Grave Rites: An Urban Fantasy Adventure (Grant Wolves Book 6)

by Lori Drake

  “Can either of you do something about the locked door?” Joey glanced between Cathy and Amber.

  “Yes,” Cathy replied. “But not from here.”

  “There’s an exterior security camera, but I can jam it,” Adam said, reaching into his bag for a small electronic device. “Should buy us a few minutes.”

  “Not necessary,” Amber said, spitting out a piece of gum into her gloved palm. A magical glow sprang up around her, and she narrowed her eyes and tilted her head slightly before blowing across her palm. The piece of gum proceeded to float across the street as if on a magical string and splatted against the camera lens.

  Adam wrinkled his nose. “That’s going to be a bitch to clean off.”

  Amber arched an eyebrow. “Not my problem.”

  Chuckling, Joey nudged Adam with an elbow. “Come on.”

  Mindful of this having been the exact spot where Detective Harding was struck by a car, Joey carefully looked both ways—even though it was a one-way street—before darting across. The others followed her, and once they reached the sidewalk on the other side Joey bent down as if to tie her shoe while the others loitered around her.

  “Eyes open, everyone. Cathy, do your thing.”

  It took Cathy only a few seconds to jimmy the lock. Quinn hauled open the door and held it while they filed down the darkened stairway that only got darker when he pulled the door closed behind them. It posed little problem for the wolves, but Amber and Cathy weren’t gifted with night vision. A soft orb of light appeared over Amber’s hand, revealing dingy walls with numerous scuffs and dings along them. Their footsteps were quiet on the concrete stairs as they descended, soon finding themselves in a basement storage room.

  Industrial metal shelving lined the walls and formed rows down the center of the room, loaded with boxes filled presumably with books. Another set of stairs off to the left led up to an interior door.

  “Spread out,” Joey said. “Look for any other ways in or out.”

  It wasn’t a huge room, so it wasn’t long before Quinn’s low bass rumbled from a corner. “Over here.”

  Joey followed the sound of his voice down the aisle between the shelves, where everyone was gathering. She slipped through the group until she was at the front. Following Quinn’s pointing finger to the floor, she observed the fine gouges in the concrete, worn in an arc from the corner of the shelving unit out into the room. As secret entrances go, it was disappointingly obvious, but when they tugged on the shelving unit they found it to be bolted to the wall.

  “There’s a seam here,” Chris said, reaching up to touch the wall above the top shelf. “Maybe there’s a latch or a pressure plate somewhere.”

  “I’ve got it,” Amber said.

  The glow of magic that sprang up around the younger witch seemed unusually bright in the dimly lit room, outshining her little orb of light by a considerable margin. Joey found herself wondering if magic users could see that glow, or if it was just a quirk of her own innate magic. Someday she’d have to ask Cathy.

  Something clicked, and the whole shelving unit shifted almost imperceptibly. Now, Quinn was easily able to swing it open, though it scraped against the floor when he did. A piece of the wall the same size as the shelving unit swung with it, and Amber sent her light ball into the opening, illuminating a narrow passage on the other side.

  Joey’s stomach turned over. She’d acknowledged and accepted that this trip would trigger her claustrophobia, but that didn’t make her look forward to it in the slightest. Chris’s hand landed on her shoulder. He gave her a squeeze and a knowing look. She shrugged his hand off and pushed forward, stepping into the tunnel and facing her fears head on. The others followed behind her, and after they figured out what the trigger was on this side of the door to open it again, Quinn drew it closed. The click of the latch sent a shiver down Joey’s spine, but she turned to face the darkness stretching ahead and began marching down the tunnel.

  They walked single file since that’s all the tunnel would allow. The air smelled dry and stale, though the distant sound of dripping water suggested that there was moisture somewhere ahead. Along the way, they passed under several arches where seemingly ancient wooden supports provided stability for the ceiling. Chris and Quinn had to duck to pass under the thick beams. After they passed through the fourth arch, the tunnel emptied into a roughly oval chamber with a vaulted ceiling. They’d walked maybe 100 feet.

