He opened his eyes, blinking against moonlight filtered through evergreen trees.
They still huddled in the middle of a ramshackle ghost town, but a narrow, paved road led through the overgrown ruins of collapsed shacks. It led to a cluster of well-maintained, modern Quonset-hut-type buildings surrounding a small entranceway that appeared to go directly into the hillside. Black SUVs, that cliché of government agencies, along with a few older trucks filled a parking lot they would have tripped over if they’d walked a hundred yards farther.
And everyone’s auras were back to normal, though Akane’s was still dim.
“Okay,” Kyle conceded. “We’re in the right place.”
“Akane, any ideas about how we actually get inside?” Tag asked.
The kitsune shook her head. Deck thought she looked pale, but then realized she was actually translucent. “It was hard breaking that illusion. I made light of it because that’s a kitsune’s way, but it hurt me. My original thought was I could trick us all inside, but the longer I’m here, the more it hurts. Something in the warding actually suppresses magic that doesn’t belong here. And I…”
“You’re magic and you don’t belong here.” Paul’s voice was gentle. “You got us here. You broke the illusion. Now get somewhere safe.”
“I’ll kick some butt for you, babe,” Tag drawled, his whisky eyes concerned as he looked at the fading kitsune. “And then I’ll come home safe to you.”
“You better. Remember my katanas—sometimes it’s better to look tough than to be tough. And if you die, I’ll go to the Otherside and tease you unmercifully.”
With that, she winked out of the clearing. Akane’s sad smile and the tips of her furry ears remained visible for a few seconds after the rest of her vanished.
“Anyone have a plan B? Or Q, or whatever we’re up to?” Kyle couldn’t manage to quip convincingly, which said something about how desperate they all were.
“I’ll try shooting the lock.” Tag patted the pistol at his hip. “Doors stand still, so it’s got to be easier than deer huntin’.”
“When I was an EMT, I sometimes ended up hanging out with cops after an incident,” Kyle said. “Shooting a lock off a door is harder than it looks on TV.”
Deck squinted at the door with his witch-sight. His witch-sight wasn’t working right, any more than anything else was, but the damn door was glowing. “And they didn’t buy that door and lock at Home Depot. The door might just shoot back.”
Then Kyle blinked and turned to Deck. “A stream runs underground here. Off that hill, I think. Can you feel it now?”
Deck probed, found the cool gray-blue vein and followed it. “To an underground lake! I may be able to work with that.” He explored farther, letting his senses expand. “No, to a cistern within the facility. And there are pipes, but they’re wide ones. Old school, like the Agency built on top of something from the old mine.” He smiled for the first time in what felt like years. “I can definitely work with that.”
“No,” Kyle said. “We can.”
“We’ll get an invisibility spell on you, one that will last even when you change forms,” Deck assured him, looking at Paul for confirmation, since illusion magic wasn’t one of Deck’s strengths. Paul nodded. “And I know you can hold your breath a ridiculously long time in otter form, but I can extend that. One of the water magics that always works for me, even inland.” Granted, he knew that because he’d dated a girl who liked underwater sex and went to school in Eugene, but experience was experience.
“I only wish I were a river otter. Those guys can squeeze in places where I can’t.”
“Think skinny, Kyle, and wiggle that fine butt of yours like your life depends on it.”
Kyle corrected Tag. “Like Meaghan’s life depends on it.”
Think skinny had sounded funny when Kyle was in wordside form on dry land—okay, mildly amusing, but all the tension had magnified it to hilarious.
He could even smile to himself about it while swimming in the chilly stream. He wasn’t as buoyant in the fresh water as he was used to, and ripples and rapids were no match for waves, but he was an otter in the water. He turned off his wordside, with all its worries, and let the otter take charge. The otter was frantic too, knowing part of his raft was missing, but his animalside could embrace the now. Slipping and sliding downhill in the stream touched pure joy even under the circumstances.
It worked until the stream diverted underground.
He could even tolerate the natural underground stream, though he hated knowing all the rock was above him instead of friendly salt water.
The pipe leading into the facility was another story. He liked risky surfing and risky sex, but those were dangers he could calculate. This situation was unknown, which made it exciting in a bad way. More like those moments when you wiped out and a wave held you under and it was all you could do not to gasp for breath and suck in a lungful of water. A great story once you reached the surface safely, awful while it was going on.
And despite the otterside’s best efforts, his imaginative wordside started screaming inside him, panicked at a space it couldn’t possibly fit, and imagining all the ways this could go badly wrong.
Steady on. Right now the pipe wasn’t dangerous. Right now nothing was blocking passage. And while the otterside didn’t always understand how humans thought, he couldn’t imagine there wouldn’t be access to and from the cistern for maintenance. He’d get in and find his way to open the door for the others.
Lord, Lady and Trickster help him. He’d do this. For Meaghan. For Deck. For his raft of three and all their kin.
He pictured Meaghan as he swam, hoping that the water would help her pick up his silentspeech message: We’re coming to rescue you. We love you.
Thinking that over and over took the edge off the wordside’s panic, kept the otter focused on what needed to be done.
