I gasped, jerking straight as the line hit me. I tried not to, but I did.

"Rachel?" Ivy said, close and concerned.

My stomach was rolling, and I panted to keep from vomiting. The undulating surges of power from the nearby line were making me seasick, and every nerve felt the power grating across it. "Fine," I gasped, unable to even think of the right words. There were three charms that were generally used, and my dad had taught me them all, plus one that wasn't used except for the most dire situations. Oh God, this was awful.

I took a heaving breath and held it, fighting to think past the pain and dizziness. Ivy's cool hand touched my shoulder, and my breath exploded out as I felt her aura slip to cover me, soothing.

"I'm sorry!" Ivy shouted, her hand leaving me, and I almost fell when the pain returned.

"No," I said as I reached to grasp her hand and the pain again vanished. "You're helping," I said, watching her fear that she'd hurt me replaced with wonder. "It doesn't hurt when I'm touching you. Don't let go. Please."

There in the lamp-lit dark, she swallowed hard and her fingers in mine became firmer. It wasn't perfect. I could still feel the waves of ley line coming at me, but at least it wasn't so raw and the agony across my nerves was muted. My thoughts returned to last Halloween, when she had bitten me that last time. Our auras had become one before she lost it. Was I seeing a lingering effect of that? Were Ivy's and my auras the same? Able to protect each other when one was compromised? Was it love?

Edden stood beside us, not sure of anything, and taking a steadying breath, I put my free hand more firmly on the door.

"Quod est ante pedes nemo spectat," I whispered, and nothing happened.

I shifted my feet. "Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?" I tried again, and still nothing.

Edden scuffed his feet. "Rachel, it's okay."

My hand quivered. "Nil tam difficile est quin quaerendo investigari possit." That one did it, and I pulled my hand back when I felt a quiver of response rise up from the charm buried in the cement and ping through my soul. Nothing is so hard that it can't be found by searching. It figured that it would be that one.

I stepped back and dropped the line, and Ivy searched my face before she let go of my hand and I fisted it. Edden put his fingers into the curve of the handle and pulled. The door cracked, and Ivy flung herself back with her hand over her face.

"Holy crap!" I exclaimed, gagging and falling back as well. I almost tripped Edden as he reared back at the stench. The light from the lantern showed Edden's expression, twisted in distaste. Whatever was in there was long dead, and anger started trickling in. Kisten had succeeded in killing our attacker. Now who would I yell at?

"Hold this," the FIB captain said as he shoved the flashlight at me. I set my lantern down and took it. Edden pulled the door farther open to show a black archway and little else. The stench rolled out, old and putrid. It wasn't the smell of decay, which would have been muted from the cold and perhaps sheer time, but the stink of vampire death that lingered until the sun or wind had a chance to disperse it. It was incense gone bad. Decaying flowers. Spoiled musk and dead sea salt. We couldn't go in, it was that bad. It was as if all the oxygen had been replaced with thick, poisonous, decaying oil.

Edden took his flashlight back. Holding a hand across his nose, he played the light over the floor to find the edges of the room. I stayed where I was, but Ivy came forward to stand at the threshold. Her face was damp from tears, and her expression was blank. Edden moved to get his shoulder in front of hers, but it was the smell that was keeping her out, not his presence.

The floor was the same dust-colored stone, and the walls were cement. A black scum stained the floor, crinkled and cracked, the color of old blood. Edden followed it to the wall to find scratches gouged in the concrete.

"Neither of you go in there," Edden said, then gagged from the deep breath he had taken to say the words. I nodded, and he quickly played the light over the rest of the room. It was a nasty hole of a place with a made-up cot and a cardboard box table. On the bare floor beside another smaller puddle of dried blood was the body of a big black man, faceup and spread-eagled. He had on a lightweight shirt, open to show that his throat had been completely torn out. His lower body cavity had been opened as well, almost as if an animal had been at him, though I expected the small mounds of something piled beside him were probably his insides.

I couldn't tell if he had been attacked while not wearing any pants or if his attacker had eaten through them. Vampires didn't do this. At least not that I'd heard. And this wasn't the man who I'd remembered at Kisten's boat.

Edden's light shook as I held it on the body. Damn it, it had all been for nothing.

"Is that Art?" Edden asked, and I shook my head.

"It's Denon," Ivy said, and my gaze jerked from the corpse to her and back again.

"Denon?" I gasped, feeling my gore rise.

Edden's light dropped away. "God help him. I think it is."

I leaned against the wall as my knees went wobbly. That's why I hadn't seen him lately. If Denon had been Art's scion, assigning Ivy to his stable of runners would make it really easy to watch her. And insulting to assign her to me.

"The cot," Ivy said, her hand over her face. "Bring your light to the cot. I think it's a body on there. I'm not…sure."

I came close and carefully angled the lantern's light to the cot, but my hand was shaking and it wasn't clear. Edden had known Denon. Had a friendly rivalry with him. Finding him torn apart was hard. I heard him take a shallow breath, and his light found the bed as well.

I squinted, trying to figure out what I was seeing. What had first looked like a bundle of forgotten clothes and straps…"Shit," I whispered as my mind shifted and it made sense. It was a gray, grotesquely twisted body, the bones warped into unnatural curves as the two viruses had fought for control, each trying to make the vampire into its version of perfection. Pale white parchment skin had flaked off in sheets, drifting slightly in the draft that opening the door had created. The black hair was puddled around the skull, and there were no eyes in the sockets gazing at the ceiling. Canines twice as long as a normal vampire's spouted from the jaw. The mouth had been ripped wide and the jaw was hanging at a broken angle. A hand with several fingers missing hung from the corner of it. God, had he done it to himself?

Ivy jerked, and I swung the light wildly as she tried to go in. Edden grunted, grabbing her arm and using her momentum to fling her to the opposite wall of the tunnel. She hit with a thump, her eyes wide and angry, but he had his arm under her chin and wasn't letting up.

"Stay out of that room!" he shouted, pinning her to the wall, his voice echoing in what sounded like pity. "You are not going in there, Ivy! I don't care if you kill me. You are not going in that…filthy"—he took a gasping breath, trying to find words—"cesspit of a hole." He finished, tears shining in his eyes. "You're better than that," he finished. "You have nothing to do with that perversion. It's not you."

Ivy wasn't trying to move. If she'd wanted to, she could have broken his arm without a thought. Tears shimmered in the light as I angled the flashlight down. "Kisten died because of something I did," she said, anger shifting to pain. "And now I can't do anything to make the hurt go away. He's dead! Art even took that from me!"

"What are you going to do!" Edden shouted at her, his voice echoing. "The vampire is dead! You can't get revenge from a dead body. You want to tear him apart and throw chunks of him at the wall? He's dead! Let it go or it will ruin your life, and then he wins again."