  Amber pointed up at the ceiling, where thin beams of moonlight filtered down through dirty purple stained glass squares overhead. “We’re under a sidewalk somewhere.”

  “Good to know, I guess,” Adam said.

  “Shh.” Chris put a finger to his lips. “We might not be alone down here.”

  Joey closed her eyes and took a deep breath, filtering through the various scents that tickled her nostrils. Most were earth, stone, and dust. But Jordan’s scent was discernible. He must’ve used the tunnel recently. She got no whiff of Dawn’s scent, however.

  “Which way?” Cathy whispered.

  There were only two options other than the tunnel they’d come in through. Quinn pointed left, and Joey nodded. Jordan’s scent went that way. She motioned for everyone to come with her and started in that direction, on the alert for any sights, sounds, or smells that might indicate anyone else’s presence. At least the tunnel was wider this time; they were able to walk two abreast.

  After another twenty feet or so, Chris put out an arm to halt Joey. “Did you hear that?”

  Since they were in front, the others drew to a stop behind them. Joey frowned, tilting her head and straining her ears… but she heard nothing. She glanced behind her, and everyone shook their heads.

  “What did you hear?” she whispered to Chris.

  “I’m not sure,” he said. “Maybe it was nothing. Let’s keep going.”

  They continued down the tunnel. Joey’s wolf paced restlessly within her, liking being underground even less than she did. She wondered how scary it must’ve been for the wild wolves to be caged somewhere dark, unable to see the sky. But the thought wasn’t making her feel any better, so she shook it off and focused on the task at hand.

  About thirty seconds passed before Chris stopped again. He looked at Joey. She looked back at him in confusion.

  “Can you seriously not hear that?” he whispered.

  “Hear what, child?” Cathy said.

  “Whistling.”

  Joey tilted her head. “Like the wind through a crack or something?”

  “No, like someone whistling.” He frowned, glancing around the group, then down the tunnel again.

  Amber wiggled her way past the others, her back scraping the wall of the tunnel. Joey stepped closer to Chris to make room, though her heartbeat picked up speed as the feeling of being packed in a sardine tin rose.

  “It could be Franklin,” the witch whispered, peering down the tunnel.

  Joey glanced at Chris. He’d gone pale, staring ahead. “Who?” she asked, confused.

  “The ghost.” Chris swallowed.

  Amber made a sweeping motion with one hand, and her light orb flew down the tunnel, illuminating a junction ahead but revealing no ghostly figures.

  Joey turned and took Chris’s face between her hands. “Hey. Look at me.” She waited until his eyes met hers. “Even if it is the ghost, he can’t hurt you here. Right?”

  “What if he possesses someone?” Chris’s eyes flicked from hers and toward the others.

  He had a good point. Joey glanced at the others. “Well, I have my anti-possession charm. Adam, do you have yours? Cathy?” They both nodded.

  “I have one,” Amber said.

  All eyes fell on Quinn. The biggest, strongest motherfucker of them all. The big wolf frowned. “If you’re saying ghosts are real, and they can possess people, that’s news to me.”

  Joey bit back a groan. “Cathy, can you do anything on the fly?”

  Cathy shook her head. “The charms take time and a considerable amount of energy
to create. I can place an anti-spirit ward, but it’d be stationary.”

  “Here.” Adam pulled the stainless steel ball chain from around his neck. Hanging from it was a quarter-sized brass disc. He thrust the charm at Quinn. “Put it on.” Quinn stared at him for a moment, and Adam swallowed, looking away. “If you want.”

  Joey didn’t like the idea of her pack brother giving up his defense against the spirit, but she had to admit she liked their chances better if the scrawny nerd got possessed rather than the big burly ranger. Quinn took the charm from Adam and slipped it over his head.

  “Tuck the charm beneath your shirt so it’s in contact with your skin,” Cathy said.

  Quinn did so, and Joey looked back at Chris. Staring off down the tunnel, he didn’t seem any less worried.

  Joey pulled his head down and put her lips close to his ear, whispering soft enough that she was fairly certain even Adam and Quinn wouldn’t be able to hear her. “Do you want to turn back?”

