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“Camille—we need you!” Smoky bellowed out as he held me fast.
In my haze, I noticed the other two daemons were down and Camille was running past their bodies. She took one look at the situation and let out a loud command.>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
As I raced forward, I decided to take on the hellhound. He couldn’t do as much damage to me as he could to my sisters, and they could probably handle the daemons easier.
The daemons weren’t prepared for my attack, and I managed to launch myself off the floor, over their heads, to land behind them. Turning, I shoved them both, forcing them to stumble forward, which would give the others an advantage. Then I whirled to face the hellhound.
The creature was full grown, meaning he was nearly shoulder high to me. Black as night, the three-headed dog had fiery eyes, and each of those heads was rife with teeth that could rip flesh and sinew. I had already decided that one of the best ways to take it down would be to avoid shedding its blood. That way I wouldn’t chance the acidic liquid spraying on the others.
One thing about hellhounds—they were intelligent. They were guarded, cunning, and volatile. And they didn’t have a lot of patience. When I landed in front of it, there was no hemming or hawing. The hellhound met my aggression, lunging forward, the center head with jaws gaping, ready to bite.
I kicked it under the chin, the force of my foot shoving the freak up off its front legs and skidding it sideways. Before it had time to regroup, I slammed into its side, pushing it farther back, away from the main group. I could hear shouts from behind, and I knew that the fight was on, but I didn’t dare chance glancing over my shoulder to see how they were doing.
The hellhound scrambled, recovering its footing as I hit it again. No time to think—no time to plan. I was in out-and-out beat it senseless mode. But this time, it was ready for my attack and its right head swung around, the gnashing teeth grabbing hold of the sleeve of my jacket. The monster yanked, and—even though I’d seen it coming, I wasn’t prepared for the force of the brute. I stumbled, falling as my arm slipped out of the sleeve, and as I rolled, I pulled my other arm out. But it dropped the jacket the minute it saw me pull away.
As it lunged again, I scrambled to my feet, but the creature landed against me and sent me flying back. Before it could snap at my face, all three of the thing’s slobbering jowls looming over me, I managed to roll away, and once again, come up into a crouch. I wondered what the fuck would happen if I tried to drink it down? Would acidic blood hurt me? The acid was corrosive but I didn’t know if it would react like fire on me. I decided a sample taste couldn’t hurt. Well, maybe not too much.
Leaping on its back, I leaned down and sank my teeth into the skin. Immediately a foul-tasting liquid poured into my mouth, stinging like hell. I spit it out as I felt welts rise up inside my mouth from the corrosive blood. Well, hell, that wasn’t going to work, and now the fucker was bleeding from the place where I’d fanged it.
The hellhound yelped and the left head let out a curse in some language I couldn’t understand, while the right swung the body around and thrust its muzzle at me, this time latching on to my leg. I yelped—even if I could survive an attack like this, it still fucking hurt.
