The Lost Soul Trilogy (Primani Book 5) (69 page)

NIGHTFALL WAS NEARLY COMPLETE as we made our way down the busy city streets heading towards Lower Manhattan. People streamed by caught up in a current of humanity. Busy, busy people had places to go. They had lives to live and bills to pay. Did they have any idea of the horror that lurked just beneath the pavement? Did anyone know how close they were to death?

Couldn’t they sense it?

Pulling my leather jacket closer to my side, I tensed with anticipation and not a little fear. The wind was blowing in fits of anger as Mother Nature planned another stormy night. When we crossed the street at Broadway and 21
st
, the wind hit me hard enough to rock me into Killian’s side. Clearly unaffected by the wind himself, he used this as an excuse to wrap his arm around my waist and pull me close against his side. This public show of affection was unlike him and I peered up at him.

“How’s your intuition tonight, babe?” he asked tightly, eyes scanning the sidewalks for any hint of trouble.

I knew without looking that the ruby-handled knife burned against his calf. Totally synced with it, Killian followed it like a GPS in his head. We zigzagged from street to street as it located our prey. He was practically twitching with readiness, muscles tensed and ready to spring.

I said candidly, “I have a bad feeling about this. It’s never as easy as it should be, you know that. Raphael and Michael both warned me there would be more pain and suffering ahead. I don’t think they were talking about a miscarriage. Something tells me we’re not going to get off lightly tonight. Do you have anything you want to say to me before we get there?”

Barking a surprised laugh, he leaned down and said, “You win, Princess. I love you and I want you beside me. No matter what happens tonight, I’ll find you.”

Without missing a step, he pulled me around a corner and kissed me as if the world would end in flames right then. Ignited by his power, my blood raced through my veins so fast it thrummed like a plucked guitar string. I had to pull back before I spontaneously combusted.

With fingers digging into my shoulders, he captured my mouth again, growling low in his throat, “Don’t fight it; let it take you.”

The more he kissed me the faster my blood raced and my own power stirred in response. Feeling light and powerful, I clenched my fingers in his shirt to keep from floating away. And still the thrumming grew louder, the notes low and clear as a bell.

“Do you feel that? Your blood sings for me.” The planes of his face shifted in the shadows giving the illusion of another, someone ageless and more powerful. He lightly gripped my upper arms and said in that compelling tone, “When the time comes, you will answer my call.”

“Always,” I promised before standing on my tiptoes to kiss him one last time as Sean rounded the corner. He jerked like he’d been electrocuted and froze in disbelief.

Without a word, Killian released me and continued walking. I trotted to keep up with him while Sean stalked along on the other side of me. His face nearly purple, he huffed impatiently at every tiny delay. At one crosswalk, he demanded, “What did you do with your ring?”

“I pawned it,” I lied.

Killian said, “You two have to focus. This is major. We’ll talk about this later.”

Suddenly he stopped and listened. “Got it!”

He gestured at a rusted metal door crisscrossed with a chain and padlocked. The door was partially concealed by plywood sheets left over from a construction project. A helpful citizen had spray painted obscenities across it to add some local color to the rusty door. Nice work…Very fancy painting in pretty shades of purple and red.

Killian was a thousand miles away as we waited to go inside. He was communing with his seeing-eye knife and I left him to it. I did my best to sense the undead. At the moment, all I could sense were the waves of anger rolling off of Sean so I glared meaningfully at him and he flipped me off. Turning his back to me, he called Dec who rematerialized a minute later. We all waited in varying degrees of readiness while Killian listened with his ears and his mind. Looking around, I noticed we were on 8
th
Avenue. It was fully dark and the streets were nearly empty now. A skinny yellow dog dug at a McDonald’s bag lying in the street and I thought of Domino. I wished she was here with us. She’d have my back without nagging. I sent my dad a quick text telling him I loved him…just in case things went south.