And then he hit the metal grating blocking what could only be the entrance to the cistern. Old, rusty, probably predating the Agency, it was still sturdy enough it didn’t budge when he flung himself against it.
Panic washed over him. Trappedtrappedtrappedtrapped. Couldn’t go forward, couldn’t go back…
Mental image of smashing an abalone with a rock.
Right. The grating attached to the pipe with clamps that looked like they might break with enough force.
Finding a stone at the bottom of the pipe was the easy part; the creek must carry all kinds of debris in here. But the clamps, rusty though they were, weren’t abalone shells, and he couldn’t get enough force with his short otter legs at this angle. His otter body smashed down to crack things, not up and out.
He needed his wordside hands and arms.
He hated being partly shifted. His two bodies were too disparate in size and shape for it to work well at the best of times, and his broad human shoulders wouldn’t fit well in this space. This called for a petite female Cirque du Soleil acrobat, not a fairly big guy.
Meaghan, soft and strong and smelling of amber and ocean, her pussy gripping his cock, her love holding him, her eyes focused on him even though she couldn’t see. Meaghan, so fragile and yet so brave. Meaghan, who would die without help from Deck’s healer relatives.
This was going to hurt…a lot. But not as much as losing Meaghan would, or letting the Agency hurt more people, including Elissa’s baby. And the bastards had killed Deck’s grandmother, one of the sweetest old ladies he’d ever met. Terrifying, but still sweet.
Both otterside and wordside steeled themselves and started the shift.
His wordside shoulders wouldn’t fit in the pipe in their natural position, but he managed to wiggle and scrunch, an effort made easier because the rest of him was otter and thus flexible. He’d have no fur left on his arms and shoulders by the time he was done with this. Not that he had fur on his wordside arms and shoulders, but he was going to lose s
o much skin in this narrow space that he’d sport bald patches in his otter form until the wordside healed.
Worth it.
A few good whacks with the stronger wordside arms and the rusty clamps bent. Something wrenched in his left shoulder but he ignored that hot pain and the constant discomfort of scraping and hit the fasteners a few more times. One gave. Now to get one of the others loose, push the grate in, shift back to full otter form and get through.
And fast. He needed air badly. He could hold his breath for three minutes in this form, maybe a little more, and Deck’s spell had extended that considerably. But his lungs ached and strained.
Another smack with the rock. Two. Three. Four.
Nothing.
Deck’s spell would keep him alive. It had to.
He picked a different angle, hit again. Muscle tore in his left shoulder, skin ripped on his right.
The hinge gave.
Using what strength remained in his damaged human arms and the force of his long otter body, he pushed on the grate. It moved.
Not all the way out of the opening, but enough that once his arms and shoulders shrank—painfully and more slowly than usual—to their proper otter shape, he could squeeze through. His shoulders still throbbed in otter form, but the ominous pain in his left shoulder shrank to the tolerable soreness of a bad bruise.
Water expanded around him, still enclosed, but with space to spare. Overhead, it was still dark, but his instincts screamed that up meant air. He shot upward. Within seconds he broke the water’s surface and filled his lungs with blessed oxygen.
Holding himself straight in the water, Kyle looked around the dimly lit space. Thank the Powers. Even this feeble emergency lighting indicated that people came and went down here. The cistern had started out as a small natural cavern, but it had been modified, expanded. A narrow catwalk with a single narrow rail ran around the inside of the chamber, above the water level.
No ladder up to the catwalk from the water. Of course not. It wasn’t a swimming pool. The water level was high, though.
Maybe high enough he could jump for it.
Otters weren’t natural leapers, but given sufficient motivation, they could launch themselves out of the water better than most humans would guess. Meaghan’s safety was great motivation.
He jumped.
Not quite high enough. One more time, then.
Higher, but he couldn’t make the catwalk platform and splashed down without any of his usual grace.
Once more with feeling. Almost…almost. This time his front paws touched the deck, but he slithered off.
He tried a swimming start this time. Promising, but didn’t get the trajectory quite right. He knew what he’d done wrong, though, corrected for it next time.
He belly flopped onto the catwalk, skidded across, managed to twist to hit the slick stone wall with his shoulder instead of his head.
His already tender left shoulder. Ouch. He was just glad he was in otter form because the wordside shoulder must feel a lot worse.
He’d made it into the Agency’s lair. Or at least close.
He panted on the cold metal deck until his head stopped spinning.
Time to shift. He’d need his humanoid hands to open doors, his wordy brain to think through human security measures.
His perspective altered. His body elongated, turned its fur inside, and his wordside took form.
Damnation and dry land, he hurt. He’d messed up his shoulders even worse than he’d realized. The right was swollen and scraped bloody, but he could move it. Tomorrow it would probably tense up and be a mass of bruises, but he’d worry about that once he knew he’d live until tomorrow.
The left was distorted and was rapidly discoloring. Best guess was he’d dislocated it. It hadn’t carried over when he shifted to otter form because of the different joint structure, but the pain was back—and blinding.
Good thing otters were bendy. Also a good thing he had EMT training and knew what to do with dislocated shoulders. Even his own.
