What a surprise. Hold me before my heart gives out from the pure shock of that surprise. “Wow, so nice of you to care.”
“The Beast Lord is an asshole,” Luther said. “I’ve dealt with his representatives before, and let me tell you, I don’t want to piss him off.”
I really wanted to look at Curran’s face, but I would have to turn and it would seem odd. “Tell me about the ghouls, Luther.”
“I can neither confirm nor deny.”
Seriously? “It’s a matter of public record. I can go down to City Hall and spend three hours digging through the Biohazard disclosures or you could just tell me. If I have to waste all that time, I’ll be irritated.”
Luther leaned back. “Be still my heart. And I suppose I should be terrified of that?”
“No, just pointing out that I don’t like to share when I’m irritated. You want to know why a horde of ghouls tried to enter the city. We also want to know why that happened. We will eventually figure this out and then we can take it to you or to your former bosses at PAD.”
He sighed. “No, we didn’t hire any new ghouls.”
“Have you talked to Mitchell?” I asked.
“He doesn’t want to talk.” Luther grimaced. “Something is going on with him.”
“He may talk to me.”
“That’s true.” Luther sighed again. “I tell you what, I’ll let you see Mitchell, but if he talks to you, you tell me what he said. I want to know what’s happening to him.”
“Deal.” I’d be an idiot not to take it. “Tonight.”
“No, tomorrow night. We fed him last night. He’s sleeping it off.”
Mitchell didn’t like the outside. He hid in his burrow most of the time, and getting him out of it after he ate would be impossible. I had tried before and gotten nowhere. “I’ll take tomorrow then.”
“Good. We’re done here, you are released, shoo, go, scram. Don’t do anything I wouldn’t do, kids.”
I started toward the cars.
“Wait,” Luther called.
“Yes?”
He trotted over to me. “Does the city feel different to you?”
“Different how?”
He dragged his hand through his hair. “Something happened in December. Something strange.”
Move along, nothing to see here, no city claiming people are on the premises. “Strange things happen all the time here.”
“No, this was different. It felt like a storm. A magic storm. It rolled through the city and now it feels different. Does it feel different to you?”
Lie, lie, lie. “No.”
Luther searched my face with his gaze. “I’m not crazy.”
No, you’re not. “That’s above my pay grade.”
“It’s like an itch I can’t scratch.”
“Maybe you should see a doctor for that,” Curran said.
Luther pointed his finger at him. “I don’t like you.”
“Bye, Luther.” I grinned.
He walked away. “I will figure it out! I’m not crazy!”
If he ever figured it out, I would have a lot of explaining to do.
• • •
“DOES EVERYBODY THINK I am an asshole?” Curran asked.
“Only people who know you or have met you.”
He looked at me for a long second.
“You were a zealous advocate of the Pack’s causes,” I said. “The Pack’s interests are often at odds with human interests. I still love you. Derek still thinks you’re the stuff.”
Derek was kneeling by the scrape on the pavement and inhaling deeply. “Three ghouls. One male and two females. The scent is about fifty hours old, give or take an hour.”
Fifty hours would be just about the time Eduardo would have come to respond to Mrs. Oswald’s phone call on Monday about the wolf griffin.
“Interesting timing,” I said.
“They came here and left along the same trail,” Derek said.
“How long were they here?” Curran asked.
“A few hours.” Derek pointed to a narrow spot between the side of the house and a wooden fence. “They hid there, behind the trash cans.”
Three ghouls just sitting there waiting while the residents of the house left for work. Don’t mind us, we’re just chilling here, behind your trash cans, rubbing our big sharp claws, while your delicious children leave for school. And that wasn’t creepy. No, not at all.
“Why?” I thought out loud. “If they were hiding, there are better places to hide.”
“Mm-hm.” Curran’s face told me he was thinking the same thing. “Bad place to hide but a good place for an ambush.”
