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

by Lori Drake

  Chris was floored. He’d never seen Adam like this. But Adam, who was normally likely to cower at an alpha’s withering look, stood his ground and glared at the angry alpha. He had to be more attached to Dawn than Chris had realized to be driven to this.

  “You shot him! I’ll kill you for that, little wolf!” Quinn roared.

  “That’s enough!” Joey said, muscling Quinn farther away. “Both of you.”

  “I’m not yours to command, Alpha,” Quinn growled. Even his skin was hot to the touch. He had to be on the edge of shifting, and if he did, he’d be harder to contain.

  “You’re in our territory,” Chris reminded him as he and Joey shifted to pin his shoulders to the wall. “So you can calm the fuck down right now and go help your friend…”

  “Or you can consider our hospitality rescinded,” Joey finished. “And you know what happens to lone wolves that make themselves unwelcome in pack territory.”

  It wasn’t a threat they’d ever had to make before, but there was only one way to deal with a hostile loner that refused to leave: make them leave, or put them down trying.

  Quinn gave Adam a lingering glare over Joey’s head, then flicked his eyes between Joey and Chris a few times before heaving a sigh and pushing them away. “Fine. Let me go.”

  “Adam,” Chris said. “Go stand with Fariq and Ali.”

  The beta gave Quinn one last defiant look, then followed his Alpha’s command and stomped over to stand with the witches, scooping his bag and belt off the tunnel floor.

  Quinn limp-hopped back to Jordan’s side and settled heavily on the floor beside him. He pressed a big hand over the wound in his friend’s side, attempting to stanch the flow of blood. Jordan’s chest still rose and fell, but he remained unconscious.

  “Go,” Quinn said, his shaggy hair hanging in his face as he bowed his head. “Save the day, or whatever. I got what I came for.”

  “If you take him to a hospital, they’re going to have questions about what happened…” Chris’s thoughts spun, trying to come up with a reasonable explanation but coming up short.

  “I know a guy. He owes me a favor,” Quinn said.

  “What about Daffodil?” Joey asked.

  Chris glanced at her in confusion, but she gave him one of those ‘I’ll tell you later’ looks, so he held his tongue.

  “Jordan needs me more,” Quinn replied.

  Chris couldn’t argue with that, though he had a sinking feeling that if they left Quinn with Jordan—and he survived—he’d never face justice for his crimes. Then again, this whole scenario was going to be all but impossible to explain to the police. “There should be another team along shortly. Ask the witches if—”

  Quinn looked up, his eyes hard. “Just go.” He shifted onto his knees, jaw set and grim determination in his eyes, gathered his friend into his arms, then stood and began limping off down the tunnel.

  Chris stared after him for a moment. “Think he’ll make it?” he whispered to Joey.

  “Am I a shitty person if I say I hope not?” She bit her lip and glanced up at him.

  “No.” He wasn’t sure he completely shared the sentiment, but couldn’t blame her either, so he gave her shoulder a reassuring squeeze.

  They walked back to join the others, collecting the discarded flashlight on the way.

  Joey shifted back into wolf form and started off down the tunnel. Chris motioned for Adam to follow her so he could keep an eye on him and ended up bringing up the rear behind the witches. As he settled into position, his phone buzzed. He took it out of his pocket and found a message that made him groan.

  Sam: Delayed by police. Be there ASAP.

  24

  A sense of foreboding accompanied Joey down the tunnel as she followed the lingering traces of Melinda’s—and now Jordan’s—scent. The encounter with Jordan had left her shaken and ratcheted her wariness up to eleven. The camouflage spell shouldn’t have been enough to let him get the drop on them like that. She should’ve smelled him, but she’d been so focused on tracking that she’d let him slip right past. She couldn’t let that happen again.

  They reached another juncture, and Joey’s ears perked as she scented the air. Melinda’s scent was stronger here, which confirmed a suspicion Joey had been nursing ever since they began tracking her: The Occidental Square entrance wasn’t one she used regularly. Her scent in the tunnel was too recent, too weak for it to have been her usual route. That meant there was more than one way into the bitch’s lair, which was both a comfort and cause for concern.

