The Sight didn’t seem to care much about my little crisis of conscience. It slammed through me again, whiting out everything in my vision. I closed my eyes and reached for Billy’s arm, needing something solid to hang on to. I felt him give me a curious look—felt it both from the motion of his body and through a fuchsia flare in the whiteness—but he didn’t object. Grateful, I focused on the familiar splash of his aura, waiting for the Sight to calm down.
After about thirty seconds it became clear I was going to be waiting a long, long time. I got sparks of emotional information from the Underground town’s denizens, but nothing like the clear readable auras I was accustomed to. At most I could tell that those who were awake and aware were cagey, trusting us about as far as we could be thrown. Not that I needed the Sight to tell me that, but it reinforced a desire to slip by and leave them to their lives. I let my magic fade, normal vision re-establishing itself as I murmured, “Thanks for the flashlights,” as sincerely as I could before releasing Billy’s arm and heading past the campfire group into the Underground’s semi-darkness.
Rita let me take the lead until we were well beyond them, then stepped up again, offering flashlights and a shrug. “I can lead you into some of the more remote parts, if you want. I’ve been down there already looking for people, but maybe you can see better than I do.”
I clicked the flashlight on to make sure it worked, then turned it off again: there were still long stretches of light from the streets above, and I saw no reason to run the battery down. “I might be able to. How far do these old streets go? I remember the tour saying something like sixty blocks burned, but I don’t know how big the old blocks were….”
“Farther than I’ve gone. I haven’t been in this part of the city that long. Even we have our territory.”
I nodded, though I hadn’t quite thought of it that way. I knew I recognized several of the homeless who hung out along the Way, and that I was never surprised when a new face showed up and then disappeared again within a few days. It was a little like prostitutes who worked a specific corner, though I had the good sense not to say that out loud. “Seems like it takes a certain amount of nerve to go exploring down here. I mean, how stable are these old walls and pipes and things?”
“Most of them haven’t collapsed in a hundred years. I figure they’re not gonna fall on my head today.”
“Irrefutable logic.” Light from above faded into gloom and first Rita, then Billy and I turned our flashlights on. The bright beams made lost city even less friendly, shedding light where none belonged. Rita gestured us onto hands and knees, flashlights thunking awkwardly as we crawled through a low tunnel. The Underground tour I’d been on had said Seattle’s new sidewalks had been built anywhere from three to thirty feet above the old, which I heartily believed as we scrambled up and down steep grades that changed with unexpected rapidity. Rita kept on like she knew where we were going, and after long minutes we came out above a room big enough to be a cave. There was no natural light, but the flashlights picked out a floor a good ten or twelve foot drop from the tunnel mouth. It had seen more than its fair share of subsidence, with water-filled, sandy cracks running along it. Wood and brick pillars supported a ceiling that stretched an easy fifteen feet above us, bent and broken brick suggesting whatever building lay atop it, its weight was too great. Eventually the whole thing would collapse six yards. I wondered if one building falling in would create a cascade effect, reshaping Seattle’s skyline once again.
Billy said, “Walker,” in an oddly strained voice, and pointed his flashlight across the cavern. I waved my light that way, illuminating another tunnel mouth that had been broken through a building wall rather than having been part of the original street system.
A woman with hip-length golden hair crouched just on this side of that tunnel, hands cupped over a largish pool of water. She turned her head our way, showing long, beautifully symmetrical features, and eyes as gold as mine when I was in the throes of magic usage. They had been brown earlier: that was my first, useless thought.
My second was identical to Mr. Kobe Beef’s once he’d determined I wasn’t dead. Tia Carley was stark naked, and my tiny little brain couldn’t get beyond that fact. She stood up, staring across the distance at us. I had never seen a more athletic, attractive female body in my life: slightly broad shoulders, strong slim biceps, round high breasts and enough taper to her waist that her hips looked lush above long rangy legs. All three of us gaped at her, as unabashed in our staring as she was in her nudity. She remained perfectly still, but even so, she reminded me of the troupe dancers in the midst of the shapeshifting dances. There was something challenging about her, as if she’d been caught, caged, and escaped, and had no intention of ever returning to the cage.
Then her lips peeled back from her teeth in a purely feral threat, and she sprang away from the wellspring in a single lithe bound.
A gold brindle wolf hit the earth when she landed, and disappeared into the Underground’s tunnels.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
Rita made a sound unlike anything I’d ever heard, incredulous dismay mixed with childish excitement and a certain amount of terror. “Was that—did I—did she—?”
“Yeah.” I did a 180, flopped on my belly and slithered down the damp cavern wall until I dared drop to the floor. It wasn’t that far—maybe three feet, with me all stretched out like that—but I hit with a jolt that knocked my breath loose.
Billy said, “My suit,” in resignation, and did the same, then yelled, “Walker, wait up!” as I bolted across the underground room floor. “Rita, you don’t have to come with us—”
“Are you kidding?” She tossed her flashlight to Billy—I could tell from the way light splashed over the room—and squirmed down after us. I was just smart enough not to go after Tia without backup, but by the time they got to me I was dancing with agitation, and immediately forewent smarts to scramble through the beaten-down brick wall, shouting over my shoulder as I lurched down the tunnel.
“Her name’s Tia Carley! I saw her at the dance concert, goddamn it, I healed her, Billy! She had breast cancer! Shit, I talked to her this afternoon. She was interested in the magic, in shamanism, and damn it, I never even imagined she might be asking because she’d gotten caught up in the same power surge I did last night. Or like Morrison did today. If she got caught like Morrison did, she has no idea what’s going on! God, she could’ve even accidentally killed poor Lynn Schumacher this morning—!”
“If she got caught like Morrison did, how come he hasn’t reverted to human? How come she just turned back into a wolf? I don’t think she’s a victim of anything, Walker. I think she’s your killer.”
I stopped and flashed my light back to eyeball my partner. “Come on, Billy. I can pop back and forth between shapes. In theory, anyway. Probably. I bet I can. With practice.”
“With practice! You just said Morrison was caught. You can’t have it both ways, Walker. Either somebody knows what they’re doing or they don’t.”
“So maybe she’s—” I couldn’t think of what she might be, since I knew she wasn’t a shaman, but Billy cut across me, getting straight to the point.
“Somebody who ripped someone’s throat out?”
I stared at him, and Rita’s half-visible shadow behind him suggested, “Let’s argue about it somewhere else.”