If what he was feeling was real, it put him and everyone else in a very dangerous position.
But, if it was real, it was also unavoidable. Mickey knew about things like that. Sometimes you had to suck it up and do things you didn’t want to do, to get them over with so that the pain of having a tooth pulled, or a broken bone set, wasn’t prolonged anymore. He knew all about that. He couldn’t let this dawdle on in limbo. No matter what would happen, he just wanted to get it over with and let it happen.
So, he led Houston down the maze of streets and tried to focus on the physical world around him. It was damn near impossible, when everything he encountered kept reminding him of the alpha at his back. The touch of the chilled wind stirring in his hair, the thick odors of pollution and exhaust that somehow could not mask Houston’s natural musk. Every footstep had an echo. His shadow was doubled. His breath reverbed. Perhaps the only thing that didn’t make him think instantly of the alpha at his back was the sodium orange neon lights that splayed across the sidewalk. However, it was in those puddles of unnatural light that he glimpsed the large shadow behind his.
He winced and tried to hurry on, but the footsteps behind him only increased in pace to match his.
“Cold?” the alpha puffed. “Or thinking about running away?”
Mickey didn’t answer, because just then he spotted exactly what he was looking for.
Thank god.
In the middle of the street, there was a manhole. Naturally, the manhole was covered with nothing but a manhole cover. Mickey headed toward it after glancing left and right to make sure no cars were coming.
Houston followed along behind him, being rather quiet.
Mickey bent over, dutifully ignoring the appreciative growl from the alpha behind him, and slid one hand around the outer edge of the covering until he found the small gap where his fingers could fit. Then, with a great heave, he lifted up and slowly pushed the cover away. Metal squealed against cement, hurting his sensitive ears, and he hurried to stop as soon as there was a large enough gap for him to start lowering his body inside.
“Wait,” Houston hissed. “You’re actually going down there?”
Mickey lifted up his head, pausing. At this point, he had both hands and his feet firmly anchored to the ladder which led down below the street. He stared incredulously up at the silhouette of the alpha, black against the blackness of sky. “What the hell did you think I was opening a sewer cover for? Fun?”
“For some reason, this is not the way I imagined things going,” Houston muttered.
Mickey shrugged as best as he could while holding onto the ladder, but his arms were starting to ache from staying in the same cramped position for so long. “You can come or not. I don’t care.” Ducking his head down below the level of the street, he focused on his climbing. The rungs of the ladder were incredibly rusty and had obviously seen better days, covered with slime and dirt from workers traipsing up and down this same way for years on end.
After a moment, he heard the same shrill scraping sound and paused to look up. Orange glow shot down the tunnel for a moment as the cover was fully pushed away. Houston’s eyes glowed in the dark, and then the streetlights were blocked out again as the huge man turned around and started to back up to descend into the tunnel.
“Wait,” Mickey hissed, pointing up even though he couldn’t be seen. “You have to pull the cover back over. Obviously.”
Houston let out a groan and started to pull himself back up. He was so broad that his shoulders scraped against the narrow tunnel walls. His breath started to come a little faster. “You do this how often?”
Mickey shrugged, lowering his foot again to feel out for the next rung. Solid ground met his foot, and he hopped down to back up and watch the alpha struggle with the heavy cover. “Every day, usually.”
“You must have arms made of steel.” Metal scraped again over the road, and the last bit of the light from above faded away. Luckily, as predator shapeshifters, they could see quite easily in the dark. “That thing must weigh fifty pounds. And you’re an omega!”
Is that all you see me as?
“Yeah, well, not all omegas are homebody wusses,” Mickey growled irritably. Houston finally reached the bottom of the ladder, staggering slightly with apparent relief.
“Apparently not,” Houston said. He wiped his forehead, eyes glowing slightly green in the dark of the tunnel. Mickey thought he detected a bit of admiration in the alpha’s voice, and he straightened up a little and lifted his head higher. “Where to now?”
“The only way to go.”
This particular manhole ran right up against a wall immediately behind them, but a long tunnel stretched out in the opposite direction for as far as their eyes could see. Technically they were standing in the middle of NYC’s sewer system, although there was no part of the treatment system or waterways immediately beside them. Nevertheless, the smell of the sewer persevered. Somewhat muted but pungent all the same, it was reminiscent of grease and mud. Finally, here was something that could overpower an alpha’s musky scent.
Mickey hardly noticed it at this point, however. Houston looked as though he was struggling with it, but trying valiantly not to show that he was bothered.
“Uh... lead the way, then.” Houston gestured.
Mickey nodded and moved off down the tunnel. There wasn’t much to see for the whole journey. Everything was either darkness or concrete. The tunnels were surprisingly spacious, although of varying widths as they traversed ever deeper and even farther down at some points. At other points, they passed by pipes and had to step over a huge crack that was quite obviously a remnant of some long-ago earthquake. Rats skittered in the distance but they were small and surprisingly complacent, apparently so used to the comings and goings of people that they no longer cared about the presence of humans.
