Chapter 10

As Remy and I faded into the dark, I became aware of how little I knew about macalla in their feral state. Her spine lengthened as she abandoned her typical slouch for ruler-straight posture, and her usual clomping steps fell silent. Cunning gleamed in her eyes, and her upper teeth just overlapped her bottom lip. Her fingers extended, turned knotty with extra joints, and sprouted lime-green claws.

I might have gulped. Hard. A few times. But I could still find my friend in her questionable fashion tastes.

Apparently, Bishop wasn't the only one sharing his deepest, darkest secrets tonight.

Shadows cocooned the warehouse a dozen yards away, but its parking lot bustled with activity.

"We need to get onto the roof." Her voice whistled through her teeth. "Can you climb?"

"I do okay." I checked the bag for rope, but I came up empty. "Are you sure that's the way to go?"

"No one ever looks up. Trust me." She flexed her odd fingers. "They won't see us coming."

As confident as she sounded for a woman dressed in a white bodysuit with sequins, I had to believe her.

She mimed zipping her lips, pointed toward the nearest tree, a pine with rust-colored needles and a split trunk that indicated a recent brush with lightning, and sank her nails into its flaking bark.

I raised my eyebrows to convey my doubt at her choice.

With inhuman quickness, she scurried to the charred treetop for the best view then flashed me a signal I took to mean it was my turn. How did she expect me to follow that act? I wasn't Spider Girl. Squirrel Girl would be more accurate, given how nutty this whole operation was, but I would do my best.

The pine groaned under my weight, and the limbs I'd watched her use creaked beneath my hands and feet. The third time I fully extended my body, I heard a vital, cracking noise.

"Remy,"I whisper-screamed, but it was too late.

The ground rushed up and smacked me in the face. The air exploded from my lungs, my palms screamed at the splinters embedded in them, and when I caught my breath again, I smelled Christmas and realized I had inhaled a handful of pine needles.

"Oww."

The dark smudge of my shadow peeled away until Ambrose sat beside me. He ran his fingertips down my spine, and chills followed the prickling of his energy, but he appeared satisfied. I must not have broken anything in the fall.

A slight rustle was all the warning I got before Remy landed beside my head.

"You're heavier than you look." She flipped me over to confirm I was still alive. "This just got harder."

Voice high and airy, I wheezed, "You're the one who chose a dead tree as a steppingstone."

"The north side is fine. It's the south side that got struck. It's still alive. Recovering even. Totally safe."

Trust a fae to intuit something like that but not grasp I weighed more than a leaf. She knew snacking was my favorite hobby. It was like her common sense had flown out the window when she…

Oh.

Huh.

This might be a problem.

There was freedom in giving one's self over to one's base nature. Midas and I had similar, predatory drives, but I never stopped to consider what Remy's might be. Aside from her multiplying trick, I hadn't witnessed her use her talents. She told us stealth was a skill she had honed, and that might be true, but for her to have lost herself so quickly, I had to wonder.

Maybe one of her selves had more affinity with nature? Or maybe this was how she got in the zone? The truth was, I had no idea, and I had no time to ask. I trusted Remy, and I had to take her method on faith.

"I'll go high, you go low." She returned to the burned tree. "I'll get on the roof and create a distraction."

"We don't want to put them on alert," I cautioned her. "Make it subtle."

"Please." She sunk in her nails, and charred bark peeled away. "Subtlety is my middle name."

Here I thought it was ohmygoddesswe'reallgoingtodie, which is what I screamed while riding with her.

"Last one there is a rotten egg," she called softly, and skittered up the trunk.

Ambrose tilted his head back and watched until she disappeared from view.

"Looks like it's just you and me," I told him. "I'm counting on you to watch my six."

The shadow stared after Remy, his posture tense, but he shook off his mood and waved me on.

In following his lead, I placed more trust than ever in his dynamic duo vow. He got me within five yards of the open bay doors on the east side of the warehouse, and I paid him in caramel brownie brittle, the last of my Choco-Loco stash.

Lowering into a crouch behind a bush, I observed the coven and reacquainted myself with the layout.

Wooden crates dotted the loading dock. Those were new. A practitioner with a clipboard used a random single box as a stool, but most were stacked three and four high. As far as I could tell, the guy was in charge of checking off names before ushering newbies into the waiting vans.

Done processing the last batch, he opened a bag of chips and settled in with his phone.

Must be nice to sit on your butt, snacking and scrolling while everyone else got their hands bloody.

About the time my thighs began quivering, a cold point jabbed the base of my skull.

A shocked exhale burst out of me, and I froze as hot breath fanned my neck and shoulders.

Fear pounded out a tempo in my chest, and I had a split second to curse Ambrose for not warning me.

You jerk. You coward. You liar, I thought at him. You said we were in this together.

A rough tongue swept up my nape, leaving a thick trail of drool behind to dry in the balmy night air.

"Midas."I whipped my head toward him. "What are you doing here?"

With a doggy grin, he bounded off into the crowded parking lot like a puppy on a playdate.

The guy on the dock spotted him and stared, confused by his appearance or stunned at his gall, I don't know. Midas lowered his front end until his elbows hit the pavement then shook his tail at them.

The message was clear: Catch me if you can.

Or maybe it was Kiss my grits.

Definitely one of the two.

Only a previously unknown inner wellspring of strength prevented me from recording it with my phone.

Oh, but I wanted to, so badly.

Why he came, I didn't know. There was no time to ask him. But he saved Remy from exposing herself. He must have figured out we needed more help to cross the finish line than we realized.

Throwing back his head, Midas bayed at the moon, and the lazy practitioner scrambled for cover.