  She drew back and met his eyes, and he shook his head, resolve settling on his face.

  “Let’s keep going,” he said.

  Biting her lower lip, Joey nodded and set off again, hoping she wouldn’t regret it.

  22

  Chris did his best to play it cool, but his blunt nails cut painfully into his palms as the group pressed on down the tunnel. The eerie whistling had stopped. It’d sounded a bit like Camptown Races, and now the tune was repeating in his head even though he couldn’t hear it anymore. Every time something in the tunnel blocked Amber’s light orb, casting a dark shadow stretching along the edge of the tunnel, his heart leaped into his throat and his wolf’s hackles went up.

  But Joey was right. The ghost had been able to attack him before because he was out of his body. As long as he stayed put this time, it shouldn’t be able to reach out and touch him. Or reach out and shoot him, as the case may be. He caught himself rubbing his chest and forced his hand back to his side.

  Don’t let them see you sweat.

  Chris was an alpha. No, he wasn’t just an alpha. He was the Alpha. Co-Alpha. But still. He was a full grown lycanthrope. Strong, capable, ready to handle whatever came his way. Even a ghost—if that’s really what it was.

  That’s what made it all the more embarrassing when they rounded a bend in the tunnel, came face to face with the gunslinging ghost himself, and he screamed like a girl.

  Everyone froze. Chris clutched his chest, his heart hammering against his rib cage like it wanted out. His cheeks heated, and he was suddenly grateful for the darkness. The ghost’s eerie laughter echoed off the walls, and a shiver ran down Chris’s spine as he stared at the apparition. It didn’t look all that ghostly. It gave off no particular glow in the dimly-lit tunnel, but it also didn’t cast a shadow.

  Joey clutched his arm. “What’s wrong? Are you okay?”

  “Give me a frigging heart attack, why don’t you…” Adam muttered, just on the edge of Chris’s hearing.

  Chris pointed at the ghost, who pushed back his duster behind his holstered weapons. His hands hovered over them like a duelist at dawn, and Chris’s mouth went as dry as Death Valley.

  “I— He— The—” Chris swallowed the lump in his throat and forced himself to use words. “He’s here. You don’t see him?”

  “The ghost?” Amber leaned over to peer around him. “I don’t see anything.”

  A chorus of “me neithers” followed.

  “Then why the fuck can I see him?” Chris asked, wincing at the sound of his own voice, pitched higher than usual. He couldn’t tear his eyes from the fingers that wiggled in the air, as if waiting for a signal.

  “What’s he doing?” Joey asked.

  “Standing there, looking like he’s ready to pump me full of lead.”

  “Well, that’s an improvement,” Joey murmured.

  Chris managed to peel his eyeballs from the apparition at that and stared disbelievingly at her. “How is that an improvement?”

  She shrugged. “Last time, he shot you on sight.”

  “Try talking to him,” Amber said. “Dean says spirits linger because they have unfinished business, right?”

  Blinking, Joey turned to face Amber. “You know Dean?”

  “Could we maybe discuss this later?” Chris’s voice was tight, but he had to admit, Amber had a point. Since the ghost wasn’t shooting—yet—maybe he could reason with it. He lifted his hands, slowly, in the universal sign of surrender. “Hey man, what’s your name? I’m Chris.”

  The spirit’s hard expression didn’t change. He continued to stare Chris down, fingers hovering within easy distance of his pistols.

  “Is it Franklin? Franklin Boatwright?”

  The ghost’s eyes narrowed, and pain burst behind Chris’s eyes. He brought his hands to his head automatically, as if clutching it might somehow lessen the pain. He was only dimly aware of Joey calling his name in alarm. He staggered, catching himself on the rough-hewn tunnel wall. When the pain retreated to a dull roar, he opened his eyes and found himself no longer in the underground tunnel. Instead, he stood on a cobbled street facing an unfamiliar wooden building. The sign above the door read Bank of Dexter Horton.

  Confused, he looked around, then stared in disbelief at a page from a history book—if any had contained photos of late 19th century Seattle in living color. No, it was more like a period film than a photograph, complete with a scowling, cursing carriage driver shouting at him to get out of the way. Chris moved forward automatically, his senses full of strange sights and smells. He looked down at his hands and found himself wearing a leather duster and plain period clothes beneath.

