“Are you going to make it?” Galen’s concern made me bristle, but I couldn’t fault him. He’d found me face-down in the alley behind McKinnett’s, bleeding and left for dead. If he hadn’t found me when he did, I wouldn’t be stumbling along these catacombs right now. Earth dragon healing magic came in damned handy sometimes, and I was lucky.
I grunted an affirmative, and Galen returned to studying the walls. He knew he wasn’t going to get much more out of me.
“I haven’t heard from Missi in a while,” Galen murmured. “I’m starting to worry about her.”
“Worry about us, bro,” Aric muttered. “These catacombs suck. And I haven’t seen a chalk mark in a while.”
Obnoxious though he may have been, Aric was right. Missi’s GPS had led us to an old warehouse by the harbor. Behind it, we found the entrance to the underground tunnels beneath the North End. Fortunately, guards were few and far between, and no match for four pissed off dragons looking for their mate.
Our mate. I frowned. Jumping the gun a little there, Chase. If anyone had that sort of claim on her, it wasn’t me. I glanced at Cass, an inappropriately-timed surge of jealousy grabbing at my heart. I wrestled it down. There was a time and a place to pine over what might have been, what may still be, and what could happen the next precious time I got her away from the others and had the chance to taste those sweet lips again, and it sure as hell wasn’t here and now. If I didn’t focus, I might never get the chance again.
I studied the rough-hewn stone walls of the tunnels we faced. Three branches she could be down. The tunnels were as old as the city, and one of its best kept secrets, winding deep below the North End. Some were used to slip between the oldest buildings in the city. Some were used to smuggle merchandise. Some were used during Prohibition to smuggle hooch to the local bars. And some were used by the Chosen to conduct their dark business unseen. Though the other uses had fallen by the wayside, leaving the tunnels largely forgotten by humankind, the Chosen were careful to keep them all looking much the same. They covered their tracks well. Damn them.
“Here.” Cass was staring at his feet instead of the wall. An uneasy feeling washed over me as we converged on the spot. The dirt floor was torn up with signs of a fierce struggle. Missi had not gone quietly. There were smears of blood on the wall, piles of kicked-up dirt, claw marks dragging along the floor. I gritted my teeth. If anything had happened to Missi, it would kill Sia. I sniffed at the blood on the wall. Human. Fuck.
No time to worry about that now. We had to figure this out.
“Okay, our chalk marks are at an end. Watch the floor. If Missi’s still alive, she didn’t go willingly.”
“No shit, Sherlock,” Aric snorted.
I ignored him. “Watch for kicked-up dirt, more scratches on the wall, any sign that she was struggling.” I looked down the tunnel closest to the struggle. A gob of spit glistened in Cass’s flashlight beam. “And she’s a spitter. Thank the Eldest.”
“Humans are revolting,” Aric muttered, stepping around the wet spot on the ground.