“Stop it!” I shouted. “Get away from each other and just … just stop it!” My voice had dropped—it sounded like a growl, a lupine snarl.

They stopped. Anastasia looked at me, eyebrows arced, lips pursed, as if she was amused that I would be giving orders. As usual, Cormac didn’t reveal anything in his expression—a cold gaze and a calm bearing hid any emotion. I could never guess what he was thinking.

The hallway smelled like blood. I couldn’t smell anything else. Not sweat, anxiety, incense, or anything. I paced, fast, back and forth across the hallway as if I could plunge through the walls to get some fresh air, to break free and run. I clenched my hands into fists, a growl stuck in my throat.

Ben put his hand around my ankle, and I stopped. He didn’t grab, didn’t force, didn’t squeeze. Just held me with a firm grip, and the touch warmed me, anchored me. Reminded me that I wasn’t alone. That we had to stay calm.

We had three dead bodies on the floor. Ben and I were covered with blood. It was congealing on my clothing and skin, getting sticky, itchy. I shivered inside my clothes, trying to better fit into my human skin. Sick of this place, I wanted to get my pack out of here. Ben stood and put his hand on my back, and I sighed, my muscles unclenching.

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“Well,” I said finally. “Are we finished here? Now that we’ve built the set for our own B-grade horror flick?” I glanced at Cormac, hoping for some clue about what he thought of all this. Of me and Ben almost losing it and digging into a dying wolf with our bare hands.

His gaze was downturned as he went to the body of the werewolf Anastasia had killed. With his second knife, he cut off a big scrap of the man’s shirt and used it to retrieve the silver dagger from the now-human corpse that Ben and I had ravaged, with gaping wounds in its neck and belly. It was the man with the matted beard we’d seen earlier. The now frail-seeming body looked like an animal had been at it. He cleaned the knife, careful to scrape out all the cracks and seams where the blade joined the handle. Then he tossed the bloody cloth away. He didn’t say a word. Didn’t look at Ben and me.

It wasn’t like he’d never seen us covered in blood before.

Anastasia’s skin had taken on the warm, almost healthy sheen of the newly fed vampire. Quickly she crouched by her victim and searched, patting down his few pockets, feeling under his shirt for anything hidden. Nothing. Standing again, she hugged herself as if cold. “They must have already delivered it to him. It’s lost, it’s all lost. Roman’s won.”

It sure felt like it, but I couldn’t believe it. We were alive, which was a point in our favor. Grace was safe, I assumed, which was another point. This wasn’t over by a long shot.

I shook my head. “No. Something else is going on here. Maybe they locked up the nine-tails, but they don’t have the pearl—they were still looking for it. Which means Roman doesn’t have it. Someone else took it. There’s a third party.”

Ben chuckled. “That’s the good news, isn’t it?” He hunted around the floor for the gun he’d tossed aside, found it shored up against the wall, and covered in blood. Picking it up with two fingers by the very end of the grip, he said, “I’m really getting tired of this. Why’d I bring this again?” Cormac tossed him another scrap of shirt, and he started wiping it down. The scene was looking increasingly ghoulish. We needed to get out of here.

“Do we need to clean up the bodies?” Cormac asked.

“No,” Anastasia said. “The tunnels take care of themselves.”

Now I really wanted to get out of here. “Who else wants this pearl?” I said to the vampire.

“Anyone who knows about it would want it. Any magician, wizard, any other vampires. The gods.”

“Gods? Seriously? Let’s not make this more complicated than it has to be. What’s our next step then? Go looking for the pearl?”

“Take a shower?” Ben said. “Go home?”

“That gets my vote,” Cormac said. “This isn’t our fight.”

Anastasia didn’t say anything to that. I expected her to argue. She didn’t, maybe because Cormac was right. But that wasn’t how I felt. Roman was my enemy, too. Here or somewhere else, he’d come after me and mine again.

I tried to acquire some veneer of dignity despite the fact that I was still too close to turning Wolf for comfort. And that I was spattered with blood. Rounding my shoulders, I went the few steps down the hall to the closet with the safe. Both the room and the safe were still open.

I held myself still and began breathing softly, taking air through my nose, smelling the space and what had been here.

Mostly, I sensed what I expected: old stone and grime, a century’s worth of salt air lingering, the cold steel of the safe, smoke and wax from Grace’s candle. Werewolves, humans, and vampires. We’d been walking around on top of each other’s scents, which blurred together. I heard a distant pattering, like raindrops or the footsteps of mice, always at the edge of hearing. Mysterious gazes, always at the edge of seeing. I listened for the sound of a crying baby, and didn’t hear it. I hoped Grace was safe.

I knelt closer to the safe, putting my nose right up to the steel. A trace of Grace’s human scent lingered on the handle and combination dial. I even stuck my head inside the safe and took a few deep breaths, hoping to catch a trace of the artifact itself. I only smelled more steel, more dust. If I’d had to guess what had been here, I’d have said it had always been empty. Scary magical items should smell like something, shouldn’t they?

“Find anything?” Ben said.

I shook my head. “You want to try?”

I stepped aside and let him go through the same routine. After a moment of searching he muttered, “I don’t even know what I’m looking for.”

“Let me,” Cormac said, moving toward us around the bodies. He carried the hurricane lamp and its golden halo of light from the storage room with him. We got out of the way and watched.

He took some kind of stone from his pocket, keeping it partially hidden in his hand. It had something magical to it, no doubt. Since his release from prison, he’d replaced his collection of guns with amulets and talismans.

Tags: Carrie Vaughn Kitty Norville Fantasy
Source: readsnovelonline.net