Houston’s breathing had calmed down ever since they left the narrow entrance tunnel, and now he seemed completely at ease. “This really isn’t much different from walking through the city,” he mused. “The smell is almost the same.”
“Just a little more contained down here,” Mickey agreed. “No air flow. That’s why...” He hesitated for a moment and then he shrugged at himself. If there was ever a time to get started on revealing this information, it was while they were walking in a sewer past a flowing river of scum-covered black water. “That’s why it’s one of the best places for the homeless to live. It breaks up the wind, just like being in an actual house.”
“And you would know a lot about that, wouldn’t you?”
He didn’t deny it. There was no need for that any longer. He just didn’t quite want to say it out loud.
They descended down one final ladder, and passed through an extra tunnel that was angled so that it was nearly impossible to see from one direction. Mickey turned down the tunnel, leaving Houston to swerve around after him.
“Do you even know where we are?”
Mickey huffed. “Do you ever stop talking? You’re pretty chatty for an alpha.”
“And you’re very argumentative for an omega,” Houston growled in response. “I came here to learn.”
“Maybe if you’d shut up for a moment, you could make your own observations.”
Mickey swerved down a final tunnel, which was far narrower than the others they had passed through for the past ten minutes or so. Fabric scraped and tore against rough concrete walls as Houston’s shoulders touched both walls. Then, they faced a blank gray wall. It was utterly featureless, with nowhere else to go.
Any human would have assumed they had took a wrong turn somewhere and left the dead end alone. However, shapeshifters who could see in the dark—and particularly shifters who knew something was there—would be able to find the secret latch tucked up in the top right corner. Swiping at it, Mickey listened for the distinctive clinking sound that meant the locking mechanism had been properly flipped. If it was done improperly, an alarm would be tripped somewhere within and the intruder would be met with qui
te a bit of opposition within only a few minutes.
Then, Mickey pushed the door open and moved on inside. He waited for it.
Houston’s gasp came right on time, his jaw clicking as it dropped wide open.
Beyond the hidden door was an entire city. There had been rumors of such things in the sewers for as long as the city itself existed, but no one ever imagined something of such magnitude.
Mickey didn’t know how this place had come to be because its history was long and confused. It was a town beneath the city; a town with the appearance of the city itself. Miniature apartment-type buildings stood in rows, filling a cavernous area that had been excavated out through decades of slow work. The walls were as rough as a natural cave formation, catching the light from flickering lanterns that lined the city streets, dispelling the brightness out at all odd angles. Shadows shifted throughout, cast by the silhouettes of people moving. Voices echoed distantly, distorted by being bounced back and forth between obstacles.
Someone at some point in history began the building of this place, perhaps dragging down a brick or two at a time when they could to craft themselves a small hovel. Then, others seemed to have joined in on the idea. More and more came, bringing with them what they could and gathering still more. Those who had fallen on hard times sought solace, contributing as they came across supplies to offer. Individuals brought knowledge of their lives before, architects and electricians and engineers and teachers. Together, they created a society unparalleled by any other. Though a majority of the lights might have been as a result of fire, they had enough ventilation to keep it from becoming dangerous. Here and there, in the more important establishments across the subterranean city, an electrical line or two had been lain that was connected through an intricate process to the upper city grid. So too had plumbing been painstakingly installed, although it was faulty at best. Still, it was a necessary commodity.
However, it wasn’t just homes that had been built down here. The homeless didn’t exactly need money amongst their own kind, but stores had been constructed all the same. The currency was trade and favor, where a woman might hand over a crust of bread to get her daughter a haircut, or a man would hand off to another a trinket that could be pawned later on and be given in return an amount of toilet paper equal to the item’s value. There were, of course, teachers who worked for a handful of extra food, and handymen who only asked for a drink of water that hadn’t been boiled first. There was a difference how. Boiled water tasted somehow... flat.
Mickey stood quietly by while Houston took it all in, hoping that his presence would go unnoticed long enough by the others who also lived here. It would be best if he could take Houston straight to his place, explain everything, and then kick him out again. Or kill him.
Finally, the police officer managed to tear his eyes away from the sight before him and turned. “Are there more of these?”
“At least four,” Mickey confirmed. “And those are just the ones I know about. All of this doesn’t stop, you know. There’s no pause. People never stop bringing things down here, or choosing to come here, or leave. It doesn’t stop. Circumstances change but things never really change. New places can appear seemingly overnight, but maybe it’s always been there and you just finally noticed. If you can’t tell, this didn’t used to be this shape. It was hollowed out by people. We still work on it sometimes. Just in case. Who knows who’s doing that in other places? Building out or down?”
“Damn,” Houston muttered. “There we are up on the surface stagnating, and you’re thriving down here.”
Mickey opened his mouth to correct him, to tell him that they were really doing everything but thriving, but as he looked out across the city he saw that they were finally bringing attention upon themselves. Time to move out, then. “Listen,” he said, “they really aren’t going to like the fact that you’re down here. Try to go along with what I say, okay?”
Houston let out a little rumbling growl. “I’d like to see them try anything.”
