INVISIBLE FATE BOOK THREE: ALEX NOZIAK (INVISIBLE RECRUITS) (10 page)

Chapter Twenty

I spiraled through the darkness before landing with a splat against hard ground, knocking the breath out of me. The breath and a loud “Oomph!”

The only thing that helped was the girl broke part of my fall.

But what was the point of saving her if I killed her in the process?

“What’re you doin’?” she grumbled beneath me. Not that I blamed her.

“Sorry about
that. Bad aim.”

“No kidding.”

Great, I’d saved a smart-ass.

I’d barely rolled over to my knees
, stumbling to my feet when I realized the other problem. The Weres.

“You see anything?” came an angry voice. Most likely Beavis. I’d be angry

my whole life if I had that name.

“Too dark,” came the grumbled reply.

Ha! I wanted to shout. Some Weres you are. Even I could see in the murky shadows. Which wasn’t a good thing because it looked like we were in a long, barrel-vaulted chamber. By the Mother Goddess, what now? A least it looked like the chamber continued for a distance. Maybe far enough to find a way back above ground.

“It stinks,
” mumbled my groggy companion.

“Yeah, but so does getting nabbed by the Weres.” I kept my voice to an urgent whisper. “Keep it quiet.”

“But you—”

I grabbed her arm and gave a hard squeeze. She released a peep but at least she was quieter than she had been.

One challenge at a time. The two Weres above.

A binding spell
? To hold them just long enough for us to hightail it out of here.

I
rocked back on my heels, feeling every ache and bruise, as I thrust my hands upward. No longer worried about my voice carrying, I shouted the spell.

“Air to wind, Earth to dust.

Call forth, needs must.

By water and by fire.

Help sought most dire.

Trouble to heed and trouble to find.

Threat to cast behind.

Compel. Coerce. Constrain.

Hide away this bane.

I thee call. I thee command.

Seek thee quicksand.

Threat be gone. Power be bound.”

“What the—”

Whatever Be
avis was going to say stalled in his mouth as the spell took hold. Sweet! The fact the curved walls and ceiling of the tunnels helped echo the spell made for one powerful casting.

At last, something going my way.

Now to get the girl away from here before the Were woke from his bound state. I’d say we had a minute or two before his good buddy realized what was going on.

I
grabbed the girl’s arm again, my hold not so tight but just as insistent. “Come on, let’s put some distance between them and us.”

“What did you do?” she whispered, glancing back at the frozen Were still visible through the opening. At least his head was.

“Simple binding spell. Won’t hold him for long.” Especially if his buddy just thrust the jammed Were through the hole. Nasty but expedient. I didn’t want to scare the girl with that tidbit either, as I took off running through rock and rubble. Guess fear, confusion, and a constant state of fight or flight must be giving me endorphins I didn’t know I possessed.

Way to go, me.

Just wait, Bran
. I could take care of myself and would take care of him. And soon!

But even as determination
echoed through me, I searched for him. And found nothing.

Part of me wanted to
gnaw in frustration. How like the warlock to harass me while I was hanging high and dry, but when I could actually use his help, for my own reasons, he disappears.

But
a small part of me flared into worry. That gut-clenching, don’t-let-anything-bad-happen to him kind of worry. If anyone was going to take a piece of him, it was going to be me. No avoiding what he’d set up.

With a swift kick to my
mental hiney, I glanced around, wondering where in the heck I was, other than deep beneath the city. The air was suffocating and humid, the only sounds the drip of water nearby and a pulsing rush farther away. Squeaks and claws skittering against rock warned me rats were around, all around, and by the Mother Goddess, I didn’t want to think about what we were stumbling through, though I was glad we hadn’t actually reached the sewers. Yet.

Hadn’t I read once that Paris had the largest sewer system in the world, lengthwise? I’d been looking for information on the Mammoth Cave system in the US that was the longest in the world at almost four hundred miles. In comparison
, the Paris sewers stretched about three times that length.

Yeah, I focused on trivia when a panic attack threatened. Damp, stinky, dark
places were not on my go-to-for-fun list.

Getting out of here in one piece, now that was topping my to-do list, especially as shouting voices sounded from where we’d just been.

Couldn’t a witch get a break?

“Come on
,” I murmured to the girl beside me who was huffing and puffing. We’d already jogged quite a ways. I should be on my knees, but was barely winded.

What was up with that?

Leave it to me to be complaining about what was working. It just gave me a creepy feeling that I was acting more like my brothers, than myself. I mean it wasn’t fair at all growing up with shifter brothers who could run, jump, endure and fight harder than I ever could. A sentiment I whined about all the time.

So maybe I was channeling them? Yeah, I could live with that. Until I had more time to focus on it. Now I had to focus on a V in the tunnel system ahead.

