Free IM03 - Pandora's Box by Katie Salidas Page B

around the windows and roof. Lysander really knew how to pick a nice home. It made our place back in Vegas, nice as it was, seem shabby.
    Lysander stopped short, just to the side of me. He smiled and nodded approvingly at the old building. “They have certainly kept up the place.”
    No lights in the windows gave us any indication as to the state of the place. The smell of blood, though, was thicker now that we were close. A foul tinge of rotted meat hung in the air as well. My senses went on red alert. I listened as carefully as I could, but didn’t pick up any other sounds except for the buzzing of mosquitoes and the loud chirping of crickets. I didn’t sense any others around either.
    “Do we go in?” I whispered, half hoping Lysander would tell us to turn around and regroup at the hotel.
    “Yes. Let us get this over with,” he answered, taking a few careful footsteps toward the house. Leaves crunched underneath him as he approached the short flight of stairs up to the wood deck.
    He held a hand up for us to wait and then approached the sliding glass door. He smoothed a hand over the edge of the frame and inspected it, then tugged on the handle. “The door is not locked,” he said, sounding oddly apprehensive.
    A shiver of fear streaked up my spine. Blood in the air, house left abandoned and unlocked. Something wasn’t right here. “I don’t like the sound of that.” My voice cracked. I took a careful step up to the deck.
    “I am not sure I do either,” Lysander said. “But I do not sense any presences inside. Let us press on quickly.” He slid the door open slowly, hardly making a sound, and then waved for Nicholas and me to follow.
    We crept into the house. Though it was dark, I had no trouble seeing. The smell of blood much became stronger. I was sure the source must be close. And I was right.
    As we rounded the corner from the living room to the kitchen I saw it, smeared all over the walls. A large red streak ran across the floor leading to a door that I could only assume led to the basement.
    “I don’t think we’ll find any human alive in here.” Nicholas said matter-of-factly. He pointed out other stains speckling the walls. “Their choice in décor indicates they left quite quickly.”
    It was a terrible joke, but Nicholas was right. The blood-soaked kitchen was as sure an indicator as any that the human inhabitants were gone. The underlying threat, though, still remained. We might not find any humans here, but that didn’t mean there wouldn’t be any other unfriendly beings around.
    Lysander pointed to the door that I guessed led to the basement. “If my things are still here, they would be down there.”
    “If?” I gulped back a dry breath. In the back of my mind, I wondered what we would find.

CHAPTER 9
     
     
    Streaks of blood traveled down the old wooden stairs like a trail of breadcrumbs for us to follow. It was as if whoever killed the people living in this house had set a specific scene for us, deliberately making it as bloody as possible. Was it another vampire? Surely not—why waste the blood? That didn’t make sense. What it did do, however, was make me feel as if we were walking into a trap.
    We descended slowly into the darkness, my fingers tracing the lines in the cold brick walls. The basement was as black as a cave. Even with my enhanced sight, I could barely see the end of the stairs. Lysander reached the bottom first and flicked on a light.
    Compared to the rest of the house, which seemed huge, the cellar felt small and cramped, like half the room was somehow missing. The original gray color of the painted brick wall peeked out in speckles as we descended into the damp room. The light, from a single overhead swinging lamp, flickered. I looked around for another source of light, but there wasn’t any. Only very small windows set toward the ceiling would have let light in during the day, though I doubted they did much good. Each one looked caked in a heavy layer of