Dervishes Don't Dance: A Paranormal Suspense Novel with a Touch of Romance (Valkyrie Bestiary Book 2)

by Kim McDougall

  Something giggled. The sound was too deep and throaty to be human.

  “He’s taunting us,” Mason said.

  I nodded, then realized he couldn’t see me and said, “They’re crafty.”

  The sire had been content to bash things, but the dupes would be like mischievous kids finding their way in their new bodies and testing their limits.

  A crash and the sound of breaking wood had us moving again, me with my sword ready to strike. We ran, quick and silent, along a row of crates. The cement floor gave way to old wooden planks that shifted uneasily under my feet.

  Mason stopped at the end to peer around the corner. We waited in silence. Jacoby pressed against my leg. Finally, Mason gestured for us to follow.

  Debris filled aisle ahead. A pile of crates had been toppled. Broken pallets blocked the way, and something had spilled out of them—shiny globes that caught the bit of stray light from the high windows.

  “What are those?” I had an unsettling feeling, like a snake was coiled around my chest and starting to squeeze.

  “I don’t know,” Mason whispered. “But he’s getting away. Careful on that board. It’s unsteady.” Gingerly I stepped forward. Those odd glass balls were all around us and they made me queasy.

  “They’re magic. I can feel it.”

  “Just keep going. We’ll get past them,” Mason said. The board under my foot tipped, and I steadied myself before putting my full weight on it.

  Something hit my shoulder, knocking me back.

  “There!” Mason pointed. The dupe stood on top of a crate, breaking off slats of wood and lobbing them at us. It giggled again, and the sound chilled me.

  It reached into the shadows to pull at the top crate, and the whole pile came crashing down. The dupe landed on Mason. The floor gave way and they disappeared.

  “Mason!” The boards under my feet broke apart and I tumbled into darkness. Above me, the world exploded with magic. My psychic wards were shredded and my keening went into overload. Even before I hit the ground, a seizure took me.

  Chapter

  3

  My neck was bent at an odd angle and my head pounded as it dangled over someone’s arm. Mason. He was carrying me. The swaying motion brought the contents of my stomach up to my throat, and I begged him to put me down.

  As soon as I hit the ground, I rolled over and vomited. Sharp stones dug into my palms and my arms shook under my weight. A scuffling sound startled me. I tried to pinpoint the noise, but the darkness and pain were disorienting. I might have blacked out again.

  Something tugged at my shoulders. Hands prodded me, pulling the pack from my back.

  “Mason?” My voice quavered like an old woman’s.

  “Dammit, Kyra! All this stuff, and you don’t have a flashlight!” He was digging through the pack, his tone gruff with alarm. Then a bright shaft of light sliced across my eyes. I knocked Mason’s hand aside and groaned. Even that tiny movement was too much. I rolled and dry-heaved in the shadows again. My stomach had nothing left to offer.

  Mason dropped the flashlight and held me while I shook with spasms. My hair had come loose, and he tucked it behind my ear. Then he touched my cheek with one finger, wiping away the gravel stuck to the fine sheen of sweat on my skin. I turned and leaned heavily on his shoulder.

  “How long was I out?”

  “Just a few minutes. Long enough for the dust to settle and for me to get you away. Why aren’t you wearing that null bracelet I made you?”

  “Didn’t expect…” I took a deep breath and steadied my shaking nerves. “Didn’t expect to be assaulted today.” Then another thought froze me. “Jacoby?”

  “He’s gone. Must have ported away.”

  My throat ached. My joints throbbed. Mason touched my shoulder as if he didn’t know what else to do. He handed me a bottle of water. I sat up and washed out my mouth before drinking down a big gulp.

  I’d had seizures before, mostly in the early days of my keening, when I hadn’t yet learned to set effective wards. I knew what to look for. Dizziness. Check. Bruises. Check. And the acid burn of vomit in my throat. Perfect.

  “Why do you always get to see me covered in dirt, blood or vomit?” I asked.

  “Don’t forget green slime.”

