Twelve flights of concrete stairs.
By the time Elara pushed open the rusted fire exit door to the alleyway, her left knee wasn't just throbbing; it felt like someone had driven a hot spike directly under her kneecap.
She stumbled out into the freezing New York rain, her lungs burning, still clutching the heavy cardboard box of manifests to her chest.
Julian followed her out. He didn't stumble, but his face was an unnatural, chalky white. The navy-blue silk scarf Elara had tied around his shoulder was completely saturated, dripping dark, thick blood onto the wet asphalt.
"We can't go to my apartment," Elara wheezed, leaning against the brick wall of the alley to keep from collapsing. "If they know we were in the sub-basement, they know where I live."
Julian pressed his good hand against the brickwork. He looked down at his ruined, neon-green dental shirt, his upper lip curling in profound disgust. "I am not bleeding to death in a public alleyway, Vance. Call a vehicle."
"With what money, Thorne?" Elara snapped, rain plastering her hair to her forehead. "Your assets are frozen, and my credit card was declined for a subway swipe. Walk."
Thirty minutes later, Elara aggressively pounded her fist against a peeling green door in Astoria, Queens.
Bang. Bang. Bang.
"Chloe! Open the door!"
The peephole darkened. A second later, the deadbolt clicked, the chain rattled, and the door swung open.
A thick cloud of cheap lavender incense rolled out into the hallway. Chloe stood in the doorway, wearing a fluffy pink bathrobe and a green clay face mask that was cracking around her mouth. She was holding a lit smudge stick of white sage in one hand and a half-eaten pop-tart in the other.
Chloe looked at Elara, soaked to the bone and shaking. Then she looked at Julian, who was taking up the entire doorframe, bleeding profusely and looking like he wanted to murder the entire borough of Queens.
Chloe took a slow bite of her pop-tart.
"The Tarot cards said a tall, dark stranger would cross my threshold today," Chloe deadpanned, chewing loudly. "They did not mention he would be bleeding on my welcome mat. That mat was twenty dollars at Target, Elara."
"Let us in, Chloe," Elara pushed past her best friend, dragging the heavy box inside.
Chloe's apartment was a chaotic disaster of beaded curtains, fake crystals, and overflowing laundry baskets.
Julian stepped over the threshold. He immediately hit his head on a hanging macrame plant holder. The clay pot swung wildly.
He glared at the plant, his fangs descending a fraction of an inch. "Your protective wards are pathetic," Julian rumbled, his voice strained with pain. "A strong breeze could break through your magical barrier."
"Well, my magical barrier is currently keeping the IRS from auditing my Etsy shop, so shut up and sit down," Chloe fired back, completely immune to the Alpha pheromones currently suffocating her tiny living room. She pointed the burning sage stick at a floral-patterned armchair. "Not on the velvet. Sit on the wooden stool."
Julian Thorne, member of the High Council, slowly lowered his massive frame onto a rickety wooden kitchen stool. It creaked dangerously.
Elara dropped the box onto the coffee table. She didn't sit. She couldn't. Her brain was moving too fast, the adrenaline finally giving way to the cold, hard logic of an auditor finding a discrepancy.
"It doesn't make sense," Elara muttered, pacing the short distance between the sofa and the TV. Her wet shoes squeaked on the linoleum.
"The fact that you married a billionaire and you're both broke?" Chloe asked, handing Elara a towel.
"The Cleaver," Elara ignored the towel. She stopped pacing and looked at Julian. "The monster in the basement. You said it was a mutated enforcer. No brain, just muscle."
Julian leaned heavily against the kitchen counter, his golden eyes tracking her erratic movements. The Mate Bond was pulsing a dull, rhythmic ache into his uninjured shoulder, a phantom echo of Elara's exhausted muscles. He hated it.
"Yes," Julian rasped. "A failed prototype. When a lesser supernatural consumes raw Sanguis Antiquus, the body rejects it. The cellular structure collapses. They lose higher brain function and become feral."
"Feral," Elara repeated. She grabbed her red pen from her blazer pocket. She didn't have a whiteboard, so she walked over to Chloe's fridge and wrote directly on the white enamel door.
Squeak. Squeak.
"Hey! My security deposit!" Chloe yelled.
"Look at the logic," Elara ignored her, underlining the words fiercely. "Sub-basement Level 4. It has a biometric scanner on the freight elevator, and a reinforced steel door at the stairwell. A mindless, feral mutant doesn't know how to bypass a biometric lock."
The tiny apartment went completely silent. The only sound was the rain hitting the window.
Julian's posture shifted. The arrogant annoyance faded, replaced by the chilling, calculating stillness of a CEO who just realized his board of directors had been compromised.
"Someone let it in," Julian said softly.
"Exactly." Elara turned around, tapping the red pen against the fridge. "Someone with Level 4 clearance walked that monster into the SCRS building. They bypassed the cameras. They locked the elevator."
"Why not just send a professional assassin?" Chloe asked, wiping the clay mask off her face with a wet wipe. "A vampire hitman would be cleaner."
"Because a hitman leaves an audit trail," Elara said, the bureaucratic horror dawning on her. "A hitman uses magic, or specialized weapons, or leaves political fingerprints. But a Cleaver? It's a sewer monster. A deniable asset."
Julian finished her thought, his voice dropping into a dark, dangerous octave. "If it killed us, the official Inquisition report would state we were tragically mauled by a stray mutant that wandered into the basement. Case closed. No investigation into the thirty-two million. No investigation into the Elder Blood."
Elara looked down at the heavy cardboard box on the table.
"They aren't just smuggling it, Julian," she whispered, her hands starting to tremble again. Not from fear, but from the sheer scale of the fraud. "Thirty-two million dollars of raw venom. They are actively manufacturing these things. Right here in the city."
She looked up, meeting his glowing golden eyes across the cramped, incense-filled room.
"And the mole who is covering it up," Elara swallowed hard, "works directly for Gideon."