“Let me deal with this,” I said, my resolve firming. “You get the harness on. Seeing as there is only one, you will have to pack me down.” I told myself Eve was just another child, just another child. That mantra spun through my head, but it didn’t lessen the fear making my skin clammy.
The Harpy lifted her head, her beak clacking at me. “You are too stupid to even believe. Do you think I won’t kill you because I’ve feasted well?”
Lifting my hands to show her I had no weapons, I shook my head. “No, I expect you won’t kill me because your sister asked me to free you, Eve.”
She let out a screech, her eyes widening until they were completely dilated, and she stumbled backwards, her wings flapping. “She wouldn’t have told you my name.” But her voice had lost its edge and she sounded like the child her sister claimed she was. Her emotions swirled toward me, and I let myself feel them. Fear, uncertainty, loss, and pain.
Wiping my hands on my jeans, I tried not to shake as I stepped toward her. Her left foot glittered as she stepped away from me, a blood red ruby catching the light as she walked.
“You’ll have to hold still if you want me to remove that,” I said, pointing at her foot.
Her feathers trembled, rippling as if there were a breeze blowing, but there was no wind. Just the raw emotions that shook her frame.
Eve said nothing, and I took a steadying breath and pulled one of the swords out. She hissed and raised her wings, her terror filling me. She was afraid of me. Her emotions were raw, an open book, and I knew if I kept tapped into them, I might have the warning I needed if she was going to attack me. Maybe.
Moving slowly, I spoke to help calm her. “I have a pet werewolf you know. His name is Alex. He was from a pack that tried to kill him, and somehow he ended up on my porch one night, bleeding and hurt.”
I was a few feet closer, and she lowered her wings. “Why didn’t you kill him?”
“I don’t like killing.”“ He was scared and needed help. I know how it feels to be in that kind of a bind.”
She cocked her head and her eyelids fluttered. “What do you know of fear? You are a Tracker. You are a killer.”
My chest constricted. Was that how all the other supernaturals thought of me? As a killer?
“I was accused of killing my baby sister, a lot of years ago.” I crouched by her foot and put the blade to the edge of the stone, working around it to loosen it up. “She was the first I tried to find, but she was already dead by the time I realized I could track people. No one believed me, not even my parents. I had nowhere to turn to for help.” I lifted my eyes to hers. She was crying. “Am I hurting you?” There was no blood from her foot, no cuts from my blade; I was being as careful as I could.
“I miss my sisters. They kept me safe,” she said, her head dropping to her thickly feathered chest.
I worked at the stone and with one final pop, it flipped out of her foot, leaving a depression but no wound.
Tucking the stone into my pocket, I stood and backed away. There was no glitter of a spell breaking, no clash of thunder or backlash of power being released. The most powerful of spells were often also the simplest, and this was one of those. “There. You’re free of the Coven now.”
She twitched and her wings shook. “I have nowhere to go. We are the last of the Harpies in this range; the others would kill me because I am young and alone.”
Deadly, they are as deadly as anything out there. But I still opened my damn mouth. “You can stay with me. For a while.”
Her eyes flicked up, hope flared between us like a sucker punch to my gut. I’d killed her two sisters and now she was looking at me as if I was her saviour. Shit.
I motioned to O’Shea, who made his way to the mineshaft and starting hooking up the gear.
“We have to go. If no one shows up, wait for us here. If people show up, hide yourself,”
She bobbed her head and settled down on the ground. It was too surreal, even for me, to see the sprawled out half-eaten bodies next to the young Harpy I’d just given leave to stay with me.
“What the hell are you thinking?” O’Shea snapped my own thoughts back at me.
“We have to get India. Then I will deal with the rest.” I forced the confidence into my voice and my movements; forced myself to turn my back on Eve, though my every instinct screamed at me to run.
O’Shea slipped on the harness and climbed up on top of the mineshaft, a glow stick dangling from his hip barely touched the murky darkness below him. He passed me a flashlight, which I stuck in my back pocket.
