Crimson Veil

Camille nodded. “I’m in. We need to go home and change first.” She paused, looking at Tanne. “You want to come with us?”

He pushed back his chair, standing. “Of course. I’m handy with fights. I throw a mean punch and have magical abilities you might not have.”

Delilah slammed her laptop shut. “Let’s roll. Tanne, you driving or riding with us?”

“I’ll come with you. I took the bus here.”

As we headed out to the car, I couldn’t help but think this was just what we needed. Not only a break in finding Violet, but the opportunity to accomplish something—to be able to actually put a stop to at least one of the bad guys.

By her car in the driveway, I saw that Nerissa had made it home. Chase, too, by the looks of things. But unless the evening had gone badly, he’d be over at Iris’s playing with his daughter.

As we walked through the door, I motioned for Tanne to wait for us in the living room, and headed into the kitchen, where I found Nerissa, parked in front of her own laptop, frowning. As she saw me come through the door, she waved me over.

“I’m starting to get e-mail from HotBod24.” She had logged into the Supe Matchups website. “He’s viewed my video five times already—and there have only been four other views, all from different users. He just sent me an e-mail requesting to meet.”

HotBod24 had been obsessed with Violet’s video on the Supe Matchups site, and he had been the one to e-mail her shortly before her disappearance, requesting a meeting. Which meant, if we were right in our suspicions, that Lowestar Radcliffe had taken the bait. Here’s where it got dicey—stringing him along while we figured out our best approach.

I frowned. “No way in hell are you going to meet him. But for now, just tell him you’re not sure. Ask him a few minor questions—get-to-know-you types. Don’t make them obvious. Express… a little doubt as to whether you’re ready to meet or not, but try to phrase it so…” I wasn’t sure what I was saying.

“Play hard to get but not unattainable.” Nerissa glanced up at me as I leaned over her shoulder.

“Right!” I laughed and stroked her back. “I’ve got to head out. We finally caught a break. We think we know where to find Violet.”

She paused. “You’re going to search for her.”

I knew exactly what she was thinking by the tone of her voice. She was worried. She had a certain lilt, a certain light accusatory tone, that only showed up when we had to head out on a case, and I knew it was her fear talking. She’d never ask me not to go, she knew what we were up against, but the fear was there, and chances were it would never go away.

“We have to.” I studied her face. “I wish you could come with us but…”

“But I’d be a liability. I’m trained in healing—be it through words or through sex, I’m trained to heal the soul. Not fight. I understand. But please…”

“I’ll be careful. I love you.” And with a kiss, I headed downstairs to change clothes. I was wearing a nice outfit and chances were things were going to get dirty, if not rough. I switched it out for a pair of snug but flexible indigo jeans, a black turtleneck, and a banged-up corduroy jacket. I slid on a pair of motorcycle boots and was ready to rumble.

By the time I returned to the kitchen, Nerissa had finished her e-mail back to HotBod24—a perfect blend of hesitation and promise—and she was eating dinner. Hanna had sliced some leftover steak, added gravy, and made her a thick sandwich.

“Do everything you can to save her,” Nerissa said, staring at her plate. “Get her out of that hellhole.”

I rested my hand on her shoulder. “We’ll find her.” I wished I felt as confident as I sounded. But so much had gone wrong, it was hard to trust in anything anymore. “You get some sleep. We probably won’t be back till late and I don’t want you waiting up like you usually do. Promise me?”

She shrugged, but nodded. “Yeah, I’ll try.”

Camille and Delilah appeared. Camille was wearing her Emma Peel catsuit, along with a low-slung silver belt. Her kitten-heel granny boots and black suede jacket were both gothy and yet functional for where we were headed. Somehow, she managed to look dressed for clubbing no matter what the circumstance.

Delilah had changed into a pair of camo cargo pants with a green V-neck sweater, and she had her leather jacket slung over her shoulder. Her boots—this time a pair of steel-toed hiking boots—were new, but I knew she’d been breaking them in for a couple weeks so they shouldn’t present a problem.

