Riven (Mirus 2)

Red

Whisper of Shadow

Trouble. That’s what wolf-shifter Mick thinks when a beautiful woman appears in his New Orleans bar with a hurricane at her back. His first impression is confirmed when Sophie starts asking questions about his missing waitress, Liza. Mick will do anything to rescue a member of the pack he’s made for himself, including forming an unlikely alliance with a woman with a badge.

Sneak Peek at Devil’s Eye

“Hurricane Roy has been upgraded to a category four and continues to bear down on New Orleans. If you haven’t already, batten down the hatches. Police are manning evacuation routes, so be prepared for something of a wait if you’re trying to get out of the city before the storm hits.”

Mick turned the radio down, keenly aware of Sophie’s silent tension in the passenger seat.

“Pull over here,” she directed.

“Lafayette Cemetery?” he asked, peering through the rain-streaked windshield. “Y’all hid it in a crypt?”

“Not exactly.” She slipped Liza’s cell phone and her own into the glove box.

“You’re not taking it? What if the kidnapper calls?”

“Can’t risk it getting wet and shorting out. He’ll know this is going to take time.”

He didn’t think it was raining that hard but it was her call.

Masked by rain and the falling dark, they slipped over the wrought iron fencing and into the cemetery. Crypts and mausoleums reared up around them, grim gray and white sentinels to their breaking and entering. Uneasy, Mick felt the wolf rise closer to the surface as they slogged down the alleys. He hated these cities of the dead. Too quiet. Too closed in. The dead didn’t belong above ground.

As Sophie wove her way through the aisles, back tracking once or twice, Mick mused at how a common enemy made strange bedfellows. His mind inconveniently focused on the bed part, his eyes noting how Sophie’s wet clothes clung to her compact little body before he mentally slapped himself back to attention. As IED, she shouldn’t be trusted any further than he could throw her. Yet as Liza’s sister, they had a common goal. Her reaction back at the apartment hadn’t been faked. This was no sting operation against the Underground.

They passed monument after monument, some dotted with signs of respect and remembrance. Votives now drowned. Flowers, beaten ragged by the rain. Mick stayed silent, senses on alert. Not that he expected muggers or mourners to be out in this weather, but if the kidnapper had known to reach Sophie on Liza’s cell phone, he had to have been watching the apartment. Mick wouldn’t put it past him to be tailing them on this retrieval mission in case Sophie balked or failed.

She came to a stop at a derelict tomb toward the back of the cemetery. This part of the dead city was neglected, older. Vines trailed up the stone, roots sneaking into cracks and taking hold so fiercely that to remove them might mean bringing down the crypt itself. Beneath the natural ropes and foliage, a pair of small gargoyles peered out, mouths agape with fangs worn by time.

Sophie motioned him over to one of them. “Put your hand in its mouth. You should feel a sort of lever.”

Mick eyed the open mouth. They were too small, too stylized to be real gargoyles, so he stepped forward and did as she asked. His fingers brushed rough stone, then a bit of smooth wood carved in a rustic sort of lever. “Found it. Now what?”

Opposite him, Sophie slid her hand into the other gargoyle’s mouth. “On my mark,” she said. “One, two, pull.”

Curling his fingers, Mick shifted the lever toward him.

There was a pop, followed by a wheeze of air, as if the tomb had been air-locked. As a Council hiding space, maybe it was. The door shifted up a couple of inches, then swung inward, leaving an entrance into darkness.

Casting another quick look around, Sophie raised her hand, generating another blue energy field like the one she’d made at the apartment. Using its faint glow to light her way, she stepped carefully over the threshold. Mick was right behind. The ceiling was so low he had to stoop or bump his head.

As he crossed the threshold himself, the door began to swing closed. He sprang toward it, his heart thudding with sudden panic, but Sophie said, “Leave it. I know how to get back out.”

It fell shut with a definitive clang that left him short of breath. “Is that really necessary? Can’t you just grab it and let’s go?”

“It’s not here.” In the faint blue glow cast by her energy field, he could see Sophie looking around.

“What do you mean it’s not here?” Mick could hear the tinge of panic in his voice and fought to level it out. Not locked in, he told himself. The door’s right behind. “Did someone take it?”

“I mean that it’s not here in this tomb. This is just the doorway to the catacombs.”

“There are no catacombs in New Orleans.”

With a rasping noise came a tiny wick of flame that grew as she applied it to a waiting torch. The panic didn’t dim much as the torchlight showed him the confines of the crypt. Sophie moved over to a huge stone slab where a body would usually be laid out. This one was, thankfully, unoccupied.

“Help me shift this.”