a heads-up.

He raised his hand again and began to count down. When the last finger fell, I went in low and fast, slapping down on one knee as I sca

I had one brief glimpse of a man—the man Kye had identified as Carlos Martez—then he was gone, his body exploding into a mass of writhing, boiling black smoke that fled sideways. I followed with the laser, saw the mirror. Fired.

But I was too late.

The smoke that had been a man hit it a fraction of a second before the laser beam, the last of him disappearing into the confines of the mirror just before it shattered. I rose and ran over, but the glass was empty of anything but my reflection.

"What the fuck was that?" Rhoan said.

I glanced at him. He stood near the doorway, his gaze sweeping the room and his gun still held at the ready. "That," I said heavily, "was probably the vampire responsible for murdering two women. He's possibly also the vampire behind our beheadings."

"Vampires can't just up and disappear into smoke." He sca

"I don't think we're dealing with an ordinary vampire here."

"But even if he's an emo vamp, the same still applies. They just can't fade into mirrors."

"Unless they were something that could before they became a vampire." I pocketed my laser and began picking up the pieces of glass. If he could disappear through a mirror then he could reappear too, and I wasn't about to chance an ambush.

"So, what was he looking at so intensely?" Rhoan said, walking lightly across the room.

"I don't know." I rose and walked back down the hallway, opening the front door and tossing the mirror's remains out into the garden. Hopefully the bright sunshine would stop him using the shards as an avenue of return. I did the same to the mirror that had been smashed in the hall, then on the way back to the kitchen, I checked the other rooms. I found a mirror in what looked to be the main bedroom, and dumped it whole and intact outside. It looked old and may have well been an heirloom. And while I enjoyed baiting Sal, I wasn't about to destroy something she held dear.

Rhoan was kneeling where our vamp had been, but glanced up as I entered. "It's a trap door."

I raised my eyebrows. "Sal has a panic room."

"Pretty sensible thing for a vampire to do," he commented. "Especially given the human history of distrust when it comes to vampires."

"It's generally not that bad these days." The door itself wasn't large—it was big enough for a body to slip down into but little else. It was also metal, and looked strong enough to withstand a bomb.

"Tell that to the vampires who have lost their heads," Rhoan said, voice wry. "Or to the humans that wanted to belt your lights out."

"That's different." I knelt down beside him and ran my fingers across the cool metal, looking for something that might act as a lock or a switch to get into the thing. "Besides, it's not humans decapitating the vamps. How we supposed to open this sucker?"

As far as I could see, there was no damn lock. There wasn't even enough of a gap between the door and the metal frame around it to squeeze fingers in and rip it open.

"I don't think anyone is meant to." He raised a fist and pounded heavily on the door. The sound echoed through the stillness, and from what seemed a long way away, a dog yapped.

I gri

"Sal," I shouted, leaning forward a little, "it's Riley and Rhoan. The threat is gone. It's safe to come out."

"God," Rhoan said, wincing as he wiggled the ear lobe nearest me with one hand. "Give a warning next time you're going to do that."

There was no immediate answer from the room below us, but the excited barking got louder. Two seconds later, there was a hiss of air—similar to that of an air lock opening—then the lid popped upwards and slowly opened to reveal a ladder.

"Riley?" Sal almost sounded relieved, which definitely meant the situation had been bad.

"Yeah," I said. "The house is clear. It's safe to come out. "

"Good." The sound of steps on metal rungs echoed, then she appeared, looking more than a little disheveled and wearing a white satin night dress that showed off her curvaceous figure to perfection. The little terrier was tucked safely under her arm, though he was wriggling for all he was worth and giving everyone a silly doggy grin.

She set him down once they were both out, then met my gaze squarely. "Thank you."

I raised an eyebrow. "We were only doing our job. And Jack sure as hell wouldn't have wanted to lose the second-best liaison he's ever had."

A wry smile touched the corners of her mouth. "No, I mean thank you for giving me the dog. He saved my life."

"How?" I glanced down at the mutt in question. He was ru

Sal smiled and scooped up the little, dog as he ran back to her. "I was woken up by his barking. When I went down to investigate, he was frantic. The beat of life was strong on the other side of the front door, and whoever it was wore a very powerful nanowire that I couldn't get past. He scampered the minute I neared the door, but he left a miniature camera sticking through the key hole. I destroyed it, but it was too late."

I raised my eyebrows. "Too late for what?"

"To stop it." She gave the little dog another scratch. "Fred gave me the heads up when he started barking at the mirror. That's when I noticed the smoke forming."

She'd called him Fred? A woman with no imagination when it came to decent dog names, obviously. "And you knew what it was?"

"Yes. I've come across mirror wraiths before and have seen what they can do."

"So you smashed the mirror and ran for the safe room?"

"Yes." She smiled, though it held little in the way of amusement. "They can only travel through reflective surfaces, so unpolished steel is a perfect foil for them."

"So why not just destroy the rest of the mirrors in the house?"