I grabbed on to him, breathless, queasy and more than a little freaked out. That just didn’t get any easier. Especially not when viewed through someone else’s eyes.
“What is it?” he demanded. “What happened?”
“Nothing.” I got my legs back under me. “It’s just…I think we might be in the right place, after all.”
Caleb looked uncertain, staring past me into the drain like he thought something was about to jump out at us.
And then something did.
“What! Hold!” Jamie threw a shield up, which knocked Caleb’s spell awry. It bounced off and crashed into the water on our left, sending a great wash of steam into the air. “Are ye daft, man?”
“Sorry.” It looked like I wasn’t the only one who was a little jumpy. But Caleb recovered fast. “Why’d you go in without us?” he demanded. “What if you’d had a seizure in there? What if it left your head under water?”
“What if you stop acting like I have one foot in the grave?” Jamie shot back. “And I went in because I needed to check on conditions.”
“How are they?”
“Bad. And going to get worse. It’s raining in the mountains.”
“So? We’re here,” I pointed out.
“Vegas sits at the bottom of a basin,” he said impatiently. “It’s surrounded by mountains and a lot of hard desert soil used to four or five inches of rain a year. When it gets a couple all at once, like the forecast for today, it can’t handle it and all that water comes running down here. That’s why the drainage system was created in the first place.”
“I think we can handle a few inches!”
“Inches in the mountains translates to feet here. And of all the drains in the system, this is the worst to be caught in during a flood. It runs all the way under the Strip, with no manholes or cross tunnels to catch you. If a wall of water came up behind us, we could be washed for miles.”
“We have shields,” I reminded him.
“And how long do you think they’ll last when we’re slamming into concrete like three idiots in a pinball machine?”
“So you’re saying we need to do this fast?”
“I’m saying we need to do this later!”
I shook my head violently. “Cyrus is in there. It has to be now!”
I pushed into the drain, which at this point mostly involved just letting go of the outer edge of the inlet. It swept me through the mouth of the tunnel and onto what remained of a sandbar. The noise was deafening, with the small, enclosed space amplifying every sound. Each car rattling overhead sounded like a 747 taking off, and the river around my legs roared like the ocean. But at least I couldn’t hear Jamie cursing anymore.
Once I got back to my feet, I discovered that the tunnel itself was fairly spacious. But that was the only good thing. The air was murky and the same shade as the water, but I didn’t dare use a flashlight. In the inlet, it could be mistaken for sunlight; farther in, it would immediately announce the presence of an unwanted visitor.
But without light, it was difficult to imagine how I was supposed to find anyone in here. There were no markers, no stuttering wards, no anything. Just a long, dark tunnel and me. If there was ever a time for metaphysical bread-crumbs, I thought, just before an image vivid enough to touch slammed into me.
Cyrus ended up on his back, with Lia prowling up his body. She’d left her hair undone and it flowed over her shoulders in a dark wave, tickling his chest after she stripped his shirt off. His hand slid under that shining mass, the strands sliding silken-slick between his fingers, to grasp her nape. He brought her down for a scorching kiss before skimming down her back and over the sweet curves below. She groaned and that combined with the skin-to-skin contact to bring a growl to his throat.
“Down, boy,” she told him, sitting up to straddle his shoulders. Her eyes were a perfect ice gray in the moonlight filtering through his bedroom curtains. Wolf eyes.
The brief glimpse into Cyrus’s brain flickered out, leaving me staring into the dense gloom of the drain. That was all right, I told myself as I pushed off from the wall. It looked like I had a guide.
The pressure against my legs doubled as I moved forward into the channel, because the water was compressed into a smaller area. Making things even more interesting were the seams in the concrete where the rectangular drains had been slapped together. They formed dangerous ledges underwater, vying with rocks and bottles and submerged sandbars to see which could trip me first.
“Why would the gang kidnap your boyfriend?” a voice demanded.
I whirled to find Jamie right behind me. All the noise had muffled his footsteps, and I hadn’t heard him approach. “I’m not real clear on that yet,” I said, lowering my gun. “But Caleb’s right. You shouldn’t be here.”
“And you should?”
“This isn’t Corps business. It’s personal.”
“And what d’ye think it is for me?” Jamie demanded. “I’m not about to let Toby’s killer walk free!”
“You’re the one who just said we should leave!”
He threw his hands into the air. “Because no one’s here! Tartarus dwellers are very conscious of the weather—they have to be. They probably cleared out hours ago—”
“Not this group.”
“Are we going to do this or not?” Caleb asked, appearing out of the gloom.
Jamie rounded on him. “I don’t even know why you’re here!”
Caleb raised an eyebrow. “I see better in the dark than either of you. And you can’t take on a whole gang on your own.”
“There is no gang! If they were here, they’d have to be in the old shantytown. There’s no other caves in this drain.” Jamie sloshed around a bend and up the tunnel with the surefootedness of someone who knew where he was going. Caleb and I followed as best we could. “There!” He pointed at a decaying ward that was buzzing fitfully, showing glimpses of the room beyond. “And as you can clearly see, there are—”
“A whole lot of Weres in there!”
Caleb threw out a shield as Jamie dove for one side of the entrance. I stayed where I was, scanning the group for Cyrus. He wasn’t there, but the guy I’d fought at the market was. He was easy to pick out with all his hair singed off on one side. He met my eyes and a shiver went through the group, a mass change that left us staring at eight full-grown Weres—for about a second. Then they melted into the back wall and were gone.
I ran after them—or tried to. But the ward over this entrance wasn’t just for show. I hit what felt like solid rock and bounced back. I watched the ward flicker on and off while Caleb and Jamie were debating whether or not the tunnel could hold up to the blast necessary to take it out. And then I jumped through the next time it failed.
I lost the tail of my coat when the ward flicked back on again, but no skin. I was across the room in a heartbeat, barely slowing down at the wall. It was an illusion—it had to be—because Weres could do a lot of things, but dissolve into thin air wasn’t one of them. I missed the hidden door slightly, and banged my left shoulder on hard stone, but then I was through.
A long tunnel stretched out in front of me, supported by wooden braces every few feet like an old mine shaft. It wasn’t lit, and visibility was no better than it had been in the drain. But unlike the tunnels outside, this one was absolutely quiet—no rushing water, no rattling cars, no pounding footsteps. It was as silent as a tomb, and wasn’t that a great mental image.
I jumped when Jamie and Caleb came in behind me, even though I’d been expecting it. “Something’s wrong,” Caleb said, an array of weapons hovering around him like a lethal cloud.