Winging It (27 page)

Nick swallowed and spoke with force. ‘You make it work.’

‘How so?’

‘You make more
Pyr
. You do what you can. You try to do what’s right.’ He said this last word with even more emphasis and glared stubbornly over the city. It was all black and white to him.

I had to say it. ‘Do you really think you’re doing the right thing by staying away from Isabelle?’

Nick avoided my gaze. ‘I might be.’ He turned to look at me before I could argue. ‘The firestorm is right,’ he said with force and I wondered who he was trying to convince. ‘And I will follow it. I won’t make promises I might not be able to keep.’

‘But she thinks that you’re meant to be together.’

Nick looked down. He tapped his nails on the lip of the roof, thinking. ‘I hope she’s right,’ he admitted so quietly that I had to strain to hear him.

Then he looked at me, his gaze tormented. ‘But what if she’s wrong? What if we’re just attracted to each other? What if it’s just sex?’

I didn’t know what to say to that.

Nick’s voice dropped low. ‘If my firestorm is with someone else, I have a duty to my kind. We all do. And I’ll have a duty to my son, whenever I have one.’

‘Your dad reminded you of this.’

Nick looked away. ‘It would be easy to be with Isabelle, Zoë, but in the end, it might be wrong. It would hurt her more if I had to turn away from her later.’

‘So you’re turning away now.’

He dropped his head. ‘Sometimes you’re crazy enough about someone to protect them even from yourself.’ And this time, when he met my gaze, his was clear with conviction.

I felt better for having Nick explain himself to me. He wasn’t being a jerk, like Isabelle thought. He was being thoughtful. Considerate.

‘They say patience is a virtue,’ I said, smiling at him. ‘But I think waiting bites.’

Nick laughed and made a mock bite in my direction. I snapped back at him, and we leapt into the air simultaneously. We swung our tails and played at fighting again. Then Nick pointed back down to our neighborhood. ‘Race you to the roof!’

‘Last one there is
Slayer
bait!’ I retorted, using an old taunt from our childhood. We flung ourselves through the sky. Nick was ahead of me, all golden strength.

‘Look! It’s Isabelle!’ I cried and he halted to look.

‘Where?’

‘Not here, fool.’ I raced past him, laughing as he roared behind me. He caught my tail and spun me around. We fell onto the roof of the town house in a tangle of talons and scales, laughing all the while.

I shoved a fistful of snow into his face. He breathed fire at me in mock fury and I swung around to swat him. He caught my wing and we wrestled on the roof. I couldn’t get a good hit in because we were laughing too hard.

‘
Nice quiet return
,’ Garrett noted. ‘
I bet no one will notice
.’

‘
Anything happen while we were gone
?’ Nick asked, brushing himself off and taking a serious tone.

Garrett shrugged. ‘
Just that
.’

I realized suddenly that there were a lot of cats meowing. They were making that yowl that tomcats make at night, but it sounded like there were a lot more of them than was typical. I hadn’t even noticed any tomcats around Meagan’s house before.

‘
There must be hundreds of them
,’ Garrett said. I looked at him in surprise. ‘
It started about an hour ago. And keeps getting louder
.’

We stood up and looked as the cries became steadily louder. I could see the silhouettes of dozens of cats in the street. Maybe hundreds. They were all different colors – soot gray with white socks, black with white tuxedo bibs, ginger and tortoiseshell and whiter than snow. They walked with the delicate precision of cats, silent but purposeful. They clung to the shadows, as if they didn’t want to be seen, but the gleam of their eyes gave them away.

Like gemstones shining in the dark.

They also were moving in the same direction, as if they gravitated toward some unknown destination. I wondered – were they all shifters? Or were cats in general drawn to a cat shifter’s distress? What were they going to do? Where were they going?

‘
They’re gathering
,’ Nick said.

But why?

Then I noticed that something else had changed. I could see the orange swirl of Mage spell, bright again, winding out of the sewer grates with greater potency than before.

