Hold The Dark: A Markhat story by Frank Tuttle Page A

and rat. I shut my mouth and looked around—bare cracked plaster walls, a single window and the wood floor curling and warped and stained from the leaks that had ravaged the ceiling.
    A single door was set in the far side. It, too, had been forced open, struck with such force that most of the doorframe was hanging splintered beside the wall.
    Evis stepped through the opening. “There is more. We are too late—but there is more to see.”
    He donned his dark glasses, nodded at the candle, turned and vanished back through the broken door.
    I picked up the candle and followed.
    The door wound down a long dark hall. Walls, floors and ceiling all bore water damage, but the warped pine wood floor had been repaired in two places. Recently, too, the nail-heads shone of new-beaten iron in the light, which meant they hadn’t had time to rust.
    The hall abruptly ended. I stepped down, nearly stumbled, onto a cobble-brick floor, and my candlelight lost sight of any ceiling, and all the walls. It did illuminate the backs of four black-clad halfdead, who stood in a small circle a dozen steps away.
    Evis and his dark glasses turned to face me.
    “They are friends. They do not see you.”
    “Wonderful.” My mouth was so dry I spoke in a ragged whisper. My new friends didn’t turn, didn’t leap, so I licked my lips and took a step toward them. “What is it we’re seeing?”
    I wasn’t seeing a thing, aside from vampires and a flickering ring of shadows and floor-bricks.
    “Blood was spilled here. Spilled in such quantity that it rushed onto the floor.” He indicated the area, which the halfdead surrounded. They pulled back a few steps, and Evis motioned me forward. I took my guttering candle and went.
    All I saw were bricks, just like all the others—black and smooth and rounded over with age and wear. Half the old buildings in Rannit were built over even older roads, just like this one. The builders merely scraped the dirt off the cobbles and called it a floor.
    I knelt down, put my nose near the cold baked clay. If there was any blood there, it was too old and too faint for human eyes and a stub of a candle to see.
    “I’ll take your word for it,” I said, rising.
    “Do,” said Evis. “You see no trace because soon after the blood was spilled, the floor was cleaned. I suspect they used a mop and tanner’s bleach. My associates and I can still smell the traces though. Some must have run between the cobbles.”
    “Rannit’s got more blood-stains than pot holes,” I said. “What makes this one special? What does it have to do with Martha Hoobin?”
    Evis sighed.
    Then he frowned.
    “Mavis. Torno, Glee, come here.”
    Three new vampires appeared and glided near, their ghost-white faces turned down, their dirty marble eyes turned away from my light.
    “What the—”
    Evis raised a hand and the halfdead stopped still, faces down, beside me. I shut up.
    A moment passed. I strained my ears, since my eyes were proving useless. I heard nothing at first—then, faintly, I made out scratching, like a mouse in a wall, chewing away. I held my breath but couldn’t locate the source.
    Evis put his dark glasses away. “Dear God,” he said, in a whisper. “Dear God.”
    A fourth vampire appeared at my right elbow. Evis nodded at it.
    “Go now, Mr. Markhat. Sara will take you to safety.”
    I opened my mouth. The scratching grew louder. Was it coming from the floor?
    “Sara!”
    Sara reached out, put both cold hands on my waist and hefted me a foot off the floor.
    She’d taken a single gliding step toward the door when the brick floor at our feet exploded and a long bubbling scream broke the silence.
    A scream and a smell. A stench, really, louder in its way than any noise—rotting flesh, warm and wet, thrust suddenly up out of the earth.
    A brick struck Sara in the side of her head, and she faltered, tripped and went down, and me with her.
    I heard Evis shout something and felt whips of motion around me and in that instant