Magic Shifts (Kate Daniels 8)

“How far does it go?” Curran asked.

“I have no idea. They were expanding it when the Shift happened. There are probably miles of rail underground.” Tracking ghouls through miles of tunnels would be like hunting a rat in a maze with a dozen exits.

We moved together, quietly walking toward the vehicle. Where the hell had boy wonder gotten off to?

The SUV sat directly under the hole. I looked up. It was just large enough for a vehicle to pass through.

“Is it a Tahoe?”

Curran reached up, grabbed the transmission, and pulled. Metal groaned as the butt of the SUV tipped toward Curran. It’s good to be a werelion.

“Yep. It’s a Tahoe.”

Dread washed over me in a cold clammy wave. It had to be Eduardo’s car. The ghouls had killed him, left his body to rot, and pushed the car in here, where nobody would find it.

Curran lowered the SUV and let it fall the last two feet. Long gashes scoured the paint on the sides. Ghoul claws. The tinted windows of the vehicle had cracked but hadn’t fallen out. Dust sheathed the cracks. I couldn’t see anything. I reached for the driver’s-side door. In my head, Eduardo’s mangled corpse soaked in his own blood in the driver’s seat.

Don’t be dead . . . don’t be dead . . .

I pulled the door open. It swung with a screech, revealing the cab.

Empty.

Oh phew. Phew.

Curran pulled the other door off. “I smell him. It’s his car.”

The interior of the Tahoe looked like it had been through a tornado made of knives.

“Does he smell dead?”

“No.” He inhaled. “It reeks of ghouls.”

“Our ghouls? The ones we killed?”

“No, a different group. These scents are older.”

So we had more than one group of ghouls running amok.

Derek walked out of the left tunnel. “The trail stops here.”

“What do you mean, stops?” I asked.

“I walked in both directions.” Derek leaned against the grimy wall. “The trail comes here and then simply stops. There are no fresh ghoul scent trails in either tunnel.”

“They didn’t just fly off,” I said.

“Could they grow wings?” Curran asked.

“I doubt it.” Ghouls with wings, that was all we needed. “If they could grow wings, they would’ve done it by now. It’s a great defensive adaptation and they are cowards.”

“Their scent says they got here and then they vanished,” Derek said.

I rubbed my face. “That would suggest teleportation.”

“D’Ambray teleports,” Curran said.

“Yes, but Hugh uses power words and special water that’s been messed with by Roland. That teleportation is my father’s exclusive trick. Besides, I would know if Hugh were in the city.”

“How?” Derek asked.

“I would feel him crossing the border into Atlanta.”

Curran leaned toward me. “There is a border?”

“Yes.”

“Were you planning on sharing that with the class?” His voice was quiet.

“It didn’t come up.”

He didn’t look happy. When in trouble, change the subject. “The point is, teleportation is a difficult thing that takes a crap ton of magic.”

“Is ‘crapton’ a technical term?” Derek asked.

Smartass. “Yes,” I growled. “I examined a scene of teleportation during the Lighthouse Keeper mess. It was done by volhves.”

Volhves were Russian druids, and unlike the actual druids, who were struggling to overcome the historical stigma of human sacrifice, volhves didn’t give a damn.

“These were really powerful pagan priests, but they had to sacrifice a human being to get enough juice.”

“What’s your point?” Curran asked.

“Look around you. No signs of a ritual. Just dirt.”

The three of us surveyed the cavern.

“I have no idea what we are dealing with,” I said. “I really, really don’t like it.”

“We need Julie,” Curran said.

Once magic came on the scene, it was quickly determined that figuring out the nature of magic at any given crime scene was vital. That was why investigators used m-scanners, clunky heavy contraptions that sampled the magic and spat out colored printouts of it: blue for human, purple for vampire, green for shapeshifter, and so on. Julie was the human equivalent of an m-scanner, and she was much more sensitive than the most advanced model.

I pulled the keys out of my pocket. “She should be at home by now.”