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As I entered the narrow passage, I hoped it wouldn’t go on for too far. I didn’t want to get lost in a maze beneath the city streets. Camil e hated close quarters, and I knew this wasn’t easy on her.
The darkness closed in around us as we continued on, and the only spots of light were the muted beams of our flashlights. I kicked the floor ahead of me as I stepped, scooting loose pebbles to the side so the others wouldn’t twist their ankles on them.
“The air here is thick,” Camil e said from the back. “How much farther, can you tel ?”
I squinted in the dim light, trying to gauge how far we had to go. “I don’t know, but—wait . . .” Up ahead, the cleft ended in a turn to the left. I peeked around the corner. The opening led to a large room. “You’re in luck.”
As I stepped into the brick chamber, I immediately began scoping out the area. The others filed in as I took in the man-made cavern. It was a good fifteen feet tal , and as wide as our house, it looked like. There were dark maws opening at regular intervals around the periphery of the wal s, and I began to realize this was just a hub in a large tunnel system.
“Damn, look at this. We could so easily get lost down here. What the fuck went on in this freak city?”
“As I said, there was a fire back in the late 1880s. It destroyed over twenty-five blocks of the city.
What you see down here are the remains of the original city streets and buildings—” Chase ducked. “Shit! Spider! Crap,” he said, brushing something off and stamping on it.
We spread out in the room.
“What do you suppose this was? An intersection?” Morio flickered his light at his feet. Wooden slats, broken and rotted through in places, lined the floor.
“Probably a little market square or something,” I said, as a sudden gust blew by. “There’s no wind down here, is there?”
“Not that I would think,” Vanzir said. “Why?”
“Because if it wasn’t a breeze, then something just flew by me and jostled my elbow.” I was about to explore one of the side tunnels when another gust hit into me, only this time it was square in the back and hard, like hands shoving me forward. “Who the hel is that?” I whirled around.
Camil e shrieked and went sprawling to the floor. “Fuck! Somebody just knocked me down.”
She scrambled to her feet.
“Quick! Back to back!” I rushed over to her side and the five of us formed a circle, covering our backs. “Who’s there? What do you want?”
But there was just a loud echo as laughter ricocheted off the wal s. And then, our flashlights went out and we were plunged into darkness.
CHAPTER 13
“Motherfucking pus bucket! What the hel —” Vanzir’s voice echoed in the darkness as our unseen assailant took a swipe at me.
Camil e let out another yelp. “Something scratched me and man, it stings.”
“Enough of this.” Morio let out a growl and began to grow into his ful demonic form—eight feet of youkai-kitsune, a cross between gorgeous man and dangerous fox with claws that could eviscerate a buffalo. As he shifted, he muttered something under his breath and there was a loud flash in the room and then, slowly, in the inky void, I began to see shapes around us.
Discorporate figures, black silhouettes surrounded by a faint green aura, fil ed the room. There must have been ten or eleven, circling us, no features showing—just shadow men, darting around us.
“What are they? Ghosts?” Camil e breathed slowly, but I could stil hear the tremor of her voice.
“Not ghosts,” Morio said. “I don’t real y know what they are.”
Chase let out a low sigh. “I can see into them. They’re . . . they’re little bits of evil, incarnate in shadow form. They have no real consciousness, but they’re hungry for our life force.” His voice was distant, as if he were a mil ion miles away.
“Chase?” I felt Camil e shift as she turned in his direction. “How do you know that?”
“I don’t know, but I just do,” he whispered, sounding afraid of his own voice. “We need some light.”
Morio mumbled and foxfire lit the room with a neon glow. The effect was eerie—the shadow men circling us, a globe of green light hovering over us.
“So, what do we do about them?” I stared at our opponents. They could obviously hurt us, if they’d knocked Camil e to the ground and managed to almost shove me off my feet. And now, in the light of the foxfire, I could see that Camil e was bleeding from a long scratch down her arm.
“You okay?”
