“Compared to you, most all of us are special.” Sid holstered her gun. “How’d you get here?”
“I jumped off the Francis Scott Key Bridge. You should have seen the faces those brats made when I jumped. Oh, how I wish I could still find the joy in that.” He dusted off his hands. “So I floated down here. About an hour later I noticed your little party across the way. That dead man had a watchful eye, too, so I ended him.”
She tilted her head. “Too? You mean there are more dead?”
Looking at his nails, Vormus said, “Maybe a couple. What? You should be thanking me. It’s not on your conscience, it’s on mine.” He leaned back and said to Smoke, “But we both know I don’t have one.”
“You have something,” Smoke said, “Or you wouldn’t be helping us.”
Taking a glance at the dead man’s body, the shifter replied, “He means as much to me as, what do you special ones call it, ah, as killroad means to you.”
“It’s roadkill,” she said. “Smoke, do you want to scout around before we take this investigation any deeper?”
“I’ve cleared the area,” Vormus said.
“Sit down,” Smoke replied.
“Here? On the ground?”
Smoke drove his boot into the back of Vormus’s knee.
The shifter collapsed, but he popped right up again. Fangs bared, he got in Smoke’s face. “Don’t take my cooperation as softness. I might not feel much, but I still have a temper. Take warning, John Smoke. Don’t treat me like chattel.”
Staring Vormus in the eye, Smoke said, “You’re worse than chattel. Don’t forget it.”
Vormus sneered.
“I’ve got this, John,” Sid said.
Smoke gave a quick nod and moved out of sight.
Facing Sid, Vormus said, “It’s only a matter of time before he embraces what he is. The deeper you go down this Lewis Carroll rabbit hole, the more his true nature will reveal itself. It’s the same for the both of you.”
“It’s not something we can avoid?”
“No, you can’t. Sidney, I’m grateful you have shown me a degree of trust. After all, we both want the same thing. You need to save your sister. I need to save myself. I’m sincere about that.”
“I’ll be convinced when my sister and niece are out of harm’s way.” Keeping her eyes on Vormus, she said, “How do I know she’s not a shifter already?”
“I know there is much to discuss on that, and I don’t have any intent to be vague, but there is a proving ground. It takes time to show commitment.”
“What sort of proving ground?”
“Think of what you know about a gang’s initiation. Multiply by ten.”
“Are you saying she’ll have to kill somebody?”
“I’m saying she will kill somebody, and somebody could be anybody. It could be somebody close to her. It was for me.”
“Who did you kill?”
“My parents.”
“You don’t mean that.”
“You have every reason to believe I’m a liar, but I’m not, as I have no reason to lie. But you have to kill someone dear to you. I’ve known shifters who even took out their own children.” His stone-cold stare didn’t change. “They didn’t shed a tear.”
Megan.
Two thoughts coursed through Sid’s mind. First, Allison wasn’t the best mother to begin with. She was selfish by nature, and she never gave Megan the attention she should. Second, Vormus, if all he said was true, deserved to die. He didn’t deserve redemption of any kind. But she needed him. She didn’t like it.
Smoke glided back into view. “It’s clear. Everything good here?”
“Peachy,” she replied. She turned to Vormus. “Where to?”
“You’re asking me? This is the first time I’ve been here too. I’m not much of what you call an investigator. I just know who to fetch when we get in there, wherever there is.”
“I’ve got it,” Smoke said. “There’s a boat docked on the bridge side. It’s got to be close to where they go in. Follow me.”
“After you,” she said, waving her gun at Vormus.
CHAPTER 4
The three-and-a-half-acre island fort didn’t prove difficult to navigate. Amid a small crane covered in vines and a Bobcat loader with a busted tread, Smoke found a path beaten down by human traffic. It led down a staircase into a network of tunnels and stone archways. The ground was muddy and wet, filled with silt from the bay. Critters scattered in the darkness.
Sid’s goggles enhanced her sight enough to make out the faint outlines of the walls. The forms of Vormus and Smoke were clear. Still, it was a little unsettling moving in the pitch-black without a single source of light.