Mickey rounded on him, striking him across the shoulder with his fist. The alpha flinched backward, looking more startled than anything else. “What the hell was that for?”
Stepping forward until they were chest to chest, Mickey jabbed his finger at the alpha’s chest and stared up angrily into his eyes. “These people have way too much shit to put up with already without having to deal with stupid assholes like you. I didn’t have to bring you down here. So you either play by my rules, or you leave.”
“You think you can make me?” Houston breathed, his voice lowering from a growl into something that seemed far more dangerous.
Instead of answering, Mickey turned around and marched off in the direction of the few people who were just standing around and watching him. He clenched his teeth together hard, jaw straining, and then forced away every bit of tension from the rest of his face. Whether or not Houston followed him didn’t matter. He was home, and things needed to be done.
The buildings were closer than they seemed. Blank gray walls didn’t give much of a sense of scale, and neither did the constant shifting of shadows and flame.
A woman approached Mickey as he drew up near her and the few others who had stopped to watch. “Hi, Beth,” he said.
She smiled at him, although her gaze flicked warily to the man standing behind him. “Who’s this?” she grunted, lisping badly. Mickey hardly noticed it anymore, although sometimes he thought that it might be getting better since the day he first met her. While he might have just been fooling himself, he wondered if having others like herself around, people who understood her plight and still treated her just like any others—people who would actually talk to her—was giving her the practice she needed to overcome the problem that had forced her down here in the first place.
“Don’t pay attention to him,” he said, firmly but soothingly. “He’s no one. Thinking about joining us and wanted a look around is all. Is everything okay here?”
He could feel Houston’s irritation at having to be blown off like that, but it was for the best. Unfortunately, the others weren’t going to be so quick to lose their wariness.
“I don’t like the look of ‘im,” a short man standing a few steps away from Beth said. His voice wasn’t so much a growl as it was a low hum. Far from being a wolf, he was actually a rabbit shapeshifter. Houston stiffened in surprise. “Nothin’ looks wrong with ‘im.”
Mickey rounded on the rabbit, not snarling, but simply stern. “You’re going to judge him based on appearance? Isn’t that what others did to you? To all of us? If that’s really what you’re going to act like, you should be ashamed of yourself.”
The other looked properly taken aback, his expression falling slightly as he realized how hypocritical he was being. “Sorry,” he muttered, staring at the ground and twitching his nose.
“It’s okay,” Mickey said, feeling his heart give a soft twinge. “How did everything go while I was out?”
The rabbit shifter cheered up considerably then. “We handed out the apples amongst the children. There should be enough left over for tomorrow and maybe the next day, if we can find a good enough place to hide them. And everyone went inside pretty well.”
Mickey nodded and turned back to Beth, who was patiently waiting for her turn to speak. “What about the lights? How are we doing on supplies for that?”
Her mouth gave a little twist, a habit she had when something displeased her. Her lips used to be constantly torn up from anxious picking and biting, but Mickey was once again taken in by how much she seemed to have changed; although dry, her mouth was healed. Maybe she would be leaving them, soon. Some had managed it. He had a feeling she might be the next. After all, for her, this life had been something she chose and not a state she was forced into.
“Low,” she finally said. “But we’re always low. On everything. You know that. At this rate, we’ll run out of fuel at the end of the week. If we start alternating the lights, maybe we can stretch it a few more days beyond that.�
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Mickey sighed and rubbed his eyes with his hands. “Okay. Can you get started on extinguishing some of these then? And let people know to conserve their own fuel. I’ll see what I can do about it in the meantime.”
Beth nodded, looking relieved as she moved away. The others followed after her, and Mickey let out another sigh. At least that was something concrete he could work on, something that was fixable. Acquiring any amount of flammables was difficult in a city of steel but, once it was done, it was done. Other things were a daily battle, a constant stress that never went away.
“Come on,” he said, turning to look at the baffled police officer. “We can talk once we’re inside my place.”
“Mickey, that man was a rabbit.”
“I’m aware,” Mickey snorted, walking down between the buildings. He couldn’t help but to notice every crack, every bit of leaning. He couldn’t help but to worry, to fret over the piles of dust and the broken windows and the rusting pipes. Everything that was wrong could not be fixed, although they needed to be. They just couldn’t maintain everything at the proper pace. Sooner or later, something essential to their survival was going to give and he had to figure out how they would adjust to it. Give up? Move? Try to join in with one of the other cities? Hell, that would cause even more problems. Cities like these grew as needed, fortified by the people within. A sudden migration like that would tip the balance. There wouldn’t be room. There definitely wouldn’t be enough food, seeing as there already wasn’t enough to go around.
As deep in his thoughts as he was, Mickey nearly walked right past his own apartment. Grumbling at his own stupidity, he swerved sharply to the left and walked up to the nearest building. Although they were all more or less in the same shape, he had deliberately chosen this one because it was in slightly worse condition than all the others. It was the least he could do.
Wild Ride: An M/M Shifter Mpreg Romance Bundle Page 20