I glanced back at Mrs. Oswald’s house. A couple of houses down, the street ended in a cul-de-sac. Only one way in or out.
“Any other scents?” I asked. “Any human scents? Anyone they attacked?”
Derek shook his head.
Curran looked at me. “Does this seem odd to you?”
“Everything about this seems odd to me. Ghouls are solitary. They live near cemeteries, they hide in burrows, and they travel at dawn or during the night. They don’t band into groups and prance about in broad daylight in a residential neighborhood. Unless the owner of that house is a serial killer and he’s got his victims buried in his backyard, there is no reason for them to be here.”
“There are no bodies in the backyard,” Derek said. “I would’ve smelled decomp.”
Sense of humor check, failed.
“The point is, it’s highly unlikely that these two odd things”—I pointed at the trash cans with one hand and at the corpse of the spider-scorpion with the other—“aren’t connected. I think they were waiting for Eduardo.” And I would give a year of my life to know why. “The ghouls we killed in Lawrenceville were answering someone’s call. They said someone was waiting for them. They don’t meet people for coffee or brunch. I think some being is using them for their own means.”
“That would explain their organization and unusual behavior,” Derek said.
“Can you track them?” Curran asked.
“Sure.” Derek smiled.
“Let’s go ask them,” Curran said.
“I’ll get the car,” I said. I would only slow them down on foot.
Fifteen minutes later I chased them in a Jeep. I’d have to send someone back later to pick up George’s car.
Lions weren’t known for their marathon racing abilities, but Curran was a werelion and by human standards he was a superb runner. He and Derek flew down the street at thirty miles per hour, which for them was probably a refreshing pace.
Ghouls came from the Arabic mythos. One of the earliest known references to them occurred in One Thousand and One Nights. The wolf griffins were rumored to have been native to North Africa and were familiar to Berbers. Muslims conquered North Africa around the seventh century BC, so technically there was some tenuous geographical connection between the griffin and the ghouls. And that’s where it all stopped making sense. Ghouls didn’t answer to any higher authority. They weren’t undead, they retained their free will, and all attempts to control them by outside forces usually ended badly. They were cowardly solitary scavengers or predators of opportunity, who dug deep burrows and hid from people and sunlight. I had no idea how the spider-scorpion thing or the cats fit into it.
Maybe whoever was behind the creatures attacking Mrs. Oswald got really annoyed at Eduardo’s interference and had the ghouls kidnap or kill him? But that would imply that this whoever could control an army of ghouls. Or maybe knew someone who could and that someone owed him a favor. If you’re powerful enough to control ghouls, why would you even care about some cats?
I blew the air out of my mouth. All this wild speculation was just that—speculation. Until we found some evidence, all my outlandish theories were worthless.
Ahead Curran and Derek turned left on Valley View Road. I followed. Small residential houses lined the street, couched in trees and brush. It looked like a relatively quiet neighborhood. No neighborhood was completely safe in post-Shift Atlanta, but this was one of the more stable ones. And as far as I knew, Eduardo had no connection to it besides the random job he’d taken at the Guild.
This mess was getting more and more convoluted. Convoluted wasn’t my favorite. I remembered George thrusting herself in front of a blade to protect a pregnant Desandra. My mind helpfully brought up a recollection of Eduardo knocked out cold and covered in his blood. He’d tried to keep a monster from attacking Doolittle and Jim’s sister and nearly died. George and Eduardo had suffered enough. They’d earned their happiness. I wanted to put them back together and see them happy. I wanted them to marry and have cute babies.
Where the hell are you, Eduardo? What have you gotten yourself into?
We turned left onto Ashford Dunwoody Road. The remnants of a Walmart came into view on the left. Curran and Derek veered toward it. The three hundred yards between me and the Walmart looked like someone had taken a blender to a warehouse: sharp chunks of concrete littered the ground, bound together by twisted metal rebar and broken wooden beams. Broken glass, dull with dirt, glittered here and there, catching a random ray of the sun. Great. If I followed them, I might as well just jump out and slice my tires now.