He sat up, wrapped his hands around his right knee, leaned back, back, back…and bit back a scream as the shoulder shifted back into place.
The pain immediately, blessedly, backed off. He’d have to favor that side, and he figured before long he’d kill, or at least maim, for painkillers. But at least he could move his arm without agony.
His body suggested a nap on the cold metal deck but he forced himself to his feet.
Time to find the main door to this crazy place. He had a Meaghan to save, and he couldn’t do it alone.
Leaving the cistern proved as simple as turning a knob and heading up a flight of stairs illuminated by dim emergency lighting. He waited by the next door, hoping that the silence he heard really meant he was safe, then opened the door and stepped into an obvious basement storage area, full of clutter, but thankfully empty of people. He had no way of telling if the invisibility spell was holding—he’d always been able to see himself—so he snuck from shadow to shadow, moving silently on his bare feet across a cold concrete floor. Only one door out. So far his luck was holding.
Another flight of stairs led to white tile floors and fluorescent lights, and a faint but unmistakable smell of formaldehyde and death. He crept past a door labeled MORGUE—thankfully closed—and others tagged NECROPSY 1 and NECROPSY 2.
Not even AUTOPSY, as if the sentients who died here were veterinary specimens. But the vets he’d met were good people who genuinely cared for their animal patients. Kyle doubted the same could be said for the “doctors” here.
The necropsy rooms were silent, and there was no light under the doors. He hurried past, said a quick, silent prayer for the dead. He could feel Meaghan’s energy under his heart. But the Agency’s other victims deserved the blessing of the Powers.
This floor had an elevator. Kyle didn’t dare to use it, but he popped in long enough to see how many levels he faced. Five, plus the basement.
Back to the stairs, then, and climb, climb, climb. No point in wandering around a floor, hoping the magic held and no one caught ripples of the spell as he passed.
It was the smart thing to do. He was not only unarmed, but stark naked and injured. Get to the main door, open it and let Deck and the others in. Then maybe he could quietly pass out somewhere, or at least find a makeshift weapon. And some pants. Kyle didn’t know much about fighting, but it seemed damn foolish to rush into a fight with your most vulnerable bits dangling free.
It hurt not to tear the place apart looking for Meaghan, but he couldn’t rescue her alone and trying to was a great way to get both of them killed.
Kyle managed to maintain this resolve until he’d climbed three stories up.
He paused on the landing. Three flights of stairs wouldn’t normally wind him, but he didn’t normally have days like this one, either.
He smelled ocean and amber even through the heavy steel door.
He twisted the doorknob. Nothing happened.
Keypad. The damn thing needed an access code to open, even from the inside.
He threw himself against the door with a cry, not caring it jarred his shoulder, not caring who heard.
Let them hear. If some agent flung the door open to check it out, let him explain about an invisible animal darting between his legs. Kyle could shift to otter form and slink away before they had any idea what was going on.
And maybe in that form, he could reach Meaghan.
Chapter Twenty-Four
It took about thirty seconds to realize that was a bad idea. Even if he managed to get in, he’d need backup to get Meaghan out safely. He took a deep breath and kept going. Do what he’d been sent to do, pass on the information, go in with everyone else.
Thankfully the stairwell door to the ground floor was unlocked. Apparently they figured if you made it that far, you worked there. A quick glance showed an empty
lobby.
With security cameras.
Kyle might be all right. Even if their tech could see through his magic, it was a quick run to the front door, and once the others poured in, there’d be relative safety in numbers.
Deck could fry the tech with his electricity magic. Probably. At least Kyle hoped so.
He shifted into otter form, on the theory that the security cameras might not notice him flat on the floor, figuring that he might be below camera level. And at least his shoulders didn’t hurt so damn much.
It took forever to skitter across the slick lobby floor on paws meant for rock and sand and water. He made the last few feet sliding on his belly, with a dim thought that this might be fun under other circumstances.
He pulled off a shift at the last possible second, velocity sending him into the door, right shoulder first. At least it wasn’t the left shoulder, but, Powers, it was not fun. If he’d had to depend on pulling himself up with either arm he might have ended up lying like a stranded turtle until someone tripped over him. Luckily, he surfed, so he popped onto his feet like he was popping up on a surfboard. It still smarted, letting him think he had a few injuries he hadn’t found yet, but it worked. He opened the door and chittered as loudly as he could, not daring to yell but hoping the otterlike noise would get the point across.
Paul screwed up his eyes and looked a little to the left of where Kyle was, nodded and then said a few words in Gaelic. Kyle’s skin tingled as the spell on him subsided. Maybe the invisibility spell had held him upright, or removing it took some of his scant remaining energy with it. He sagged against the open door.
Then Deck’s arms were around him. Just a quick hug and a whispered, “I knew you could do it,” before he stepped aside for Paul and Tag to enter the facility.
They were all trying to be quiet, Kyle could tell, but their footsteps made some noise.
Not enough for most humans to hear, which made Kyle think that someone had a spell going to muffle sound, but enough to seem loud to the ears of an anxious dual.
Witches' Waves Page 24