Then he held out his hand. “Come on.”
Tucking away the sword I’d used to pry the gem from Eve’s foot, I did as he asked; put my palm against his, and; he yanked me to his chest.
“Hang on.”
“Like I was going to let go?” I lifted my eyebrows in tandem.
He flushed and I snaked my arms around his neck, shifted more to his side before I wrapped my legs around his hip and right thigh. Even though it wasn’t a tight squeeze, the mineshaft brushed up against us, banging us back and forth down the pipe, our bodies swaying with the movement of the rope.
O’Shea worked the ropes, lowering us slow and steady, his muscles flexing under his dirty white shirt. At some point along the way he’d lost his tie, his hair was a complete mess and again, I could see just before we lost the light from above that there was a glint in his eye.
“You having fun, Agent?” I tightened my grip on his thigh as the pipe bumped into my hip.
“What?”
“This whole time, with all this crap going on around us, you look like you’re enjoying it.” The pulse of his blood beat strong against my hands. I forced myself to not trail my fingertips along his neck and jaw, to feel the stubble that had been pressed against my own face not so long ago. I swallowed hard. This close proximity was not a good thing for me. Never in all the times I’d been tracking down kids had I been so distracted, and it wasn’t like this was the first time O’Shea had been involved—to some degree—with a salvage I was on. He’d almost always been there on the periphery, just on the edge of my life.
He shifted his arms and we slid down, the light around us dimming completely except for the little glow stick below us. “I don’t think enjoying is the right word.”
We slid down into the darkness, no longer able to see each other’s faces. Maybe that was what made me so damn bold. “Yes, it is. You’re enjoying this. Like a kid who’s never been to a party before and gets taken to the biggest frat house in town and lets loose. So what gives?”
Silence, except for the creak of the rope, and when he spoke, he went in a totally different direction.
“What really happened to Berget?” His words would have sent me running in a different direction except for the fact that I was stuck with him in a freaking mineshaft that would probably take us another half an hour to get to the bottom of.
It was my turn to be silent. But then, hell, it wasn’t like he didn’t know anything about the supernatural. I could tell him, I just didn’t want to.
“I was watching her for our parents. Berget loved the park, loved being outside. So I took her to the biggest park in the city late in the afternoon, close to dusk.” My fingers found the collar of his shirt and I fiddled with it; of course he already knew all this, it was in the files on me and the case, no doubt. “Anyway, when we got there, I had this strange sensation of something not being right. I didn’t know what it was, but I told Berget to keep close.”
We slid down a few more feet while I gathered myself. Much as I hated talking about this, I suddenly wanted O’Shea to know completely and irrevocably that it wasn’t me who’d killed Berget. But I wasn’t going to analyze why it was important to me, as my fingers brushed along the back of his neck.
“There are some people who have blood pulsing through them that is . . . ““I tried to find the right word. “Exotic and tantalizing to the supernaturals who drink blood to live.”
He kept shi
fting us lower, but still managed to sound as if we were just going for a walk in the park. “You mean like vampires?”
I nodded, though he couldn’t see it. “Yes, and daywalkers, and a slew of other creatures too. I found out after she went missing that Berget had that kind of blood. It sings to the supernaturals, almost demands to be taken in a way. I don’t fully understand because it’s not something that’s a part of me, nor is it a common occurrence. What I know is there are very few people with this kind of blood who make it to adulthood. Very few.” And that was the hardest truth about my job as a Tracker. So few of the children were brought home to their families alive.
“So what took her?”
“A pair of vampires.” I thought about Doran, how he’d wanted a taste of my blood, and I shivered. Although I had no doubt my blood was tasty, I never would have made it to where I was now if I’d carried the same blood as Berget. I’d have been stolen and drained years ago.
“So these vampires took your sister and you couldn’t stop them?” His words sliced through me as if it had been only moments since Berget had been killed instead of years.
