Damn Him to Hell Read Free

house, skipping stairs and the yellow jacket nest in the bushes. Feeling plucky, I followed suit, but landed with a thud far less graceful than my kitty’s feline pounce.
    “Milo, my white-knight cat.” With renewed urgency, I shoved him in my messenger bag before he could run again, then pounded the door knocker. Andre owned this town house and shared it with his father, Julius. He’d also taken in Tim, the invisible kid. If they were all still asleep, they needed to be warned.
    When no one answered, I let myself in and shouted, “Julius! Tim! To the basement, now!”
    I knew they had one. I’d been in Andre’s underground tunnel that led to an empty warehouse across the road. Should I ever have time to spare, I’d look up the history of these old houses, but I was more concerned about any illegal operations Andre might be running.
    “We’re coming down!” Julius’s familiar voiceshouted back. “Open the basement door for us.” Elegant, imperturbable Julius sounded edgy.
    Hoping this house was identical to Pearl’s, I ran down the hall toward the kitchen, located a flat painted door almost hidden by an Oriental wall hanging, and tugged. It opened silently on well-oiled hinges. I flipped a light switch and, thinking a grown man and a teenager could make their own way downstairs without my aid, I hurried to get out of their way. I knew Andre’s cellar was a heck of a lot cleaner than Pearl’s would be.
    The gargoyles’ cries were lost behind these thick brick-and-plaster walls. Andre didn’t settle for filthy damp coal cellars, no sirree. His cellar had plaster, and wall sconces, and some kind of rugged stair-tread protector over mahogany-stained and polished wood stairs. Hell, his cellar looked better than any place I’d ever had my bedroom.
    The bottom step led to some kind of speckled-tile floor like they used to have in banks and city halls. Doors led off to either side of the corridor, but I had no idea which one to take. The only one I knew was at the end and led to the warehouse.
    What the devil was taking Julius and Tim so long? The way they were stumbling and staggering and bumping into walls, it sounded as if they were carrying a pirate trunk down with them.
    You’d have to understand Andre to get why my mind leapt to pirate trunks and not sixty-four-inch flat-screen TVs, which most normal men would try to take with them to the grave. Andre reminded meof Jean Lafitte, the gentleman pirate in old New Orleans—complete with slick black hair, swarthy complexion, flashy white teeth, and a distinctly European mind-set.
    Even though he called himself Legrande, I knew he’d grown up right here in blue-collar Baltimore. He’d gone to the same school as the wealthy Vanderventers, except I figured he’d done it on a scholarship.
    I nearly jumped as the object of my thoughts yelled down the stairs at me. “Dammit, Clancy, doors! Open doors!”
    Andre must have taken care of Nancy Rose and cleared the customers out of Chesty’s in record time.
    Not bothering to waste breath asking why he couldn’t open his own damned doors, I started flinging open every one in sight. He knew better than to yell at me like I was some kind of low-IQ sheep.
    No hoards of pirate gold or exotic harems down here—very disappointing. I’d expected more from our alpha male.
    One room had tubes and paraphernalia like a chemistry lab. Another was filled with computer equipment. A third contained a pretty damned extravagant theater that would have made any Hollywood director proud. I was pretty sure the flat-screen TV in here was bigger than sixty-four inches. Clearly either we were far enough away from the Zone for Andre to have his play toys or the underground bunker acted as a buffer against the Zone’s eccentricities.
    I threw open the only remaining barrier and found a hospital room. Damn, Andre just kept gettingspookier and spookier. I could almost believe vampires, but Frankenstein was out of my territory.
    “Tina,