Huntress Clan Saga Complete Series Boxed Set: Books 1-6

by Jamie Davis

  The pipe angled down, so she could only see about twenty feet before it turned out of sight to the left. Whimpering drifted up to her, much clearer this time. She was definitely closer. The voice sounded like muffled groaning. It was louder than before, but still faint.

  “Man, I don’t like this,” Quinn said, trying to judge the diameter of the opening. She couldn’t tell if her mind was playing tricks on her. It looked to her like the circular pipe narrowed farther down.

  Another whimpering groan made up her mind. Quinn bent over and climbed into the opening. There was enough room for her to crawl at this point, although her back scraped the top. Quinn ignored the muck squishing between her fingers and soaking the knees of her jeans as she moved forward.

  Her eyes hadn’t fooled her. The pipe did narrow as she continued. Luckily it wasn’t enough to force her down so far that she had to crawl on her belly. It did make her assume a sort of moving plank position on elbows and knees.

  Quinn reached the point where the pipe angled down and to the left. When she stopped and listened, faint breathy gasps came from up ahead. Peering forward, Quinn could make out a dark shape in the tunnel, filling half the pipe. It looked more like a pile of rags than a person.

  Reaching to her side, Quinn drew her Bowie knife while she had the room to do so and resumed her advance. The moaning form was only about fifteen feet away.

  Taking a chance, Quinn whispered, “Hey, I heard you cry out. Are you okay?”

  The rag pile moved and then rolled over. A furry face appeared, with a white stripe from the forehead back and down the neck amidst the brownish hair.

  “Who are you?” the creature hissed. It bared its fangs and tried to look fierce. The pale face and slack skin told Quinn the shifter was injured.

  “Easy does it. I’m a friend.” Quinn recognized it as a werebadger, maybe one of the missing ones they’d been looking for. That confirmed their suspicions about this location if the presence of the bikers above didn’t already do that.

  “If you’re a friend, why are you pulling a knife on me?”

  Quinn lowered her Bowie but didn’t sheathe it. “Hey, you never know who you’re going to meet in these tunnels, am I right?”

  When the creature didn’t respond, Quinn said, “Look, I know Inez Huckle. I came looking for her after some goons kidnapped her.”

  “You know Inez? I heard them threatening to bring her in before I tried to escape. I knew it couldn’t be a good thing if they’d decided to be so bold and take our clan leader.”

  “You were right. That’s why I came. I’m Quinn. The Huntress? Have you heard of me?”

  “You’re the one who took out that vampire coven a few months back. Funny, you don’t look that tough.”

  “Hey, I’m here, aren’t I? I don’t think you have a lot of choice about who rescues you.”

  The werebadger shifted and groaned as it rolled over. Quinn still couldn’t tell if it was a male or a female here in the tight confines of the pipe.

  “You’re hurt. How bad is it?”

  “Bad enough that I decided I was going to die here in this sewer pipe.”

  Quinn made a snap decision and sheathed her blade, then shifted forward a few feet. “Show me where you’re hurt. Maybe I can help.”

  “Now you’re a healer, too?” The werebadger’s tone dripped suspicion.

  Quinn didn’t take offense. Instead, she smiled and said, “Maybe. You have any other options?”

  The werebadger grinned, showing a mouthful of sharp teeth. “You make a good point, Huntress.”

  When it rolled all the way over onto its back, Quinn could see it was a female and at least ten years older than her. The move revealed a chest and belly covered in blackened and putrid claw wounds. The stench was overpowering now that the wounds were uncovered.

  “How long have you been injured?”

  “I’ve been holed up in this pipe for two days now. The werepanther I jumped messed me up pretty good. He won’t be bothering anyone else, though. I ripped out his throat while he was clawing me.”

  Quinn remembered learning about the savage determination of badgers in the animal world. It seemed their shifter kin were no different.

  She slid closer and tried not to wrinkle her nose at the smell. She didn’t want to offend the dying woman. “What’s your name?”

  “Gretchen.”

