“The way in he’d use when he’s running by himself. Keep watching the house and lawn and tell me if you see anything interesting.”
“Right.”
Finally I found a grate that opened with a hard press of a lever, and we descended a steep tunnel into the gloom. The grate clicked closed behind us. Even with my wolf eyes and their superior ability to make out objects in the dark, I couldn’t see very far in front of us, and at points, the space was so narrow we had to crawl. An occasional whimper escaped my lips when my back touched the top of the passage and pain stabbed through me. The tunnel opened up into the lower hall I remembered, but another grate blocked us in and wouldn’t give when I pushed against it.
“Dammit,” I couldn’t help but say. “We’re stuck.”
“Is there a similar catch on the other side?” Selene asked. “If so, maybe you can get a paw around.”
I tried and found one, but the angle was wrong for me to get enough pressure on it to open it. Selene tried as well, her paws being smaller, but it was no good.
“I’m going to change,” I said. “Maybe I can get it with my human hands.”
“I’ll give you space.”
She backed up, and I hesitated. David had asked me if I trusted her. Transforming back, especially hurt as I was, would put me in a very vulnerable position, especially at that final moment of disorientation before my brain changed from lycanthrope to human mode.
Screw it, I do trust her. I have to.
I changed back into a human. The process bumped me against the sides of the tunnel, and I became all too aware of my injuries as muscles and skin rearranged themselves.
“You’re burned,” was Selene’s assessment. “We need to get you medical attention.”
“First we need to get un-stuck.” I tried to reach my hand through the holes in the grate, but it wouldn’t fit. “Damn, I’m too big. Your hand might work, though.”
“I’ll try it, but I need room to change. It’s too narrow back here.”
I scrunched against the wall and hissed at the searing pain along my lower and middle back.
“I’m sorry,” she said. “I’ll try to make this quick.”
She took a deep breath, curled up as tightly as she could, and unfolded into a lovely, naked, sweaty female body. If my back hadn’t been throbbing, I would’ve enjoyed the view better. I also felt a pang of guilt that she hadn’t hesitated like I had.
“Sorry,” I said.
“For what?” She wiggled to try to lie on her stomach, and I hissed when she bumped me. “I’m sorry,” she said. “God, we sound like a couple of Canadians. You’re going to have to lie on top of me so I can get my hand through at the right angle.”
“Are you sure? I might crush you.”
“Support yourself with your arms.”
We rearranged, and in order to keep from bumping my back into the roof of the tunnel, I had to keep myself pressed to her backside. Her breasts ended up pillowed on the backs of my hands. I’ll enjoy remembering this later. In the meantime, hurry.
“I’ve almost got it,” she said. “How are you doing up there?”
“Truth be told, I’m no longer as aware of my back.”
She shook with her chuckle. “Happy to be of service. Glad you’re keeping your sense of humor.”
The catch gave way, and the door opened…inward.
“Argh,” she said. “Can you scoot back or change again? I think I can squeeze past.”
“Change, right. Maybe not. Not enough room with both of us being human. Can you?”
“I don’t think so. I don’t have it in me. Okay, scoot back, then.”
I did, and she ended up with her ass in my face as she swung the door inward.
“Now let’s find David,” I said.
“Can you change back into a wolf? We’re pretty vulnerable here.”
I shrugged, and pain shot along my shoulders and down to my butt. “I dare not until I can get treated for these burns.”
We crept along the walls and stuck to the shadows as much as possible. No ghosts, friendly or otherwise, came to bother or help us. Selene, stuck in her human form due to physical and emotional exhaustion, was only slightly less vulnerable than I because of my injuries.
“Take my hand and lead me,” I said. “I’m going to turn on my werewolf hearing and smell so we’ll have that, at least, but I need to close my eyes.”
“Okay, but I don’t know where I’m going.”
“Straight down the hall. There’s a door with a staircase on the other side.”
She took my hand, and I closed my eyes and activated my lycanthropic senses. The hallway sprang to relief with its mélange of musty, dusty, and cool smells. There was also a hint of pipe smoke and kerosene, which had perhaps been cleaned out by the fresh air from the ventilation shaft. And, of course, our sweat and human smells, which yelled our presence to any creature that may be near. Luckily it seemed that whoever had been down here had already left. And blood—more than there should be for it to be mine.
Then I turned on my wolf ears. The hall came alive with the scratchings and skitterings of small many-legged creatures in the walls and along the floor. I opted not to tell Selene about the animal life of the dungeon, although being from the Southeastern United States, she’d probably taken care of her share of them. Something about her, possibly the way she’d handled Morena or how she carried herself, told me she wasn’t the type to yell for daddy to come kill the bug. She led me with some hesitation, being limited by her human vision and having to feel along the walls.
“What’s down here?” she asked. Her voice sounded loud in comparison to the other noises I’d been concentrating on. “Is it a real dungeon? Do you hear or smell anything?”
“Nothing human or lycanthrope. As for where we are, David has a special room where he keeps his documents, and otherwise he uses the cells for furniture storage.”
She didn’t speak further until she came to the end of the hall. “I think I’ve found the stairs.”
