The Rough Riders

Chapter Fourteen

The door was heavy iron, bolted into the brick with rusty bolts. It was one of the older warehouses in the Waterfront District, surrounded by antiquated wooden crates stacked high enough to reach the barred windows. One of those stacks leaned against the alley fence, thick enough that Thomas had been able to scale it, his slight weight doing little to unsettle the wood.

"I can't see Kitty," he said, peering through the grimy pane. Clutching the sill with one hand, he rubbed at the glass and squinted again. "But there's something drawn on the floor."

"What is it?" Nathan kept both hands on the stack of crates, bracing it in case of abrupt shifting.

Thomas shaded his eyes. "...it looks like a circle of some sort. And it's red. Glistening."

"Blood then."

"Probably. I can't smell it though."

Slate didn't look up from the padlock he was picking, a pair of bobby pins held in the corner of his mouth. "Ya ain't gonna be able to through the brick and glass, Thomas." He held a hand up and Jack set a pocket knife into it, stepping back to give the other man room to work.

Against the other wall, the gold-furred wolf sat, staring intently at the door. She had led them through the tangle of warehouses without pause, bolting into alleys and squirming under fences that the vampires had vaulted, stretching themselves to keep pace with her. Reaching Warehouse 6, she had whined at the corrugated steel double doors facing the narrow excuse of a street. When Slate caught up with her, she had pawed at the base of the doors and sat, pointedly looking up at him.

That she was clearly more than a dog, proving Jack's nose and Slate's familiarity with werewolf eyes correct, was obvious when Slate muttered about "needin' another way in." Without hesitation, she had sniffed the pavement and then bolted into the alley, leading them to the door that had a telltale sign—a brand new padlock.

"How long is it going to take you to get that damn thing open?" Nathan looked over his shoulder as he reached up, letting Thomas take his hand for balance as the slimmer vampire made his way back down the stack of crates.

Slate didn't break away from his task to glare at Nathan, but concentrated. In the silence awaiting his reply, the click! was audible and he just looked smugly at the other vampire. Spitting out the bobby pins, Slate tossed them aside and handed Jack the pocket knife. "Ya gotta make sure she doesn't come in after us. She's just a lit'l thing. Might get herself hurt."

Jack nodded, and Slate ignored him as he knelt to murmur to the wolf. Turning to Nathan, Slate looked at the guns on his hips and huffed out a breath. "Ya know those prob'ly ain't gonna do a damn thing to whatever she's got in there."

"Probably not, but I'd rather have them and not need them than need them and not have them," Nathan said, adjusting the holsters hanging from his hips. He handed the shotgun to Thomas and sighed, rolling his shoulders. "We're probably going to have to do this old school."

Slate nodded, looking up at the slice of sky visible from the alley. "We ain't got much time. Sky's already gettin' lighter."

"If we have to hunker down here afterwards, the place probably has a storeroom or something we can stay in. Cover up any windows in it or find a cellar." Nathan's eyes were rutilant as he looked at the door, and there was an odd hush about his steps. He moved in perfect silence to the dangling padlock and plucked it from the latch, set it down precisely on the asphalt to avoid risking a noise.

Slate nodded, acknowledging Nathan's unspoken declaration. It was time to throw restraint to the wind. All of the care they used in concealing themselves was unnecessary here. Thomas would be of little help, he knew—the boy wasn't a fighter—but he, Nathan and Jack could let slip that facade of humanity that they wore simply to get along with each other.