Kiss of the Night (Dark-Hunter #5)(26)
Author: Sherrilyn Kenyon

They walked for several minutes before they came to a five-way split.

"Wow," Chris said as he peeped around Cassandra and Wulf. "Where do all of these go?"

Wulf indicated the one on the far right with the light. "That one goes to the garage, the next one over goes to the field just beyond the south gate, the middle one is for a bomb shelter farther underground. The next one leads to the street outside the main gate and this one"-He indicated the one on his left-"leads to the boathouse."

"Man, I wish I’d known about this when I was a kid, I could have had a ton of fun down here."

"Yeah, and you could have gotten lost or hurt and no one would know."

Chris blew him a raspberry.

Ignoring him, Wulf led them down the long, winding tunnel that ran the length of his property. The boathouse was set off to the side so that, to people who didn’t know better, it would look like it wasn’t part of his holdings.

That, along with the design of the boathouse, had been intentional.

More than five thousand square feet in size, the boat-house looked like a home from the water, with the first level of it housing his collection of boats. The second floor had four bedrooms, a kitchen, living, dining, and game rooms. Over the years this had served as guest accommodations for Acheron whenever he came to town.

Wulf only hoped Stryker wasn’t bright enough to figure out he had an escape route this far down his property.

At the end of the tunnel, there was a steel ladder leading up to a trapdoor that opened in the back of the boat-house inside a storage closet.

Wulf went first, ready for anything. The lock on this door was manual in case of fire. Wulf spun the combination, then waited for the release to sound.

Slowly, he pushed the door open, expecting the worst.

There was no motion in the room or outside it. No sound of someone or something walking about. He listened for several minutes, but all he could hear was the creaking of the ice and the howl of the winds.

All seemed right…

Lifting himself through the trapdoor, he reached down to help Cassandra up. She drifted a small distance away in the closet while Chris and then Kat climbed up.

"Okay," Wulf whispered to them. "It looks good so far. I want you," he said to Cassandra, "and Chris to stay back. If anything happens, you two dodge back into the tunnels and press the red button to lock the door behind you."

"What about you and Kat?" Cassandra asked.

"We’ll take care of ourselves. You and Chris are the important things."

Cassandra’s eyes told him she didn’t agree.

"It’ll take a couple of minutes to lower the airboat from its harness down to the ice," he explained to her. "Let’s hope the Daimons don’t hear it."

Cassandra nodded and kissed him lightly. "Be careful."

Wulf hugged her gently, then opened the door. He took a step out, then hesitated as his foot collided with something large and solid on the floor.

No, wait.

It was left-behind clothing. Something that reminded him of Daimon remains.

Wulf pulled his retractable sword from his boot at the same