They were up to something, spinning their web and making it stronger. Were they feeding on Jessica’s strength? What was the deal with the cats? Were they drawn to Jessica’s distress? Or were they leading the way for us? Was she still alive, then?

I saw a black cat hesitate on the lip of a sewer opening. It looked around, then stared straight at me. It held my gaze for a long moment, then turned and slipped through the grate, as sinuous as a snake.

Gone as surely as if it had never been.

I felt a shadow pass over me, and it chilled me to the bone.

‘
What is it?
’ Nick asked and I told them what I could see.

No one liked that news.

Garrett looked grim. ‘
We should sleep while we can
.’

I wondered, though, whether I would ever sleep again, with my thoughts spinning so fast.

Like a Mage spell.

I watched the orange light, tugging down into the world beneath the city. I thought about the cats, maybe answering some summons we couldn’t discern.

That was when I knew exactly what we had to do next. We had to go down into the sewers, just like those cats, and confront the Mages in their den.

Wherever it turned out to be.

I didn’t tell the others my plan until the morning, when we all met up in the park. I’d spent the night trying to think of alternatives, but hadn’t come up with a single one.

Predictably, there was dissent. The guys weren’t big on risk, especially with so many unknown variables. Meagan was instantly ready to go and help her buddy.

We decided to vote.

Meagan voted first, in favor of the quest, then spent time busily researching the Chicago underground on her messenger. She was so proud of herself for finding maps that I didn’t have the heart to tell her that we wouldn’t need them.

I’d just follow the spell light.

Nick was sure the light I’d seen was a lure to draw us into a trap. Garrett pointed out that we weren’t sure of Jessica’s motives. Had she been targeted by the Mages and trapped? Or was she complicit with them, like Kohana? Liam wondered whether Jessica’s capture was just an illusion, meant to draw us closer. Meagan was insulted by that idea, but before they could argue, Isabelle drew another card.

She’d been quietly shuffling the whole time. She brushed aside the snow on the park bench, then snapped the card onto the painted wood.

The Chariot.

‘Always the court cards when Zoë is around,’ she murmured with a smile. We waited expectantly. ‘The Chariot indicates a conflict being resolved. Someone intervening in a situation.’

‘Like a rescue?’ Liam said and Isabelle nodded.

‘It has a military sense, like a planned campaign being executed.’

‘Successfully?’ Garrett asked.

Isabelle nodded again. ‘It indicates preparation and planning, so check your plan and coordinate it. But yes, the card is right side up, which means triumph.’

‘Upside down for Zoë,’ Derek said softly.

I jumped to find him behind me, in his quiet human form. The guys looked startled – they hadn’t heard him approach, either.

But he was right. Isabelle could have placed it on the other side of the bench, but she’d put it between us. I stared at the card as the guys reviewed events of the night before and planned their assault.

Was I crazy to let that detail bother me? What did the card mean when it was reversed? Failure? A temporary victory? Either possibility spooked me.

But it didn’t much matter. The guys were on board. Derek and Meagan and Isabelle were in. We didn’t have to tally the vote to know that we were going underground.

It had been my idea in the first place, so I couldn’t bail.

Our thinking was that the Mages would be tired after their festivities of the night before. They’d be expecting us to take time to regroup. We would strike early and fast, before we were anticipated, and maybe have surprise on our side.

It was all a rationalization, but we convinced each other of its merit. Meagan located access points to the underground on her map and we tried them in succession.

The first manhole we tested was locked down or stuck. The second was on a street that bustled with traffic, probably because it was close to a big church. The third was on a quiet side street. It also seemed to be locked, but Nick was impatient. He shifted shape quickly and hauled it open in his dragon form. Garrett went first into the hole, Meagan right behind him. Liam and Isabelle followed, then Derek, then me. Nick shifted back to his human form while we were slipping into the wet darkness, then pulled the manhole cover over the opening again.

Sealing us in darkness.

There was a ladder fixed to the side of the shaft and we descended in silence. Every sound echoed and was magnified, and we seemed to understand as one the need for quiet.

I could hear water running.

I could smell sewage – although I didn’t need
Pyr
powers of perception for that.

