A Shadow In The City

Chapter 8: Haunts of Leopards

The door to the laundry room was always locked to insure that only residents of the building could use the machines and that said residents were safe from the possibility of someone who didn't belong there storming in while they were going about their business. But Mark simply lent Amy his key so she could do laundry without having to wait in the room if she didn't want to or have to constantly ask him to come with her to open the door.

The lock on the door was sturdy and the room was brightly lit and clean and it was small enough that she could see the whole place from the bench she sat on. There was a folding table next to the bench, and a small window close to the ceiling, too narrow for any machete-wielding, masked psychos to crawl through, but the fact that this room was in the basement made her a bit nervous about going down there. The brass elevator in the lobby didn't even reach that floor. She needed to take a service elevator located next to a small supply closet in the short hallway off the lobby itself. If you asked her, it was a horror movie set-up waiting to happen.

As tempting as it was to use as many of the machines as she could all at once in an effort to get out of the basement as quick as possible, there was only four washers and three dryers and Amy didn't want to be That Guy if someone else living in the apartments above came down to use them.

Not that she had seen anyone else who was living here. At first, she thought that maybe the place was occupied by nocturnal beings or vampires other than Mark who could or would only come out at night and that by now she'd at least see someone on the stairs or elevator. But there was no one. Nine million people lived in New York City and here was an apartment building with potentially a dozen barren apartments. The idea of it being completely empty only added the sense of unease she felt being in this room.

If a crazed killer were to come crashing down the door and use her rib cage to sharpen his butcher knife, who would hear her screams of terror or his evil laughter?

The buzzer from the washing machine snapped her out of her morbid thoughts with a jump. She got up to take the clothes from the washer to the dryer, shaking them out before throwing them in, before shutting the door and starting it. She reached down into the yellowed, cracked laundry basket Mark had given her and dug around for something else to put in. She didn't have that many things to wash, but was still making an attempt to do her laundry the same way she would at home.

She stopped her rummaging when she found a certain shirt.

The cream colored top she wore the day she arrived in New York that was now covered in dried blood.

She let out a sigh as she held it up to look closer at the stains. Amy had joked about being stuck in New York until Tyler's case was resolved but, to be honest, she was more worried about him. She didn't even know this man but she felt the need to help him. Perhaps it was the research she did into his life that made her sympathetic or maybe it was the knowledge that he was the only one of his kind left. Maybe it was witnessing firsthand what the thousand years of entrapment in stone had done to him, both mentally and physically. The manic switching from childlike helplessness to the blind, destructive fury and that was without taking into account the eight man body count he'd racked up since his arrival in the city. The more Amy thought about that detail, the more conflicted she became.

He had been a warrior in his past life. His people were the descendants of the people that sacked Rome- the people that started the trend of sacking Rome, in fact. Of course he was capable of killing a person. But even then, the people he attacked and killed were in the process of attacking someone else. Mugging was hardly a crime worthy of a death penalty, but what if Tyler hadn't stepped in...?

She ran her hand down her face with an exasperated groan. Why was she trying to justify the murder of eight human beings?

"Some white vinegar would get that out-"