Smoky, Morio, and Roz were waiting for us. Vanzir, Trillian, and Shade would stay home to help protect the place. Even with Aeval’s guards, we still were uncomfortable emptying the joint, especially with babies in the mix now. Trillian had headed over to Iris’s house to make sure everything was set for the night. Shade gave Delilah a kiss and I heard him murmur a warning for her to be careful as we headed out the door.

“We’ll take two cars—Camille, you take Tanne, Smoky, and Morio. Roz and I will ride with Delilah.” I preferred taking my Jag when I could, but with it banged up, I didn’t want to chance using it much. And we’d be less conspicuous with two cars instead of three.

“What’s the plan? Or do we even have one?” Camille snorted. “Not that we usually do.”

“We head down in the tunnels nearest where Pete’s Barbershop was, follow the trail Tanne did, and… well… see what we find.” I gave her a fangy grin. “That’s the best I’ve got.”

“Then it will have to do. Make sure we all have our weapons. I can’t use the unicorn horn till after I charge it in a few days—I expended all of its power when Delilah and I were trying to escape from that room during the storm in Elqaneve. So I’m packing silver. And magic.”

She patted her hip and I saw she had strapped on the sheath to her silver dagger. Father had given each of us a silver dagger when we were younger. Delilah’s had proved to be sentient, after a fashion. I couldn’t touch mine now—silver and vamps didn’t mix. So it stayed in my lair, on the wall in a display case.

“I’m ready.” Roz opened his jacket. As usual, he was a walking armory. Stakes, magical incendiary devices, daggers, shurikens, a mini-crossbow, and gods knew what else were fastened snugly into the folds of his duster.

“You’re insane, but that’s beside the point. We can always count on you for some sort of destructive firepower.” Morio shook his head, but he was laughing quietly. “I’m ready. Smoky—what about you?”

“I am a weapon.” That was all the dragon needed to say.

As we headed off into the rain-soaked night, the storm parted for a brief second, but the moon was nowhere in sight, and she was waning to dark anyway. A few stars peeked through, but they were covered over again by another incoming band of dark clouds. October had us by the balls; that was for sure.

Underground Seattle. We’d been there so much you’d think we’d know it like the backs of our hands, but the truth was, the maze of buildings tucked away beneath the city streets was labyrinthine. And with our local crew of denizens who made their home down there, the tunnels were growing—slowly but surely. What had started out being the remains of a major fire that destroyed over twenty-five city blocks of the city back in 1889 had turned into a sublevel of Seattle. An underground haven.

After the fire, the city officials required that all buildings be made of stone or brick, and they raised the level of the growing city from anywhere between ten and thirty feet higher than they’d been, leaving the burned-out shells of stores to linger in the depths below the new city streets.

The official Underground Tour had shifted quite a bit since the Supes had come out of the closet, and the reality of how large the Seattle underground had grown came to light. There were rumors at first, then a few articles had cropped up in the papers, worrying about the stability of the city considering the network of tunnels was growing. But officials were quick to quell fears.

As to what the truth was? I didn’t know. And I doubted that anybody really did. It was far too chancy to attempt to map out the network, because the FBHs were gradually beginning to realize just how dangerous some of the Supes could be. Chase had mentioned not long ago how much busier the FH-CSI was becoming as the regular police force turned over more and more cases to them. In fact, he’d mentioned that at the last biennium, his department had seen a substantial increase in funding.

All these thoughts and more ran through my head as I called shotgun and slipped into the passenger seat in Delilah’s Jeep. Roz and his personal arsenal climbed into the back. He was a one-man army of weapons, and we’d come to rely on him for anything we might have forgotten.

Delilah led the way, with Camille following. They both had the GPS coordinates to the area we were looking for. I wasn’t thrilled that we were headed back into the Greenbelt Park district. It was haunted—severely haunted—and while we’d discovered just what had been causing a lot of the intense ghostly activity, and dispatched it—hopefully for good—the spirits would take quite a while to calm down. And by quite a while, we could be talking years.

