Page 40 of Catnapped

Sure enough, one of the steps had seen better days, and I crouched on the step above it to get a better view. Whatever had hit the step had done a good job of exposing the steel support wires in the concrete. I pointed at the bent metal. “Maybe the dust is just from whatever did this. That took a lot of force. It bent the metal, too.”

Darian joined me, and he touched the ground before rubbing the dust between his fingers. “I don’t suppose any of your practitioner tricks can capture reflections from the past? I’m now really curious what caused this.”

“Unfortunately not. You could probably ask your father, though.”

“I could, but the chances he’d answer me are pretty slim.”

“Nothing ventured, nothing gained.” I hopped over the damaged stair and resumed my journey to the next landing. “What the hell? It’s going down even farther. What is this place?”

“A very deep lab, apparently. We must be at least fifty feet down by now. There’s actually a logical explanation for doing that,” Darian announced, joining me. “After about forty feet, the temperature becomes consistent underground. Oxygen, however, becomes an issue. Can you use practitioner magic to make sure we get fresh air down here?”

“Actually, yes. That I can do.” Chuckling over how easy the Devil made it for me to use my magic for that purpose, I took one of the sheets of paper from the pad and drew a rune representing air and a second one representing a light wind before binding the two together with a drawing of a chain. I concentrated and waved the paper back and forth until it began to produce a gentle breeze. I offered the sheet to Darian. “You can just put it in your pocket or something. No need for it to be out. It’ll last until you break the chain.”

“How do those runes produce fresh air?” He took the paper from me, examining the drawings. “Actually, what are these runes? I don’t recognize either of them.”

“Wind and air. They’re an older form of practitioner magic—think Biblical times older. I had to learn older rune sets, and the older they get, the closer to the elemental sources they go. I’m tapping the elements themselves with those runes, which is why the air will be fresh.” I pointed at one of the exterior circles I’d drawn around the rune for air. “This is a symbol for renewal, which I combined with air, which translates to fresh air we can breathe. Intent matters as much as the runes or symbols drawn.”

“These runes don’t use squared edges,” he noted.

“That’s because they aren’t that sort of rune. Squared edges were easier to chisel into stone or wood. These were originally drawn into sand or mud. It’s also a lot faster to draw in a hurry. Straight lines aren’t as friendly when you’re trying to work magic; going off kilter can create problems, where curved lines are friendlier when you toss magic into the fray. I do know some workings that require straight lines, but I get out the tools when I need to work on those. That’s how you summon demons like your dad without having a way to contain them, Darian.”

“Do you think my mother really drew a squiggle when she meant a straight line and summoned Dad?”

“I think she had no idea what she was actually doing and played with magic she should not have been playing with. It could have gone very differently for your mother if she’d summoned another demon or devil. There are plenty in the many hells that would have eaten her, spit out the bones, and destroyed the circle to make certain nobody repeated that trick. The only smart thing she did was summon your father to help contain your dad, really. But I do admire the amount of power and skill required to make that sort of mistake.”

“I’m telling Mom she’s never allowed to be left alone in a dark room with chalk and candles ever again. I like my mother and do not want her to be eaten by some demon that’s not my dad.”

I laughed at the innuendo. “She reeks of devil and archangel; the worst that would happen to her is a kidnapping, and Belial wouldn’t let that stand for long. Demons and devils generally aren’t stupid, and they won’t hurt the mortal member of a triad. That’s how you trigger an unauthorized End of Days. That’s also how to lose favor with the Devil, and he takes his triads seriously. I think, in some ways, the triads are how the Devil fulfills his basic needs to be a family man,” I admitted. “I don’t recommend following in your mother’s footsteps as a general rule.”

“Oh, trust me. If I’m going to summon somebody, I’ll be doing it very deliberately, I will have the appropriate bribes, and I’ll be prepared to make the most of my summoning. I mean, it worked pretty well for my mother.”

“You’re going to bite off more than you can chew,” I warned.

“Should I take that route, I will do so with the utmost care.”

Of course he would. I shook my head, made a mental note to talk to the Devil about his nephew’s desire to create a disaster, and continued into the depths. Two more landings and at least a hundred feet later, we came to a set of steel double doors which were cracked open. Thanks to my rune, the air remained fresh, but thick layers of dust coated the floor beyond.

Cages, some of them occupied with skeletal remains, lined the walls, reminding me of a sterile shelter. The animal shelter cages, however, offered the animals far more space. The ones containing cats included a small litter box.

I clenched my teeth, and my cheek twitched.

“I wish I could say I’m surprised. I’m really not. I don’t even want to know if they were already dead or dying when this place was busted.” Darian cringed. “My bet is on dying and couldn’t be saved, so euthanized and left in the cages where they died.”

“That’s horrible.”

“And the theory plays very well to the concern of some contagion; I can’t imagine why the animals would have been left like that unless there was some concern of a contagion that could spread to people, so they likely just gassed them and left the bodies to rot. They may have cracked open the door later to confirm the animals had died.”

“Wouldn’t that make this dangerous to go into?”

“They would have neutralized the toxins after making sure the animals were dead.”

“That’s even worse.”

“They were probably beyond saving, and it was less traumatizing for them to just kill them in the cages without rounding them up and traumatizing them even further. I don’t like it, but I can understand it. Cats like your Mr. Flooferson would have been taken for medical care and put in a shelter’s care while the others were left to die.”

“Wouldn’t that shoot down the contagion concern, though? If the animals were contagious, why would they rescue some and not others?”

Darian shrugged. “It’s just a possibility. With the mix of science and magic available, it’s not exactly hard to treat sick animals. If there was a contagion, they would care for the ones they thought they could save and leave the rest. It’s a lot harder to make sure contagion stays with the corpses than it is to dump a bunch of angry cats and dogs into some neutralizer and force feed them the treatments. Leaving them to stay down here, sealed, would solve a lot of problems. The contagion would die out on its own over time. And that’s if that’s the case.”