The lights were on in the messy bedroom—it smelled like an animal den from ten feet away, even to my weak half-human nose—and the door was open, voices coming from the hallway, but Sindari was right. Nobody was inside. I started to draw Chopper, intending to cut through the screen, but Sindari eased past me.
Allow me.
He lifted a paw, one of his claws extended, and soundlessly sliced open the screen on all sides.
Handy. I pulled myself through, landing lightly on the clothing-strewn carpet inside. Next time the electricity is out, I’m coming to you to open cans.
The den smell was stronger inside. It seemed strange that all these cats were living together, even temporarily, when I associated most of the big feline predators with being solitary. Prides were a lion thing, and I assumed whoever had started the Northern Pride was a lion shifter, but these other members were all going along with it. Maybe there were perks. Like lawyers and assistance with beating the snot out of pesky government assassins.
Someone is coming. Sindari slid into the closet, knocking off the handful of garments hanging up instead of piled in a heap on the floor.
Light footsteps sounded in the hall, just audible over the voices of people in the living room. I hadn’t moved from the window yet, so I crouched down behind the bed, Chopper in hand. There was nowhere to hide my six-foot frame even if there had been time. I was about to see how well my cloaking charm worked on these guys. The dark-elf apprentice alchemist had seen me when we’d been within a couple of feet of each other.
A male shifter in human form stumbled in, his jeans halfway off his hips. I wasn’t sure if that represented a stylistic choice or if he was in the middle of undressing, especially when a giggling blonde slinked in after him. They embraced, tumbled to the bed, and started a noisy kiss-and-grope session a foot away from me. They reeked of alcohol. Maybe everyone here would be drunk and this would be easier than I thought.
Do you think he recited poetry for her first? Sindari asked.
No. Moving as soundlessly as I could, I headed for the door, stopping only to peer in the closet to see if there was a panel in the floor. There wasn’t. I’d already been in the room with the TV—now replaced, judging by the video-game music drifting out of that corner of the house—and hadn’t seen an access panel in there either.
Sindari and I checked the master bedroom next—it was also empty and even grimier than the first room. As we checked the closet, voices roared in laughter scant feet down the hall. Someone went barreling past and tried to get into the bathroom. It was locked, and the person rushed into the master bedroom. I barely had time to flatten myself to the wall and avoid getting hit as the man sprang into the small bathroom. But he—another shifter, this time a big man with shaggy blond hair who might have been a lion—paused with his hand on the jamb.
He sniffed a few times, and I held my breath. He was looking right at me, and it was hard to stay still, but his eyes weren’t quite focused on the right spot.
He shook his head and disappeared into the bathroom, shutting the door.
There is an entrance here. Sindari backed up so I could check the closet.
There was a rectangle cut in the carpet. It looked like an access panel to a crawlspace under the house and nothing more. I almost backed out, thinking there had to be stairs and an actual doorway somewhere, but I had seen most of the house by now, and I hadn’t noticed anything like that.
Chopper’s soft light shined over dirt in the carpet. I touched it. It was fresh dirt. Someone had been down there recently.
The sound of the man peeing echoed through the wall, so I was careful not to make any noise as I pressed Chopper’s tip into the crack and wedged the panel open. The smell of mold and mildew and dampness rose up, and I frowned. My sensitive lungs were going to love this.
There was no light below, so I crouched and lowered Chopper. I was tempted to use my new Dwarven command, but not until the man with the bladder the size of a canteen finished his work.
Val? Sindari had been next to the bed and watching both doors, but he looked gravely in my direction. The dragon is coming.
Please tell me you mean Zav.
I do not. The other one.
Why? I barely resisted the urge to thunk my head against the wall. He shouldn’t be able to sense me while I’ve got the charm activated.
Or was that wishful thinking? He’d lost his ability to cloak himself when he lost that onyx stone, but I had no proof that he didn’t have other magical tools or an innate sensitivity. Just because Zav hadn’t seen through my cloaking charm didn’t mean another dragon wouldn’t.
