the oak, he cannot free the Morfran. But at any rate, you must keep him busy. Wound either arm; it will weaken his ability to do the releasing spell. Drive him from the cavern. If you can, kill him.”
Kane’s face paled. Could he kill Pryce—or anyone? As a wolf, he ran down the deer that stocked his werewolf retreat. But take a person’s life? I didn’t know.
Mab appraised him. “Mr. Kane, you say you wish to go into that mine with us. Good. But if you do, you must be prepared to kill Pryce. He looks human, but he’s of demonic stock. He’s killed many times, gladly and without pity. Even knowing that, you may be reluctant to end his life. Perhaps you’ll understand his nature better if I supply the details Victory left out of her account of her dealings with her ‘cousin.’ ”
“No, don’t—”
She talked over me. “In the short time Vicky has been in Wales, Pryce has beaten her severely and twice attempted to kill her. He’ll certainly try again, most likely today. If she survives, he intends to force her to bear his children.”
Her words had their desired effect. Kane bristled, his eyes glowing with a dangerous light. No longer the handsome college quarterback, he growled, a low, deadly, terrifying sound.
“Mab, stop.” If she made him any angrier, he’d get reckless—a sure way to get hurt. “I don’t need protecting. I can take care of myself.”
And I could.
Except maybe not this time.
STEPPING INTO THE MINE WAS LIKE DIVING INTO AN INKWELL. The darkness, immediate and absolute, swallowed up whatever daylight lingered outside. We turned on our headlamps; spots of light jittered across the stone walls like nervous ghosts.
The tunnel had a damp, mineral, musty smell. Here, it was wide enough for two people to walk beside each other, but the curved ceiling was low. I couldn’t stand up straight, and Kane, walking ahead of me, had to bend at the waist. Huge, half-rotted wooden beams braced the walls and ceiling, some buckling under the weight of the hill. I hoped they’d hold long enough for us to get out.
Iron rails were set into the tunnel’s floor, tracks for wagons that had long ago carried loads of slate. The rusty tracks jutted up from the floor here and there. Old junk never hauled from the mine—broken machinery, rusted tools—littered the path. But the real hazard was loose rock. We were constantly stumbling over the chunks of slate that littered the floor, and in places we had to scramble over heaps of fallen rock.
We wriggled over a large pile—there was a gap of about two feet between the shifting stones and the tunnel’s ceiling—and emerged into a vast cavern. Here, the ceiling stretched up maybe twenty feet; it was hard to judge in the narrow light from my headlamp. The damp smell was stronger. Water trickled somewhere, and puddles shone on the floor.
“The cavern we want is on a lower level.” Mab started across the cavern. “Be careful on the wet slate. It’s slippery.”
I motioned to Kane to follow her. I wasn’t going to let Pryce sneak up behind us and attack him. He paused, like he was having the same thought about me, then turned and followed Mab. She was already way ahead of us.
Half a dozen steps later, Kane stopped so suddenly that I bumped into him. “What the hell—?” He brushed at the back of his head.
“What’s wrong?”
“Is something on me? It feels like something’s pulling my hair.” He wiggled his shoulders and brushed at his head again.
It must be a demon, something unmaterialized. Kane could sense its presence but not its body.
I drew my dagger and started to open to the demon plane. Then I remembered Mab’s warning and how I’d gotten stuck before. What now? I couldn’t kill the thing, whatever it was, if I couldn’t see it.
But an unmaterialized demon can’t attack, either. Just cause a creepy feeling, like ice-coated cobwebs grazing your skin.
“Keep going,” I said. “As long as it doesn’t materialize—”
The demon chose that moment to take form. It was an imp, a foot tall with slimy green skin. Both clawed hands clutched Kane’s hair. The imp reared back and opened its mouth wide, showing its jagged teeth, preparing to bite a chunk out of Kane’s neck.
“Hold still!” I shouted and stabbed the imp through its throat. The demon collapsed, and I plucked its body from Kane’s shoulders.
“An imp,” I said, showing him the materialized corpse. “Pryce must have conjured them.” I cupped my hands around my mouth. “Mab!” I shouted. “Imps!”
Before the echo faded, a chorus of insane giggles ricocheted around the cavern. We looked up. The ceiling was lit with a strange glow, the light from dozens of pairs of yellow imp eyes. Like bats, they crouched upside down, clinging to the bare rock.
A hailstorm of imps dropped on us.
Three landed on me—on my head, shoulders, and back—and two more bit at my ankles. Imps are easy to kill, just a nick from a bronze blade does the job, but there were dozens of them pinching, pulling, biting, and scratching. I’d kill one, and two more moved in to attack.
The imp on my head stabbed at my face with its claws, trying to gouge my eyes. I slashed its arm, yanked it off me, and flung it away. Kane was getting swarmed worse than I was. Five imps grasped his legs, another scrambled up his back. Two sat on his head, clawing his face, and he had one on each shoulder and another weighing down the arm holding his blade. I nailed that one with a throwing knife, freeing his hand. He pulled an imp off his head and slammed it to the ground. He held it in place with his foot and drove his blade into the center of its chest.
“You don’t have to do that,” I yelled. “Just cut them—if you break the skin, the bronze does the rest.”
I didn’t see his response, because another imp launched itself at me, landing square on my face and hugging my head. A face full of imp belly—
To my right, Kane had got the hang of it. Dead imps piled up to his shins. He twisted to get at one that hung from his back, stumbled, and fell. A dozen imps swarmed over him, hiding him from view. His arm burst from the heap, waving the knife wildly. I waded through imp corpses to help. I slashed three with one stroke and swept them away. I skewered another and hurled it into the darkness. I grabbed Kane’s arm and pulled him to his feet. A new wave attacked. We stood back to back and resumed our slice-and-dice routine.
Eventually, the attack subsided. The ranks thinned; the imps came more slowly. When the last imp was toast, its dead comrades began to dematerialize, melting into the ether. Soon, the stone floor was clear.
“Are you okay?” I asked. Kane breathed hard, his clothes ripped and speckled with blood. A nasty-looking gash bled on his cheek. As I watched, the blood stopped flowing and the cut’s edges crept toward each other. Even in human form, werewolves healed fast.
“Fine,” he said. “You?”
My clothes weren’t in any better shape than Kane’s, but I was more or less unhurt. But the imps had cost us time; we’d lost ten minutes. I called to Mab, but she didn’t answer. In the fight, I’d lost track of the direction she’d taken.
We explored the cavern’s perimeter. Besides the way we’d come, which was easy to identify from the pile of slate at its entrance, there were two other tunnels. Nothing indicated which one Mab had taken. I called down one, then the other. No answer.
“We need to split up,” I said. “You take this tunnel,” I indicated the tunnel to our right, which proceeded more or less levelly, “and I’ll take the other one.” The second tunnel, across the cavern, sloped steeply downward. Mab had said we needed to go deeper into the mine to find the cavern with the Morfran.
Kane opened his mouth like he was going to object. Yeah, yeah—he never let anyone tell him what to do. Well, neither did I, and we’d already lost too much time.
“We have no choice,” I said, my voice sharp. “One of us has to find Mab.”