Crumbling stone walls in both directions. Overhead, rusty pipes to the right, a metal handrail to the left. Silence and stygian darkness in both directions. Which way to go?

Eenie. Meenie. Min
ey. Mo.

Left.

Why? No logical reason, just my hearing warning me the voices were coming closer. The right looked an easier route so my convoluted logic said that’s the way the Weres would prefer to go. Wasn’t that Occam’s razor? Or was it something else? Desperation speaking?

I
veered toward the left, aware the walls were closing in. Not enough to slow us, unless I was leading us into a dead end.

Deeper and deeper
we trudged, noticing the slope of the tunnel seemed to be angling down, the air getting thicker, and older smelling. Like dry death.

Keep going.

I tucked my head, held my breath and hugged as close to the nearest side wall as I could, figuring the air might be better there. I used one hand along the wall to anchor me. My silent travel buddy was brushing against the walls, her foot crumbling small stones as we passed, but the sounds behind us seemed to be receding. Or my own hearing was being deafened by the closeness pressing all around us.

Didn’t I remember the Teenage Ninja Turtles doing something in the Parisian sewers in one episode of the TV show? But I think they had a boat.

Lucky reptiles.

And what about the
Phantom of the Opera
? He had a boat or skiff, too.

I was catching a pattern here tha
t wasn’t helping me, being boat-less.

The
slope was getting steeper and steeper. Maybe that was why the metal rail was in place. Something to grab, though it smelled so strongly of rusted metal I didn’t think it’d hold any weight without capsizing.

My shoulders were beginning to cramp
from stooping. My lungs close to exploding from the dry dust as we trudged deeper and deeper into the dim light. I think my hands were bleeding from rubbing them against the rough walls. I could smell fresh blood but couldn’t see them clearly.

Good news, I hadn’t
stumbled on any crocodiles. Yet. Maybe those were just American urban myths.

The tunnel took another sharp turn to the right and I stumbled over rubble beneath my feet. Rubble and slime.

I think I had a nightmare that started like this once. Or maybe I was storing up material for future wake-up-in-a-cold-sweat dreams.

The walls were
still narrowing. Each step forward seemed it was squeezing us closer to both sides of the tunnel. Sweat dampened my waist, slipping cold against my skin beneath my cotton shirt as the humid heat intensified.

Soon I’d be struggling to
move forward. At least my companion wasn’t complaining, though I could hear her breaths chugging.

Suddenly
, the hand I was brushing against the wall hit an open space. Like a shelf, or pockmarks of space between crumbling walls. Then I touched it. Peered closer. Big mistake.

A skull. Lots of skulls, staring out at us.

Sweet Mercy, where were we?

The catacombs. It had to be. Good news was my companion didn’t seem to notice where we were. Either that or the beejeebees had been scared out of her
, leaving her struck dumb.

Swallowing a lump of fear I paused, considering going back the way
we’d just come. Skulls meant death and death increased the chances of spirits and magic. And magic with death and skulls often meant dark magic. Using the resting place of people who hid in terror gave power to black magic practitioners and the last thing I wanted was to go deeper into spaces where my magic was a liability, or an attraction to someone stronger than I was. Maybe the Weres were long gone, down the right hand tunnel.

Maybe I was a delusional idiot who deserved to die in a
cave-in.

Enough of the pity party. Noziaks were not quitters. End of story.

Besides, I thought there might be a small wedge of weak light not that far ahead.

Far enough
. I was panting by the time we drew closer, leaving the shelves of skulls behind. I was also shaking my head to keep salt-stinging droplets from my forehead dripping into my eyes and blinding me.

One step more.

And one after that.

The light was taking shape. It glowed more red than yellow. Like a demon’s eye, only square.

What?

A door. Above a series of worn steps carved from solid rock and smoothed by centuries. There, just past a pool of water where the tunnel widened.

I wanted to shout hallelujah as the walls receded. Nothing else changed, just a hint more space, wide as a kidney-shaped pool and about twice as long, between those stairs and us. That whole trivia thing keeping me sane.

This was do
-able.

I stepped forward but my foot found nothing.
The girl behind me plowing into me and slamming me forward, her hands clutching my shirt.

For the second time in less than an hour
, the sick feeling of a free-fall engulfed me. Right before I dropped through space and my head went under.

Chapter Twenty
-one

It all happened so fast. The splash. The girl smacking my shoulders as her weight pushed me deeper into the inky waters. A whirlpool of traction tumbling me round and round.

I didn’t want to die. Not like this. Not now.

Bran!
The single word roared from my thoughts.

But there was no response.

Twisting. Twisting. Scrambling.

