The Midnight Guardian Read Online Free PDF Page B

home to deal with the wife—honestly, such a relief to have business in Paris, such a bother to have to go home to snapping wife and squalling children. The barman understood only too well and they swapped stories with spirit. Another man thought he might just as well get his shoes shined. The third was a tourist and roused the sleepy clerk at the information desk to inquire in painstaking German if he could take a bus to his hotel, or should he hail a taxi?
    The strolling guards usually noticed lovely young women who were traveling alone, but if the guards on duty had been questioned later, they would have sworn no single women had left the station all night. Nor men, for that matter. The vampires knew how to move with hot swiftness, clinging to shadows. Only one guard thought he saw a glint of something in the corner of his eye, but decided he’d either imagined it or it was a spark going off, or something equally innocuous. He’d never have guessed it was the rhinestone brooch on Meaghan’s felt hat.
    Two hours later, they all arrived at the lair. It was an idle section of the U-Bahn, with the extra advantage of never having been completed, so there was only one entrance accessible by humans. Over time, the vampires who had lived there had dug an extra tunnel that wended down into the sewer network. This was kept blocked by a concrete slab that you’d have to be at least a double centennial to budge. Even the stairs led up to a blocked entry, and then a conveniently sheltered yard behind an abandoned butcher’s shop. Brigit was surprised, what with the war machine revving up, that valuable property like this wasn’t being put to use; but the entire area was run-down and just enough on the city’s edge to be unappealing for anyone to want to work, much less live there, unless there was absolutely no other choice. She could understand why vampires had thrived here for so long. Ulrika had assured
them that neither Nachtspeere nor true hunters had ever come anywhere near the lair.
    â€œThe Nachtspeere, they’re interested in action, not subterfuge. They want to get us when we roam. They certainly don’t want to spend much time in forethought.”
    Brigit was unconvinced. The Nazis seemed to like convenience, and what could be more convenient than to find the homes of vampire families and simply throw firebombs in them at midday? For true hunters, of course, this was both unsporting and anticlimactic. A tactic saved for the last resort. One didn’t go through all that training and prepare for battle and death, only to kill a vampire without even looking at it first, showing it the face of its doom. This was not like war. A born vampire hunter lived the calling as an art. These wormy Nazi thugs who dared term themselves hunters were not interested in art, the refugees made that perfectly clear. But they were only too keen on seeing the eyes of their victims before they dissolved.
    Bastards. Souls of geese that bear the shape of men.
    The place was musty, with the feel of a home that hadn’t been lived in for a long time. Even when vampires had been there, it was nothing like the lovely underground castle in London. Meaghan sniffed and looked fretful, but the others set about lighting a coal fire in the main room and airing the beds.
    â€œI don’t know about you lot, but I’m almost tired enough to sleep hanging upside-down from the ceiling,” Mors joked.
    Even Meaghan smiled at that. Some humans did get the funniest notions. Personally, Brigit loathed bats and found it insulting that anyone thought she might have an affinity with the filthy beasts, never mind partly being one.
    Besides, what a waste of time sleeping would be if you had only parts of your own self to wrap up in?
    Wishing she hadn’t thought that, Brigit concentrated on picking out her own pocket-sized chamber with a single bed. The less space to move, the less she might notice the body that