Betrayed

Gotham City of the Batman Dark Night comics. (Yes, I know. I'm a dork.) It had those huge arched windows that reminded me of teeth between two towers that looked like perfectly creepy haunted castles.
    "And we have to go down there," I told Persephone. She was breathing hard from our ride, but she didn't seem particularly worried, which I hoped was a good sign. You know, animals being able to sense bad stuff and all.
    We finished crossing the bridge and I found the broken little side road that led down to the depot. The track level was dark. Really dark. That shouldn't have bothered me, what with my excellent fledgling night vision, but it did. The truth was that I was totally creeped out as Persephone walked to the building and I began slowly circling it, looking for the basement entrance Heath had described.
    It didn't take long to find the rusted iron grill that appeared to be an impassable barrier. I didn't let myself hesitate and think about how completely afraid I was. I got off Persephone and led her over to the covered entryway so she'd be out of the wind and protected from most of the snow. I looped her reins around a metal thingie, laid the extra blanket over her back, and spent as long as I could patting her and telling her what a brave, sweet girl she was and that I'd be back real soon. I was working toward that self-fulfilling prophecy thing, and hoped if I kept saying it, it would be true. Walking away from Persephone was hard. I guess I hadn't realized how comforting her presence had been. I could have used some of that comfort as I stood in front of the iron grill and tried to squint into the darkness beyond.
    I couldn't see anything except the indistinct shape of a huge dark room. The basement of the creepy unfortunately-not-abandoned building. Great. Heath is down there, I reminded myself, grabbed the edge of the grill, and pulled. It opened easily, which I took to be of how often it must be used. Again, great.
    The basement was not as awful as I'd imagined it would be. Stripes of weak light filtered between the barred, ground-level windows and I could clearly see that homeless people must have been using the room. Actually, there was a lot of stuff left from them: big boxes, dirty blankets, even a shopping cart (Who knows how they managed to get that down there?). But, weirdly, not one homeless person was present. It was like a homeless ghost town, which was doubly weird when I considered the weather. Wouldn't tonight be the perfect night to retreat to the comparative warmth and shelter of this basement, versus trying to find someplace warm and dry on the streets or smush into the Y? And it had been snowing for days. So, realistically, this room should be packed with the people who had brought the boxes and stuff down here to begin with.
    Of course if scary undead creatures had been using the basement the desertion of the homeless folks made much more sense.
    Don't think about it. Find the drainage grate and then find Heath.
    The grate wasn't hard to find. I just headed for the darkest, nastiest corner of the room, and there was a metal grate on the floor. Yep. Right in the corner. On the floor. Never, in a gazillion years would I have ever even considered touching the disgusting thing, let along lifting it and going down there.
    Naturally, that's what I had to do.
    The grate lifted as easily as the outside "barrier" had opened, telling me (again) that I wasn't the only person/fledgling/human/ creature who had come this way recently. There was an iron ladder thing that I had to climb down, probably about ten feet. Then I dropped to the floor of the tunnel. And that's exactly what it was—a big, damp sewer tunnel. Oh, and it was dark, too. Really dark. I stood there for a while letting my night vision accustom itself to the dense darkness, but I couldn't just stand there for very long. The need to find Heath was like an itch beneath my skin. It goaded me on.
    "Keep to the right," I whispered. Then I shut up because even that little sound echoed around me. I turned to the right and started to walk as quickly as I was able.
    Heath had been telling the truth. There were lots of tunnels. They split off over and over again, reminding me of worm holes burrowed into the ground. At first I saw more evidence that homeless people had been down here, too. But after a few right-hand turns, the boxes and scattered trash and blankets stopped. There was nothing but damp and dark. The tunnels had gone from being