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items rotting on nearempty shelves. I’d once thought the sewers beneath New Covington were confusing; they were nothing compared to this. “Where is this stupid lab?” I muttered. “It feels like we’ve been walking in circles all night.”
    Jackal started to reply but suddenly paused, a slight frown crossing his face. “Do you hear that?” he asked me.
    “No. What is it?”
    He motioned me to be quiet, then crept forward again. The cement tube that we were walking down narrowed, and then I did hear something—something that raised the hair on my neck. If the low growls and hisses didn’t rouse my suspicions, the dead, rotting stench that slithered down the tunnel confirmed it.
    Weapons out, we eased forward, silent as death. Ahead of us, the tunnel abruptly ended in open air, and a rusty, narrow catwalk stretched out over nothing. Gripping my weapon, I followed Jackal to the edge of the catwalk and peered down, into the darkness.
    “Shit,” Jackal murmured, sounding faintly awed.
    We stood at the edge of a massive round chamber, the walls soaring up a good fifteen feet above us. The narrow metal bridge, stretching to another tunnel on the opposite side, had to be at least two hundred feet across. The railings had rusted away completely, and the mesh floor had disintegrated in spots, but that wasn’t what worried me the most.
    Below us, about twenty feet down, the cement floor was a shifting, roiling carpet of pale bodies and jagged fangs. Rabids filled the chamber, growling, hissing, moving about the room like a swarm of ants. There were hundreds of them, maybe thousands, coming in from various tunnels and pipes near the ground. I hissed as their scent wafted up from the pit—blood and rot and decay and wrongness—and took a step back from the edge.
    “Well,” Jackal mused softly, watching the rabid swarm with vague amusement. “I think it’s safe to say that we found the nest.” He shook the catwalk experimentally. It creaked, rust and metallic flakes drifting down to the horde below. Thankfully, they didn’t notice. “Doesn’t seem very sturdy, does it? This is going to be interesting.”
    “You can’t be serious.”
    “Do you see any other way across?” Jackal crossed his arms, shooting me a challenging smirk. “I thought you were so anxious to find the lab.”
    I smirked back. “Fine. After you, then.”
    He shrugged. Stepping onto the narrow bridge, he carefully eased out over the sheer drop, testing for weakness. The catwalk groaned but held, and he grinned at me. “Afraid of heights, sister? Need me to carry you across?”
    “Yeah, why don’t you save the smart comments until you’re on the other side?”
    He rolled his eyes, turned, and began walking across the gap, moving with unnatural grace. Despite that, the catwalk creaked and groaned horribly under his weight. It shuddered and swayed, and I bit my lip, certain it would snap at any second and Jackal would plummet to his death.
    Beneath us, the rabids had noticed the vampire trying to cross the bridge, and their shrieks and snarls rose from the pit as they surged forward, gazing up hungrily. Some of them began leaping for the catwalk, swiping at it with their claws, and though they couldn’t quite make it, some of those leaps came frighteningly close.
    After several long, tense moments, Jackal finally reached the other side. The hisses and screams from the rabids were deafening now, echoing through the chamber, as Jackal turned and beckoned me across with a grin.
    Oh, dammit. Swallowing hard, I stepped to the edge and peered down again. The rabids saw me immediately and began flinging themselves at my end of the catwalk, slashing at the air. Trying to ignore them, I stepped onto the rickety metal walkway, feeling it shake and shudder under my feet. The end of the bridge seemed an impossible distance away.
    One step at a time, Allie.
    Keeping my gaze straight ahead, I started across the catwalk, putting one foot in front of the