Where was the girl? Where was I? Where was air?

It seemed like hours but must have been only seconds before I popped up, my head escaping the water long enough to chug a breath.

There. Dead ahead. A slight shelf of
concrete to my right.

The girl brushed past me. I grabbed her
in a macabre water ballet, groping for her neck, to pull her head up. Best I could do was clutch her hair, tug it backwards so her face would raise up as I kicked toward the slab.

I scraped against it, sure there’d be no skin left on my face as I pushed the girl out first then wrenched myself after her.

The slab was wider then I’d thought. Which was good because there were no thoughts left as I twisted to my knees and did what any partial human would do after an unexpected dousing in who-knew-what-kind-of-water. I vomited. And vomited again, retching until all I had was dry heaves. Even that wasn’t enough.

I was
soaked to the bone. Shivering from the unexpected cold, though the water hadn’t felt chilled.

That’s when the tears came. Not poor-me tears, I told myself, feeling them wash against me. But WTF
, I’d-had-enough tears. Even they didn’t last long enough to help.

Besides
, I had to check on the girl.

I crawled on knees and hands toward her, curled in a sodden S against the
concrete.

“You alive?” I
hoped she could hear me. She hadn’t responded since I’d pulled her out. It just felt better to hear a voice, even my own.

“What hit me?”

I’d just about reached her, my hand extended to touch her arm when her voice jerked me back.

“You alive?” I repeated, knowing I sounded like an idiot, but I was afraid I’d drowned her.

“Damn, this sucks,” she mumbled, rolling onto her face and gagging.

I knew that feeling.

Like a swimmer underwater too long, she kept spitting out water, and who knew what else, until her shoulders sagged and she lay flat.

I eased myself against the rock wall, my legs straight in front of me, my feet dangling over the water. Across the way I spied that red light again. Above
us and glaring. But how to get there? And would there get us out?

“Who are you?”
The girl turned her head toward me.

“Name’s Alex Noziak.”

“You’re the damn witch who wouldn’t help me earlier,” she shot back. Which stung, given I’d been dragging her sorry ass around for who knew how long, almost killing me in the process.

Okay, killing us both, but sometimes righteous indignation felt good. Like now.

“Where are we?” she demanded, raising her head a little and sniffing. “Damn, it stinks.”

“That stink would be you,” I said. Yes, snark was my second language, except in incidents like this when it was my first.

“Are we …?” She raised herself higher, which was pretty impressive given what she’d been through lately, but I wasn’t ready to give her credit for much yet. “Are we in the freakin’ sewers?”

“No.” I brushed my sopping wet hair as far away from my face as possible, not
that it was helping anything. I was beginning to think a Sinead O’Connor look might be the way to go instead of my waist-length braid. I’d never get it clean. “The Savoy was booked so we’re in the lower level of the Ritz.”

“
Asshole,” she snarled, pulling herself to a sitting position.

“That would be me.”

She must have decided silence was a smarter option as she looked around. She was a mess. But then so was I. If we ever got out of here, we’d have to find dry clothes to have a sinner’s hope in heaven of getting help.

“That a door?” she said
, pointing to the rectangle of red I’d eyed earlier.

“Looks like it.
”

“Then why don’t we
… I dunno … go over there?”

I looked at her then, not that it’d be easy for her to see my glare in the murky shadows. “
We’d been aiming for that. Damn near drowned us.” I turned away before I added, “That pool is way deeper than it looks and has a hell of an undertow to boot. You a good swimmer?”

“Don’t know how to swim at all.” He
r voice suddenly sounded very young.

Great.
I was going to have to play nice here. As the baby of my family, I didn’t get a lot of chances to play mercy nursey with younger siblings. Besides, the Noziak way seemed more along the lines of suck-up, buck-up and shut-up.

I went with the lat
ter option. Until I heard the sounds.

“You hear that?” I scrambled to my feet, looking toward the tunnel that had spilled us out into the pool.

“No. What is it?” She stood too, inching herself up the wall, using it to support herself. Still, she didn’t complain. Which made me feel worse for verbally beating up on her.

A PIA I could deal with easier than someone trying to act brave when they were anything but. Which didn’t say a lot about me.

“There.” The echo had come again. “Not far now.”

“What’s not far?”

“Whoever is coming down the tunnel.”

I could hear her suck in a breath. I would have too but
it’d take too much energy. Energy I needed to find a way out of here.

“Someone coming to help?” she asked, her voice ending on a high note.

“Don’t think so.”

She glanced my way, as if I were being a meanie on purpose. “It could be. You don’t know that for certain.”

“You’re right. I’m not certain about anything right now.” I didn’t bother looking at her, preferring to keep focused on the biggest threat. The one stomping through that tunnel. “But I do know there were several—” I caught myself, aware she was human and I’d almost said too much.