Derek slowed and made small circles among the debris. The ghouls must’ve lingered there.
Curran tensed, his whole body compressing like a tight spring, and leaped onto a six-foot-high concrete boulder. He landed light and straightened, his gaze fixed on the crumbling corpse of the big-box store. His broad shoulders and the line of his back curved slightly. The wind pulled on his sweats, revealing a glimpse of his hard body, muscles ready to launch him at some unseen threat in an instant. That potential power was like a magnet. If I didn’t know him and I was driving by, I would’ve stopped to get a second look, trying to figure out who that scary hot bastard was.
I would go home with him tonight. Go me.
Okay. There was something seriously wrong with me. First, I was staring at him like some sort of love-struck idiot. Second, I was doing it while sitting in the middle of the street with the motor running. If another vehicle came barreling down the road, I’d get to experience the fun and excitement of a head-on collision. I pulled the car to the curb. It was a consequence of the blood loss. Sure. That was it.
Derek did a one-eighty and ran past me down the road. Curran leaped off the boulder and caught up with him. Here we go again. I eased off the brake. Meadow Lane Road . . . A ruined parking garage loomed on our left, half-hidden behind pines. Curran and Derek ducked into it. I parked the Jeep and went down the slope after them.
The parking garage stretched before me. I stood for a moment, letting my eyes adjust to the gloom. Bare vines, still reeling from winter, blanketed the right and left sides of the garage, growing denser toward the back, where the ceiling of the structure had caved in. Three cars, pinned in place by the crushing weight of concrete, rusted quietly in the far left corner. Next to them Curran waited. Derek crouched by him. In front of them a fissure split the concrete wall. From here it looked solid black, at least eight feet tall and three feet wide.
Of course. Why wouldn’t it be a terrible dark pit? Just once I would like it to be a breezy path through some garden with roses and sunshine.
I jogged to them. Derek pivoted on his feet toward me. “The trail leads in there.”
No, it doesn’t. “Okay.”
Derek ducked into the gap. I looked after him. The concrete ended after about five feet, merging into a tunnel dug in soil, angling down. A cold, dank odor washed over me.
No.
I felt Curran behind me and straightened. My back brushed against his chest. I didn’t want to go down into that hole. I would do almost anything else. I just didn’t want to go down there.
“Baby?” Curran asked.
“Yes?”
Right now Eduardo could be down there, waiting for help. I stepped into the gap and started moving. I just had to put one foot in front of the other and not think about thousands of pounds of soil and rock that would bury me alive if it collapsed.
“You okay?” he asked quietly.
“I’m great.” I could barely see Derek in the darkness moving ahead of me. My imagination painted an avalanche of loose dirt dropping into the tunnel in front of me, burying me, getting sucked into my lungs . . . I tasted adrenaline on my tongue. Tunnels were never on my favorite list of things, but today my body was going into overdrive.
“Your pulse is speeding up.”
I just had to pick a shapeshifter. “Apparently dark narrow tunnels leading deep underground don’t agree with me.”
He wrapped his arms around me. I stopped. My heart was hammering against my ribs. What the hell was wrong with me?
Curran kissed my hair. His voice was a quiet warm whisper in my ear. “This isn’t Mishmar.”
Memories cascaded through my mind like a bucket of cold water dumped over my head. Being trapped in a tunnel filled with water, clinging to the metal grate, holding Ghastek’s head so he wouldn’t drown, running through the dark passageways while hundreds of undead chased us . . .
Curran’s voice cut through it, calm and reassuring. “We aren’t trapped. It’s just a hole in the dirt.”
I inhaled deeply, leaning on him. Breathing from the bottom of your lungs short-circuited anxiety, and so I breathed slowly, trying to get my exhales to last longer than my inhales, and stood wrapped in him.
