Chapter 23

TWENTY-THREE

Robin rose from his crouch, wiping his muddy fingers on his denim-clad thigh. "Tracks are fresh," he said, voice low. "She's still in here."

"And the giant?" Mac asked, likewise whispering.

"Him too." He lifted his headful of rusty-blond hair, sniffed the air, then veered into a narrow tunnel to the right, barely wide enough for the coyote shifter's shoulders. Only Icarus was a match for Robin's size, which made him a brick wall when he halted on a dime, Adam crashing into the back of him with a curse.

"Fuck, Robin, a little warning."

"Sorry," he said, not sounding sorry at all. "Forgot you were human again."

He'd come when called, exactly as Adam had predicted, and when he'd found out why, he'd bitched the entire afternoon and evening they'd had to wait for low tide and the cover of darkness. Never mind the lives and lasting peace on the line; he'd heard Paris Cirillo and had been ready to bolt right back out the door, back to chasing the warlock he blamed for his sister's death. From Mary's and Paris's comments about Atlas, from what Mac had witnessed with his own eyes the night they'd battled Vincent, Mac was beginning to think there was more to Atlas than they realized, but Robin was a dog with a bone and on one side of that bone was the warlock's name and on the other was Robin's own guilt. Good luck stopping him; they only had him for a blink and then he'd be gone again. They just had to deal with his surliness in the meantime because they needed their best hunter.

"What is it?" Mac said.

Robin extended a hand to the wall, then jerked it away like he'd been burned. He glanced over his shoulder, golden eyes skipping past Adam to him. "Your precious human's been here too."

"How?" Mac said, surprise amplifying his voice louder than intended. He lowered it again and asked quietly, "When?" According to Mary, Paris had gone to the Cirillo compound in YB. He hadn't actually been here in the tunnels beneath the Huimen Enclave.

"I don't know," Robin sniped. "This is your kind of magic. Not mine."

Mac put his hand to the wall, in the same spot Robin had, and felt the soul that had been hidden from his for the past six hours. He yanked on the soul bond—and Paris yanked back. Mac nearly fell to his knees, only the wall he leaned against holding him up. Paris had been here; Paris was still on this plane. Thank fuck.

And just as Mac recognized Paris's soul, he also recognized the viewpoint of the paintings he'd left behind. "This is where he watched from." And given how he'd painted Pati, looking back over her shoulder, she'd run right past him. "Pati went this way," he said, shoving off the wall and charging ahead, keeping his footfalls light, the mud further dampening the sound of their movements.

The next tunnel junction was a three-way, and above it, a chute in the ground that had metal rebar rungs leading up to a hatch door, the lights on the keypad beside it glowing purple. The way she'd programmed it. "Paris installed the hack," Mac said, pride tipping up the corners of his lips. He'd gotten into the compound and into Vincent's office, then into the safe he'd broken into countless times before to steal from his father's supply of Daylight. The same safe where Vincent stored his laptop that Mary now had control of.

"So," Adam said. "That's one cold storage facility cleared. Stands to reason, the door that leads to the second one, which should be farther down that tunnel"—he pointed to the far-right one—"should also be cleared." Jenn and Abigail were each leading surface teams, rescuing any victims still held in the facilities Vincent had owned on the eastern side of the border road.

"Meaning the third," Mac said, referring to the facility on the other side of the road, down the far-left tunnel, "is waiting and ready." For them to herd a giant into so they could capture him on the surface. Liam and Icarus were standing by to lead that charge, after their trio got Pati out of here alive.

"And the woman is down that one," Robin said, pointing straight ahead.

"The giant?" Adam said.

Robin shook his head. "I lose him here. Must have turned back."

"They hunt their victims," Mac said. "He'll be back."

"Let's go, then," Adam said, poorly disguising the shiver in the detective-turned-vigilante's voice.

Robin led them down the middle tunnel, Mac following behind Adam, somewhat less careful now, Mac also sensing another presence, smelling her and the unborn shifter as they snaked farther into the earth, coming to another junction.

And meeting a wall of fire.

Mac shifted on instinct and so did Robin, the crack of bones one second, a giant rust-blond body on all fours the next. Beneath him, Adam drew his pistol and leveled it at the knees of the large bald man they knew as the giant from the ridge, in human form no doubt to disguise his scent or to give the pregnant woman behind him the illusion of a chance. Not the giant they were expecting but no less dangerous, balls of fire hovering over his hands.

Backed into a dead end, hunted to within an inch of her life, Pati was still in jeopardy. A shot fired in the giant's direction could hit her too, and while the silver bullets in Adam's gun might not kill her, they would kill the eagle she carried. Mac needed to create more space between the giant and Pati if they had any hope of saving her and themselves.

Adam realized it too, gesturing up with his gun and rolling out from under Robin, staying between the coyote's big body and the tunnel wall, eyeing a path to get behind the giant with Pati, if Mac could carve out that extra space for him.

He flew high, wings spread wide, but rather than attack the giant's eyes and possibly push him backward, closer to Pati, he flew over and behind him, then dug his talons into his neck and wrapped his wings around his head, blinding him with feathers and pain, hoping like hell the fireballs he flung as he staggered forward missed his friends. And gave them the room they needed to maneuver—fast—because Mac felt the energy inside the giant sizzling. At any moment, he would transform into the nightmare of Paris's paintings, and none of them would survive.

Two shots fired and the giant lurched, sank, and Mac released him, flying back and up, out of Robin's way as the coyote slammed into the giant from behind and took him to the ground, pinned him there long enough for Adam to run past with Pati under his arm. The giant roared, the tunnel walls trembling, and while the plan had been to herd him out, at the rate the earth around them was crumbling, they just needed to get out alive.

Mac sounded the alarm, a shrill KRAA his team knew well. Robin banged the giant into the ground one more time, enough to momentarily daze him, then took off after Adam and Pati, Mac flying overhead. Watching as the coyote shifted midstride so that when they reached Adam and Pati beneath the exit chute, he could help Adam lift her high enough to reach the rungs and start to climb toward the hatch. Adam stayed right behind her, reaching a long arm around her to key in the code Mary had given them. They shoved open the hatch door and cold air rushed into the tunnel, just as hot air began to build beneath Mac's wings, orange light and thundering steps closing in.

Mac cried again, as much a "GO!" as he could manage in raven form. Robin got the message, quickly scaling the rungs next, Mac providing cover behind him as the giant, in full monstrous form, charged their direction, hands of fireballs out, ready to defend himself. Mac did the unexpected—swooping low, talons digging into the bullet wounds behind the giant's knees, driving the silver bullets deeper, speeding along what the rush of magic had temporarily slowed. The giant staggered into the fragmenting wall, his weight dislodging chunks of mud and limestone.

"Mac, let's go!" Adam called from overhead. "She's gonna blow it."

He dodged the giant's flailing arms and sailed up and out the chute, Robin slamming shut the hatch door just as the earth heaved, Nature answering the call like Mac had seen her do weeks ago at the Canyon Lands.

KRAA!

"Run!" Robin shoved a shoulder under Pati's armpit, Adam under her other, and they sprinted out of the cold storage unit, out of the building, and toward the road, Mac sailing above them with a flock of corvids, their group reaching stable ground not a moment too soon.

Nature gave a final, powerful jolt and the land on the other side of the road sank, the tunnel walls collapsing into a massive sinkhole and, with any luck, swallowing the giant for good.