Dec positioned himself in front of the door and the lock mysteriously fell free. The chains hit the concrete with a slithering thunk. Peering around for an audience and finding none, we slid into the darkened building one by one. With a forceful yank, Dec closed the door behind us and I had to remind myself that we could teleport out. It was a dark as a tomb, the air stagnant and warm. Using my tiny flashlight to conserve my personal energy reserves, I followed along between Killian and Dec. Sean brought up the rear in case there was trouble. His body vibrated with restrained power and his heartbeat reverberated in my head. He was close enough for me to feel the heat coming off of him and I moved a little guiltily towards Dec. It was strange to stand so close to Sean after so much distance between us.

The dim light revealed a dusty hallway that eventually stopped at another, much older, door. The red paint had long since disintegrated and rust had taken over. With quiet precision, Dec cracked its lock and manhandled the door open against the uneven concrete floor. The harsh grating seemed supernaturally loud in the silence of the room.

His teeth gleaming in the darkness, Dec whispered, “Still got that bad feeling, sweetheart?” He’d never been scared in his life and was ready to jump into this night with both feet. I wondered vaguely if he was a wee bit insane…

Killian stood with arms hung loosely by his sides listening to the echoes in his mind.
Sgaine Dutre
’s brother blade glowed triumphantly in his fist, the red eye burning like brimstone. The red light brought his cheekbones into sharp relief giving his face a hard, sinister look. Turned away from me, Sean watched the hallway with an eager ferocity that made me wonder if I’d ever really known him.

He was reputed to be one of the best Primani of all time…and he’d earned that reputation by sheer tactical skill and overwhelming brutality in a fight. It wasn’t in his nature to show mercy and he would annihilate the demons we found tonight. The set of his jaw and the rage in his eyes promised a vicious death for anyone on the wrong side of our mission.

Taking a minute to reach out with my mind, I raised a finger to tell Dec to wait a minute. It was creepy and dark, but there was no danger here. And yet, something tickled at the far edges of my intuition and I knew someone, or something, was waiting for us. The feeling of impending doom hung in the air like a noxious cloud of steam.

Fear curled in my belly like poison.

We were going to lose someone. 

Nudging Dec’s arm to get his attention, I said simply, “This is going to be bad, Dec.” Impulsively, I hugged him and whispered fiercely, “I love you! Please be careful!”

Squeezing me hard enough to crack a rib, he whispered against my hair, “I will, sweetheart. We still have things to do, you and I.” Then he released me and straightened towards Killian who watched us with thinly-veiled patience.

“Let’s go. It’s this way.” We moved purposely into another hallway.

Killian slowed long enough to reach a hand back to me. I touched his wrist in answer. Yes, I’m here and I’ll be ready. His eyes caught mine in a glance, conveying the words he’d said to me on so many missions…
careful and smart--
his parting words for us every time we went out without him. My heart sped up as I digested the words and took notice of our surroundings. This hallway was lined with crumbling brick walls and my stomach churned. The walls gradually became tunnels broken up by occasional metal doors. I knew this place.

One of these doors was witness to my darkest nightmares.

Keep moving. Don’t dwell on this place It has no power over you,
Killian’s voice whispered sharply.

Hundreds of scurrying feet sent shivers climbing up my neck and I choked on a scream when a heavy little body ran across my foot. I stopped abruptly and Sean ran into me with a grunt of surprise.

“Rats,” I offered under my breath and kept moving lest it come back to taste me.

We’d gone about a hundred yards farther when a wave of déjà vu washed over me. I froze next to a door. This door wasn’t padlocked and had been used recently. The dust was disturbed around the door handle and there were footprints jumbled around in front of it. Cold sweat crawled between my shoulders and I nearly bolted in a sprint, but Sean stopped right behind me and held onto my arm. This was the room. High-pitched shrieks echoed from inside and Killian swore softly in front of me.

