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I bent and peered at the lock It looked solid enough, but the same could not be said about the frame It very much looked as if soood and hard and had taken soh it had been patched, I suspected it wouldn’t take ave the door a thue before it could s sure it still looked locked

The rooh it held nothing more than the res of dusty cobwebs I moved on The next door wasn’t locked, and it led into a roo and dark Given there was no wall to my left, it also had to be the salanced down sharply, seeing bare concrete rather than wooden flooring, but didn’t iic crawled around hter"

She did so Her flained The roof soared high above me, snaked with metal lines and some sort of conveyer systeht-hand side of the building, and the concrete was stained with rust lines and grime, reminders of machines that had once stood here To the left, there was that large square of wooden flooring Jak and I had fallen through the first time Obviously, whoever had made that trap had repaired it after we’d left

"Why would they set the trap over only one door?" My voice echoed in the cavernous roo seemed to stir in the shadon the far end Or ination and fear

The stairs are closest to the ically choose that door Azriel’s voice held a hint of amusement Why do you ask the question out loud rather than in your thoughts?

"Because I don’t feel so alone" Which was stupid, because I was

Not, Aru on to you as it is Azriel

Her static filled the far reaches of ht not understand it, but I was pretty sure she earing at nored her and stepped forward, every htest inclination to drop out from underneathsensation of reorse or better I bitthat concealed a trap and into the warehouse proper Though I scanned high and low, I couldn’t see anything that suggested this place had been recently used in any way

I checked out the offices to the right, but didn’t find anything h in the last one there was a large rat’s nest It had been , and what creepily looked like hu

I wondered if it had come from someone who’d stumbled into the pit and, unlike us, hadn’t been able to escape

I shivered, but let the rats be and continued on I was about halfway dohen I felt it

Notelse Air stirred the hairs on the back of oose bu on A but shadows in the far reaches of the building where Alanced toward the street Several s had been broken along this section, so it was logical that the air would stir The wind ht outside, but it was nevertheless there, and it wasn’t about to hurt

"Azriel, has anything changed? Can you sense anything other than me and the rats in this place?"

No But if you fear so, retreat It is not worth the risk

"I can’t retreat every ti fucking done"

The trouble with that statement, he said, mental tone exasperated, is the fact you haven’t retreated Not once

"That’s an exaggeration I have retreated, and you know it I’m not that much of a fool"

What sounded like a nored hiain, this ti the s definitely was here

I stopped again A?

No foe, she said No fair

I half sha little put out I

Funny not, she aze constantly scanning the walls and the floor, looking for soerous I couldn’t see or sense anything untoward Even the dark caress of an to fade as I moved farther from the pit trap, until it was little ness that scratched at the far edges of , the filth and grie was thickest where h heaven I kept to the center, between the outline of the machines, but even so it was hard not to slip and slide