“Several what?” Did her voice hold an I-dare-you tone?

Nah. Too much yucky liquids on the brain. Though I was tempted to tell her the seven dwarves might be following us. I did say I could be snarky when stressed.

“Several bad guys
, the same ones who hurt you back in the cell. My best guess is some, or all of them, will be arriving at the end of that tunnel any moment.”

I’d underestimated my timing as first one, then another appeared. Their shadows
loomed against the walls, thicker blackness against the grayer tones, their breathing raspy as if they’d run more than we had, even the sound of them sniffing the air reverberated against the stone walls.

“What now?” the girl whispered. She didn’t panic, no matter how her heartbeat picked up.

And why could I hear that? Or maybe it was my own.

Either way
, it looked like we might be in luck. Well, a very thin slice of luck, but given how much I’d found recently I’d take it.

There were only two threats, neither of them
had spoken yet, but remained quiet, as predators did when hunting prey. Waiting for fear to spook their quarry.

“Do exactly what I say,” I mumbled in a half breath to the girl. “Exactly.”

She didn’t reply but did give me a hesitant nod.

I’d take it.

“Hey, assholes, come and get us,” I shouted, startling my companion beside me as I began jumping up and down. “Over here!”

I’m sure the girl thought I’d lost what marbles I might have possessed, but bless her heart, she started waving her own hands, after placing two fingers in her mouth and whistling.

That was above and beyond. I doubt I’d ever put my fingers in my mouth again if we got out of here.

But it worked.

The two Weres, for that’s what they were as I could smell their stench even here, growled in return.

But they didn’t move.

Great! We were probably up against the only two smart Were goons in the city.

My plan was simple. Weres, like shifters, had the same type of physiology, even in their human forms. They were dense masses, which is why they were so lethal as assailants. But put them in the water and they sank like stones.

All I wanted them to do was get riled enough to step forward, fall into the pool like I did, and let the water do the rest. If there’d been a half-dozen of them the ploy might not work, but with two, it just might.

If I could get them to move.

“Come on, idiots,” I called. Not too loud because I didn’t want their friends to join these two. My guess was the group had split up, sending an advance recon team in this direction, the rest taking the easier route back at the V in the tunnels. Shouting too loudly might attract the attention of the rest and that would be bad. Very bad.

“Assholes
, afraid of fighting two women?” the girl beside me yelled. “Cowards.”

She was good. Aim for the ego if nothing else more vulnerable was available.

It seemed to work too, as one dark shadow threw off the restraint of the other and leapt forward. Just as fast, he disappeared.

The other must have edged too close to the lip of the tunnel as his arms churned, then splash, he hit the water.

Yes!

“What now?”
The girl elbowed me. “Shouldn’t we find someplace to hide?”

“No.”
The word held a finality to it that caught her attention. Snagged and held as her gaze followed mine toward the center of the pool.

Like spinning crocodiles in a death throw, the water whisked into a froth with too heavy arms beating uselessly against it. No voices cried out. Probably, because in panic a Were’s first instinct
was to morph. Which would only hasten what was happening to them.

I swallowed. Deeply. Death, even to the bad guys, was
n’t an easy sight.

Within a few moments
, all that was left was a lingering ripple across the pool’s surface. And silence.

“What happened to them?”

“What almost happened to us,” I snapped, hating that I stood by as two died, but knowing it’d have eventually come down to this. Survival of us, or survival of them. Besides, these two might have also been involved with my brother’s death, and if so, dying quickly was too easy for them.

I turned from where the girl stared at me. Probably wondering what kind of monster she was with. Didn’t blame her. I’d thought the same thing about myself more than once since joining the IR Agency.

But if we were going to get out of this hellhole, we didn’t have the luxury of a long memorial over the bodies of two wanna-be killers.

I started edging myself along the lip of c
oncrete, aiming away from the tunnel opening and toward the beckoning red light. One hand on the wall for guidance, I inched one foot at a time ahead of me into the shadows. One unexpected dunking was enough, thank you very much. Wasn’t going to go ass over teakettle again, not if I could help it.

“Wait. Where are you going?” the girl cried behind me, catching the back of my shirt with her hand.

I paused but didn’t turn around. “Looking for a way out.”

“Is there one?” she asked.

“Yes.”

“Certain?”

I knew what she was really asking. Since we’d both nearly drowned and then watched what looked like two adult males do just that, she wanted reassurances.

Somehow
, I didn’t think she’d like the only kind of faith I could offer her. The one that went something like we’ll-get-out-or-die-trying.

So instead I lied. “Yes. I’m certain.”

Another step forward.