And, thanks to my new ring, I could see the dizzy orange swirl of Mage spell light. It emanated clearly from one direction. It danced in spirals, tugging deeper into the system. I pointed and the others followed me, letting me lead the way.

The guys arrayed themselves behind me, Isabelle between Garrett and Liam, Meagan between Liam and Nick. There was a faint shimmer around the guys, as they were agitated enough to be on the cusp of change.

It said something for my state of mind that the sudden brilliant shimmer of light blue to my right reassured me. It reassured me even more when a silver-gray wolf matched my stride, his pale eyes shining with wariness. I buried my fingers in the silken fur at Derek’s neck and felt the tension in him.

It was the kind of place where a person could do with a pet predator.

I don’t know how long we walked, never mind how far. The spell light was swirling ahead of me, leading me on a golden path that seemed to take us deeper and deeper into the underground. There was water in the bottom of the tunnel, but we walked to the left and the right of it, keeping our feet mostly dry.

It got colder. It got darker beyond the spell light. It was impossible to guess the amount of time that had passed. There were boarded-up passageways and blocked tunnels, but the spell cut a steady course through the darkness.

Like a thousand threads, twining together into a thicker rope.

Or a spiderweb, drawing its victims into a place of no return.

It was strange because I had this sense of dread, yet at the same time, the radiant spell had a soothing effect. Maybe it lulled me into complacency. It was pretty. It had a pleasant glow. It made me feel serene and outside of any tension.

Maybe the spiderweb analogy was a good one. Don’t spiders drug their victims so they struggle less?

Either way, we drifted along the path that was laid for us, lulled into believing that we’d made our choice and now had to follow it to the end.

There wasn’t a lot of conversation.

We weren’t alone either. Derek kept looking over his shoulder and snarling into the shadows behind us. I finally looked back to see, and realized that not only did the spell light dim noticeably right behind us – like it was gathering us close – but there was a procession of cats heading in the same direction.

The cats from the street. They walked a little higher up the sides of the tunnel to keep their feet dry. They trailed behind us, as if trying to avoid the full power of the spell light. They also seemed to be enchanted by it. I saw one sitting in a side tunnel, batting at a swirl of gold as if it were a butterfly.

Then the cat rubbed against it, its expression euphoric.

A moment later it joined the procession.

What was going on with these cats? Were they another variety of cat shifter? Were they drawn to the plight of a jaguar shifter? I know cats tend to be mysterious, but this was extraordinary.

Another cat mewled at Isabelle from a side tunnel. He was a big handsome cat with presence to spare, sitting like a statue. He looked almost leonine, with a mane of long fur framing his face, his coat striped in coal black and gold. He had a white bib and white socks, and golden eyes. He purred with loud approval when Isabelle scooped him up into her arms.

‘He must weigh thirty pounds,’ she said with surprise, hefting him higher.

‘Then leave him behind,’ Nick suggested in an undertone. ‘You don’t need the extra responsibility.’ I saw that he was nervous, too, his gaze darting back and forth. Even though he couldn’t see the spells, he must be feeling their effect.

And trying to fight them.

Isabelle’s eyes flashed and she hugged the cat more tightly. ‘Not a chance. That’s not what I do.’ She and Nick glared at each other for a charged moment, and then Nick turned away.

‘We’ve got to make sure we keep Zoë’s back,’ Nick said to Garrett. ‘Not like the last time.’

Garrett nodded, strain in his features. ‘It gets to you, doesn’t it?’

‘What’s it like for you guys?’ I asked.

‘Like an earworm, a song you can’t get out of your mind,’ Garrett said. ‘A pulsing, insistent one.’

‘A violent one,’ Nick agreed, wiping sweat from his brow. ‘Feeding doubt.’

‘Just don’t give it anything to root in,’ Liam said. ‘Remember that we’re a team and we’re not going to split ranks.’

‘
Pyr
forever,’ Garrett said grimly and the guys nodded as one.

‘
One for all and all for one
,’ I teased in old-speak, but they didn’t smile.

They just crowded a little closer.