I stood in the doorway, letting my eyes adjust. A dark stone foyer, cavernous, its roof supported by two rows of columns. Probably used to belong to some hotel or bank. There had to be an exit that would lead deeper into Mishmar, because we had crossed this lobby the last time I was here, but I couldn’t see it.

I moved to the side, away from the sunset light, and waited with my back against the wall.

The vampires stayed away. They had to have heard the bar slide aside and the creak of the gate. They should’ve come running, but instead their minds hovered above me and to the sides. That meant only one thing. Something lived in this foyer, something so dangerous that the awareness of it penetrated even the bloodthirsty, crazed minds of the bloodsuckers.

I waited, breathing quiet and slow. There was a trick to staying invisible: stop thinking. I cleared my head and simply waited, one with the darkness and the cold wall of stone touching my back.

Moments ticked by. I watched the foot-wide line of daylight cross the stones of the floor as the sunshine slipped through the gap between the two halves of the door. The chamber was roughly rectangular, the columns running along the two longer sides. Most of them had survived, but at least three had fallen, breaking into pieces. The walls weren’t perfectly smooth. A shelflike decorative molding ran along the perimeter of the lobby at about twenty feet high. Above it, at even intervals, large reliefs interrupted the stone, depicting modern buildings and people. The floor was polished marble, now dusted with dirt and grime, but still slick. I would have to be careful running.

I stayed completely still.

The attack came from above, fast and silent. I felt it a fraction of a second before the javelin hit, and I dodged right. The short spear clattered on the floor. I jumped back—two shurikens whistled through the space where I was a moment ago—and leapt left behind a column. The column was four feet across and left me two choices: left or right. Not much of a cover.

Open lobby to my left, sliced in half by the narrow light streaming through the gap in the door, a wall to my right. Down wasn’t an option; up wasn’t either. The vampires squirming above me were too far. Concentrating on drawing them close would split my attention too much.

A shuriken clattered against the column from the left. Judging by the angle, the attacker had to be either twenty feet tall or above ground.

Shuriken were nuisance weapons, meant to distract and panic. Even if dipped in poison, they rarely killed. The attacker was trying to herd me toward the wall.

I lunged right, but instead of running to the wall, I dashed around the column and sprinted into the open space in the center of the chamber.