Free Kyn 3: Feral by Mina Carter Page B

occur all around him without him needing to lift a finger. Well, civilian women got that look anyway. Vixen would just have slapped him upside the head for showing off like he was, flexing his muscles because Tessa was watching, and demanded to know why he wasn’t out in that corridor yet.
    Casting a quick glance about the room to make sure they had everything he moved past the two women to the door. With control hard won over the years and even more so now he blocked out all other distractions and concentrated on the corridor outside.
    It was empty, his keen senses picking up nothing. No breathing, no heartbeat, nothing.
    He heard of some people holding their breath to avoid detection when they were lying in wait for someone. But he had yet to meet anyone that could shield a heartbeat from a Kyn.
    Especially one that hadn’t fed yet tonight.
    “Ok, we’re all clear,” He pulled the door open and headed out into the corridor.
    Progress through the hotel corridors was quick, Feral hurrying the two women along as quickly as he could. He didn’t even have to remind them to keep quiet, which was a minor miracle considering how they’d been chattering away down in reception earlier. Even Spud was down with the deal, watching proceedings wide-eyed and silent as he picked up on the sense of urgency shrouding the adults.
    The corridors were deserted, it being an odd sort of time in the morning. The one where clock watching insomniacs had finally succumbed to exhaustion and the average early bird’s alarm clock had yet to spring to life. Even so, dawn was approaching, the tell tale heaviness settling into Feral’s limbs as Jane led them down further into the depths of the hotel. Down through the kitchens and beyond, into the darkness of the basement.
    Feral breathed a sigh of relief, feeling the shielding comfort of the ground closing around him, shielding him from the worst effects of the approaching sunrise. Of all the facts humanity had picked up or made up about Vampires their habit of seeking the earth was the most accurate. The human books and films each gave their own reasons of course but the reason was simple. The layers of dirt between him and the soon to rise sun lifted some of the heaviness trying to settle into his muscles and hold him paralysed, crushing him. But the earth stopped that, a bizarre form of sun block. He chuckled to himself; amusement filled him at the thought. Good old dirt, factor billion.
    “Well, here we are,” Jane announced as the two women stood at the bottom of the stairs, Feral joined them a moment or so later. The barred door at the top of the stairs might not stall a determined Pixie for long – hell, by the looks of it, it might not stop a determined Chihuahua for long – but sometimes you had to make do with that you could get. At the moment Feral was taking every half second he could lay his hands on.
    The basement wasn’t what he was expecting, the fusty odours of age and mildew combining to attack his sensitive nostrils. On the one hand it was your average, clutter filled basement with the random cast of paraphernalia of running a hotel lining the walls. Like the dining room chair to his left, resplendent in all its faded glory, seat ripped to spill its fabric guts out onto the floor. Next to it sat a cot with three broken slats filled with what looked like ripped up old sheets, and so on... half formed shapes in the shadows cast by the single bare bulb overhead. All pretty standard basement type stuff.
    Except that was, for the freaking huge magic circle painted across the floor and continuing in a sprawl across the wall. As though the painter had realised halfway through he’d run out of space and had just carried on along the next available surface. Feral followed the design, half expecting it to continue over the clutter, painted across more broken chairs and the like. But it didn’t, that area of the basement completely clear to allow the circle to continue unbroken. In