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The passage we were in was narrow. It might have been an alley for the way it looked. The floor here was brick, but there were signs that, once, there had been planking over the brick till somebody had gotten the idea to rip it up. I wasn’t sure why, but chances were the wood had eroded away in the dampness.
I looked over my shoulder at Delilah. “Which direction was Pete’s Barbershop? I hope it’s to the left or we’re going to have problems.”
She nodded. “Left, it is. About two blocks.”
We headed out, as quietly as we could. The bricks seemed to muffle the sounds of our footsteps, but coughs and words reverberated in the silence, and somewhere ahead, the echo of dripping water steadily beat out a cadence. Must have been either a leak in a pipe, or something of the sort.
Along the way, I examined the lights that were affixed to the walls in regular intervals. They were, indeed, electric. Power had been run down through the Underground for years. The soft glow of the forty-watt bulbs was enough to see by, but not so bright that they illuminated every nook and cranny.
“Do you notice something?” Delilah asked after a moment.
“What?”
She motioned to the sides. “No intersecting tunnels. This passage seems to be blocked off from the rest of Underground Seattle. First the brick wall back on the other side of the entrance, then no other exits.”
She was right. This did seem to be its own little corner of the world.
“I hadn’t noticed, but now that you mention it, you’re right. You say we have about another block to go? There should have been other tunnels leading off here—for the alleyways, etc. In fact, I thought we were already in an alleyway.”
She shook her head. “No. It just feels narrower than usual because it was a side street. However, again—yes. There should be tunnels branching off, with the amount of building and expansion that has gone on down here. But nothing.”
By the looks of the tunnel, there had been more than cosmetic work done down here in the past ten years.
“I’ll bet you anything, Lowestar had some renovation done down here to give him more privacy. It would make sense when you consider the scope of the operation that he’s running. It’s probably a multimillion-dollar business. He’s not going to jeopardize that—nor is he going to risk being found out. Even if the FBH courts wouldn’t know what to do with him, you can bet some angry Supe would do their best to take him out.”
Delilah laughed. “I know somebody who would probably love to get his hands on this knowledge. He could make book with it so big.”
Camille chimed in from behind. “Are you talking about Daniel?”
“Daniel? No. I’m talking about Alex—someone I met not long ago at the Supe-Urban Café. He owns the Fly by Night Investigations Agency. He and his crew are bounty hunters in a sense. They not only take on paranormal cases, but go after rogue Supes. I’m surprised you haven’t met the guy, Menolly. He’s a vampire and his IT guy is a werewolf.”
I frowned. The name of the agency sounded vaguely familiar. “They’re in Seattle?”
“Yeah. I thought of him because his last name is the same as our villain’s. Radcliffe. But without the e on the end. And there’s no connection; that much I can tell you. I checked into it. Alex was originally from Australia.” She let out a chuckle. “Not your usual vamp either.”
I wanted to ask what she meant by that, but just then, we reached the end of the road. Literally. The tunnel ended at another brick wall. But to the right, we saw a sign. PETE’S BARBERSHOP. And against the brick façade built over the mouth of the passageway were two sconces.
Tanne pointed. “That’s what I saw. We’re here.”
“Then we’re close to Lowestar’s cells. Did you notice any sort of trap, any other action he took when he came through here?” I gazed at the Fae, hoping to hell he was remembering correctly.
He shook his head. “No, he just fiddled with the sconce and the passageway opened. There’s a knob back there, I can see it. That’s what he was turning. I’ll do it. I just hope to hell we find her in one piece.” He moved forward, his lips set.
There wasn’t much I could say to that. A woman he loved had been kidnapped and was slated to be sold to the highest bidder. The only thing we could do was pray she was still here, and hadn’t been farmed out yet. If she’d been auctioned off, we might never be able to find out where she was.
Behind me, Delilah readied her dagger as Roz pulled out a silver short sword. I could hear Camille and Morio ramping up some sort of spell, and Smoky was, as ever, poised for action. I gave Tanne a silent nod.
He moved to the sconce and reached up, hesitating just a single heartbeat before he twisted the knob. Another heartbeat—I could hear his heart pounding in his chest—and a brick panel slid back.
On the other side, waiting to greet us, stood four armed guards. They weren’t Tregarts—think burly biker-demons—but they reminded me of them. And they were fully armed with coldset iron blades—close enough to unalloyed iron in nature that they could do nasty damage to the Fae—and heavy-duty bullwhips. I shuddered. Demons or daemons, there were subsets of both who were so fucking good with whips they could behead a man with a single flick of the wrist.
Then, as they parted slightly, we could see behind them. There, lumbering like a giant three-headed Rottweiler, was a hellhound. He was almost shoulder high to me, huge and with eyes as fiery as his nature.
“Crap! Not hellhounds.” Behind me, Camille groaned and I could hear her heart pounding. The monsters had acid in their blood, and, in one battle, Camille had been on the wrong end of it. She still bore the scar.
As the guards pushed forward into the hallway, we fell back, making room for the looming battle. Then, before they could make the first move to attack, I took the initiative and launched myself forward. And once again, the fight was on.
Chapter 13