It’s possible he’s not after you.
And just wants to visit the cat-shifter party in Bothell?
Maybe he’s not coming here. This is along the route he was flying when he was kidnapping people.
True.
The bathroom door opened, and the lion shifter walked out, heading for the hallway. Once again, he paused, nostrils twitching as he tested the air. He stood right between me and Sindari.
A part of me was tempted to jump out of the closet, shut the bedroom door, and try to knock him out before the others heard anything, but a lion shifter wouldn’t be easily subdued. He would fight back and make noise.
He turned toward Sindari. His innate stealth was different from what my charm granted me. As his handler, I could see him, but nobody else should have been able to. Maybe this guy was extra sensitive.
Sindari glided out the door into the hall. He’s catching a hint of my scent. I’ll lead him away from you.
I hated the idea of being separated from Sindari, but it was better than being discovered too soon. Don’t leave me for long. I pine without your companionship.
I know this.
The shifter left the room. Trusting Sindari to evade him, I slid the closet door shut and lifted the panel the rest of the way. I leaned it against the wall then whispered, “Eravekt,” and Chopper’s blue glow flared bright.
It illuminated a chamber dug into the dirt below the house with mud and puddles on the ground. Something that looked like cement had been sprayed on the lumpy walls, maybe in an attempt to keep water from seeping in. Droplets lined a few cracks in the hardened gray material. Fuzzy growths of mold dotted two of the walls, and my chest tightened.
While I debated whether to dig out my inhaler before I started wheezing, I lowered my head, twisting to see what was on the wall underneath me. A door. A huge metal vault door with a spinning handle that looked like something out of a submarine.
How had they gotten it down there? There was no way they could have fit it through the access panel in the closet.
The dragon that Sindari had already sensed came into my range. Dob. No mistake.
I pulled out my phone and texted Dimitri. Stay ready, but don’t send in the brute squad yet. Dob is around.
Isn’t that a reason to bring them in, not the other way around?
They’re not going to fight a dragon.
Is he coming for you? Dimitri demanded.
I could sense him wanting to help—he’d made a few enchanted weapons to use on the shifters, but they would be laughable against a dragon.
I hope not.
That’s not an answer.
Just hold tight.
I hopped to the muddy ground, wanting to see what was behind that door. I could still sense someone with a magical aura, but as before, it was nebulous and hard to identify. The door itself held some magic, and I wondered if it was what was making it hard to get a good read on who was inside.
Easing forward, I gripped my lock-picking charm and rested a hand on the cool steel. The metal tingled under my fingers, a testament to an enchantment on it. I tried to open the door, in case someone had left it unlocked, but the spinning wheel of a latch didn’t budge.
That was fine. This was what my charm had been designed for. But when I closed my eyes and urged it to thwart the enchantment, nothing happened. Oh, I sensed the magic from the charm tr
ying to obey, but like a true bank vault door, this had state-of-the-art security. Or state-of-the-art magic?
I could try to hack it open with Chopper, but if it was as thick as it looked, that would be asking a lot even from a magical sword. Besides, that would make a ton of noise. I couldn’t forget that I was right under a house full of shifters with very good hearing.
One more try, I decided, resting my hand on the exact spot where I guessed the locking mechanism would be. Once again, I willed the charm to work, and I imagined funneling some of my own energy into it. Zav was positive I had some inherent magic, and I had seemed to draw upon something like that when I’d broken the dark-elf bonds.
You can do this, I told myself, ignoring the offensive moldy air curling down my trachea and the tightness of my chest.
A thunk-clink came from the door. I felt the reverberation in my hand. Was that it?
I tried the wheel again. This time, it turned.
With no idea what was on the other side, I only opened the door a crack and paused, listening and waiting. I didn’t hear anything, but intense magic flowed out, startling me so much that I scurried back several steps and lifted Chopper in a defensive gesture.