  Something drew him up the steps toward the front of the bank, and he paused in front of it to hold the door for an older woman in a corseted dress. She scowled at him on her way past, then put her nose in the air as she headed off down the sidewalk. Chris stepped into the bank, his dusty boots thumping on the clean tile. It appeared to be a slow time of day for the bank, as there weren’t any other customers around. A skinny young man in an old-fashioned teller’s starched shirt, vest, and tie stood at the teller’s window. A thick mustache rode his upper lip, and with his head lowered as he wrote something in a ledger, Chris could see the beginnings of a bald spot atop his head. Poor guy.

  The teller looked up from what he was doing, the courteous smile on his lips twisting into a sneer. “What are you doing here?”

  Chris’s sympathy melted away. He didn’t know how to answer the question but found himself reaching into his pockets to produce a thick stack of bills and a handful of coins. He placed them on the counter, wordlessly.

  “Last night’s ill-gotten gains, eh?” The teller eyed the cash like it was dirtying up the place. “I don’t know what she sees in you. A civilized woman like Miss Katie deserves a civilized man. Not some dusty thrill-seeker with nothing to his name but what he earns at a poker table.”

  Chris’s jaw tightened. He had no idea what the man was talking about, but it still rankled him. His fingers itched to reach for his sidearm, but he held the impulse in check.

  “Nothing to say, eh? Well, I guess that’s par for the course.” Snorting, the teller reached for the cash, then paused and glanced over his shoulder. Instead of raking the cash toward him, he shoved it off the counter and back at Chris. The money flew off the counter, change clattering noisily to the tile.

  “Robbery!” the teller shouted, pulling a pistol from beneath the counter and pointing it at Chris. “Say hi to the devil for me, you godless piece of—”

  The roar of the gun discharging cut off the teller’s last word, but there was little doubt what it was. The bullet struck Chris in the chest, and he staggered backward. Instinct brought his pistol to his hand, and he fired back, putting a round between the teller’s eyes. The man’s head jerked back, blood and brain matter ejected from the back of his skull before he fell.

  Pain spreading through his chest, Chris staggered for the door, still holding his gun in one hand while the other presse
d over his wound. He made it out of the bank but fell down the steps to sprawl in the street, staring up at the bright blue sky as he wheezed for breath, his lungs rattling wetly.

  He blinked, and the warm cobblestones beneath his back changed into cold stone. The bright sun faded into a ball of magical light, keeping the darkness of the tunnel at bay. The pain lingered in his chest, and his fingers came away bloody when he touched it.

  “We need to get him out of here,” someone said. “Whatever’s happening to him, it has to be the ghost’s influence.”

  “Chris, can you walk?” someone else said.

  Chris tried to sit up, but he couldn’t breathe. It felt like he was drowning, with no water in sight. He coughed, trying to clear his esophagus, and spit up blood.

  “Quinn, help me get him up.” This voice, he recognized. Joey.

  While Joey and Quinn hauled him to his feet, he stared down the tunnel with fresh understanding, but the ghost of Franklin Boatwright was nowhere to be seen. In a flash, his symptoms disappeared. The ache in his chest, the fluid in his lungs, everything was gone. He looked down at his hand, but there was no blood. He could breathe again.

  “Wait, stop. I’m okay,” he said, pulling away from Quinn and Joey. “Just let me catch my breath.”

  His heart raced as he leaned against the tunnel wall and rubbed his face with both hands. The others hovered around him, gazing at him expectantly.

  “I… I had a vision.” He didn’t know how else to explain it.

  “Ugh. Say no more,” Amber said.

  Joey elbowed her, sending her skittering a few feet away. “No, really. Say a lot more. What happened?”

  “I think Franklin showed me what happened to him, through his eyes. He didn’t rob that bank. He was framed by the teller and shot. But he returned fire and killed the teller. There were no other witnesses.”

  Joey folded her arms, frowning. “That would explain the unfinished business.”