The ceiling above me moved, letting in a pale glow. A hand with long clawed fingers grabbed my wrist and yanked me up. A horrifying face swung into view, illuminated by the faint blue light of a feylantern: pale, with patchy fur and a pink nose at the end of a tear-shaped muzzle. Long stiff whiskers fanned from a mouth studded with finger-long incisors. Dark, disturbingly human eyes stared at me.

My mind cycled through a chain of thoughts in a space of half a second. Kill. Wait. Wererat in a warrior form = friend. Stop.

I stopped the throwing knife a quarter of an inch before stabbing it into the wererat’s windpipe. It’s good that I had fast reflexes.

“Conssshort,” the nightmarish creature said. “What are you doing here?”

I made my mouth move. “Looking for you.”

The wererat smiled. My body flinched and tried to run away out of sheer self-preservation, and if I hadn’t been hanging suspended over a dark hole, it would’ve succeeded.

“You found me!” the wererat announced. “I alwayshh wanted to meet you. I am sshhho ffflatterred.”

Robert’s head poked out of the hole. “Jardin, put the Consort down before you dislocate her shoulder.”

“Alpha!” Jardin deposited me to the side. “Itshh shhuch an honor.”

Robert pulled himself up into the room. Derek and Ascanio followed. I looked around. We were in a narrow, rectangular space about as wide as an average van. Three walls looked like concrete; the fourth was covered by a dark curtain.

“Any activity?” Robert asked.

“Not in the lasssht ten minutesh. Before that, very exshiting. I shaw Wolf Beta run by. There were vampiresh chassing her. She was yelling, ‘Bill me, bloodshuckers!’”

Yep, that’s the wolf beta, alright.

“I think I’m in love,” Ascanio said.

Derek smacked the back of the bouda’s head. Ascanio snapped his teeth at him.

“Stop it,” I growled under my breath.

Jardin tossed a rag over the lantern. Darkness drowned the room. The curtain whispered as he moved it aside, revealing a long narrow space, filled with moonlight. Jardin hunched over, bending his six-and-a-half-foot body, and slipped through the opening. Robert followed and I did, too. My eyes acclimated to darkness and I saw Robert and Jardin leaning against the wall by a narrow gap in the concrete. The space was barely large enough for the five of us.

I crouched next to them and glanced through the gap. A hundred yards to the left the Casino glowed. Vampires scoured the walls, crawling on the textured parapets. We were inside the overpass.

“How did you even find this place?”