  Multiple ways in meant multiple ways out.

  Add that to the complication of trying to track someone whose scent branched off in several directions, and Joey was one grumpy wolf. She sniffed along the openings to the four tunnels that intersected here, getting more than one unfortunate nose full of dead rat, but finding Melinda’s scent in three of them. Tracking by scent was non-directional. If she didn’t have a starting point, it was difficult to tell which direction her prey had gone.

  It was a problem encountered in the forest at times, as a rabbit might criss-cross its own path. In those situations, it was usually down to luck or the benefit of having her pack around her, such that they could fan out and track in multiple directions. In this case, her pack was already spread out, but not in the right places.

  She huffed in annoyance.

  “What’s the hold up?” Ali asked.

  “Her scent is all over here,” Chris replied. His human nose wasn’t as strong as his wolf one, but it was strong enough for that at least.

  “That means we’re on the right track, right?” Fariq said.

  Chris walked over to stand beside Joey, crouching with a wince and laying a hand on her back. “Yeah, but it also means the tunnel we were tracking her down wasn’t the only one she’s used. Joey’s not sure which way she went.”

  Joey huffed again and put her nose to the floor once more. Her mate knew her too well.

  “Well, now what?” Ali folded his arms, looking between the various tunnels in obvious consternation.

  Leaning down, Chris spoke softly. “Concentrate. Try to find the most recent trail. You can do it.”

  Joey flattened her ears and eyed him, then shook off his hand and retraced her steps back to the tunnel they’d come down. He smelled so strongly of baby powder that it was messing with her sniffer.

  Picking up Melinda’s scent at the tunnel mouth, she concentrated on it and followed it into the juncture, closing her eyes in an effort to focus on the nuances of that most recent scent trail, but it was still tainted by the baby powder. It wasn’t until she followed the trail along the edge of the juncture and past the others that she realized the reason she’d been smelling baby powder all the way down the previous tunnel wasn’t just because of Chris. It was threaded through Melinda’s scent too. Once she figured that out, she quickly found the right tunnel and turned toward the others, yipping an alert and motioning with her head for them to come with her.

  Adam was quick to do so, with Fariq and Ali on his heels, but Chris remained standing some ten feet away, gazing off toward another tunnel. Joey cocked her head to one side. She was ninety-nine percent certain she’d gotten the right tunnel. She yipped again, but got no response.

  “Chris, you coming?” Adam called from the tunnel mouth.

  No response.

  Joey padded over to him and nudged his hand, pressing her cold nose against his palm and snuffling. When he didn’t respond to that either, she shifted back to human form and stood facing him. His expression was blank, eyes open but staring at nothing.

  “Chris?” She snapped her fingers in front of his face.

  “Whoa, get a load of his aura,” one of the witches said.

  “Holy shit. What is that?”

  Joey’s stomach sank to the floor. It had to be Franklin. She spun and looked around, but of course saw nothing. Chris was the only one who could see the damn ghost, for whatever reason. Joey had a suspicion it had something to do with the wou
nd Franklin had inflicted on Chris’s aura, but of course she couldn’t prove it. Guilt welled up in her chest. She should’ve called Dean. If anyone could’ve helped, it would’ve been him or Harper. But Cathy had seemed to have it under control.

  This… this was not under control. This was the opposite of under control. She never should’ve let him come down here again. Melinda wasn’t the only monster lurking in these tunnels, and they’d known that. This was an enemy they couldn’t fight with tooth and claw or even magic, and Joey hated the helplessness that evoked.

  Spinning back to face Chris, she slapped his cheek lightly a few times. “Chris! Come on, love. Come back to me.”

  He blinked a few times, and his eyes focused on her. Or seemed too. “This ain’t your fight, darlin’,” he drawled.

  Joey blinked at him.

  “Look out!” Chris said, pushing her aside.

  She slipped on a slimy patch of tunnel floor and nearly ended up on her ass but landed in a three-point crouch instead, fingers of one hand pressed to the tunnel floor. Ugh. There was not enough hand sanitizer in the world to make her feel better after this little subterranean adventure.

