recently in Milan and did not want it ruined.
'Your clothing should be the least of your worries, my dear,' Doyle said as he held his hand out before him, a sphere of light glowing from a space just above his palm, lighting his way.
'Are you trying to scare me?' she asked, watching the rats scurrying about in the shadows, bothered by their presence. 'Me?'
He stopped before an ancient metal door, its surface caked with ages of dust, dirt and corrosion. It was also padlocked. 'You mean after all you've seen thus far you're not scared already?' He placed one of his hands against its rusted surface.
A subway train squealed somewhere close by and she wondered if it was coming their way. 'I've faced the wrath of God,' she said, watching him at the door. 'I've had more terrifying dates than this.'
A tiny smile played at the edges of Doyle's mouth. 'Ah, yes. Sometimes I forget.' Doyle took his hand away from the door. 'We'll need to get through here,' he said, pointing to the rusted padlock. 'Do the honors?'
Eve reached over and tore the lock free with a single tug, rust smearing her palm and fingers.
'I don't suppose you have anything that I could use to wipe my hand?' she asked the mage as he went through the door. With a sigh, she resigned herself to the fact that her wardrobe was going to be ruined.
Eve wiped her hands upon her denim-clad legs and joined Doyle in the tiny entryway. There was a metal staircase leading down into further darkness, which her companion had already begun to descend, his eerily glowing hand lighting the way. That staircase ended at another door, which led to a cramped hallway that took them to another even older-looking door that had been sealed shut with planks of wood nailed to the frame.
'Let me guess,' Eve said as she grabbed hold of the first piece of wood and ripped it from its moorings. 'You want these removed as well.'
Doyle stepped back, giving her room to work. 'Astute as well as beautiful,' he observed. 'Traits not commonly found together these days, I'm sorry to say.'
Eve smiled. 'When He made me He broke the mold.'
The last board came away from the frame with a metallic shriek as the old nails were torn from the wood, and the door stood revealed.
'Allow me,' Doyle said, sliding back a corroded deadbolt on the door with some minor difficulty. The rusted joints squealed as he yanked the door open, a damp, ancient smell wafting out to greet them.
'Smells old,' Eve observed, following the mage through the doorway and out onto what appeared to be another, far more antiquated version of a subway platform. 'Even by my standards.'
'It should,' he replied, raising his arm to shed further light upon the forgotten chamber. 'It's been sealed up tight since 1899 when the major construction was begun on the subway tunnels above us. This was part of the old Grand Central Depot.'
There was definitely something to this place, Eve thought, something in the air that hinted of a power as old as Creation. Whatever was going on here, there was more to it than rains of toads or some antisocial sorcerer hiding out. She walked the platform, her footfalls leaving prints in the inch-thick dust that had settled there since the close of the nineteenth century.
'Very good, Lorenzo,' she heard Doyle say to himself, his voice as sibilant whisper in the lost station. 'But not good enough.'
She sensed movement close by, the stale air rushing around her, and turned to see a shape shambling out of the darkness of the tunnel they had just journeyed through. Eve tensed for a fight, but it was the homeless man who had tried to warn them off before. She frowned. Doyle had cast a spell before to blind people back on the platform to their presence. But this filthy creature had seen them.
He leaped up from the tracks to the platform, where he landed without making a sound.
'It appears there is more to our poor soul than meets the eye,' Doyle said. 'I'd thought madness responsible for his resistance to magick. Now it seems not.'
The man strode toward them, his duct-taped shoes making a strange scuffing sound upon the concrete-and- dust-covered surface of the platform.
'What gave him away?' Eve asked, watching the figure with a predator's gaze. 'It was the seven-foot jump that clinched it for me.'
'I'll leave you to deal with this complication,' Doyle said, his voice reaching her from somewhere on the platform behind her, 'while I endeavor to bring our search to an end.'
Eve didn't respond to Doyle, choosing instead to keep her eyes upon her would be attacker. 'Don't want any trouble,' she told the man.
The homeless man stopped his advance, glaring at her with eyes that now seemed to glow with an eerie inner power. 'The Mage must not be disturbed,' he roared, in a new and terrible voice.
She wondered if he was possessed.
But then the man began to grow and his clothes tore as his musculature was altered, bones twisting grotesquely along with his flesh. As she watched the transformation, she doubted that this thing had ever really been human at all. Spiny protrusions erupted from the new flesh beneath the old. The creature reared back, stretching to its full height, and she saw that it had more than doubled in size, torn skin hanging from its body in tatters.
'For nigh upon a century have I guarded this place,' its voice rumbled through a mouth filled with jagged, razor teeth. 'I shall not fail in my duty now.'
It came at her then with speed belying its size. She dodged from its path, leaping onto the wall and clinging there, insectlike.
The demon fixed her in its gaze, head cocked, yellow eyes glinting with surprise. It tilted its head back and sniffed the air as she hissed. Eve sprang at it from her purchase upon the wall.
'Vampire,' it growled in disgust, slapping her viciously away, the sharp protrusions that adorned its body shredding the soft suede of her Italian coat as well as the delicate pale flesh beneath.
Eve rolled across the filthy floor and came up quickly, coiled upon her haunches. She felt the bestial side of her nature awaken, the canines elongating within her mouth, fingernails curling to talons.
'Did I forget to mention how much I hate that fucking word,' she spat, and she lunged at her foe, a thirst for the blood of her enemy taking her to the brink of madness.
It was a place she had been so many times before.
CHAPTER THREE
A stray cat with fur the color of copper and one white ear trotted along Rue Dauphine, darting out of the paths of tourists strolling the New Orleans streets and sniffing at air redolent with the aromas of the city's famous cuisine. Most people did not even notice the stray. Despite the glitter of its later development, in its heart it was still an old city at heart, home to countless rats, and stray cats were not only inevitable in such an environment, but welcome. An old Cajun man sat on the stoop in front of a barbershop whose window frames were badly in need of a new coat of paint. He called out to the cat as it passed, almost as though the two were old friends. Otherwise the stray went on without interruption.
If anyone had taken enough interest they might have observed that the cat seemed far more single-minded than most of its species. Rather than wandering, lured by tempting smells or idle curiosity, it seemed to have purpose.
Most of the traffic in the French Quarter was on foot. Quickly, though, the stray was moving away from the core of the Quarter, and there were more cars rumbling by and fewer people on the sidewalks. There were children searching for summertime diversions, but none of the street performers who livened up the cobblestones of the Quarter.
Soon the stray left Rue Dauphine and began a winding journey that took it past buildings that had been beautiful once, their balconies and facades elegant and proud. Now they were falling apart, paint faded and cracked, and where there might once have been flower pots upon the balconies or outside of windows there were now cases of empty beer bottles and washing hung out to dry.
On a corner, the cat paused and perched on its haunches, staring first into the air above it at something
