Kitty in the Underworld (Kitty Norville 12)

“Gosh,” I said flatly. “What did I say?”

Of all the wonders, the werewolf smiled.

“You do understand,” he said. “You do know what we’re battling.” He said this with awe and hope. The woman raised his hand to her mouth and kissed it. I might have just handed them the map to buried treasure, the way they acted.

I suddenly wanted to take a nap. Another one, hard rock for a mattress or not. The fuzz in my head had become too thick to muddle through. But I tried.

“This is all about fighting Roman? You maybe think if you let me in on the secret I might actually be able to help?”

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“It’s—it’s more complicated than that.”

Wasn’t it always? “Let me go. Just let me go.”

“We can’t do that.”

I growled in frustration. The pair turned and left the chamber as well, and I was alone. They hadn’t left a guard, they hadn’t chained me up. So I stood and ran after them—what was to stop me?

Answer: another door, a few feet down the tunnel, bolted into supports drilled into the rock. The whole place was compartmentalized; they could lock me up anywhere.

On principle, I screamed and banged on the door a few times. This one wasn’t any less solid than the one to that first cell. But I didn’t waste breath and energy lashing out any more than that.

I curled up on the ground next to the door, hugged myself, and waited.

* * *

TIME PASSED and the door opened, scraping against the stone floor. I started awake and wondered if I could grab the door, haul it the rest of the way, tackle whoever was on the other side, run hard, find my way out of the tunnels—

The door opened just a few inches, and it closed again quickly, just as soon as the were-lion shoved a bundle through. I could smell her, sense her moving quickly, but then she was gone again. I blinked, trying to figure out what had happened. My nose flared, smelling. She’d left a pile of clothing. My sweater, jeans, panties.

I wondered what the catch was.

Maybe she was being nice. Maybe I actually had an ally in this place. Or maybe this was a good cop/bad cop ploy. I’d put my trust in her—she kept giving me things, after all. Water, food, clothes. I was supposed to cling to her, and they’d use that trust to manipulate me into doing … whatever they were trying to do. Or maybe I was overthinking this.

I didn’t much care what the ulterior motives were, I was putting my clothes on.

Chapter 9

I HAD LIGHT at this end of the tunnel. I had room to move around. And I felt a million times better being dressed.

I went exploring.

The antechamber, more of an extrawide part of the tunnel, didn’t have much to it. It was small, the remnant of mining activity. A vein of ore might have been dug out, and this and the adjoining cave were what was left. The old rails ran straight through, out the other side. I couldn’t guess how deep underground this was. Air must have been coming in from somewhere, because I was still breathing. It smelled musty, like chalk and silt, but not stale. The walls shimmered, and in some places had rounded mounds of colored rock, places where the water seeped through and deposited minerals in strange colors, patterns, and pencil-thin baby stalactites. I had no interest in touching the walls more than I had to, leery of the silver there.

I went down the short tunnel into the ritual chamber, picking up the lantern there to study the room and its details better.

In a panicked moment, I wondered if the circle and star on the floor had been drawn in blood. I didn’t smell blood, but I was starting to not trust my senses. After kneeling and studying the markings, I saw they were black, thick, and opaque—ink or paint of some kind. Decisive, indelible. Dozens of symbols marked the floor and walls, their shapes and shadows bending strangely in the light as I brought the lantern close and moved it across. I recognized some of them in the most general sense—there were zodiac signs, Greek letters, Roman numerals, shapes that might have been Egyptian hieroglyphs, words in what I thought was Hebrew. I didn’t know what any of it actually meant, except that they were Western in origin—Judeo-Christian, Greco-Roman. Medieval alchemical stuff. Whoever did this—the woman magician?—must have taken hours to draw it all.

Amelia would have known what all this meant. A pang of homesickness struck, along with gratitude that my friends weren’t here and in danger. I could be rescued, or I could break out on my own. I didn’t need to share the whole experience. I had a sudden, horrible thought: Tom wasn’t here, they hadn’t captured him. But maybe they’d killed him instead, and that was why the cavalry hadn’t come yet. Tears fell; I brushed them away. I’d get out of this, I would. Tom was fine, everyone was fine, everything was fine.

Continuing my circuit of the room, I found objects hanging from spikes driven into the walls at five places, corresponding with the points of the star on the floor. Amulets, talismans, whatever. They looked antique, with that worn and aged patina that very old items had. Again, I recognized some of them in the most general sense—a Maltese cross, an ankh. But I couldn’t have said where they came from or what they meant, and if they meant anything in relation to each other.

I raised the lantern, trying to make out the cave’s ceiling, but it was too high for the light to reach. A black depth, that was all.

This was a hodgepodge of symbols and ritual, from Europe and the Middle East. If I had to guess, I’d say this was all done by an overactive history student playing at magic. They’d stand around wearing black velveteen cloaks, speaking in pig latin. But the four of them had looked so deadly serious.

Having seen what real rituals, real power could do, I was not feeling good about what rituals they might be performing here. Especially since they seemed to think they needed me to continue whatever the hell it was they were doing.