  I sagged against him. I had nothing left.

  “Just once I’d like to show off to my best affect. Maybe in a dress…”

  “Sounds like a date. I don’t date.”

  “Me neither. But just once…”

  My eyes closed. Mason eased me down and arranged my head on his lap.

  “Just take it easy,” he said. “We’re safe for the moment.”

  We sat in the near darkness. His heart beat against my ear. As usual, it tolled slow and steady, but my senses picked up something else going on inside him. A restlessness that would be hidden to anyone else. He sat against a cement wall, eyes closed, limbs still. Magic fluttered around him in anticipation…of what?

  “Is it near dawn,” I asked.

  “No.”

  So he wasn’t about to go all granite on me.

  “Do you think we’re trapped?” I said.

  “No.”

  “We should try to get out of here.”

  “Yes.”

  He was going to mono-syllable me to death in payment for barfing on his shoes.

  I sat up and drank more water.

  “Is something wrong? I mean other than the murderous snooker hiding somewhere in here with us and you having to save the useless damsel in distress?”

  “You’re not useless,” he said. “But yes, there is more going on here. That explosion? They were magic flash-bombs.”

  “But those were outlawed after the war.”

  “Outlawed but not destroyed.” In the dim light, he looked even grimmer than usual.

  Flash-bombs had been favorite weapons between warring city-states in the aftermath of the Flood Wars. They disrupted electricity and created pockets of rogue magic that were as unpredictable as they were dangerous. Alchemists still debated if magic bombs had been the catalyst that breached the ley-line, waking Terra. Or had Terra woken on her own and created the magic that allowed humans to make the bombs? It was a chicken or the egg argument that no one would ever solve. But the snooker dupe had just set off a crate-load of those bombs over our heads.

  “The magic down here is erratic. It’s affecting me in ways I can’t explain,” Mason said.

  “Where exactly are we?”

  “Under the warehouse, I guess. There’s a hallway over there. We should follow it.”

  A scraping noise echoed through the cavern. It stopped, then started, stopped, and started again. Someone carrying a heavy burden was heading our way.

  Mason rose, knife already out to face whatever was coming.

  Scrape, scrape. Silence. Scrape, scrape. Silence.

  He muffled the flashlight with his shirt, and darkness fell on us again.

  Scrape, scrape. Silence.

  The sound raked my frail nerves.

  Scrape, scrape. Silence.

  Mason whipped around and shone the light right in Jacoby’s face. The dervish dropped my sword, screamed and disappeared.

  Poor Jacoby.

  I rose on unsteady legs and recovered my sword. The magic blast had really unsettled me. I hadn’t even noticed it was missing.

  “Can you walk?” Mason asked. “I want to get out of this place. The magic makes my skin itch.”

  Two hallways led away from the cavernous basement. Jacoby had come down the one to the left, but as we turned toward it, I heard that unearthly giggle from the other direction. The dupe had already dug its way out of the debris. We still had a job to do.

  “Did he get dosed by the flash-bombs,” I asked. That much magic could have forced a growth spurt on the dupe. We could be deali
ng with a full grown snooker again.

  Mason shook his head. “I don’t think so. We got hit with just the tail end of the blast.”

  Gods, if that was enough to send me into a seizure, I never wanted to be caught at ground zero for one of those bombs.

  The dupe giggled again, taunting us to come for it in the darkness.

  “Should we stay and fight it?” I really didn’t want to. My muscles ached from the seizure.

  “No. We need backup. Who knows how big that thing is now. Let’s find a way to the surface.”

  We followed the hallway where we’d last seen Jacoby. It started off wide enough for us to walk side by side, but soon it narrowed and the cement walls gave way to rough-hewn rock. We continued single file and Mason had to stoop so he didn’t scrape his head. The flashlight dimmed as the batteries wore out. We stopped while I scrounged in my bag for the gleam Mason had given me after our trip to the Inbetween. The silence was absolute. No city sounds reached down this far. We were completely cut off, alone, wedged in a tunnel that would come out who-knows-where with only the anemic flicker of a dying flashlight for comfort.

