It was a lovely gun, the way it tore the things apart. His hand on its comforting butt, he stepped into the downward passage. The descent was steep. Soon, his flashlight was revealing carved inscriptions in Latin here and there on the walls. This tunnel must be very old indeed. The Arénes de Lutèce, where the Romans had held bearbaiting contests, could not be far overhead. Maybe they had quarried the stone for it here. But he did not think so. There was something too perfect about the way these walls were made. As old as it all appeared, every line was dead straight.

He was in a vampire place, something made by them in some uncountably ancient time. When this place was made, mankind must have been—well, maybe still living in caves.

What did it mean?

If they had been advanced enough to make this, they must have ruled the world then, in the deep long ago. The implications for human life were chilling. Anything could be true—they could even have bred us the same way that we breed cattle.

Fear kept rising, and he kept pushing it down. But what if he couldn’t win? What if they had reserves of power that he had never imagined?

He tried to be philosophical. If he died here, he died here. At least he’d take some of them with him.

And then—was that somebody breathing?

He stopped, listened. No, it was nothing, just the wind in the halls, or far-off street noise. He started off again.

One of them appeared ahead of him, leaping, screaming, a blur of darkness and fury. He fired, then fired again and again, until it exploded along the corridor with a series of wet splats.

He flicked on his light. He’d expected to see a mass of carnage, a flowing river of blood. But there wasn’t all that much blood. And then he saw a bit of fur, gray, and he realized that the light had played a trick on him. He’d shot at the looming shadow of a rat.

“Goddamnit!”

He went on, deeper still, closer to the murmuring, to the whispering movement.

Then he heard a totally unexpected sound. A voice. A child’s voice.“Sir?” His heart started hammering—not only because the voice was there, but because it was behind him.

Dare he turn? Dare he?

“Sir?”

Boy or girl, he could not tell. It sounded about ten, perhaps a little older. His finger slipped around the trigger. He felt sick, he did not think he could do this. But he whirled round, dropping to the floor as he did, firing.

There was nobody.

They were tricking him. The rat had also been a trick, he realized. No rat would cast such a big shadow. Somehow, they’d done it. They were tricking him, in order to get him to use up his bullets. They were probably counting his shots.