Page 38 of The Psychic and the Vampire

“Are you sure you’ve got the right place, Doctor Channon?” Mike said. “Only this is very clearly someone’s private residence. If you step foot on that lawn, you’ll be trespassing.”

“Ant is a police consultant, and he has reason to believe that a crime is taking place on the property. Why can’t I open this damn door?” Viktor banged at the door latch, but the car door stayed shut.

“Oh, shoots. Sorry. Our doors are wired for criminals.” Mike chuckled. “The child locks are on. I’ll just get out and…”

“Forget it.” Viktor leaned his shoulder into the door and popped it off its hinges. “Job done. Ant? You okay?”

Ant's face was so pale, but there was a dark fury in those pale gray eyes. Viktor knew that whatever Ant was seeing was not good. Getting out of the car, he kept a firm hand on Ant's elbow. Able stood on the other side of him, his ears perked up, and histail still. Now they were outside, Viktor couldn’t hear the sound of another person at all.

Viktor popped his head back into the car. “Stay here. We’ll call you if we find anything.”

“Er…that’s a no. In my head, you’re still trespassing. You need me there to witness.” Mike clambered out of the vehicle, taking his own sweet time about it. “We should do a walk around the outside of the premises first – see if we have probable cause for entry.”

Ant was already heading for the front door. He didn't even knock, but immediately tried turning the old-fashioned door handle. When it wouldn’t turn, Viktor took over and crushed the mechanism in his hand.

“I'll pay for it,” he said to Mike who opened his mouth, clearly to object.

Viktor followed Ant inside. Again, the interior looked like any other residential home with clear signs that a family lived there. There were books left open on the coffee table, various sized shoes in the little tiled area by the doorway, a couple of coffee cups on a kitchen counter that Viktor could see through an open living space,

Ant wasn't focused on any of the living areas. He headed straight for a hallway across the entry way that ran through to the back of the house. “There's a door somewhere around here,” Ant said, still in that weird robotic voice of his. “It’s hidden. It’s like he just disappeared into the wall. She’s being taken to a basement.”

“We should’ve gone around the outside,” Mike insisted. “You could probably access a basement that way, without wrecking a person’s front door.”

Ignoring the officer, who was becoming more annoying by the second, Viktor scanned the walls. They were white panels, dozens of them aligned in two rows that ran from ceiling to floor and from one end of the hall to the other.

“I’m losing the connection,” Ant said, his voice rising. “There's a basement here. We have to find it.”

“Basements in this part of the state are usually accessed through the kitchen pantry or from…” Mike started to say, but Viktor interrupted him.

“Go and find it then. Just shut up and let me think.”

Mike scuttled off. There didn't appear to be anybody else in the house. Viktor was almost sure they were the only people there. But in the silence, broken only by Able's panting, Viktor thought he could hear something.

“Am I heading in the right direction?” He checked with his mate as he moved down the hallway. Five feet one way, he then turned back. “Somewhere here?”

Ant nodded, his eyes wide, his mouth twisted with pain.

Viktor tapped on the walls on either side of where Ant indicated, searching for a hollow sound, but they all sounded the same.

“We’re running out of time.” Ant’s voice caught in a sob. “I can barely feel her.”

You’re probably running out of juice.With no other option available to him, Viktor knelt on the floor and punched downward, ignoring the shards of pain running through his knuckles. The fake hardwood panels broke instantly, but there was no light underneath. “Damn it.” Viktor punched into his existing hole again, and then when he still couldn’t see any opening below, he did it again – this time his fist went through.

“Can you see her?” The fist-sized hole suddenly got crowded. Ant was on his hands and knees looking and so was Able. “She’s definitely down there, I just can’t see anything.”

“Move out of the way a moment.” Viktor glanced at his battered knuckles. They were going to bruise, but he’d heal. Then he looked at his boots. They’d work better. “I need to make the hole bigger so I can get down there.”

It didn't take long. Five minutes at most. It probably would have gone quicker, except Ant didn't seem to want to move too far away from the hole. When Viktor finally thought he had made a hole big enough to accommodate his shoulders, he sat down and dangled his legs down before just dropping down, landing with his knees bent.

Dust. Mold. Oil. Blood. The room was dimly lit with only one tiny window set up by the ceiling of the wide space. There were cluttered shelves everywhere – steel ones like those found in a warehouse filled with random boxes and plastic storage containers. No obvious sign of another person, but the blood scent in the basement was the same as the one in the office.

“Come on, Bridget girl,” Viktor muttered as he started prowling the racks. “You’ve always got something to say. I need a sound. I’d settle for you yelling at me, but make some noise, sister-in-law. I need to know where you’re hiding.”

He strained his ears, his head tilted as he listened to the piercing silence. And then, just when he was ready to tear the room apart, he heard a scuffle, almost like the sound of a mouse in the wall lining. But it wasn’t the scuttle of tiny mouse feet, it was a rhythmic tapping of what sounded like a tiny thud on something hard.

“That's good Bridget. Thank you. I hope you realize you’re buying us breakfast after this. Your poor brother is running onfumes.” Viktor moved to the corner of the room farthest from the window. On the bottom shelf was a large steel box. It looked like the sort of thing someone might have kept mechanical equipment in, or maybe it was an old storage trunk.

Viktor really didn't care about the box’s original use. What was ominous was that it was big enough to squish a body in. Yanking it off the shelf - it was far too heavy to be an empty trunk - Viktor tore at the lid, at the straps holding it down, crushing the new padlocks that were keeping the lid strapped down in his bare hands, before he ripped the whole lid off its hinges.

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