have forgotten what we’ve done for each other. I’ll take you there, now. But swear that no one dies tonight.”
“I can and will swear not to kill anyone at this place. I do not promise to do no harm to certain parties, but they will survive it. Will that do?”
I weighed his promise, though I really didn’t need to. I’d gotten out of the habit of trusting him, but there was no reason I shouldn’t and every reason that I should. I nodded. “Yes. Now let’s get out of here.”
But this time it was Carlos who stood still. “One thing more: The return of Inman means a great deal to me and to Cameron. If that is accomplished, I will lend you any aid I can with your ghosts—and Limos. If not, I will still help you, but without Inman my resources will be limited to the nighttime—which may not be enough.”
It was a considerable concession. Carlos is the most magically powerful ally I have. As much as it gave me a qualm to admit it, I felt more confident that the plot involving Hazzard, Limos, and Purlis could be unwound with him on my side than without him. I stopped and turned to him, risking his direct and dangerous gaze. “Thank you. That’s generous of you and I appreciate it.”
He laughed, the rolling tide of his amusement shaking in my chest. “I’m a fool to remind you, but I am indebted to you, as is Cameron, unto death and beyond.”
I felt uncomfortable; I hadn’t done the things I had just to help Carlos or the vampires of Seattle. “Come on,” I said, turning to walk to the Rover.
Still chuckling, Carlos came along behind me.
I didn’t enjoy the drive to Gas Works Park. I left the truck around the corner from the condo building where I’d last seen Quinton. But he wasn’t in the alcove near the trash and recycling now. I frowned and Carlos gave me a quizzical look.
“Quinton should be here. . . .” I felt a tugging, vibrating discomfort in my chest—the vibration of a preternatural connection that Quinton and I shared—and looked down toward the park, dropping toward the Grey.
The ghost world was churning around me, the park an upheaval of paranormal activity, much more so than it had been earlier. I backed out and turned to Carlos. “Something’s wrong.”
“I can sense that. And Inman is close.”
“So’s Quinton. But he’s down there.” I swore. “I was hoping we could sneak up on Inman, but he’s probably with Purlis. It appears we’re just going to have to dive in and make the best of whatever is going on.”
I started running for the bit of temporary fencing—if there was a secret door to something it would be there. Carlos kept up with me easily. I didn’t care if Daddy Purlis had eyes and ears on the entrance—I figured that if the turmoil in the Grey was any indication, he was too busy to do anything about it—and so I shoved through the flimsy gate that was hanging ajar. Beyond it lay an old building that had been renovated into a picnic shelter, but a new door in the old concrete structure stood open, letting a blade of light fall onto the recently grown grass. I snatched my pistol from the holster at my back and went through the doorway hard and fast.
There was no one on the other side, just a stairway leading down and distant clangs and screeches coming up. I swept the room just in case and advanced with the HK down, but ready. In the back of my mind I was thinking it was silly to carry a gun when I was backed up by a vampire necromancer, but it’s a habit and, to be fair, sometimes a brute-force technique is easier and cleaner than waiting for magic. Carlos seemed to have no problem following my lead. He kept behind me, close enough to whisper but far enough not to foul my movements. I could feel the tingling cold of spells held ready but in check. He was taking no more chances with the situation than I was.
We advanced quickly, but with sufficient care to avoid being unhappily surprised. Our caution was probably overkill, since the staircase led to a long, dim corridor with nowhere to hide and nothing hiding in it. That led to another door that stood slightly open, letting sound escape from whatever lay beyond.
The first room was plainly a remnant from the old gasworks. Rusted bolts and anchor plates, still adorning the concrete floor where equipment had once been secured, were now being used as tie-downs for empty cages with their doors hanging open and a few locked animal crates that rocked and leaked disquieting groans. The overhead lighting was long gone and had been replaced with super-bright LED work rigs clamped to the remains of wall brackets or sticking up from tripod floor stands. The lamps cast overlapping shadows around the room and made our trip through it more difficult. I stared hard at each shadow to determine whether it was natural or paranormal.
As I searched the shadows, I noticed I was no longer seeing the overlap of Grey and normal vision simultaneously and wondered when that had changed. My preoccupation made me sloppy and I barely noticed one of the shadows shimmering as it shouldn’t have.
Darkness erupted from the shimmer with the crack of leathern wings unfurling and something built of nightmare and scales lunged into the world. I couldn’t say what it was—it seemed to have no real form, and yet it had a physical presence that swept toward us with a ripple of muscle under iridescent blackness.
I pivoted, raising the gun, and Carlos stepped forward, pushing me back with a murmur. “Don’t shoot. And avoid the claws.”
We both ducked as a forelimb trailing black wings like smoke and tattered funeral shrouds ripped through the air where our heads had been. Carlos muttered something and made a throwing gesture that propelled a coil of glimmering midnight toward the creature’s diving face.
It was a long-snouted thing with an evil smile full of glittering obsidian fangs. It opened its maw to bite and the spinning, expanding shape of Carlos’s spell ripped into its mouth, tearing the thing’s head in two. The monstrous shape vanished in a sooty cloud and a skeleton clattered to the floor.
The bones at our feet were pale, acidic green and black talons defined its digits. The concrete steamed with a thin, noxious fume where the claw tips touched it.
Carlos knelt by the remains and carefully picked a few of the claws out of the rubble by their rounded, bone-end attachments. He wrapped them in a cloth from his pocket and stowed them away.
“What was that?” I asked in a low voice.
“Night dragon,” he replied. “This is a very small one—young and weak. But where you find one of these, there may be a ley weaver or dreamspinner nearby.”
I’d met a ley weaver and would be quite happy never to meet another. I shuddered at the thought. “So it’s not a monster—it’s a construct . . . ?”
“Yes and no. This skeleton is drachen, but the animation and manifestation of the night dragon is created, not born. They are useful in rousing fear and panic, but not hard to destroy once you know they are mostly illusion—but only mostly.”
I wanted to ask more about dragons in general, but I felt the press of circumstance more with each passing minute. The strange connection between Quinton and me brought a sense of growing distress that was not just my own. I nodded and stepped carefully over the skeleton, ready to carry on. Carlos didn’t need any prompting to follow me.
We continued through the room and I kept a much more careful eye on the Grey this time. A small flurry of ghosts caused us some disorientation, but as they passed I recognized a face and knew we’d gotten lucky: These were some of Hazzard’s ghosts and their energy was too depleted by the seance to do whatever they had been tasked with. But I had no idea why they were here and neither did Carlos.
“Perhaps it is not Hazzard but Limos that connects them here with Purlis,” Carlos suggested.
“I suppose, but I’d rather get to the end of this maze and find out what’s going on with the people who are still breathing before I worry about the disposition of the ones who aren’t.”
He nodded and we crept onward.
We didn’t see a single living human in the next room, only ranks of equipment and a ragged dead body of something with wispy hair and blue-green flesh. It lay on a steel table, oozing green liquid I couldn’t help but think of as blood. Whatever had been done to it had been done in haste and I had to hold back an urge to be sick or cry over it—whatever it was. On another table sat an object that looked remarkably like a salesman’s sample case made of bones and stretched skin. The boxy thing stood open, its three sections partially unfolded to reveal a cold sparkle within. A bunch of cables led off the table and away through a hole in the wall. The table was stained a curiously glimmering gray around the box. I paused at a distance to study it only long enough to see if it was an immediate threat to us, but while the cables carried power and the object was enfolded in dark energy, it appeared to be inactive and certainly not alive.
We moved on toward the door at the far side of the room, which let us out into a corridor. Not far away I