Smoke engaged the laser sight on his pistol.
Good idea.
Sid did the same.
The red beams cut through the darkness, tracing the walls, giving them the appearance of something real and not some maze hidden in the night.
Smoke moved with his eyes low, burrowing farther into the tunnel. He stepped up on a ledge that led into another alcove. The storage chamber of the old fort was big enough to hold about twenty men. There was nothing inside except the stainless steel frame of an elevator.
“You’ve got to be kidding me,” Sid said, stepping forward and inspecting the frame. “An elevator? Here? Huh, it needs a proxy card.”
Smoke dangled a proxy card in front of her eyes. “I patted down one of Vormus’s dead guards.” He went to scan it. “Going down, I suppose?”
She stopped him. “If this place is so important, shouldn’t it be under heavier guard?”
“Again, the shifters are overconfident,” Vormus said.
“Huh,” said Sid, “and who’s to say there isn’t some other way out? They probably have a tunnel under here that leads to the Pentagon.”
“You mean the Pentagragon,” Smoke added.
“Don’t start.” She brushed a strand of wet hair from her eye. “Of course, at this point, nothing would surprise me.” She filled both hands with pistol grips and took a breath.
Smoke scanned the card.
The doors parted. A small halogen bulb inside the elevator was a beacon of bright light. Head turned aside, Sid stepped in. Vormus and Smoke joined her. The new illumination gave her a close look at Vormus’s slacks and sweater. “What’s with you and lavender?”
“It was a dear aunt’s favorite color.”
“Did you kill her, too?”
“No, something else did.”
“OTIS,” Smoke said, eyeing the lettering at the top of the elevator panel. “Wow, they make elevators everywhere. I bet contractors know a lot more than they should.” He glanced down. There were two buttons, one over the other. “Going down?” Smoke said with a Steven Tyler chuckle.
“Funny, just don’t bust out the air guitar,” Sid said. The doors closed. The elevator began to move. Her adrenaline surged.
With a quizzical expression, Vormus asked, “What’s an air guitar?”
Sid’s fingers rubbed her clammy palms. The elevator ride was either really long or really slow. She looked up but away from the light. She’d toured an elevator shaft when she was a girl. She’d been amazed at how deep it went and how dark it was. Her skin had crawled the entire time. There was only one way out. What if that way failed?
“It’s deep,” Smoke said. “It has to be deeper than the bay. At least fifty feet.”
“How could anyone make such a thing without anyone noticing?” she replied. “This is worse than Mallows Bay.”
Vormus snorted. “You haven’t seen everything man can do. You only see what is in the world above. They let you see that. Evil lurks in the depths where the light is not wanted. You’d be astonished what is buried in Europe and beneath the great pyramids.” He made an effort to chuckle. “And not just mummies.”
The elevator stopped with a wobble. Sid lifted both barrels toward the exit. The stainless steel doors parted. Her lips did too. “Morning glory.”
CHAPTER 5
It was a cavernous view. Sid couldn’t see from one side to the other. Steel girders held up a dome roof made of yellow concrete block. The cavern floor was solid rock and uneven in many places. The stone was slick with a thin sheen of water. Metal lanterns with glass bulbs and dim yellow gas lights grafted to the walls and hanging above gave off an eerie glow. The air she breathed was damp. It made Sidney think of a subway tunnel but a dozen times bigger.
Smoke stepped out. His broad back blocked her view. She nudged him forward. His head turned in all directions. Under his breath, he said, “It’s like the Batcave.”
“More like a watery tomb.”
Vormus stepped into the cavern. The elevator doors closed. “Interesting, I don’t see anyone.”
Careful where she stepped, Sid moved forward with Smoke, toward the center of the room. There were desks similar to something one would see in a World War II army base. The rest of the wooden furniture appeared to be two hundred years old. Damp papers lay on the desks and floors. There were old glass-panel cubicles against the walls on the right. She noticed something familiar and gave Smoke a nudge.
The coffin they had put Titus Tolliver in lay on the floor. Smoke kneeled down and picked up a pair of flex cuffs that had been snipped. “At least we know he made it in here.”