A scream brought backup running, but they scattered and squeaked like mice before a hunting cat.

Allowing Ambrose to guide me, I trailed him behind one of the waiting vans then snorted at the driver. He had locked himself in and sat with his nose mashed against the glass. The coven was scraping the bottom of the barrel for these guys.

Thanks for the distraction, Stud.

No one paid attention to me or my shadow as we crept up the cement stairs. As I got even with one of the crates, I noticed it held black backpacks, not unlike the ones we brought with us from HQ. Worry over what they contained tempted me to unzip one, but I had no time to be nosy.

Still, I appreciated the coven leaving stacks scattered across the dock. They made for excellent cover.

Slinking from shadow to shadow, I slipped unseen inside the warehouse then plastered my back against the wall until I got my bearings.

The concrete floor in the main space contained a yawning maw that stretched from corner to corner, a good thirty feet across. With a gulp, I realized the portal had grown since the last time I was here.

Sulfurous mist tickled my nose and threatened to make me sneeze as it oozed from the portal's edges to lap at the ankles of the thirteen witchborn fae who stood watch over it with a chant on their lips.

I couldn't see from this angle, but the goal was a staircase made of oxidized metal spiraling down, down, down until it vanished from sight. That was my way in. The only way in. I just had to get there in one piece.

Past thirteen witchborn fae.

With instant access to a bottomless archive teeming with monsters eager to be worn, to feel alive again.

Easy-peasy.

The portal guardians didn't bat an eye at the commotion. They were content to let the others handle the ruckus. They must be linked in an active casting they couldn't stop without aborting the spell. That might work in my favor, depending on its purpose and if they could hurl it at me when I breached their line.

A pointy finger jabbed me in the shoulder hard enough to bruise, and I jumped before I saw Remy, come down from her hiding place.

Ambrose and I really needed to have a talk about him alerting me to oncoming danger and the approach of friendlies. How else could I act suave and debonair in the face of danger?

"Your man sure knows how to make a distraction." She settled in beside me. "Why's he here?"

"No clue." I trusted him to act in our best interests. "Maybe he knows something we don't."

Remy touched the strap of her backpack, and when she noticed me looking, she yanked it tighter.

"It almost fell off on the way over," she explained. "How do we get past the portal guards?"

"Ambrose?" I jerked my chin toward them. "Take them down."

The shadow, given permission, raced toward them with the bounding strides of a dog on a scent.

"Are you sure that's wise?" Her fingers curled and released at her sides. "They're casting."

"Ambrose can handle them." I didn't get into the particulars. "He'll incapacitate two or three, and then we'll make a run for it."

"Incapacitate?" She frowned. "You do know spells can go boom if you set them off ahead of schedule?"

Cold sweat blossomed on my forehead as I tried not to think too hard about what I had almost done.

"I do now." I focused my attention inward to shoot him a message. "Dial it down a few notches, okay?"

The shadow radiated displeasure, but he slowed his assault until his strikes gained surgical precision.

Rather than take down a few guardians to make an opening, he skimmed from all of them.

Soon, the lot of them hit their knees, their lips moving in silence. Their power fluctuated in wide bands that brushed against my face like a hot, foul wind, but their spell didn't break.

"That's our cue." I clasped hands with Remy, grateful when she reverted from her feral aspect. "Let's go."

We leapt into their circle, over their joined hands, and raced for the inset stairs. I held my breath as I took the first step. A painful cold stabbed me, but I eased into the archive without difficulty, grateful I couldn't look down and see the howling faces of the damned I recalled from the photos on my phone.

Remy lagged behind me, and I loosened my grip to give her one final choice to stay or go.

Her fingers tightened at the last second, as I sank in past my shoulders, and she hurried in after me.

Ambrose slid into me, stuffing me with a sense of fullness that nauseated, but there was nothing for it.

Why I thought it would help, I don't know, but I gulped a lungful of air before ducking my head under the surface of the archive. I held my breath until my chest burned, until I had no choice but to gulp oxygen.

Oxygen, if this denser matter qualified, sliced my nasal passages and froze the back of my throat until I tasted blood.

I can breathe,I reminded myself. I can breathe. I can breathe.

The archive just wasn't making it easy.

"Oh," I whimpered as I surveyed our surroundings. "Oh, my goddess."

I had really, really, really hoped the vengeful souls only appeared on film.

That was how it worked in the movies. Frak it all, couldn't reality get it right just this once?

Unsure what I expected to see when I glanced back, I goggled at the stone gateway that had spat us out onto the staircase. Runes were carved into its frame, and mist curled from its center to pool at our feet.

The archive was far more gothic chic on this side.

The scent of fresh meat must have called forth the curious, each the vestige of a strange and unfamiliar creature. They drifted beside us, not quite touching, as they glared with hate-filled eyes at the intruders.

"They can't hurt us." Remy laughed with near-panicked gaiety. "They can't touch us."

I was thinking the same thing, but I was afraid to say it out loud and jinx us both.

Obviously, she didn't share my superstitions.

"Don't be too sure," I cautioned her. "It's pointless to attack us when we don't have room for them."

A shudder rippled the length of her arm and trembled in our joined hands as my words struck home.

In perfect unison, the petulant souls swiveled their heads to stare behind us with renewed interest.

I tensed, ready to sprint for it and drag Remy along with me, but it wasn't the coven in hot pursuit.

Fur stained with blood, a blond gwyllgi stepped into the archive with us.

The spirits shrieked over him, whipping themselves into a frenzy, biting and clawing to get to him first.

"Midas," I breathed. "What have you done?"

I lunged at him, but the spirits got there first.

They swarmed before I could reach him.