Silken Rapture (Princes of the Underground 2)

“I don’t know for sure. I’ve never tried it before,” she admitted, hoping she wasn’t building up his expectations too far.

“Will you have to touch the maps?”

“Yes.”

“Won’t it hurt you?”

“It won’t be anything I can’t handle. I have to touch things for Lester’s research, after all.”

“I would deeply appreciate it if you would try,” he said after a moment. “If it pains you too much, I will know it. I’ll stop it.”

She smiled. “I have never told you that it can cause distress to touch objects. Why are you so worried?”

He glanced away. “I have heard from Michael Lord, who researched your history and your power, that it can be painful for you. Besides…you wear the gloves, so it must be unpleasant.”

“It’ll be all right,” she murmured, touched by his concern.

He stepped back, looking hesitant. She worked her glove off her right hand. She paused with her fingertips a few inches ab

ove one of the well-worn maps.

“Is there anything you can tell me that might guide me?” she asked Blaise.

“Maybe. Morshiel tends to form hideouts in tunnels he and the revenants have managed to burrow over the centuries that are above or below the Tube. Sometimes they encounter natural caverns where they hide out for years without our knowledge. Other times they camp out in manmade structures, like the old brick-lined sewers or openings around the ancient structures left by the Romans. Morshiel forces his revenants to relocate his headquarters and belongings frequently. They live like outlaw gypsies, with the bizarre additional fact that Morshiel is bloody rich. His power is limited in the surface world, but it’s still significant. He can influence humans to lavish him with money and expensive items. He spends outrageously on luxurious furniture and priceless treasure. In his delusional mind, he makes the sewers a kingdom. He believes himself to be a sort of unfairly banished monarch. You’ve never seen anything like it. Infiltrating one of his abandoned hidey-holes is like discovering the Rat Prince’s palace,” he said dryly.

He waved at the maps. “We have discovered many of his old hideouts, and added them to the maps, but there are many more we know nothing about. The only thing I can say for certain is that he doesn’t ever stay for any extended period of time in the Tube tunnels. He hunts there for human prey, but he doesn’t stay there for long.”

“Above or below the Tube,” Isabel clarified under her breath. “I will have to concentrate on Morshiel. I have an image of him in my mind. I have never seen Isi, and I need a point of focus.”

Blaise didn’t seem pleased about that, but he nodded.

She touched the map.

It happened quicker than she’d expected—quicker than when she touched most objects for Lester’s research. Perhaps it was because the maps had become a distilled form of knowledge, given Blaise’s long history and regular focus on them.

A train roared through her mind followed immediately by a swarm of human consciousness, tramping feet, people rushing to make their train, worrying about being late—a veritable sea of surging thoughts and feelings.

“No, no, leave it…please,” she said shakily when she felt Blaise’s hand on her forearm, trying to pull away her hand. Had she cried out? The effort it took her to move her consciousness a layer lower than the Tube line caused a sweat to break out on her brow.

She inhaled raggedly, catching her breath. There was peace in these lower strata of the earth. Peace and the sound of music. It was unlike anything she’d ever heard.

“I hear…I hear singing,” she whispered. “It’s so beautiful.”

“You hear the sound of the earth’s soul,” Blaise said. The sound of his voice steadied her. She shifted her fingers on the map and her consciousness moved too, as though she stood in Blaise’s study and flew at preternatural speed beneath the earth at once. Blaise shifted his hand slightly on her arm and fear leapt in her breast.

“Don’t let go of me. Please. You’re keeping me anchored,” she said in a strangled voice. His grasp on her tightened. She inhaled with effort. “It helps.”

“I’ve got you,” he reassured, his low, gruff voice near her ear.

And she did feel him there with her as her mind zipped through soil and rock as though it were a dense sort of air. She moved her fingers more rapidly on the map, starting to feel claustrophobic in the absolute darkness, reaching and reaching, but never finding anything on which to fasten her awareness.

“Help me,” she whispered to Blaise. “Think of Morshiel.”

She gasped. He was giving her his thoughts, helping her find her target. Impressions bombarded her consciousness. His thoughts of Morshiel were startlingly sharp and precise. Before she had time to wonder at the difference in Blaise’s consciousness from that of a human’s, it was as if they dove headlong into an open space. Everything came to a jerking halt, rattling her.

Morshiel stood naked, wearing only a leather harness around his hips and thighs, a sheathed blade at his right outer thigh, his long legs spread slightly, his buttocks exposed. She had the vague impression of two people kneeling before him, giving him oral sex. She had no time to take in much of anything else because suddenly Morshiel turned and looked directly at her with a viper-like stare.

Blaise lifted her hand from the map and she flew from the underground chamber.