  “Well, Gretchen, I’ve got an idea, but I have to warn you, I’ve never done this before. It’s something I’ve only seen done. I’ve been told I have the ability, though.”

  “It’s not like I have a lot of options at this point. I had resigned myself to die in here and be discovered as a bare skeleton by city works crews years from now.”

  “Well, let’s see if we can avoid that. This might hurt a little.”

  “It can’t hurt more than it does now. Do your worst.”

  Quinn nodded and stretched out her hands, hovering them over the woman’s chest and belly. She tried to remember what Avery had done when she’d healed Quinn’s shoulder after the werepanther fight.

  She reached out with her mind to search the area for ley lines close enough to draw upon. It was an instinctive reaction when she wanted to power up. Then Quinn remembered Avery had said the power to heal came from within the Huntress, not without.

  Redirecting her mind inward, Quinn pulled up her HUD and drew down her stamina bar as she tried to put that energy, not into her strength or reaction speed like she usually did, but into a flow of healing energy.

  At first, nothing happened. For several seconds, Quinn squeezed her eyes shut and trembled all over as she tried to force her energy into Gretchen’s injured body.

  A voice, as familiar as it was distant, flowed into her mind. It was the voice of the woman clan leader or goddess or whoever spoke to her at certain times. Quinn stopped straining to force her energy outward so she could try to make out what the distant voice said.

  “Nature is health, nature is flow, not force. Let the power flow from you, Huntress.”

  Quinn stopped and relaxed, and Gretchen looked at her. “I don’t think it worked. Don’t worry about it. You tried.”

  “No,” Quinn said. “I think I was doing it wrong. Don’t give up while I try again.”

  Quinn closed her eyes again, but this time she tried to focus on the energy in her stamina bar as a flowing river, using that imagery instead of something solid she had to force or push out. This time, she imagined a channel through which the energy would flow down her arms and into her hands. She didn’t force or direct the power to do anything. She just let it do what nature wanted it to.

  It worked.

  Gretchen and Quinn drew sharp breaths at the same time. A flaring, searing heat flashed from Quinn’s hands, and the whole tunnel lit up for an instant with the power of the flow.

  When it died down and Quinn drew her hands back, she could tell Gretchen’s breathing had eased. It no longer had the raspy quality indicating fluid in the lungs and throat.

  The werebadger let out a long sigh. “Oh, my, that is much better.”

  Quinn studied the area where the wounds were located. She couldn’t tell if they were better or not. The crusted blood and torn fabric of the woman’s clothes still clung, but the putrid stench seemed to have dissipated.

  “How do you feel?” Quinn asked.

  “It still hurts a little, but the throbbing ache is gone from my gut, and I can move without pain now.”

  As if to test her statement, she rolled back to her stomach and lifted herself up onto her hands and knees. “See, I could barely crawl far enough to get in here earlier.”

  “Good, I’m glad.” Quinn smiled. She realized the healing spell or whatever it was had filled her with a sense of fulfillment and peace. Maybe it was an aftereffect of doing what she had done. Her stamina bar had already started to refill with energy. That was much faster than it had when she’d pulled power from it before.

  Gretchen pointed up the pipe toward where the storm dr
ains ran along the street. “If you back up, we can get out of here, now that I am mobile again.”

  Quinn shook her head. “You came from the tunnels below here, didn’t you?”

  The werebadger nodded.

  “Then I can’t leave. I have to go down there.” She pointed past Gretchen.

  The older woman shook her head. “There’s all kinds of trouble that way, kid. You should get out and come back with help.”

  “I’ll be okay, I’m just here to scout things. I have to try to see what’s going on. Anything you can tell me about what’s happening down there would be helpful, too.”

  Gretchen glanced back down the pipe and shook her head. “It’s your funeral. Look, I don’t know much. They’re looking for something, but none of us knows what it is. Some big dark-haired lady came down there a couple of times in the last week or so. She pulled out a folded map. I never got a good look at it, but she used it to tell the panthers where she wanted us to dig next.”