Nothing rushed out besides the magic and a faint lavender light, but the magic called to me, inviting me.
I tried to sort through what I sensed. I hadn’t encountered anything like it before. The being with the aura was still in there, close to the door, I thought, but there was something else that was the source of this power. It was what was trying to draw me in, almost like one of the compulsions the dragons had put on me. But it was easier to resist than a dragon’s commands, at least from here and with Chopper in my hand, lending its protection to my mind. That might change if I got closer.
Footsteps sounded in the room above me. I wasn’t sure if I was still under the bedroom or had moved under the hallway. It occurred to me that the shifters would feel this magic, too, that someone would know their vault had been opened. I needed to shut it—but not without seeing who was in there first.
A ding-dong echoed down from above, almost amusing in its mundaneness. The doorbell.
The footsteps stopped. A few muffled shouts echoed from above.
The dragon is here, Sindari informed me.
He rang the doorbell? Why did that seem ludicrous to me?
He did. I can sense him standing on the stoop in his elven form.
I couldn’t tell where Sindari was. Still in the house, I thought.
Stay safe. Don’t get closer than twenty feet from him—Zav said he felt you at that distance. I’m going to find out who we’ve been sensing in this weird basement.
Be careful. I just felt an immense powerful swell from somewhere under the house.
I know. I opened a door.
I think it’s something menacing.
I had a feeling it wasn’t a fairy handing out lemonade.
Be careful, Sindari repeated. That’s probably the only way in and out.
I’m not sure about that. There’s a two-ton vault door down here. It wasn’t brought in through the crawlspace opening. I eased the door open a little wider, enough for me to slip through.
Maybe it was here before the house was built.
I had been about to step in but froze at the thought. The door looked new, far newer than the house above, but Sindari’s suggestion was possible. If so, maybe it—or whatever was behind it—was the reason the shifters had picked this place. Maybe it had to do with why so many other cat shifters were willing to come hang out here for days. To protect a secret?
Only one way to find out. I’m going in.
27
I stepped through the doorway, leading with Chopper, though I was tempted to switch to Fezzik. Images of enemies firing at me from behind crates popped into my mind.
A moan came from the left, behind the door, and I spun, almost attacking before my brain registered what I was seeing. A dwarf. A full-blooded, full-bearded, old male dwarf with wild white hair and olive-gray skin that reminded me of dirt and stone. His slate-colored eyes were sunken and vacant, and he didn’t react as I stood gaping at him with my sword poised to strike.
He sat on the floor with his back to a stone wall—the walls in here were natural stone, not the lumpy cement of the other room. Unlike the muddy floor outside, this one was flat, rock, and bone dry. Boxes of ammunition rested to the dwarf’s right and a crate full of loose rounds to his left. As I watched, he took a single bullet from a box, held it in his hand and murmured something too soft to hear, then placed it in the crate. A faint magical residue emanated from the bullet. Before he’d touched it, it had been plain.
The dwarf moaned again, the sound soft and full of pain. His left ankle was shackled with iron, a chain running from it across the floor of the small chamber and into a tunnel. The chain was the source of the lavender glow, but it wasn’t the source of the magic calling to me. Whatever that was came from down that dark tunnel.
The door thudded shut, sealing with a hiss. I lunged for it a split second too late to grab it and hold it open. My stomach sank. There wasn’t a latch or wheel or anything but flat metal on this back side.
Trapped.
No, I’d opened it once. I could use magic to open it again. I hoped.
You will not believe this, Val. Sindari’s voice sounded far, far away, as if he’d run to the end of the mile range he could get from his charm.
What? I lowered my sword and crouched in front of the dwarf.
When I waved my hand in front of his eyes, he didn’t react, didn’t seem to see me at all. Was he blind? His face was gaunt, his weathered hands so lean that I could see every tendon and vein along the backs as he worked.
