At eight o'clock that evening, far beneath Old Cathedral Road, the foundations of Regina concealed a place that had never appeared on a city map, a place where the oldest stones had been shaped by hands that belonged to an age before the Council, before the packs divided themselves into territories, and perhaps before the first vampire records had been written.
A narrow staircase descended through the darkness behind a sealed section of the cathedral crypt, its walls damp with underground moisture and marked with faded crimson symbols that seemed almost to disappear whenever the torchlight passed over them, only to return when the flames moved away. At the bottom stood an enormous iron door without a handle, and before it Selene Arkwright rested her palm against the metal with the calm familiarity of someone greeting an old friend rather than entering a forbidden sanctuary, while the followers behind her lowered their heads and waited for the ancient mechanism to awaken.
