"Room to spare." Al answered. He looked the the others' bewildered faces. "Oh now, come on, don't tell me you guys never thought of it, with all the places we've been and the things we've seen, collectively, you didn't think The Pond wouldn't have an Undertown, did you? That's where Bob has his still that he makes my carb juice in."
"Don't look so shocked, kid," Al said to Liam, "everyplace has a place like it, the part o' town that the middle class and the upper crust like to pretend don't exist, but which exists anyway in utter defiance of what's supposed to be possible. Chinatown's like the entrance hall, it's where the biggest doors and boltholes are." He turned to Jace. "I'm surprised the Scarabs haven't told you about it, they're down there all the time with Tall Dark and Vampy cleaning out the problem cases; she's made quite a name for herself as a monster hunter, so I hear."
------
"Just so you know, I'm not the "wampyr" that stays safe under ground," Meri said from the doorway to the hangar, dressed in what appeared to be a sheath-like, deep blue satin Chinese slit-side evening dress. "I'm also not some kind of ravening bloodhound." She cocked her head to look around Al at the young woman on the floor. "As I said to your friends, those kitsune twins," she said in perfect Russian, "as long as you're not a problem to the people I've allied myself with, and you don't do something to fall afoul of me or the Scarabs, I'm not going to be after you. And, no, Liam,
" she added, in English, "I don't go out hunting for blood. Er, anymore. Unless it's sanctioned." She smiled a bit crookedly, and shrugged slightly, then added, "The Scarabs have been quite helpful in that regard, Services Rendered, and all of that.
"There are of course other vampires, some benign, some not so much so, and some who are downright maleficent. Those last are the ones I and a select few scarabs go after periodically."
"And yes, Marta," she added again in Russian, "I do feel the pull of that infernal light. I used to be their creature, after all. The insufferable bastards..."