My pulse slowed. The odd uncomfortable panic was still there, but it receded far enough that I could keep a lid on it. I squeezed his hand. “I’m good.”
He let me go and I pushed my way through, trying to speed up.
The tunnel narrowed. My shoulders brushed the dirt. Great. The anxiety hammered at me. I concentrated on my breathing, slow and deep.
A minute passed. Another.
Just keep moving. Keep moving. It will end.
It will end.
It felt like we’d been underground for eternity. It had to be at least thirty minutes.
It had to end . . .
How far did this damn tunnel go?
A hand rested on the small of my back and slid down.
“Did you just grab my butt?” I whispered.
“What?”
“Curran!”
“Yes?” I could hear controlled laughter in his voice.
Unbelievable. I sped up. “We’re tracking ghouls and you’re grabbing my butt.”
“I always make sure to pay attention to important things.”
“Sure you do.”
“Besides, if the tunnel collapses, I won’t get to do it again.”
“You won’t get to do it again anyway. I can’t even see Derek anymore. He probably heard about your butt-grabbing and decided to give us some space.”
“Maybe you just move too slow.”
Argh.
“You should try making more noise as you walk, too.” Curran suggested. “Maybe the ghouls will mistake you for a small underground elephant and run off.”
“When we get out of here, I’ll kick you.”
“You’ll try.”
The tunnel turned. A faint light illuminated Derek almost fifty yards ahead of me. He jumped down into the light. I double-timed it. A moment and I grabbed onto the edge of the tunnel’s opening. A large open cavern spread before me, its floor about seven feet below, illuminated by daylight streaming in through a hole in its ceiling. The ray of light fell onto a mangled vehicle sitting upright in the middle of the floor, its hood a crushed Coke can of a mess, its back up in the air. Derek was nowhere in sight.
A mangled black vehicle.
A sick feeling pulled at my stomach. I jumped dow
n. The impact of hard ground punched the soles of my feet. The cavern stretched into a large tunnel to the left and to the right, too uniform not to be manmade. It just got better and better.
Curran landed next to me, silent like a ghost. It wasn’t fair that a man that large could move that quietly.
“MARTA,” I told him.
He frowned at me.
“Metropolitan Atlanta Rapid Transit Authority. We just entered the Red Line.”
MARTA began in the 1970s and grew into a network of bus lines and heavy rail stations, some above ground, some under. In its heyday, over four hundred thousand people rode it daily, but the magic waves crushed it. The trains were the first to go. Not that many of them crashed, but magic spawned nightmarish creatures who enjoyed hiding in dark tunnels and grabbing tasty snacks conveniently aggregating on the platforms for them. People refused to go underground. The buses held out for a while, but finally the city threw in the towel. Now MARTA stations stood abandoned, their tunnels turned into lairs by things with sharp teeth.
“How far does it go?” Curran asked.
“I have no idea. They were expanding it when the Shift happened. There are probably miles of rail underground.” Tracking ghouls through miles of tunnels would be like hunting a rat in a maze with a dozen exits.
We moved together, quietly walking toward the vehicle. Where the hell had boy wonder gotten off to?
The SUV sat directly under the hole. I looked up. It was just large enough for a vehicle to pass through.
“Is it a Tahoe?”
Curran reached up, grabbed the transmission, and pulled. Metal groaned as the butt of the SUV tipped toward Curran. It’s good to be a werelion.
“Yep. It’s a Tahoe.”
Dread washed over me in a cold clammy wave. It had to be Eduardo’s car. The ghouls had killed him, left his body to rot, and pushed the car in here, where nobody would find it.
Curran lowered the SUV and let it fall the last two feet. Long gashes scoured the paint on the sides. Ghoul claws. The tinted windows of the vehicle had cracked but hadn’t fallen out. Dust sheathed the cracks. I couldn’t see anything. I reached for the driver’s-side door. In my head, Eduardo’s mangled corpse soaked in his own blood in the driver’s seat.
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