  Chris grappled with an unseen foe. For a moment, her heart stopped, thinking she’d failed again. But there was no accompanying splash of water at Chris’s feet. He made a shoving motion, then sprang back a few steps, fists up and shifting on his feet like a boxer. Right cross, left cross, uppercut, dodge.

  Joey caught a glimpse of a golden glow out of the corner of her eye a moment before a pulse of magic rippled through the room, but this time no opponent was revealed.

  “Um, Joey?” Adam called.

  Joey tore her eyes away from Chris and found Adam pointing at one of the tunnels. “Someone’s coming.”

  Sure enough, light spilled from the tunnel entrance, a steady glow rather than the panning beam of a flashlight. She heard footsteps a moment later, the rapid cadence of running feet. Figuring it was one of the other teams catching up, she shifted her focus back to Chris in time to see him grab—well, nothing—and swing it like a wrestler with a metal chair. Yeah, he was seeing more than a ghost, that was for sure.

  And there was nothing she could do.

  Her eyes swung back to the lit tunnel as familiar faces spilled out of it.

  It wasn’t one of the other teams. It was Cathy and Amber, and they’d brought backup.

  Joey sucked in a gasp, mouth hanging open. “Dean?”

  The wooden chair broke as Chris brought it down on the head and shoulders of the one-eyed piece of shit that’d accused him of cheating. He’d never cheated at cards in his whole damn life. He’d make this sore loser regret those words.

  He tossed the remains of the chair aside as the man in the eyepatch picked himself up off the floor, blood running down the side his face from a cut at his temple. The man licked his split lip, spat on the scuffed wooden floor, then charged.

  Chris wasn’t quick enough to dodge out of the way. The two of them crashed down on a scratched, pitted table. Its legs buckled under their weight, and one of the whores shrieked. Cards and coins went flying. Chris managed to roll them over amongst the debris, pinning the gambler down and raining fists upon him, only dimly aware of the barkeep hollering something about breaking it up before he shot both of them.

  “What’s going on here?”

  A voice penetrated the fog of rage shrouding him, and he looked up to see an oddly-dressed Mexican standing in front of the still-swinging saloon doors.

  Then everything shifted, and Chris was back in the tunnel juncture, kneeling in brackish water and staring at one Dean Torres, wreathed in silvery light. Cathy and Amber flanked him, both radiating gold. He shook his head to clear it, but the vision didn’t waver.

  “You’re not welcome here!” Franklin Boatwright stomped across the juncture, pistol in hand and pointed at the medium.

  Dean spared the spirit the briefest of glances and flicked a hand like a royal dismissing a subject.

  The ghost vanished.

  “Is this real?” Chris asked, looking around.

  Joey rose from a crouch and approached him cautiously, holding out a hand. “That depends, what do you see?”

  “Dean?” Chris took the offered hand and got to his feet, pressing his other hand against his ribs with a wince.

  The man in question strode forward, approaching them with Cathy and Amber following a few steps behind. “I’m here, amigo. But for the record, you guys weren’t easy to find. You okay?”

  “I… yeah, for the moment. You made him go away.”

  Dean tilted his head, brown eyes curious. “You can see him?”

  “Well, not now.” Chris wrapped an arm around Joey’s shoulders. “But before, yes. Why are you glowing?”

  Dean’s brows lifted. “What?”

  “I see it too,” Joey said. “You’re glowing, like witches do when they’re casting spells. Or getting ready to cast them. Only they glow gold, and you glow silver.”

  “Interesting.” Dean looked down at himself, then to his left, then back at Chris. “Can you see Trish?”

  It took Chris a moment to realize what Dean was asking. Trish was a friendly ghost Dean had mentioned before, though Chris had never actually met her.

  “No, I can’t see her.”

  “Interesting,” Dean said again, his eyes roaming over Chris from head to toe. “Yeah, I see it,” he added, though no one else had said anything. Maybe Trish had.

  “See what?” Joey asked, echoing Chris’s thoughts.