Dob has heard that the brothers sell dragon-slaying weapons, and he wants to purchase one.
Is he the reason the shifters aren’t checking out the magic that flowed from their vault? I reminded myself that it was a good thing that the door had shut, insulating that magic inside again. Maybe, distracted by Dob, they would forget they’d sensed it.
Yes, I think so. Two of them were on their way to check the orb—that’s what they said—but everybody is in the front room now. They’re very wary of Dob.
As they should be.
Orb? I eyed the tunnel. Was that what was back there, calling to me? Not with words but with pure magic that promised something good if I came to visit it. My curiosity almost pulled me away from the dwarf to investigate, but I remembered my mission, to get the shifters to leave Nin alone. If I took away their dwarf slave, they wouldn’t be able to create magical weapons or ammo anymore.
Besides, this poor guy needed to be freed.
“I’m going to let you go, all right?” I patted his shoulder, but again, he didn’t react.
An uneasy thought stirred, and I moved my hand to his throat. What if he wasn’t alive any longer? What if he’d died here and his undead body was chained by magic to forever carry out the whims of the shifters?
But his skin was warm, and a slow steady pulse beat under my fingers.
“Good.”
I reached for the glowing shackle on his ankle, thinking I could unlock it with my charm. I’d barely touched it when a surge of power slammed into me. It hurled me across the chamber like a cartoon character who’d stuck his finger in an outlet. I tried to twist in the air to make sure I didn’t break anything landing, but I struck the wall first. Hard.
My breath whooshed out of my lungs as pain struck me like a lightning bolt. Groaning, I slumped to my hands and knees.
“You could have warned me,” I growled between gasps for air.
The dwarf hadn’t moved. He still wasn’t reacting.
It was a long moment before I could climb to my feet and pick up Chopper, and the ache that remained after the initial burst of agony worried me. Since I didn’t see a way I could escape the night without fighting, I worried about cracked ribs making everything even more difficult.
I shambled back over to the dwarf, care
ful not to bump the chain with my boot.
What’s going on out there, Sindari?
Since the door had shut, I hadn’t heard any noises from above. It was almost as if I’d been transported to some other dimension. I didn’t get an answer, and that worried me, but he probably wasn’t monitoring my thoughts because the shifters and the dragon were having an interesting conversation.
“Wait here,” I told the dwarf, as if he was going anywhere. “I’m going to explore.”
Maybe I could turn off the source of the magic powering the chain and keeping him in zombie mode.
I padded down the tunnel, rounding bend after bend, careful not to touch the chain that ran along the wall the whole way. The passageway sloped slightly downward, and I lost track of where I was in relation to the neighborhood above. Definitely not still under the shifters’ house.
The lavender light grew brighter as the tug on my mind grew stronger. Whatever was trying to get me back there seemed… hungry. But it was full of promises too. Images started to pop into my mind of me and my daughter skipping rocks into a lake, of me sitting out on a sunny beach with no weapons in hand and nobody trying to kill me, of me dragging a handsome and laughing version of Zav into bed with me. All the things I wished I could have? I grunted skeptically at the last.
By the time I reached a chamber about twenty feet by twenty feet, the lavender light was so intense that I held up my hand to protect my eyes. An orb hung in the center of the chamber, not suspended from anything, simply floating in place. Dark purple veins were visible on its glass-like surface, overshadowed by the brilliant light it exuded. The orb throbbed, reminding me uncomfortably of a beating heart. I could even feel the faint pulses emanating from the walls and floor around me.
More images flooded my mind, these more intense than the first. They were carnal and erotic and promised great pleasure if I came forward and touched the orb.
“Given how it went the last time I touched something down here, I’m going to pass.” I gripped Chopper’s hilt with both hands and willed the blade to help protect me, to push the intrusion out of my mind.
Battle Bond: An Urban Fantasy Dragon Series (Death Before Dragons Book 2) Page 24