  Just as panic won out, my fingers closed over the orb. I shook it, filling the tunnel with light. The gleam needed recharging from a ley-line, but in that absolute darkness, its dim glow was like a beacon.

  After a deep breath to calm my nerves, we moved on. The path continued to narrow until I sucked in my chest to push past it. Mason must have nearly suffocated to get through, but he did it with only a grunt. On the other side, we came out to another long hallway with offshoots every few hundred feet. We walked quickly, looking for stairs back to the surface.

  “Do you think these tunnels run under all the warehouses?” I asked.

  “Probably. A lot of smuggling went on here in the early days of Montreal Ward. We’ll come out at Old Port eventually.”

  Each time we came to another branch in the hall, we looked for a staircase, but found only more hallways. We took turns at random, having no idea where we were or how to get out of this dark maze. The pale light from the gleam did nothing to improve the decor. Trash littered the ground—plastic bags that had been banned in Montreal for over thirty years, old needles, broken bottles. Rodents rustled under the garbage. Now and then, the light caught their shining eyes. The graffiti-covered walls were made of chipped cement that held in the reek of urine and rot. We walked in and out of stagnant pools of magic. Each one felt like smog in my chest and oil on my skin. Either this place was a natural hotbed of magic or the ruptured ley-line that produced the snooker had flooded these tunnels.

  Mason lagged behind me with unfocused eyes. He trailed one hand along the wall for support.

  We stopped to catch our breath and take a sip of water.

  “Are you all right?” I braced him as he stumbled into me, though I wasn’t much steadier on my feet. A sheen of sweat covered his forehead and the crease between his eyes deepened.

  “I don’t feel right. Something’s forcing me to turn.” He rubbed the nape of his neck. “If I go to stone down here, I might never turn back.” His voice seemed detached, like it came from somewhere far away.

  “You don’t seem too upset by that idea.”

  “It is what it is. I only want to be sure you get out.” He motioned that we should continue walking. I was lost in the dark with a fatalistic gargoyle. My night just kept getting better.

  I’d already checked my widget, but the flash-bomb had fried it. I couldn’t even tell the time, but I guessed we’d been down here about an hour. It had to be near midnight.

  We walked on through the unending darkness, with only the gleam to lead us. Jacoby didn’t return, and I hoped he got out safely.

  The tunnels became broader and more modern. We passed an old elevator cage and considered climbing the shaft. But staring up into the dark duct, I didn’t have a good feeling. Broken cables hung from rusted struts. No telling how solid the structure was or even if it opened at the top.

  “Let’s continue,” Mason said. “We’ll come back if we don’t find another way out.”

  I nodded. I had no heart left for arguing.

  Several times, my regenerating wards shuddered as I stepped into pools of latent magic. These tunnels were a spell-caster’s dream. So much untapped power. But I had no idea what to do with it. I could only feel it, like walking through waves of water that broke around me as I passed.

  At one juncture in the never-ending tunnel, the air shimmered like a mirage. I stepped through a heavy fog of magic and turned to find Mason standing just beyond it.

  “I don’t think I should walk through that.” He pointed to the shimmering spot of air. “Something keeps trying to force my change. That might do it.”

  “We go back then,” I said without hesitation. We headed back down the tunnel and turned at the first branch. One turn was as good as another now.

  Something skittered up ahead. I stopped. Not that I was afraid of whatever critters might be hiding down there. Bugs and rodents were my job, after all. But with stray magic flying around, rats and cockroaches could turn into something much worse.

  I unsheathed my sword. Another light rap sounded ahead, like feet across a hard floor.

  “Something’s up there,” I whispered.

  “It was following us,” Mason’s dark eyes pierced the shadows. “It got ahead when we turned around.”

  We moved slower, stopping to listen every few steps. The cement walls were damp and somewhere up ahead, water dripped in a slow tap-tap-tap. Mason covered my shoulder with his hand as he walked behind me. I wasn’t sure if the touch was meant to steady him or me.

