“Just one more thing… Sorry … I can’t keep awake… Will you stay? Stay in England? However you can? Stay with him? Please. If you’re able? The others also … that’s fine. It’s only … Kage… He wanted to meet a caster since he was a pup. You mean the world to him. Even more now.
“Thank you, Cassia… Moon bless…”
Chapter 42
The dream was a touch that was reality that merged both worlds.
Nana tapped my shoulder and pointed to the door in the dark. It’s right there. Then she pointed to Jason as I held onto him. Right there.
Then she was gone. So I looked, got up, and opened the door.
It wasn’t locked. In fact, there was no lock on it. Nor was it magically held.
The smelly room beyond was dim, only a hint of light coming through the blinds that I took for streetlights outside. Night. But the house was silent. Not an active night. The little animals were curled in their cages.
Very quietly, I woke Jason, told him we were leaving, and helped him finish getting dressed with shirt and jacket, using a hint of palm light to make sure we had left nothing behind, I tied my hiking shoes, then offered my arm.
Jason was unsteady on his feet, limping, but I was deeply sore after untold days and nights on the tiles as well. As long as his internal damage could either be seen to or heal on its own, he would be all right. Unless he met Tayron one more time. In which case he would die.
“Hold onto me,” I whispered. “We’re going downstairs to find the others and get out.”
I opened the next door into the hall.
We crept on the threadbare rug to spiral stairs. Although he leaned on me slightly for support, Jason led the way with his superior night vision.
I didn’t dare light my hands, but called on a magic shield around us both, drawing on an invisible white light bubble, asking Nana to guide us.
There were lights on below. A bright one filling the mouth of the next stairway, more coming from inside doorways in the next hall, either shut or open.
As we reached this hall, one of the dark rooms lit from within and the door banged open with a crash that made us both jump.
Yet … despite the pulse-pounding fright of the sudden noise and someone following up to burst out, I didn’t panic.
That hand was on my shoulder again. This way. You’re good.
I squeezed Jason’s arm and faced Milo as he bore down on us, cursing.
“I finally get a good day’s sleep and what do you do? On my watch? You have to go for a fucking walk! On my watch!”
“I’m sorry we got you out of bed, Milo,” I said—absolutely floored by my perfectly calm voice. “We want to see our friends. It’s not much fun up there on cold tiles for days on end.”
“Fine,” he snapped, clenching his fists. He was nearly naked again: boxers, cowboy hat, nothing else. Even the cigarette was missing. “Want your friends? You’re welcome. Go on.” Waving his arm at the next stairs.
So we went down.
The old mage with the white beard and hair, calico cat on his desk, was working away at many papers and diagrams while young André scurried about, drawing something on the wall with the fluffy end of a feather—holding the quill.
André glanced at us in alarm. The old mage never even looked up, muttering angrily to his attentive cat in French as we swept through the room. Beside Muffin, tossed carelessly on a corner of the desk, lay my purse. My belt was on the floor as if it had been knocked off. So was Jason’s chain necklace. There was someone’s wallet. Just a glimpse and we had to keep moving.
We walked down the main steps to the front door, Milo cursing even more, walking on the sides of his feet against the cold boards, and around a U-turn.
“How is it you were keeping watch?” I asked. “Security cameras?”
He snorted. “Go.”
We climbed down a ladder into a vast cellar filled liberally with wine and other storage. In one corner was a trapdoor, latched shut at the top.
Milo threw the latch with magic, jerked his hand at the door, and it wrenched loudly open.
“There, go! By all the hells, go on! Quick! It’s cold!”
“How do we get down?” I asked. “It’s a pitch-black hole.”
“Jump, I don’t care. Go!”
“Cassia?”
“Isaac?” I scrambled to the edge of the trapdoor.
With a shove from magic, Milo kept us together, Jason knocking into me, myself grabbing the edge with both hands. I jarred my bad arm, swung down and … was caught.