  “I think I know what they’re after. Are you sure they haven’t found it yet?”

  Gretchen shook her head. “Not as of two days ago, at least. The lady was yelling the last time she was in there. I got the impression she was in a hurry because the werepanthers put a beating on us and made us work extra hard. That was when I decided to try to get out.”

  Quinn smiled. “Well, now you’re out. If I lie flat against one side of the pipe, do you think you can wriggle past me?”

  “Oh, easily. You sure you won’t come along?”

  “No,” Quinn said. “I need to see this for myself. I’ll be out as soon as I scout around a little. In the meantime, do you know where O’Malley’s pub is on the east side of the city?”

  “I’ve heard of it.”

  “Can you go there and ask for Clark or Naomi? They’ll be able to get you more help with your injuries, and you can tell them how to get into this tunnel system. That way, if I do get stuck or caught, they’ll know how to come find me.”

  “Fair enough.” Gretchen crawled forward as Quinn pressed herself against the side of the pipe.

  As soon as the werebadger was past her, Quinn called, “Be careful. There were a pair of werepanthers patrolling up there. Try to make your way farther out in the storm drains before you exit the tunnels.”

  “Thanks,” Gretchen replied. “You be careful, too.”

  Quinn nodded and turned back to look down the now-empty pipe. Gretchen had described how she’d found the entrance to the pipe where it opened into a cave off the main tunnel. Quinn would have to wriggle back through the same route until she reached the fresh excavations by Gemma’s kidnapped werebadgers.

  With a deep breath to steel her determination, Quinn started crawling, angling downward, deeper into the tunnels beneath the city.

  Chapter Twenty-One

  “What do you mean, you’ve lost the tracking data stream?”

  Taylor leaned forward, furiously tapping on her keyboard. Worry wrinkled her brow. “Just hold on, Clark. I’ll tell you as soon as I figure it out. Yelling isn’t going to make it happen faster.”

  She hit enter and watched the screen to see if it reconnected to Quinn’s stream. The comm had lost the connection soon after she’d called in to tell them her plan.

  A few minutes later, the normal brainwave stream flowing through the VR system had stopped. There’d been no sign of distress; it had just cut off. It could be caused by a lot of things, but the consequence was the same. She couldn’t recall Quinn until she re-established the link.

  Under normal circumstances, Taylor could see when stress levels reached a critical point. She could see when Quinn was in a fight. That hadn’t happened this time. If it had, she could’ve run a crash recall and pulled Quinn out.

  Under normal circumstances.

  Somehow, they’d lost the signal. That had never happened before, but Taylor was certain she could find a workaround to reconnect to her friend. She just needed to relax and solve the problem using logic and maybe a touch of magic.

  Of course, having Clark breathing down her neck made it hard to stay focused. When he put a hand on the back of her chair and leaned over to watch what she was doing, Taylor had enough.

  “Do you want to sit down here and do it yourself? If you think you can do better, be my guest.” Taylor swiveled the seat in Clark’s direction and stood up.

  Clark’s face reddened, and he took in a deep breath in preparation for his reply to the tech witch.

  Naomi stepped between the two of them. “Both of you, stop it. My daughter’s in trouble, and the two of you starting a pissing match over who’s going to save her isn’t going to solve anything.”

  She turned to Taylor, who stood with her arms crossed, glaring at Clark. “Sit down, Taylor. Get back to work. You’re our best chance of getting her back in one piece.”

  Taylor shifted her gaze to Naomi. The vampire’s eyes glowed red, irises blazing with an inner light. Taylor nodded, then inhaled slowly and blew out the breath, working to calm herself.

  Taylor sat down and swung the chair back around. She leaned over the keyboard and scanned the monitors to make sure the data hadn’t shifted in the time her eyes had been off them.

  Even with her attention on the computer, Taylor didn’t miss catching a glimpse of Clark’s fists held rigid at his sides. His knuckles had turned white from the pressure.

  Naomi noticed, as well. “Clark, center yourself and get back in control. Think about what we can do next.”