The streets were empty. Seattle was a busy city, with a bustling metropolis, but at night, most of the business districts and a lot of the suburbs were quiet, the activity going on behind locked doors. Oh, in the Broadway District, or the U District, things were different. The streets were filled with students and hipsters, with junkies and hookers, but here it was fairly quiet.

The rain pelted down, hard bullets of water tap dancing against the pavement. The businesses in this district were run-down and shabby, as were the houses. Everything had been let go—and while nothing seemed to be in rack and ruin—nothing actively falling apart—neither were the buildings in great condition. It was as though nobody here cared. There was a feeling of abandonment that permeated the neighborhood.

Delilah swerved to avoid a blown tire in the road, then pointed to a building up ahead. “That warehouse? It’s abandoned. It’s also got a basement entrance into the tunnels. We can slip in through there.”

I frowned. “Anybody using the building that we know of?” Walking into an abandoned building had never done us any good. There always seemed to be somebody staked out in it.

“I don’t know.” She laughed. “I guess we pay our money and take our chances.” And with that, she turned into the parking lot and swung around back. Camille was following us, and within minutes, we were parked and out of the cars, staring at the back of the warehouse.

The building was three stories high, but we had no clue how far belowground it went. We knew, thanks to Delilah, that there was a basement, but whether that was the extent of the warehouse was anybody’s guess.

The place had been a storehouse of some sort, by the looks of the loading docks. The building was brick or concrete or some sort of stone—it was hard to tell what lay under the layers of dirty cream-colored paint. The metal roll-up doors were probably locked, but a regular door stood to the side, and chances were we could pick that lock. This setup seemed to be standard with the warehouses we’d found.

It crossed my mind that it might be handy to have someone like Daniel with us now—he was supposed to be an expert at getting into buildings, and he was used to holding his own in a fight. But then again, how many times had he gone up against a goblin horde? Or a troll? Fighting other humans was one thing. Fighting Supes who were stronger and tougher than you, quite another. Chase had discovered that, all too painfully.

Tanne knelt down by the door. “I know the charm of unraveling. It is akin to the charm of unlocking, but I don’t know if it will work.” He glanced up at us. “I am a spell singer by nature. I can charm fir and oak. I’m not so handy with metal, but I’ll try.”

I stared at him. This was a new one to me, but Camille seemed to understand what he was saying.

He began to hum, a low tune—slow and melodic. The sound became a whisper of words in a language I couldn’t understand, but I could feel the magic behind them, and the spiral of sound built until I could almost see the shape of a creature emanating from Tanne’s lips.

He held out his hand and sure enough, a vaporous form—bipedal and vaguely humanoid—stepped onto his fingers. As he reach out, holding his hand out to the door lock, the creature delicately bent down to touch the lock, and then, in a puff of smoke, it vanished into the keyhole.

We heard the sound of grating, then a faint tumble and click. The door sprang open and Tanne sat back, squatting on his heels, staring at it.

“I can’t believe that worked. But then again, the spell of Unraveling is stronger than the spell to charm locks.” He stood, letting out a long breath.

I stared at him for a moment. “You aren’t nearly as afraid as you should be. Unless you’ve done this sort of thing before.”

Tanne shrugged. “Fear destroys. Fear tears plans and people to pieces. I lived in the ancient forest, where the dark arts are honed to a brilliant degree. My people are not gentle, and neither are the humans who share the forest with us. I brought my skills, and my legacy, here.”

“What legacy is that?” It was apparent Tanne was far more than he seemed to be at first notice, but often people with real power were. They didn’t need to parade it because it was there, tangible.

“I come from the Woodland Fae, yes. But my people are more than this. People know me as a writer, but my family… we are the Hunter’s Glen Clan. We’ve chased down demons and monsters for centuries. Back in the Black Forest, my mother leads the clan. My sisters and I learned from her, and now some of us have emigrated here. We are establishing our own niche.”