Jason dropped after me, there was a rush of voices, arms, movement, someone crushing me, then someone else at the same time, saying my name. Crash of the trapdoor and all was black.
They were here. All three voices, all saying my name: Cass, arä, Cassia, you’re all right, I love you, what happened, where have you been, you’re alive—
It was like light or touch, the way everything blended beyond sound. More than words, but a melody, a kiss.
Their voices were cracked and husky, their lips dry and bloody, badly chapped.
They’d been trapped in here since the start. No food, no water, no light, no visitors. But they were all here, in this freezing cellar that Zar said was a catacomb. The walls in many places were lined with the tops of human skulls or other bones. The passages seemed to run away forever. They had no idea if it eventually joined with some of Paris’s famous underground tombs or was a world apart.
How had they been able to stray even a few steps from here in pitch darkness? If they had, how had they remained so near the trapdoor? I didn’t ask.
There was a wooden ladder of sorts built into the wall right below the door, while the ceiling was so low even I could reach it just by lifting a hand.
There were questions for Jason also. Andrew, finally moving from holding onto me for minutes and minutes, shaking, felt for Jason and hugged him. All asked were we all right and what had they done? What had they wanted to know? And how were we going to get out?
“I’m fine,” I murmured, still being crushed. “At least we’ve had water. We’ve been locked in a bathroom. Jason needs help. But he can walk and I’m okay. I don’t know how we’re going to get out. But Jason does.”
Finally, everyone fell silent.
Jason hadn’t said a word. He still did not.
After a long pause in blackness with only arms around me, many ragged, shuddering breaths, and the cold damp of the catacombs, Andrew said quietly, “All right, Jay? You have a plan?”
“No.” Jason’s voice was weak. Beside his own sickness and pain, I believe he was in shock.
“Just think for a minute, Jason,” I said. “Okay? I can’t open the trapdoor with magic, or they’d all be down here. So something else. Please. We have a minute. Why don’t you sit down? Catch your breath. Think. Andrew? Can you stay with him? I’m going to make a light. You’ll all have to be able to see when we get out of here, so you need to get used to light. It’s night right now. That should help.”
Andrew and Jason sat against the wall. The three of us stood beside them.
I started the glow like distant stars, leaving it at that for a long time before building to glow-in-the-dark stickers.
No one was looking anyway. Isaac’s face was against the top of my head, my face on his chest, Zar’s against my shoulder, arm across my back, holding my head. Andrew leaned against my leg and Jason against him. We stayed, quietly, gradually glowing for many minutes, perhaps half an hour, before Jason said, “All right.”
“What do we need to do?” I said.
Everyone shifted then. They blinked and tried to look at the soft glow of my hands. Jason and Andrew got painfully to their feet. We all stood together, heads close, while Jason explained how we were going to get out.
Chapter 43
I’d been right about Jason’s French. He had understood, for example, that the old mage at the desk had been talking about all the noise again. Banging all evening, all the headache, all the bot
her of someone pounding at the knocker and how he was going to remove it.
This was only one of very many notes that Jason had to share once he’d had a think to solve the puzzle for us.
The first note, and most important, was that someone was on watch by means of a scry that was ever-running in some way, alerting the mage on watch if anything was amiss.
First step: turn off the camera.
I had to magically fool the feed by means of a blank screen. It was when someone came to have a look that things would begin happening fast.
“How can you be sure one will come alone?” Isaac asked.
“I’m pretty sure,” I said. “Based on all we’ve seen. They’re the most confident people I’ve ever met. If we threw open the trapdoor by magic and all came storming out, that would be different. They could flood us. But just coming to check, like Jason’s saying? I bet only one…?”
“I’m positive,” Jason said. “He’ll be alone. Milo if it’s universally his watch night. Or probably André or some other young mage if it’s not. There are more in the house than we’ve met. It doesn’t matter who. Just so he comes alone, can’t detect us, and jumps down in here.”
“It’s a stretch, Jay,” Andrew said. “What nob-head jumps into a pit of enemies for a shifty?”