“True, but where, exactly? It doesn’t look like anyone has been in here in days.”
The sound of metal being struck echoed in the great chamber. It came again. In the vast open space, the sound’s source was hard to make out.
Head tilted and eyes closed, Sid said, “It sounds like someone tossing a rock through a ventilation duct.”
“Just bigger,” Smoke added.
“Maybe the rats are much bigger down here,” Vormus suggested.
“There wouldn’t be any rats down here. Well, not unless you’ve met Swift Venison. Could he be down here?” she asked.
“They might all be,” Smoke said.
The tapping became steady.
“That’s Morse code,” Smoke said. He cupped is ear.
Vormus opened his mouth to speak. Sid shushed him.
“Left,” Smoke said, heading that direction with Sid and Vormus in tow. He came to a stop at the edge of a metal trapdoor. It was about four feet by four in size. The hinges were heavy iron. Flush to the floor, the door was a solid plate, aside from a large keyhole.
Sid noted more metal tombs. There were dozens, spaced out evenly and lined up all the way to the yellow block walls. “Geez, I hope these things aren’t full of shifters.”
“That would be a lot of shifters.” Smoke kneeled down and looked in the keyhole. “I think I see an eyeball.” He leaned closer. “Yup, it’s an eyeball.” He rapped his knuckles on the door. The same knock came back.
“Any ideas?” she said to Vormus.
The vampire shifter shrugged. “I suppose you’ll just have to open up the box.”
“I’ll see what I can find.” Sid made her way to the desks and sorted through the papers, which were old and damaged. There was Drake letterhead on what appeared to be invoices and shipping manifests. The contents weren’t described. It was just a list of packages. She opened desk drawers and rummaged through them. She found several fountain pens. “Huh, I bet these are worth some money.”
Vormus puckered a brow. “A pen?”
“An antique pen.”
“Yes, but still, just a pen. I can’t imagine it would have any notable value.”
“Why don’t you quit standing around in your Barney sweater and help me look for a key?”
“Who’s Barney?”
“Just look.”
Vormus began milling about in imitation of what Sid was doing. He didn’t seem to have any idea what doing real work was like. She made her way over to the glass-paned cubicles on the right side of the cavern, where she found a clipboard hanging by a nail hammered into the wooden frame of a cubicle. There was a gridded box with names on it. “Oh, snap.”
“What?” Vormus said in her ear. He’d crept right up on her heels.
She shoved him back with an elbow. “Don’t ever do that again.”
He inhaled through his nose. “Your hair smells nice. What kind of shampoo do you use? It has a floral luster to it that I like.”
Sid’s eyes were fixed on the page. Her lips said the words but not out loud.
Angi Harlow.
Swift Venison.
Adam Vaughn.
There were others. Among them in fresh ink was Titus Tolliver. She headed back toward Smoke and lined up the grid boxes from the clipboard sheet with the ones on the floor. They matched up.
Smoke glanced up at her. “What’s up?”
“I think I have a prison manifest.”
“Really?” He made his way over and checked it out. “I had a feeling they weren’t dead. Well, maybe we can finish them up now.”
“I told you shifters weren’t easy to kill,” Vormus stated. “It’s our thing.”
“Everything dies eventually.” Smoke fingered the manifest. “So who do we have communicating in this box here? Ah, our old buddy Toad Man. Remember him?”
“How could I forget?”
“He’s the one pecking inside. Did you find a key?”
“No.” Sid paced along the trapdoors. She lingered over the one with Adam Vaughn’s name. He’d killed her friends. He should be dead. She pointed her gun down at the keyhole and noticed it was turned to three o’clock. “Smoke.”
He slid over and gave a nod. He grabbed the handle on the door. Sid stood on the other side with her gun ready. She gave him a nod. He lifted the trapdoor. Nothing popped out, jumped, or scurried from the hole. The chamber wasn’t very deep, but it was empty. Just a metal door over a stone hole.
They checked all the locks in this row. All of them were unlocked except for the one marked “Toad Man Eugene Green.”