I opened my eyes, and the noise- and smell-scape of the dungeon retreated. I ignored the urge to pop my ears to clear them, knowing it wouldn’t do me any good. A sigh bubbled up, and my back throbbed in time to the inhale and exhale.
Selene opened the door slowly and stopped when it squeaked like it wanted to let forth a mighty haunted house creak.
“Can you squeeze through?” she asked.
“Yes.” I sucked my stomach in and slid through sideways, only barely grazing my injury, which still burned, although not as badly as I’d suspected. My previous head injury came to mind and the speed at which I’d healed from it, so I wondered if the same might be happening to my back. That made me even more eager for Selene to clean it up—I didn’t want the skin and muscle to heal over bits of rock and dirt that could cause infection, scar tissue and other problems.
Selene followed me, and in the dim light from the open door at the top of the stairs—suspicious in itself—all I could see was her delectable female outline and shape. The kerosene-pipe smell lingered more strongly here, as did the blood, and I gestured for her to get behind me in case someone waited at the top of the stairs for us. We ascended into a scene of horror.
Chapter Twenty-Three
The scent of blood was neither subtle nor hidden, and I easily followed its trail to the dining room, where David—or what was left of him—sat tied to one of his chairs. Either he’d decided to look back through his documentation on Wolfsheim or the intruders had found it because the now familiar papers sat scattered over the top of the table. Splotches of blood punctuated the statements and pictures in a fine spray. More blood coated the floor and windows. David sat with his head back, his throat a gaping testament to the powerful, violent magic that had been wrought upon him, similar to the security guards at the Institute.
Selene’s horrified gas
p reminded me I wasn’t alone.
“Oh, god, it’s just like Otis,” she said and covered her face.
I pulled her to me and bent my head to hers, but the image remained even when I closed my eyes. Nausea warred with a howl that rose up from my gut, and Selene pulled away when the tremors started under my skin. She backed up, one hand over her mouth and the other arm across her stomach, and she fell to her knees. The same force that had come over me in Bartholomew Campbell’s office and after exploded outward. I changed quicker than ever before into an animal larger and fiercer than my previous manifestation. I did throw my head back then and howled with rage and despair at the last link to my father’s past being gone and the budding friendship lost.
“Calm yourself, son.” It was my father’s voice, or what was left of him. The memories I craved had died with David. The ghost stood there, and with my wolf eyes, I saw the red glow around him. His face, illuminated by some inner light and no longer hidden under the brim of his hat, appeared clear to me, and his eyes regarded me with compassion. Now the pressure tried to turn into a sob, difficult in my wolf form, and it came out as a whine.
“David’s dead, and my only link to the killer is…” I looked at Selene.
“I can’t.” She shook her head. “If I do, they’ll kill Curtis.”
Now disappointment stabbed through me, and I growled. “Can’t you see that they’ll kill him eventually regardless of what you do? And now that you know their secrets, you’re in danger too. We all are.”
“No one comes from an encounter with Death unchanged,” my father’s ghost intoned and disappeared.
Selene stood and ran from the room. I followed her upstairs to a bedroom, but she locked the door before I could get in. I looked down the stairs, and the flickering light from the fire illuminated the burgundy carpet like a river of hellfire.
“Selene, you have to let me in.”
“No.” The word held calmness and despair.
“I can break this door down.”
“You wouldn’t.” She sounded certain. I backed up, but I recognized the futility in the action. She’d been traumatized twice over that evening, and she needed gentleness, not force. And I really needed her to attend to my wounds. It would be just my luck if an opportunistic microbe killed me, not a battle wound or something exciting.
“Selene, I’m changing now, and I’m going to go into the next bedroom and get in the shower. I need help with my wounds or else I fear I’ll get an infection.”
“Your lycanthropic immune system won’t handle it?” Now it was the gentle query of a scientist.
“I don’t know. It depends on the maker of the bomb and what they put in it.”
“Fine, but not here. I can’t stay here.” And the hysterical note was back.
“Good idea. I’ll show you where your clothes are, and then you can take us back to my place.”
I changed back to human—a miserable process—and when I stood, warm fluid dripped down my right butt cheek and leg. I called Garou to process the crime scene and told him what Selene and I had encountered outside of Laird Hall.
“You need to stay there. Dammit, Investigator, I need your impressions.”
“I’m injured.”
“Fine, I will call Doctor Fortuna.”
“That’s not a bad idea,” I told him. “Tell him to meet me at my place, and you and I can talk tomorrow. Don’t argue.”
Surprisingly, he didn’t, and in half an hour, I lay face down on towels in front of the fireplace in my house. My entire back felt on fire, but I shivered as my nervous system tried to decide whether it would be better for my survival for me to change or stay human. I gritted my teeth and suppressed the urge, not sure I would make it if I did transform. One thing both sides of me agreed on: I needed fluids, and Selene gave me ice cubes to suck on while we waited for Max since sips of water made me gag.
Finally the doorbell rang, and Selene went to answer it.
“Thank god you’re—oh.”