“A confident one,” I said.
“He’ll have to find us,” Jason said. “He can’t go back upstairs without finding us. He’s not afraid, remember. You’re thinking like he’s afraid of us—like we’re wolves. To him, we’re just sheep. Worst case…?” To me.
“Yes, I can trip him and knock him in here with magic if he’s on the edge. I really don’t want to do that because I need strength for the door. Besides, he might be able to block, but I don’t think it will come to that.”
Once we’d been over the whole plan, Zar asked, “Who’s going to be in fur?”
“Jason can’t and Andrew can run fastest in skin,” I said. “So Isaac and Zar. We have to get to the hotel for the Jeep. Zar can stay in fur. Isaac will need to drive once—”
“Wait…” Andrew said. “Zar … and Isaac…? Are going to run through Paris in fur? All the way to the hotel?”
“We don’t have a choice about that,” Jason said. “What would they do? Change on the pavement and run there naked in skin? That’d be safer?”
“Then I should change,” Andrew said. “Less noticeable.”
“I don’t care if we’re noticed,” I said. “I don’t care if half the city sees, if we’re floodlit, and a video of our run goes viral. We’re going to get out. We’re going to survive. And there are going to be wolves running through Paris tonight in order for us to do that. Isaac and Zar will change. But that means you two will have to take on the watchmen. Can you do that?”
“If we could just hit his head—” Zar started.
“No,” I said. “If we could do that, we could all stay in skin. We need you.”
“If we call someone down here to open the trapdoor, only for him to survive the encounter, there’s no point to what we’re doing,” Jason said. “He has to die.”
“He has to die and it has to be in about two seconds,” I said. “I can help block the magic for an instant, but that’s probably it.”
“And we don’t want Cassia doing anything she doesn’t have to,” Jason said. He looked at me in the faint blue from my hands. “Send the scry feed; door; passports.”
I nodded. “I know.” If we didn’t get the passports back, we wouldn’t be returning to England at all.
“You two; firepower,” Jason said. “Andrew helping me and Cassia. Whoever’s at the door … just hope they’re on our side.”
“If someone’s still there,” Andrew said. “You didn’t actually hear anyone knocking?”
Jason shook his head. “It was recent, though. This evening.”
“We don’t even know if it’s Tuesday or Sunday,” Andrew said. “‘This evening’ doesn’t mean much. Besides, that bloke is mental.”
“Doesn’t matter,” I said. “Hardly one of the key points.”
We went over the key points again, then Zar and Isaac stripped, Jason keeping the few items we needed to preserve, and all of us pocketing small things for them, like bracelets of Zar’s and the Jeep keys from Isaac. We kept a jacket and Isaac’s shoes. He had a change of clothes in his bag at the hotel.
More concerns: how long ago had the hotel staff taken over our things and cleared out those rooms? Yet they must have our bags, right? Sitting in some staff room or behind the desk, waiting to see if we would show up and pay the ransom of the three nights’ stay we’d booked in order to reclaim them. They wouldn’t just throw the bags away. And the Jeep? Would they have had it towed out? How long had it been?
Please, Goddess, have the Jeep.
As long as we had his shoes and the hotel had his bag, which it must, Isaac would be able to change back to drive us out of here. I’d have liked to keep his slacks in case, but it wasn’t worth the potential damaging burden of carrying them. Some of this was brains. Some of it was faith.
I kissed each. “I believe in all of you. We’re getting out.”
“We know you can open that door,” Jason said. “Scry, door, passports.”
“I can do that.” I put out the light. My new master list had grown very short—no notebook needed. For something very long: life.
Isaac and Zar changed. I knew what I was asking them to do was terrible, yet it didn’t seem terrible anymore. I’d have done it myself if I had the teeth for it.
Then I scried. I’d never done a scry feed or block, but—how nice—I’d just been reading all about them.