She tossed Vormus the manifest. “Who was the one you were looking for?”
“Ah, the keeper of secrets, Manson Bay.” He pecked his neatly trimmed fingernail on the clipboard. “It says he’s here. A good thing.” Vormus pointed. “Three over.”
She moved. “It’s unlocked.” The eerie quietness in the room bothered her. They weren’t quiet, and their presence had to be easily known. No one else, if they were there, was scratching or pecking.
Smoke came over and took her hand. With a nod from Sid, he opened the small prison.
“Empty,” she said.
“That’s disappointing,” Vormus replied.
One by one, they opened all the doors. Every cell was unlocked and empty aside from the one with Toad Man. The three of them surrounded it.
“I don’t know if this is a good thing or bad.” She sighed. “If we want answers, we’re going to need a key. Let’s keep looking.”
Toad Man
CHAPTER 6
While Sidney and Vormus searched for a key, Smoke sat on the trapdoor, knocking his knuckle on the metal in Morse code. The person inside the tomb pecked back. “So far as I can tell, it’s Toad Man. He’s angry.”
Talking loudly from across the cavern, Sid said, “Why isn’t he talking?”
“I think this metal is too thick. Sounds are probably muffled. I don’t know. Any luck with a key?”
“No.” Sid searched everything there was to search. She looked under desks. Pulled out drawers. Turned over tables. She looked through shelves of rations and supplies. There wasn’t a key of any kind. Worry set in. The captured shifters had been here, and now they were gone without a trace. She wondered why they might have been moved. Or were they still inside the cavern, just elsewhere? “Vormus, did you find anything?”
Somewhere inside the underground complex, Vormus said, “As regards a key, no.”
Sid stepped outside the wood-and-glass cubicle. She didn’t see Vormus. “Where are you?”
“South of you. In the shadows where the walls of block turn to solid stone. There are some smaller offshoot caves down here. Possibly a tunnel,
but it looks quite small.”
“I got it,” Smoke said.
Sid hustled over to him and asked, “You got what?”
Smoke lay flat on his belly. His hands were filled with slender metal tools. He worked the keyhole. Metal scratched on metal. The keyhole clicked. “We’re open for business now.”
“Toad Man, huh? I wonder if he’ll be excited to see us,” she said with a smile.
“I have to admit, I’m looking forward to seeing his face.” Smoke took the handle.
Sid readied her gun.
Smoke opened the door.
Slowly, Eugene Green, Toad Man, crawled out. All he wore was a pair of jeans, but his skin was brush brown and clumpy. Even in man form, his eyes were extremely large. They widened when Smoke removed the gag from his mouth and he said, “You!”
“How are you doing, Eugene?” Sid said.
Eugene’s frog neck turned toward her. “You too?” He gathered himself into a dangerous crouching position. His thick legs coiled to spring. “I can’t believe it’s you. Of all the despicable people. I swore if I ever saw you again, I’d bury you both.”
Smoke lowered his gun to aim between Toad Man’s eyes. “That’s not a nice thing to say to someone who just let you out of captivity, now is it?”
Blinking, Eugene said, “I don’t care. I still hate you both.” His long tongue flicked from his mouth. He had a little tic when he talked. Slowly he pointed at the both of them. “I hate you and you. You got me put in this hole. They called me a failure. Took my glory. My money. My everything.”
“We don’t care,” Sid said. “What happened to the others? Why did they leave you here?”
“What do you mean?” Eugene looked around. His jaw dropped. “Oh my. Are all the others gone?” He scanned his surroundings. “Where did everyone go? Did you kill them all?”
Smoke popped the ugly frogman on the top of the head with the butt of his pistol. “Don’t play stupid, toad neck.”
Wincing, Eugene rubbed his neck with his long toad fingers. “Beat me all you want.” His tongue snapped in and out. “I can take it. I’ll heal. I’ll be damned if I help you with anything.”
The Supernatural Bounty Hunter Files: Special Edition Fantasy Bundle, Books 6 thru 10 (Smoke Special Edition Book 2) Page 27