Free Hold Their Peace (Vampire Assassin League) by Jackie Ivie Page A

again.
    Darcy narrowed her eyes. Smoky haze? Damn everything! She’d gone in circles again.
    “Ah!”
    Darcy flung her head back and voiced the frustration in a long drawn-out note that lingered in the air, and somewhere in this labyrinthine hell she heard Thanos replying. Only his howl sounded like it carried laughter. Of course it would. He’d carved this monstrosity in the first place, or had centuries to figure out the floor plan.
    She decided to go right this time and took the right corridor whenever an option presented itself, and then, out of the blue, she found a hall that had doors branching out of one side. Thank goodness. She might actually have found something even better than a bathroom. She might have stumbled on an exit.
    Nope.
    The first wooden door had a placard at her eye level - which was his eye level as well. It said library. Library. Interesting. What might a vampire from somewhere in the fourth century B.C.E. stock in a library?
    She twisted the handle, opened the door, groped for a switch...and holy hell. He had a librarian’s dream in here. Every spot was filled with shelves of books. All kinds. All shapes. Everywhere she looked. Lizbeth would be in raptures over this...just before she keeled over. Too bad Darcy wasn’t much of a reader. But she supposed if she did get bored she could always search out useless facts so she could spew them, too.
    Now, that would really be a waste of time.
    She shut off the lights, closed the door, and moved to the next one. It was marked supplies. Supplies. She wondered what an ancient vampire considered supplies. Probably not toilet tissue. Maybe...blood bank vials? Yuck . Darcy twisted the knob, pushed the door open, hit the light switch, and stuck her head in. Well. Looks like supplies meant filling a cavernous space with body shop stuff. Thanos was warehousing all sorts of odd-shaped paraphernalia. Containers, some metal, some not. Tools. Wood. Piles of warped and distorted metal items. Was that an anvil? One thing looked like an old plow, maybe. Another stack looked like dented helmets from some archaic battle. While another contained...were those shields? Wow. If the mangled circle-shaped things were shields, they didn’t appear to have worked very well. And that answered that. Thanos had pure guy mess in a room that he’d marked supplies.
    He was welcome to it.
    Darcy shut that door and moved to the next. This was beginning to feel like a game show lottery. But she was no nearer a bathroom or an exit. Finding the way out of here would be the big prize. Darcy stopped for a moment as her heart pumped painfully. Was that reaction from just the thought of leaving him?
    No. Get a grip, Girl . She didn’t love him. Not this soon. It wasn’t possible.
    The next door was marked Recon. What the hell did that mean? Well...whatever recon meant, he kept the door locked. Darcy gave the knob a jerk in disgust, and it broke off in her hand. Holy smack . She watched the broken knob unseeingly as the other part landed somewhere inside the room. She’d broken a door handle? Without one bit of effort?
    All right. That did it.
    She was finished with Thanos and his maze of nonsense. She clenched her teeth to keep the reaction unvoiced. She didn’t need his laughter again. Damn vampires, anyway. Darcy smacked at the door next, expecting a slight sting to her palm. Her jaw dropped as the door launched right into the room, leaving a trail of wood splinters that slowly settled after it.
    What on earth was going on? Was she going crazy? Could this be what insanity felt like? Supreme well-being? Strength? Fitness? Senses that were elevated to an unbelievable level? Sexual satiation? Oh wow. Just the thought of Thanos and his loving-making started a nice tingle all along her spine. Oh, stop it already, Darcy . She had to face facts and possibilities here. Because if she wasn’t crazy, then...what?
    Oh no. No.
    She’d been ignoring and denying and avoiding and now she was just