The space was pure black. I didn’t think that mattered. I projected the sense of emptiness, not an exact image, but the lack of living people, a big “nothing” that the scry could find. I settled into the flow of it and, after the first rush, it was easy, no energy drain to hold the lens cap over the lens.
Everyone was ready, all in place. We waited.
Ten minutes, fifteen.
Then the rushing, storming feet thudded above. Either he had put on his cowboy boots or this was another watchman. The important thing was it was only one.
The trapdoor crashed open. Muttering in French, then shouting in English.
“Wolves? Witch?” It was Milo. I’d have preferred Tayron, but there’d been no chance.
Swearing at us in French, conjuring his own light, Milo leapt down into the catacombs.
By the time he hit the ground I had a field of energy ready to strike him. Isaac leapt at his face, Zar at his back, and my magic countered Milo’s lightning lashing out that would have sent both of them flying—hence the confidence. But he hadn’t thought about the pack. He’d thought about the wolf.
Instead of knocking back Isaac and Zar, our magics hit and exploded in a shower of yellow and blue sparks like a fireball that set nothing ablaze. In the same instant, Zar struck him in the back, teeth fastening into the top of Milo’s shoulder, knocking the cowboy hat flying with his own head, Milo screamed, and Isaac hit him in the front.
Jason scrambled up the ladder with the jacket and shoes, me behind. Isaac’s teeth were in Milo’s throat. He yelped but held on as Milo gripped his huge neck and face, burning away fur with fire from his hands. Then Milo’s own scream was cut off. Isaac was shaking his head, both wolves crushing him as Milo thrashed, now almost soundless.
I rushed after Jason. We turned on our knees above the trapdoor and reached back in as Zar, then Isaac jumped and scrambled up, boosted by Andrew from below, catching paw-holds in the ladder, pulled from us above. Isaac’s white coat was burnt and sprayed with blood. Andrew raced up after.
We closed and bolted the door and ran for the steps up from the cellar.
At the top, the wolves in fur took off, leading the way for the front door that we all ran to. We didn’t make it there. Sure enough, the screaming had alerted another watchman.
André was coming through the gloomy hall beyond the foyer
. His eyebrows shot up and his jaw shot down when he saw us. He threw up a protective hand. The blast hit Isaac, slamming him into the wall, but Zar was quick enough to drop flat as I’d warned them at the motion of the hand. The energy washed over him, making all his fur stand on end, and he sprang straight from the crouch into André’s chest like a mountain lion.
André also screamed and fought, yelling in French, thrown to the floor by Zar only to knock him loose with another blast and be leapt upon by Isaac.
While this was happening, the three of us ran past the battle.
Coming to the front door, I was already there, in that space, opening it. I’d opened that door a dozen times by magic already. I just had to watch it happen before my own eyes this time.
Then … bang, bang, bang.
Goddess, the old mage was right. The hammering of the iron knocker from the inside was excruciating. At close range it pounded into my ears, beat through my bones, jarred my teeth, and reminded me all over of the headaches that had never stopped. Why didn’t they dampen the damn thing? The door was so big and metal and the room was so big and empty and echoing the effect was one I did not want to repeat.
Yet there it was again. Hammering away.
The person or persons outside had heard screaming. Knocker, then fist. Upstairs, the old mage was shrieking. Footsteps were sounding. André was screaming, the wolves snarling and yelping as they fought him.
The door was still locked: that perfect image gone in the new one of bewilderment. Who was out there? How? Someone … after us?
I’d sent Jed the address … but … how? Jed couldn’t be in Paris. Even the idea of Jed making the journey on his own was outrageous. Much less being here right now at this moment.
But who else? No one. It had to be him.
So I opened the door to see. Throwing the magic, all myself, all my certainty into those locks and charms and tearing them away like cobwebs.
I flung open the door with all my power and both my hands. And stared.
It wasn’t Jed. It was his brother.
Moonlight Whispers: A Reverse Harem Shifter Romance (The Witch and the Wolf Pack Book 8) Page 30