“I was young and had no training; I didn’t know I was a Tracker. It was after Berget went missing that my abilities awakened.” And that was the crux of it. If she hadn’t been killed, I wouldn’t be able to help these other kids. Yet, I’d give them all up to have her back in my life, to have had a family that was whole and not shattered into pieces. It was also a line Giselle had drilled into me as she’d trained me and Milly. I couldn’t change the past, but I had to use what it had given me in order to keep Berget’s death from being wasted.
Tears traced down my face in the pitch-black darkness, and even though O’Shea kept asking me questions, I couldn’t answer them. Not that it mattered anyway. I couldn’t change the past, and it was India’s life that now lay in the balance.
22
The bottom of the mineshaft was lit, the walls studded with sconces filled with a brilliant purple and red flame.
“What the hell is that?” O’Shea’s voice was hushed as he unhooked from the harness.
“Witchlight. It’ll last until the maker of it is killed or chooses to extinguish the light for some reason.” I pulled out a sword and scanned the area, flicking the flashlight on even though there was plenty of light. The mine itself was good size, tall enough that I couldn’t see the ceiling and wider than a four lane highway. Unfortunately, I could just imagine all the nasty creatures needing so much room to maneuver.
First, we had to find the actual crossing point to make it to the other side of the veil. I glanced over to O’Shea, then handed him the other sword. “Here, you’d better take this.”
He took a few practice swings; his form was pretty good. In fact, his last swipe was a move only some who trained with blades would know. I frowned at him, and he shrugged.
“I started to take lessons once I realized you only carried knives and swords. Figured I might have to fight you one day.”
Damn, his foresight was going to serve me well. Even if he’d only learned so he could kick my ass. For some reason, the thought made me smile.
There were three options as to which direction to take, but only one tunnel was lit with Witchlight. I pointed with my sword. “Follow the freaky purple light.”
O’Shea followed me, letting me lead without an argument. Which was good, all things considered. We needed to be quiet, subtle, and ideally break in and out with India without being noticed. If I could have crossed my fingers I would have, but as it was, I kept my hopes high and my eyes wide open.
From a distance, I picked up the sounds of voices—arguing voices carrying through the cavern as though they were much closer than they actually were.
“You said we could be together this way,” a woman said, her voice cracking. “I left my family’s Coven for you!”
“It’s temporary. We have to see how this Coven operates. Stop being so fucking whiny. It’s your goddamned fault we got kicked out of the circle and stuck on guard duty. Stupid bitch.” Her male companion snapped at her.
“Nice guy.” I muttered.
There was nowhere to hide, so we stepped back behind the slight curve we’d just come around. Again, I didn’t need to say anything, O’Shea just followed my lead. Maybe he wasn’t Milly, but he did seem to have some redeeming points.
We crouched against the rough cut wall. The cool water dripping down the sides slipped along my arm to drop off the edge of my hand, which gripped my sword. I motioned slightly to O’Shea. He was to go high, I’d go low. The barest flicker of his eyelids told me he understood.
Flowing green robes spun into view and I struck hard and fast, the borrowed blade slicing through the flesh of the female Coven member’s stomach and pinning her to the ground. I heard a grunt above me to see O’Shea dispatch the other Coven member, a man dressed in a red silk shirt and black pants that had been stuffed into tall boots.
The woman whimpered and lifted her hands—I knew a spell prep when I saw it. Dropping to my knees, I straddled her chest and pinned her hands above her head. “Hold these for me, would you?” I turned to look over my shoulder. O’Shea’s face was grim, but he nodded and stepped around us to put his hands over the woman’s wrists.
I ignored O’Shea’s frown. “Where is the entrance?” ’’
She shook her head. “I can’t tell you.”
I let out a sigh. “Your man is dead and you’re going to follow in his nasty-ass footsteps if you don’t tell us how to get across the veil. Now where’s the entrance?”
