Graffiti-covered walls were replaced with smooth steel as we plummeted straight down at better than twenty miles an hour. My silver net briefly lifted from the velocity, only to crash back down onto me as we came to an abrupt stop a couple minutes later. Then the door swooshed open, revealing a huge room with dozens of employee workstations, 3-D security graphics of the surrounding wildlife area as well as this complex, and helmeted guards patrolling around like Storm Troopers.

Marie Laveau’s underground meeting room had nothing on Madigan’s top secret testing facility.

“Take Specimen A1 to Cell Eight,” Madigan’s hated voice barked.

I looked around but didn’t see him, and there had been a tinny quality to his voice. Must be giving orders via intercom. Once again, I kicked myself for not killing him when I had the chance, but I’d rectify that at my next opportunity. Then I was wheeled out of what I guessed was the command center and taken down a long hallway. My armed escorts’ boots clicked in staccato rhythms on the tile floor as they guided me through two rights and a left before bringing me to the entrance of what looked like a prison hospital wing.

“Stop for scanning,” a guard said in a bored tone.

He also wore a full visor helmet, but his didn’t emit the thought-scrambling white noise that my captors’ gear did. Come to notice, neither did any of the other helmeted guards here. Must be elite technology that only the tactical units had.

Then the lasers surrounding my cart disappeared, and my entourage obediently stayed still as blue lines appeared in grid format over us. The guard looked at his computer screen, and his head snapped up.

“Something’s in the cart with her.”

“Dead vampire,” one of my escorts responded.

The words hurt so much, it took me a second to register the other guard’s response.

“No, something with a heartbeat.”

Confusion threaded through my pain. My heart had stopped beating hours ago—

With a squeak, something small and furry leapt out between the holes in the silver net. Two of my hardened guards actually jumped back while a third tried—and failed—to stomp on the critter, which outran him, then disappeared underneath a nearby door.

“Fuckin’ rat,” the guard muttered. Then his head swung my way.

“Why didn’t you kill it?” he demanded in an accusing tone.

“So it could shit in your soup,” I snapped.

Did he think I’d apologize for not being a good exterminator? Even if I hadn’t been too overwhelmed with grief to notice, why would I care if a rodent hitched a ride in the back of my kidnap wagon . . .

My eyes narrowed, but I ducked my head before the guards could catch something suspicious in my expression. That rat hadn’t just meandered onto the wrong vehicle. It had been inside the silver net, which would only be possible if it had hidden itself in Bones’s clothing during the brief interim between his death and our capture. And the odds that an animal would’ve stuck around after a firefight so intense that it killed a Master vampire were next to nothing.