The sound of booted feet on metal startled us into action. Killian took off in a sprint towards a tunnel to the right. We just cleared the corner when several men came out of the room into the tunnel where we’d just been standing. Their laughter echoed eerily as they stood outside the room smoking. From their tone, they were flunkies. One of them sounded vaguely familiar to me though. Another scream undulated shrilly from the open door and Dec dug his fingers into my arm.

“Not human; not our problem,” Killian’s harsh whisper broke through the horrific scenes running through my brain.

Not human…demon? Reanimated corpse?

The eye of the blade burned hotter the deeper we moved into the tunnels and Killian’s entire expression changed again. Gone was my lover, my friend, my Primani. The high priest was back and in complete control now. Moving with utter silence, he stalked his prey with single-minded purpose.

Sgaine Dutre
must be close.

When we turned to the right, the tunnels abruptly forked into three directions. We stopped to see which way he wanted us to go. In that voice that brooked no argument, he told us to wait. He went to the left and vanished. Right after he left, Dec perked up, his face lit with excitement, eyes gleaming in his face.

“Can you hear that?”  He pointed at a pipe in the wall. The mortar was decayed and crumbling around it leaving a gap that seemed black as night to me.

Straining my ears but hearing nothing above the pounding of my heart and Sean’s breathing behind me, I shrugged negatively.

“I’ll be back in a minute,” he promised, bolting down the other tunnel and vanishing around a bend in the dark.

The sense of foreboding grew stronger and I rubbed my arms to hold myself together. “I guess it’s just you and me…” I murmured to Sean who was listening to something I couldn’t hear.

The darkness was getting oppressive as if the entire city was about to cave in on me. I tried to ignore the small space, the heavy air, the solid darkness. It was a good thing I wasn’t alone. I’d really be freaking out.

“Stay here for a minute. I’ll be right back.” He vanished without letting me argue.

Stunned by this turn of events, I pressed back against the wall and cursed all three of them. What the hell were they doing? Just when I was nearly hyperventilating with anxiety, Sean reappeared from the tunnel darkness.

“Where did you go? Are you crazy?”

Shrugging arrogantly, he replied smoothly, “I had to check something. I was only away a few minutes. I thought you were a big girl now?” He eyed me with a challenge.

Gritting my teeth, I muttered, “Never mind.”

Walking back into the darkness, he called over his shoulder, “Come with me. We’re going to meet Killian.”

The silence was broken by dripping water that must be the East River. We were in an unfinished line of the subway that went from Lower Manhattan to Brooklyn. The river was on top of us right now…suddenly the rats didn’t seem so bad. About 50 yards into the tunnel, my flashlight went out. The darkness was absolute. Disoriented by the sudden loss of light, I bounced into the wall and scraped my elbow. Hissing with pain, I stopped and dabbed at the raw skin. Sean halted in front of me. I couldn’t see him but I sensed his presence. In half a heartbeat, he was standing very close to me with one hand possessively wrapped around my arm.

Invisible in the black void, he purred in my ear, “Are you afraid?”  Slowly, he rubbed his palm along my shivering skin leaving a trail of heat behind.

“What the hell are you doing?” I stepped back only to find the brick wall.

Before I could say anything else, his mouth was on mine in a demanding kiss that bruised my lips and ground my head against the brick. Pressing his body against me, he ran his hands under my shirt even as I struggled to push him away.  I bit down on his lip and twisted my head away to break the kiss. I was nearly free when a voice thundered in the tunnel behind us.

“Mica!” Sean shouted. “No!”

The Sean holding me in his arms chuckled and blinked. His eyes changed from brilliant blue to sickly yellow and he grinned at me showing his fangs.

“Surprise!”

No! It couldn’t be! Not again!

Screaming in horror, I struggled to push him away and he pressed me to the wall with his forearm and mocked me with his eyes.

“What’s wrong, sweetheart?” he crooned in exactly the right voice and blinked his eyes to blue again before turning to greet Sean.