The Lamia Hunt

Chapter Twenty-Six: Refuge

12:37 09/03/2015

It was irritating at first - not being able to find the entrance to the hideout - but Lucy's irritation only served to increase the relief she felt when she did.
It wasn't easy; the door was at the back of a broom cupboard on the house's highest floor, which was itself still full of all the usual crap you'd find in a broom cupboard. Not at all convenient. But then, it would have been a really idiotic decision to make the entrance as obvious as it had been in the asylum; a mysterious staircase with no end was really just a bit too suspicious, even for Lamia hunters.
However, despite the differences in location, once she had passed over its threshold, it was nigh on impossible to tell the hideout's entrance apart from its sister in Port Lennings. Both were the same, identical flights of stairs leading downwards, without exit or deviation. 
Just down.
She hummed as she descended, her feet moving in the rhythm of the music. She didn't know what it was that she was humming, or whether she had made it up herself, but it served to make the journey marginally less dull, which was all she could really hope for.
Too soon, however, she had either finished the song or forgotten what came next, and was so forced to continue in silence.

God, it was a long way down.

Despite much thought on the matter, Lucy had never found a fathomable reason for the placement of Société hideouts; yes, to locate them below abandoned buildings had the advantage of concealment, but this was not enough reason for them to be as deep as they were. (Although she had never found out precisely how far below ground any of the hideouts lay, the descents to them had always been long, and there was almost always a point during them at which she considered the possibility that this descent was one that would never end.) 
It was this point that she now approached during her current descent, and so sought to distract herself by lamenting the staircase's poor design, which was far from hard to do, as it seemed roughly as considered as a drunken ink drawing upon a lightly used napkin in the early hours of the morning, when the majority of rational thought has long since found itself abed; the staircase - an uneven spiral coiled around the walls of the stairwell - was carved of dark, hard stone, which, though inoffensive in itself, led her to consider the wellbeing of any individual so misfortunate as to fall down them: certainly, it did not seem as if the experience would be a pleasant one. Despite this, however, no measures seemed to have been taken to counteract such circumstances; rather, it seemed as if the staircase's creators had actually gone out of their way to make the ascent or descent of their creation as difficult, unsafe, and generally impractical as was humanly possible. The staircase was, for some unknown and unstated reason, bereft of both lighting and any other potential markings of level or distance, and of any form of rail to prevent an individual using them from falling to an unpleasant and painful death. Admittedly, such matters were of little concern to Lucy herself, but then, she had the decided advantage of being a Lamia, which removed from her the inconveniences of both death and low lighting, and therefore gave her no concern for her own wellbeing as she descended. However, whilst the circumstances of the stairwell were acceptable to herself, as they would be to other creatures of the night, she was not of a mind to think they would be as ideal for human users - which, considering that these constituted the entirety of the Société des Mains Blanches, cast some serious doubt as to their planning capabilities in the construction of their hideouts.
She didn't know how long it took to get to the bottom of the stairs; nor did she care. However long it had taken, it didn't really matter; whether time marched on or stood still made no difference to one who was alone, which she quite firmly considered herself to be. Years could have passed during her journey down the stairs, and she wouldn't have cared, for she was alone, and it is the blessing of the lonely never to need care for the passage of others' time. It was, admittedly, not a great blessing at the time, but it was blessing enough for Lucy; it may not have been much, but it was something.
However, it did her no good to dwell on such thoughts for the moment, and so she turned, slowly, to what lay before her.
Ahead, there stretched a thin, stone-walled corridor, as unlit as the stairs before it.
She sighed.
More walking.
"Come on," she whispered to herself. "Just find the place, and then you can sleep."

It was some time - if time really mattered down here - later when she found the door, which had been skilfully designed to look like a door in the wall, which she opened with ease, despite the weakness of her arms.
Within, she was rejoiced to find that this place, at least, had working lights - bright, clinical LEDs that gave the impression of artificial daylight, placed at intervals along the brilliantly white ceiling.
It was furnished pleasantly, although uniformly, each room possessing the appearance of an Ikea display that had picked up and carefully positioned beneath the ground, so that, together, they created the impression of a relatively large apartment, complete with multiple bedrooms, and a white - almost unused - kitchen and bathroom, as well as a generous living space, which included a room that seemed to occupy the bizarre and rather unpleasant territory between dining and conference room, perhaps created with the intention of being used for both. It had evidently not been used as either.
Having made her way through the apartment to a sufficient extent that she was satisfied that she was alone, Lucy returned to the lounge - the first room she had entered - flopping down on a fake leather couch with a loud sigh.
"Well," she said, placing Annabelle's book upon a coffee table that lay just far enough away from her to make leaning over it a rather tiring experience. "Here we go."
She flipped open the first page, trying to find the title beneath the scrawled mess of ink above it, succeeding to such an extent that, whilst she knew it to be there, and even where it was placed, she could not for the life of her decipher it.
Perhaps, if she had been more lively, or if she had not been so tired, or even if she had known what the contents of the book were to be, she would have continued, but she was not lively. She was tired, and it was out of fatigue that she had come here, and so, defeated by Annabelle's scribbles, she found it no chore to curl upon the black, unnaturally modern furniture, close her eyes, and drift to sleep.

She slept long, and deeply - she had been more tired than she had realised - and without dreams. It was a peaceful sleep, a sleep of calm, and one she would have been glad to continue forever.
Unfortunately for her, such things were not to be, and, before she would have wished, Lucy was awoken with a shake, and the barrel of a gun pointed between her eyes.