  A shadow flitted across the green light, and a clattering sound was followed by an eerie giggle.

  The dupe dropped from the ceiling right in front of us.

  Chapter

  4

  He lunged. Pain lanced my shoulder, and I screamed as a claw bit deep. Mason punched him in the face and the dupe fell back. He opened his mouth to show off rings of sharp teeth and laughed again. In the faint light, his leering grin was hideous. He was bigger than the last time we saw him, but still no bigger than a man. In this smaller form, the snooker was more human like, but that only made the aberrations more disturbing—the extra teeth, the freakishly long arms that let fingers trail on the ground, the deep set yellow eyes, filled with madness.

  I pushed Mason behind me. Armed with only a knife, he didn’t stand a chance against the snooker. My sword was already out and primed by the magic all around us.

  The snooker howled and threw himself at me. I barely lifted my arm before he was impaled on the end of my sword. The blade pierced his shoulder, but the momentum threw us both against the wall. He snapped his jaws at me and grinned. Then he grabbed the hilt of my sword, yanked the blade from his wounded shoulder and tossed it into the darkness.

  He opened his mouth wide, and a double row of massive teeth filled my field of vision. A sound, halfway between laugh and cry, warbled from his throat.

  “Gods, you stink.” I kicked him in the stomach.

  The dupe doubled over and Mason tackled him. They slammed into the wall. Mason had the upper hand only for a moment. He stabbed the dupe in the gut, but the creature took the hit with a grin. Only thin lines of dark blood leaked from his wounds. His long arms reached around Mason and squeezed. Mason grunted and his face turned red.

  I scrambled through my bag, looking for a weapon. Knives would be useless against the dupe until I could get it away from Mason. I needed time to find my sword so I could cut his gods-damned head off. My hand closed around the handle of a small gun. Excellent.

  I yanked out the taser, pressed it to the side of the dupe’s head and pulled the trigger. He spasmed and released Mason, who dropped to the floor with a thud. The dupe stood to his full height and stretched. He grew again and now stood at least eight feet tall.

&
nbsp; “What did you do?” Mason coughed and rose on hands and knees.

  “I had to make him let go. He was choking you!”

  We both scrambled backward as the dupe shook out his arms and legs, adjusting to his new growth. He leaned forward and roared.

  “By the One-eyed God, that’s disgusting.” I covered my nose with an elbow, looking around for my sword. Mason grabbed me, pulling backward, but we had no more room. Our backs pressed against a wall.

  The dupe charged. Mason pushed me aside and shoved his arm into the beast’s mouth. Teeth cracked on stone. The dupe gurgled out a scream of pain, but didn’t let go.

  I’d seen Mason turn just one arm to stone before. The effort was costing him though, and sweat streamed down his face. Mason punched him with his other hand. I regained my wits, found my small utility blade and drove it into the dupe’s throat. Blood spattered, but the stinking beast held on, the three of us locked in a morbid dance.

  Then there was a tiny pop in the surrounding magic, and the dupe disappeared, leaving only his stench and flecks of blood on our clothes.

  “What the…” Mason stumbled back. His arm slowly changed back to flesh. “Where did he go? Did you kill him?”

  “No. It was a dupe. Someone up top must have killed the sire. They’re still linked at this stage. Kill that one, kill them all.”

  I hung onto Mason’s shoulders, panting with the rush of the short, brutal fight.

  “So that’s it?” he asked. “We can get out of here now?”

  “Kind of anticlimactic after all that, isn’t it?” I leaned my head against his collarbone and breathed him in.

  “Yeah, I feel cheated, like a hyena who’s just had his kill taken by a lion.”

  “That’s why I love you. You remember lions.” I tensed as soon as the words came out of my mouth. What in the hells was I thinking?

  After a moment, we broke apart. He watched me with dark, unfathomable eyes. His gaze drifted down my face and snagged on my lips, then he stepped away.