  Miranda hovered nearby and said, “She’s right. Quinn’s been in tough spots before, and she’s always found a way through. This is probably just a technical glitch.”

  “We can’t be sure,” Clark said. “Until we know one way or the other, we have to plan for the possibility that she’s in trouble.”

  Naomi nodded. “You’re right. We need to head down there.”

  “I was thinking of going by myself,” Clark countered. “I work better alone.”

  “Not a chance. This is a clan, and it will be a team effort. That’s what Quinn is building here. She would want us to work together.”

  When Clark didn’t immediately say no, Naomi continued, “It’s nighttime, so it’s also the perfect time for me to go out with you.”

  “It’ll be light in eight hours,” Clark said. “What if we’re still waiting in the car for an opening to go in after her?”

  “You’ve got a trunk, don’t you?”

  Clark smiled. “You’ll let me stuff you in the trunk of my car while it’s daylight?”

  “No,” Naomi said. “But I’ll climb in on my own so we can stay on location until the right time to enter.”

  Taylor clicked the menu and selected the option to restart the VR system in an attempt to reconnect with Quinn on boot-up. As the screen went dark and the boot sequence started, she turned to face the others.

  “I think it’s a great idea for you both to head down there. She might just have gone far enough underground to block the signal. From what I can see, the signal got progressively weaker until it cut off. I’m running a diagnostic to be sure. I’ll have a better idea once it reboots.”

  Taylor slid in her chair to the side and pulled open the bottom drawer of a small filing cabinet beside her. If her suspicion was right, they might be able to boost their signal by putting a repeater transmitter on site. The VirSync engineers must have thought they’d need it someday because she had found a prototype repeater in the gear they’d recovered.

  Taylor dug through the bundles of wire and circuit boards for the device. “Ah, got it!”

  She pulled out a stacked pair of circuit boards wrapped in a length of shielded copper wire.

  “Got what?” Naomi asked.

  “I have a way we might be able to reconnect with her, but I need the two of you to get this signal booster as close to the tunnel entrance as you can. We might be able to use it to reconnect the system to her and maybe even relink our comms.”

  “What are the chances it’ll work?”
Clark asked, taking the proffered device and turning it over in his hand to study it. “Where’s it plug in?”

  “No plug,” Taylor said. “But you’ll need a battery pack. She rummaged through the drawer until she pulled out a pair of D-cell batteries held together by a tight wrapping of electrical tape.

  Taylor held out her hand for the repeater. Clark returned it to her, and she slid the batteries into place so they were wedged between the two circuit boards. Then she connected two loose wires to the terminals on one of the circuits. The red LED on the top board switched on, and Taylor glanced at the right-hand screen to make sure the signal registered.

  With a nod of confirmation, she handed it back to Clark. “Take that to Federal Hill. I’ll tell you if you’re close enough to connect to her.”

  Clark shoved the repeater into the side pocket of his long black duster, then pulled his car keys out of another pocket and turned to Naomi. “You coming?”

  “Try to stop me.”

  Naomi didn’t wait for Clark’s reply. She moved to the door and went out into the hallway beyond.

  Clark nodded and started after her. Over his shoulder, he called, “Keep in touch with us. We’ll let you know what we see when we get there.”

  Taylor didn’t say anything. She’d already turned back to her screens and began working on tuning the VR system and the magic that melded with it so she could try to catch up with her friend. After all, she was the clan’s tech witch, and it was up to her to make this right.

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  “Dammit.” For the second time, Quinn had cracked her head on a low-hanging rock jutting from the roof of the rough stone tunnel.

  She scanned the way forward in the dim gray-green light her night-vision afforded in near-total darkness. Without it, she wouldn’t have been able to navigate this narrow tunnel. It was a wonder Gretchen had made it as far as she did into the concrete pipe above.

  Laying her head on her dusty forearm, Quinn paused for a few seconds. She had to press onward at this point. There was no way to turn around in the confined space, so her only option was to keep going down.