AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“What’s the plan? Or do we even have one?” Camille snorted. “Not that we usually do.”
“We head down in the tunnels nearest where Pete’s Barbershop was, follow the trail Tanne did, and… well… see what we find.” I gave her a fangy grin. “That’s the best I’ve got.”
“Then it will have to do. Make sure we all have our weapons. I can’t use the unicorn horn till after I charge it in a few days—I expended all of its power when Delilah and I were trying to escape from that room during the storm in Elqaneve. So I’m packing silver. And magic.”
She patted her hip and I saw she had strapped on the sheath to her silver dagger. Father had given each of us a silver dagger when we were younger. Delilah’s had proved to be sentient, after a fashion. I couldn’t touch mine now—silver and vamps didn’t mix. So it stayed in my lair, on the wall in a display case.
“I’m ready.” Roz opened his jacket. As usual, he was a walking armory. Stakes, magical incendiary devices, daggers, shurikens, a mini-crossbow, and gods knew what else were fastened snugly into the folds of his duster.
“You’re insane, but that’s beside the point. We can always count on you for some sort of destructive firepower.” Morio shook his head, but he was laughing quietly. “I’m ready. Smoky—what about you?”
“I am a weapon.” That was all the dragon needed to say.
As we headed off into the rain-soaked night, the storm parted for a brief second, but the moon was nowhere in sight, and she was waning to dark anyway. A few stars peeked through, but they were covered over again by another incoming band of dark clouds. October had us by the balls; that was for sure.
Underground Seattle. We’d been there so much you’d think we’d know it like the backs of our hands, but the truth was, the maze of buildings tucked away beneath the city streets was labyrinthine. And with our local crew of denizens who made their home down there, the tunnels were growing—slowly but surely. What had started out being the remains of a major fire that destroyed over twenty-five city blocks of the city back in 1889 had turned into a sublevel of Seattle. An underground haven.
After the fire, the city officials required that all buildings be made of stone or brick, and they raised the level of the growing city from anywhere between ten and thirty feet higher than they’d been, leaving the burned-out shells of stores to linger in the depths below the new city streets.
The official Underground Tour had shifted quite a bit since the Supes had come out of the closet, and the reality of how large the Seattle underground had grown came to light. There were rumors at first, then a few articles had cropped up in the papers, worrying about the stability of the city considering the network of tunnels was growing. But officials were quick to quell fears.
As to what the truth was? I didn’t know. And I doubted that anybody really did. It was far too chancy to attempt to map out the network, because the FBHs were gradually beginning to realize just how dangerous some of the Supes could be. Chase had mentioned not long ago how much busier the FH-CSI was becoming as the regular police force turned over more and more cases to them. In fact, he’d mentioned that at the last biennium, his department had seen a substantial increase in funding.
All these thoughts and more ran through my head as I called shotgun and slipped into the passenger seat in Delilah’s Jeep. Roz and his personal arsenal climbed into the back. He was a one-man army of weapons, and we’d come to rely on him for anything we might have forgotten.
Delilah led the way, with Camille following. They both had the GPS coordinates to the area we were looking for. I wasn’t thrilled that we were headed back into the Greenbelt Park district. It was haunted—severely haunted—and while we’d discovered just what had been causing a lot of the intense ghostly activity, and dispatched it—hopefully for good—the spirits would take quite a while to calm down. And by quite a while, we could be talking years.
The streets were empty. Seattle was a busy city, with a bustling metropolis, but at night, most of the business districts and a lot of the suburbs were quiet, the activity going on behind locked doors. Oh, in the Broadway District, or the U District, things were different. The streets were filled with students and hipsters, with junkies and hookers, but here it was fairly quiet.
The rain pelted down, hard bullets of water tap dancing against the pavement. The businesses in this district were run-down and shabby, as were the houses. Everything had been let go—and while nothing seemed to be in rack and ruin—nothing actively falling apart—neither were the buildings in great condition. It was as though nobody here cared. There was a feeling of abandonment that permeated the neighborhood.
Delilah swerved to avoid a blown tire in the road, then pointed to a building up ahead. “That warehouse? It’s abandoned. It’s also got a basement entrance into the tunnels. We can slip in through there.”
I frowned. “Anybody using the building that we know of?” Walking into an abandoned building had never done us any good. There always seemed to be somebody staked out in it.
“I don’t know.” She laughed. “I guess we pay our money and take our chances.” And with that, she turned into the parking lot and swung around back. Camille was following us, and within minutes, we were parked and out of the cars, staring at the back of the warehouse.
The building was three stories high, but we had no clue how far belowground it went. We knew, thanks to Delilah, that there was a basement, but whether that was the extent of the warehouse was anybody’s guess.
The place had been a storehouse of some sort, by the looks of the loading docks. The building was brick or concrete or some sort of stone—it was hard to tell what lay under the layers of dirty cream-colored paint. The metal roll-up doors were probably locked, but a regular door stood to the side, and chances were we could pick that lock. This setup seemed to be standard with the warehouses we’d found.
It crossed my mind that it might be handy to have someone like Daniel with us now—he was supposed to be an expert at getting into buildings, and he was used to holding his own in a fight. But then again, how many times had he gone up against a goblin horde? Or a troll? Fighting other humans was one thing. Fighting Supes who were stronger and tougher than you, quite another. Chase had discovered that, all too painfully.
Tanne knelt down by the door. “I know the charm of unraveling. It is akin to the charm of unlocking, but I don’t know if it will work.” He glanced up at us. “I am a spell singer by nature. I can charm fir and oak. I’m not so handy with metal, but I’ll try.”
I stared at him. This was a new one to me, but Camille seemed to understand what he was saying.
He began to hum, a low tune—slow and melodic. The sound became a whisper of words in a language I couldn’t understand, but I could feel the magic behind them, and the spiral of sound built until I could almost see the shape of a creature emanating from Tanne’s lips.
He held out his hand and sure enough, a vaporous form—bipedal and vaguely humanoid—stepped onto his fingers. As he reach out, holding his hand out to the door lock, the creature delicately bent down to touch the lock, and then, in a puff of smoke, it vanished into the keyhole.
We heard the sound of grating, then a faint tumble and click. The door sprang open and Tanne sat back, squatting on his heels, staring at it.
“I can’t believe that worked. But then again, the spell of Unraveling is stronger than the spell to charm locks.” He stood, letting out a long breath.
I stared at him for a moment. “You aren’t nearly as afraid as you should be. Unless you’ve done this sort of thing before.”
Tanne shrugged. “Fear destroys. Fear tears plans and people to pieces. I lived in the ancient forest, where the dark arts are honed to a brilliant degree. My people are not gentle, and neither are the humans who share the forest with us. I brought my skills, and my legacy, here.”