That was an “oh” of “oh, there’s another woman here,” and Reine’s soft voice drifted to me along with Max’s deep one. At that point, I seemed to float off the floor, and when I cracked my eyelids open to see if I did, indeed, levitate, the flames licked at the wolf-faced fireback in slow motion. Another shudder racked me, and I squeezed my eyes shut against the urge to change. A sensation of bugs running under my skin covered me, and I struggled to stay tethered to reality in human form.
“Good gods, what happened?” Max asked.
“As I said, he took the brunt of the explosion,” Selene said, and I wanted to wipe away the tears in her voice because I imagined them coming out of her eyes as well. I wanted to turn my head to say something comforting, but the wolf’s face behind the fire kept me anchored, and I feared I’d lose consciousness if I stopped looking at it.
“How close were you?” asked Reine.
“Too close,” Selene said. “We tried to run, but it was too late—they saw us and tried to kill us. He knew. He curled around me and protected me.”
A cool finger ran over my back. No, through it. It was a dagger frozen in dry ice coated in ice, and I gasped.
“You’re hurting him!” Selene cried.
“Wait in the other room, child,” Reine told her. “I’m trying to save him. That was a hellfire grenade, and it will take more than human or lycanthrope magic to mitigate the effects. Then you both wandered through a residual blood magic aura. If he wasn’t as old and strong as he is, he would’ve already died.”
A quick swallow and the sound of hair brushing over Selene’s shoulders told me she didn’t like it, but she nodded. There’s my girl.
“What do you need me to do?” asked Max once Selene’s footsteps had faded. I wondered where she went, if she was fixing a drink for herself or just curled up somewhere. Curling up, that sounded good, but I couldn’t move. My limbs were leaden, and the fire continued its slow, sensuous dance.
“Now it’s your turn to hold him, but first we must negotiate a price.”
Aw, fuck.
A curtain of sinewy curling white snakes got in the way of my flames, and the fairy’s face followed it. Her wide blue eyes held mine with a solemn expression.
“You wolf-men get in more trouble,” she said, her lips curling up in a half-joker smile. I never understood the purpose of that card in the deck. It seemed extraneous unless you were playing something needlessly complicated. I never had the smarts or patience for—
“Stay with me, Wolf-man,” she murmured, and I blinked, back from the land of floating, sneering face cards. “You know what I want as a price for my healing you.”
“I can’t,” I said through dry lips.
“I don’t suppose you’d be interested in offering a child? You can even make it your second if you like.”
“No child,” I croaked.
“Your name, then.”
She held a hand over my temple, and a soft white glow suffused my vision. It soothed and cleared my head from the pain I’d been in. I understood what it would also do: capture my name as it left my lips and allow the fairy to use it however she saw fit. I would be at her beck and call, and she would have power over me.
Max cleared his throat. “You don’t have to give it to her, Gabriel. Remember, it won’t just affect you if you do.”
Right, Selene. If she does have a future with me… But the chances of us being together wouldn’t be high if we both ended up dead, and our opponents obviously meant business. A hellfire grenade meant it had been wielded by someone with powerful magic, and I knew I was dead if I didn’t accept Reine’s bargain.
I took a deep breath and said through clenched teeth, “I am Gabriel Stuart McCord. I give you my name to use once. Employ it wisely.”
“All right, then, you are a clever one.” She disappeared from my view. “Hold him, Maximilian.” H
er tone was cold, and I guessed she was not pleased with his interference or my limiting her power over me. “I can sit on his legs, but you need to hold his arms.”
“No sticks,” I coughed and moved my arms to the side and over my head so Max could easily restrain them. Her weight settled on my legs, and a burning electric jolt shot from my lower back to my neck.
“Oh, darling Gabriel, you’re going to wish I was using a stick by the time I’m through.”
My name dropped from her lips like a frozen pebble and landed on my sacrum. She murmured words even below my hearing, and each one fell onto my back, chips and daggers of rock and ice, a trail starting from my tailbone and rushing up my spine, sticking into each of those burning, throbbing places. I writhed to dislodge them—Death would feel better than this!—but my captors held true. The weight of the spell ground my front into the towels beneath me, and the needles of each little loop and fiber poked me. Searing cold poured through my nervous system, and if Max’s cleansing had been a torrent of glacial water, this one crushed me in an avalanche of ice, snow and misery. I thrashed with my head, the only part of me I could move freely.
“Almost there,” Reine said through clenched teeth, and I imagined her, face slick with sweat and the effort of the spell.
If the bitch can even sweat.
The sensation turned from crystalline to gel, and it warmed gradually from the center outward until my entire body had been filled with it. I wondered where my bones went since I couldn’t feel them from my neck down, and then a cowl of the stuff grew over my head and face and into my eyes, nose and mouth. I struggled to breathe against its viscous web, but with every inhale attempt, I pulled it further in until it choked my throat.
“Just another moment,” Reine murmured. “I have to get all the passages, even the little airways.”
My chest worked to breathe, and on what I felt would be my last inhale before I suffocated, the stuff vanished. I drew air into my lungs in deep, desperate gasps.
“Do you always have to make it so unpleasant?” I asked when I could speak.
Blood's Shadow: The Lycanthropy Files, Book 3 Page 20