  Dean smiled faintly. “Sorry. I can see, well, what the spirit did to you.” He stepped closer and lifted a hand, but stopped short of laying it on Chris’s chest. “May I?”

  Chris nodded, and Dean placed his hand over Chris’s heart. The silvery glow around him flared, and Chris’s skin tingled beneath his shirt where Dean’s hand was.

  Dean tilted his head like he was listening to something only he could hear. “Cat, can you…?”

  Cathy stepped up beside him and touched Chris’s arm. It wasn’t until he felt the warmth of her hand that he realized how cold Dean’s was. He could feel it through his shirt. A moment later, that sense of being drained returned. Chris gasped and started to pull back, but Dean’s other hand clamped down on his shoulder.

  The medium met his eyes briefly. “Trust me.”

  Chris nodded, and that tingle beneath Dean’s hand grew tenfold. Cold seeped into his skin beneath Dean’s hand and spread until it felt like his whole body had been doused in freezing water. He tightened his jaw to keep his teeth from chattering.

  “Huh. You know, I’ve read about this sort of thing but I’ve never seen it before,” Dean commented.

  “Really filling me with confidence, here,” Chris muttered.

  “What is it?” Joey asked.

  “The spirit left part of its essence behind, like a fish hook in Chris’s soul. It tagged him, for lack of a better term. That’s probably why he can see it, why it’s able to influence him so strongly.”

  Joey nodded. “Can you fix it?”

  “One way to find out.” Dean’s eyes met Chris’s again. “Hold on to your butt.”

  “Wha—” Chris’s back bowed as a surge of power traveled from Dean’s hand and into him. The cold intensified until he was certain he knew what Ötzi the Iceman had felt like, trapped in that block of Alpine ice for 5,000 or so years.

  It felt like an eternity before Dean’s hand fell away. He stepped back. “How’s that?”

  The frigid sensation was slow to fade, and Chris couldn’t speak at first. He shivered violently. Joey’s hands rubbing his arms were almost too warm.

  Dean winced. “Too much?”

  Chris shot him a glare, but once he could feel his extremities again he took stock and nodded. “Yeah, that’s… that’s better I think.”

  “His aura looks normal again,” Amber said, smiling. “You did it, Dean!” She clapped him on the shoulder with a gloved hand. It was the first time Chris could remembe
r her voluntarily touching someone.

  “How did you do that?” Joey’s voice held a note of wonder as she wrapped her arms around Chris and squeezed. She was so warm that Chris couldn’t help but pull her closer, even though his ribs protested.

  Dean shrugged. “No clue. I’m still figuring all this out.”

  Cathy thwacked him on the back of the head.

  “Ow, hey! I didn’t fly two thousand miles to take your abuse, woman!” He smiled as he said it, though.

  “Are you injured, child?” Cathy asked, studying Chris with narrow-eyed scrutiny.

  “Yeah, I think I cracked a rib. Do you think you could…?”

  She stepped forward and took his head between her hands. Her power flooded him with warmth, chasing out any lingering effect of Dean’s icy power. There was a brief bit of discomfort as his bone mended, but when she stepped back he felt whole again in every way.

  He gave Joey another squeeze before extracting himself from her arms. “Okay, let’s get this show on the road. We’ve got a witch to catch.”

  “Cat and Amber filled me in on the way from the airport,” Dean said.

  “Yeah, about that…” Chris quickly caught the three new arrivals up to speed on the latest developments.

  Dean emitted a low whistle. “Sounds like you’ve got quite a mess on your hands. But I think I’ll stick around, in case your gunslinger friend comes back.”

  “That’d be great, thanks man.” Chris offered a hand, and Dean shook it.

  “Wait a minute,” Joey said. “Where’s Adam?”

  Chris looked across the juncture to the last spot he’d seen the beta before the ghost’s vision had overcome him again, but Fariq and Ali stood alone.

  One of them shrugged and jerked a thumb over his shoulder, down the darkened tunnel behind them. Alarm bells went off in Chris’s head. He strode briskly across the juncture with long strides and had to stop himself from grabbing one or the other of the twins by the front of his shirt.