“I’m guessing you have about two minutes before the train comes,” David Kwan said quietly, kneeling on the platform.
Blaise nodded and ran down the tunnel, intent on finding the elusive entrance to Morshiel’s hidey-hole. It took him longer than he liked to locate the circular opening at the base of the tunnel. In the distance, he heard the train approaching. He sent a terse telepathic command and concentrated on opening the inch-thick metal door.
“Twenty seconds,” David said calmly from beside him a moment later. They were long used to working in the tunnel and avoiding oncoming trains. Blaise jerked up the grate with a grunt. It’d been soldered shut. In the distance, he heard the voice on the train loudspeaker announcing the stop.
“Down,” Blaise growled.
Literati after Literati dropped into the dark hole. He could tell by the sound of boots hitting metal that the men were grabbing on to a ladder. Blaise went last, scooting the grate back into place a second before the train roared over his head, thundering over them like an angry god. He reached, gauging the width of the hole in the darkness. The tunnel stretched behind him, the length of a man’s body.
He descended a crude ladder consisting of metal rings spaced approximately two and a half feet apart. It was easy for the Literati to navigate, with their unusual strength and agility, but it would have been awkward and dangerous for a human. Adrenaline surged into his veins.
“The Scourge fashioned this tunnel and ladder,” he told all of the Literati at once with his mind. “Be ready, because they aren’t going to be far off when we reach the bottom of this—”
He broke off immediately when the scent of sulfur, blood and death entered his nose.
“They’re here,” he told the Literati before he shoved himself back to the wall farthest from the ladder and dropped, free-falling two hundred feet past the backs of his men. He thrust out his feet at the last second, grinding the toes of his boots into the sides of the very bottom of the vertical tunnel, holding himself at a standstill, his legs nearly in splits. He gripped the handle of his heartluster in his hand.
A prowler was just below him. He saw its ugly head go around. It had caught his scent and was trying to ascertain his direction. Any second it would release a shriek of warning to its peers.
He landed with a jarring thud on a dirt-packed floor in a cavern. The prowler had moved aside as he’d dropped. Before he had a chance to consider his surroundings, the prowler—a revenant in the form of a large, hairless, cat-like creature—pounced. Its claws ripped into his chest, causing a sensation like acid burning away at skin. Blaise barely had time to place his hands on either side of the feline skull and prevent five-inch incisors from ripping off his face. For a few seconds, they remained almost motionless in a mortal struggle, straining sinew against flexing beast-muscle. Hot, foul breath brushed against his face. Blaise stared directly into the prowler’s yellow and black eyes and engaged in a mental battle as much as a physical one. After what seemed like hours to Blaise, but was probably only five or ten seconds, he gritted his teeth and used all of his strength to heave the beast off him. It let out a bloody bawl, the sound bouncing eerily off the tunnel walls. The unholy sound was cut off abruptly when Blaise slashed upward in one fluid motion.
The prowler’s head fell to the dirt floor with a thud.
“More are coming. The prowler’s shriek warned them,” he told Grady Ellison, who had just leapt into the chamber in wolf-form. “Cover me while I look for Isi.”
A sluggish underground stream trickled several feet to the left of him. In the distance, two smoking torches attached to metal brackets lit a narrow tunnel. He saw the shadowed forms of fleeing revenants. He glanced back as two bloodboars and three canids charged into the chamber from the opposite end. He recognized Morshiel’s rear guard. Twice the number of Literati had already descended, however, each of them transformed into their wolf-selves.
They could fend for themselves admirably, Blaise decided as he charged down the tunnel toward the fleeing figures. He heard shrieks and growls and the sound of bodies thudding against the tunnel walls echoing behind him.
He instinctively reached with his mind, sensing the lay of the land and sentient creatures in the near vicinity. When he became aware of a very fragile, weakened consciousness, he aimed in that direction in the tunnels. Revenants scrambled ahead of him. They obviously had been ordered to retreat by Morshiel, but they also were aware of Blaise approaching. They knew an encounter with him meant almost certain death.
The tunnel narrowed, enough that he had to duck his head. It became so skinny at one point that there was a scrum as the revenants all tried to squeeze into an opening, none of them wanting to be last. He ran as fast as he could, slowly eating up the space between himself and the escaping Scourge. Undoubtedly Morshiel was in the lead. If he could just reach the end of the line, it was conceivable he could fight the revenants one by one, for the tunnel width allowed only enough space for one-to-one combat. He had the definite advantage.
“You’re about to die, you cursed beasts,” he roared as he pursued.
The tunnels were very old. The ceiling and walls crumbled. Dust was rising beneath scurrying, frantic paws and pounding human feet. It burned in his lungs, and the air grew murky, making vision difficult. He blinked dirt out of his eyes. Someone ahead carried a lantern, which created a dim, bobbing light on the earthen wall. He sensed several revenants were ahead of him—perhaps several dozen—but he only could see the one who had lost the scramble at the entrance, a canid with pumping, ropey muscles running for its life.
He clearly sensed the subtle scent of wolf amongst the stench of Scourge revenant. It must be Isi. Adrenaline flooded his muscles, increasing his strength.
He was close enough to reach the canid. He clasped his hand around the bunching thigh muscle of the revenant and yanked. It barked viciously in a show of fury, but it couldn’t completely turn in the tight tunnel. The snapping, lethal fangs never reached Blaise. His heartluster plunged into the belly as if it were made of soft butter. The fierce growl of the canid morphed into a panicked yelp as it fell heavily to the ground. Blaise leapt over the body, never losing a second, snarling as he grabbed and caught the next revenant around the lower leg. The dry, rough skin told him it was a prowler. The sleek, foul beasts were more flexible in the narrow tunnel than the canids. Blaise paid for getting closer to Isi with a tear of vicious claws from shoulder to hand. The revenant let out wild death-shriek before he took off its head, the sound bouncing eerily off the narrow tunnel and sending a dire warning to all ahead.
Even though he’d cut down the canid and prowler as quickly as possible, he’d lost valuable seconds. The light was growing dimmer, but he could make out the shadow of the next fleer in line. It was someone in human form—a tall male, because he needed to hunch over in the passage as much as Blaise. He appeared to be carrying a large, bulky item. Was it Morshiel? Somehow, Blaise didn’t think so, although he did sense his clone was close.
Very close.
They were escaping, but Blaise thought he could overcome the tall man. Whatever he carried was slowing him down. He plunged ahead. He came to an abrupt halt when he almost tripped over a form crumpled at the bottom of the tunnel.
The man he’d been chasing had dropped his burden, sacrificing it for speed and escape. The only source of light faded away. He knelt warily and felt with his hands in the now pitch-darkness. It was a man. Blood smeared on Blaise’s hand. He lifted it to his nose.
He caught the scent of wolf with his keen sense of smell.
Isi.
A minute later, he came face to face with Michael Lord leading a contingent of Literati into the tunnel.
“Go back,” Blaise said. “They’ve escaped. I have Isi.”
When they reached the large chamber with the underground river, he did a quick survey of the two beheaded bodies on the ground, satisfied to see neither was a Literati.