She blinked large blue eyes up at me, as if she could con me into letting her go with a few bats of her eyelashes—no doubt, it had worked for her in the past. Reaching down, I pulled the sword out of her stomach and she let out a gasp. Before she could say anything, O’Shea’s hand clamped over her mouth. I didn’t know whether to be happy or freaked out that he knew what was going to happen. Steeling myself, I pulled a short knife from my boot and jammed it into the wound, pushing until I could feel the resistance of one of her internal organs, a kidney by the location of it. “Tell me now where the entrance is.” I banked on the notion she wasn’t accustomed to torture.
She struggled, her eyes full of fear and pain. I had a hard time feeling bad for her when I thought of how many kids this Coven had stolen. No, I wouldn’t feel bad. I forced myself to push harder, popping through the organ’s walls, until her eyes rolled back in her head and she passed out.
“Now what?” O’Shea’s eyes bored into mine.
I refused to look away. “We wait for her to come around, and then ask again. We need the exact entrance or we’ll walk right past it.” I wasn’t yet ready to explain what crossing the veil entailed. Nor did I want to try and explain that he probably couldn’t cross with me and would be left behind.
It took longer than I wanted, and each passing minute brought us closer to facing down another member of the Coven, one that wouldn’t necessarily be so easy to take down or be taken by surprise. We’d lucked out that these two were having a lover’s quarrel.
Another minute passed and she came around, though she tried to hide it. I leaned forward and whispered into her ear. “Unless you want me to puncture and scramble each piece of the rather necessary equipment your body contains, I suggest you tell us where the entrance is.” She nodded, her face white and shocky with blood loss. My stomach turned and I fought with the nausea rising in me. The warmth of her blood on my hands, the pulse of life I could feel because my hand was partially inside of her. Not a good time to want to puke. I bit down hard on the inside of my cheek, the pain helping me steer my thoughts away from what I was doing.
Her whisper was just loud enough to be heard over the thrumming of my own blood as it filled my ears.
“The break in the rock. That’s the entrance.” Her eyes flicked toward the way she and her lover had come. “You’re the Tracker.”
I nodded. She took a breath and smiled up at me. “They will kill you.”
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I shrugged and smiled back at her, knowing the smile was anything but nice. “Everybody says that.”
Rolling her onto her stomach, we used the belt her boyfriend was wearing to tie her up and placed her around the corner where we’d hid, gagging her mouth for good measure.
“That’s all it takes to deal with a witch?”
O’Shea’s question made me want to laugh out loud, but I contained it. “Weak ones are incapable of doing magic without their hands.” I wiped the blood off my own hands using her skirt. Her head lolled and she groaned, but it was the best she could do. I shrugged off the guilt and turned toward the direction of the crossing.
Again, O’Shea followed me, and I wondered at his willingness to let me lead. A quick look over my shoulder showed him gripping his sword lightly, his eyes never resting in one area for too long.
Three more corners through the Witchlight tunnels and the crack in the wall was right in front of us. It didn’t glow, and in fact, looked a lot like all the other cracks we’d passed, except it was wide enough we could have walked in shoulder to shoulder without bumping the walls—and the Witchlight didn’t penetrate it. That was the clincher.
“This is it.” Now came the really hard part. Making him stay behind without having him throw a fit and without having to explain what crossing the veil meant.
“O’Shea. Let me look in first, then I’ll give you the okay.”
He ducked his head inside the crack before I could stop him. “There isn’t anything, just a slab of rock.” He reached out and tapped said slab with his sword. That would make this easier. O’Shea didn’t have any natural ability to cross the veil, at least not without help.
“Go check down there.” I pointed to another tunnel off the main branch, one that didn’t have any light going down it, handing him the flashlight. “I’ll backtrack and see what I can find, maybe we missed something.”
I watched him walk away, his sword raised as if it were a gun. The flashlight held at the handle gave him lots of light as he stepped into the tunnel’.
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