Chapter 24 Creepier and Creepier
CREEPIER AND CREEPIER
It took an hour to assemble everyone and make our way to the old industrial district a few miles beyond the Crossroads. I told them about Mrs. Chen’s sighting before we set off.
“Esmeralda Thornwick?” Didi asked sharply.
I nodded. “Nothing’s confirmed yet, of course.”
Samuel drove the Bentley. Didi rode shotgun, her hands already crackling faintly with defensive wards. Gavin clutched a fire extinguisher in the back seat between Bo and me.
Barney followed in his own car, the vampire having declared that he refused to be crammed in with “a dragon newt who was a fire hazard and a dog who’d been rolling in something dubious.”
Bo had protested the accusation in vain; both Samuel and I could smell Nora’s vegetable patch on his fur.
The warehouse on the corner of Porter and Ninth looked abandoned. It was a squat brick building with a corrugated metal roof, half its windows boarded up and the other half shattered. A rusted loading dock jutted from one side. The parking lot was cracked concrete and weeds.
Bo refused to get out of the car at first.
“My legs don’t want to go over there,” he whimpered, pressing his belly flat against the seat.
Gavin looked like he was having similar thoughts.
I could understand why. Even from the parking lot, my wolf was bristling. There was something in the air around the place. A sticky residue that coated the back of my throat. It tasted like copper and despair and felt worse than what I’d smelled in Melody’s home.
“Stay close,” Samuel warned as we approached the loading dock, his eyes glowing amber.
I could sense his wolf under his skin.
Didi raised a hand toward the building and murmured something under her breath. Her pupils flickered with an eerie light.
“Someone practiced magic here,” she said slowly. “It’s recent. And powerful.” Her face tightened. “It’s the same signature from Maple Street.”
My wolf’s low growl rumbled up my throat as a trace of the coldness that had swamped us outside the Lincoln sisters’ clinic danced across my flesh.
Barney tested the loading dock door. The lock had been cut and replaced with a new one at some point. Metal crumpled as he crushed it with his hand. He pushed the door open.
The interior of the warehouse was a single cavernous space.
A bare concrete floor stretched out before us, the steel support pillars dotting it rising to a ceiling shrouded in shadows.
A section of the roof had collapsed. Starlight streamed through the gap, revealing stacks of abandoned boxes and barrels and vegetation.
I focused my wolf’s powers.
I couldn’t sense any other heartbeat apart from ours and a few rats.
The sinister magic we’d sensed outside lingered thickly in the air like a bad odor. There was something else beneath it. Something familiar that I couldn’t quite place.
“Let’s spread out,” Samuel said.
Bo stuck close to me as I headed for the eastern section of the warehouse.
Gavin was the one who found the trap door, the dragon newt’s obsessive attention to detail proving its worth. He called us over to where he’d crouched near one of the support pillars and was examining something on the floor.
“There are scuff marks here,” he said, his tail rigid with concentration. “They are faint, but I think there might be something beneath this concrete.”
Didi knelt beside him. She passed her hand over the spot. Her expression darkened.
“You’re right. There’s a sealing barrier built into the floor.”
Barney sniffed the air where he stood beside her, his pupils flashing crimson. “It has a definite vampiric element.”
Bo whined and tried to squeeze between my legs.
“Can you undo the seal?” Samuel asked Didi, a muscle jumping in his jawline.
Didi wrinkled her brow and focused for a moment. “It’s got several layers.” She hesitated and glanced at me. “It might be faster if Abby does it.”
I blinked. “Oh.”
I’d forgotten that I’d ripped open a magical barrier nobody else had been able to break at the Holts’ ball and punched my way through another one beneath the Chamber of Commerce a few weeks back.
My wolf slipped under my skin as I squatted next to the witch. I placed my hand where she indicated.
Magic brushed against my palm, an alien cold sensation that made my skin tingle. I flexed my fingers and felt it resist slightly.
“I think you guys should stand back for this.”
They moved several steps, Bo’s tail drooping.
I put both hands on the ground. My hair thickened and my muscles bulged as my wolf’s strength surged through me. The corrupt magic making up the barrier fought back as I tried to break it. I ground my teeth and drew on my white luna powers.
It flowed through my veins, as easy as breathing.
The steel pillar beside me trembled. Dust vibrated off the floor. Windows rattled as the building began to shake.
I curled my fingers and tore the barrier and the floor apart with a feral sound.
Gavin’s horns popped out as concrete crumbled into a dark space below. Didi cursed. Even Samuel flinched at the vile magic that poured out from it.
Barney shone a flashlight into the space, his jaw set in a hard line.
A wooden ladder disappeared into the gloom.
I finally recognized what it was I had been feeling since I’d stepped out of the car.
“Samuel, I think there’s a ley line beneath this building,” I said quietly.
The others exchanged a tense look. Samuel headed down the ladder first.
Bo whined and paced the edge of the opening as we descended after him.
“Be careful. It smells nasty down there.”
We found ourselves inside an empty brick cellar.
My white wolf powers roared in my blood, eliminating the suffocating effect of the magic the space contained. Crimson flared in Barney’s pupils and amber brightened Samuel’s eyes. Tiny pilot flames burst into life on the tips of Gavin’s horns.
“This place is old,” Didi muttered, placing a hand crackling with magic on the nearest wall. “Not many people would know this even existed.”
“Not unless they’ve been down here before at some point in the past,” Samuel said darkly.
My scalp prickled. Barney stiffened beside me.
It wasn’t just the corrupt magic bathing the cellar and the ley line deep underground that was making the hairs rise on my nape. The coppery scent I’d caught outside was stronger here.
My wolf growled. It was blood.
Barney and I followed it to one of the steel pillars.
“Didi,” I said, my mouth dry.
The witch came over.
She paled when Barney’s flashlight washed over a blood stain on the floor. She swallowed and crouched, magic flaring on her fingertips.
I blinked when an echo of her powers lingered in my vision.
“There was a containment ward here,” she said after a moment. “Somebody was being kept inside it.”
Barney traced the metal column with his fingers. “There are specks of blood on the pillar. They were tied up.”
“Over here,” Samuel called out in the gloom.
Barney and I followed Didi to where Samuel and Gavin squatted beside another pillar. There was even more blood on the floor here.
Magic flared in Didi’s eyes as she examined the area. “Another containment ward.”
We found the third containment point at the back of the cellar.
“Three sisters,” Barney muttered.
“Three barriers,” Samuel said in a voice edged with steel.
My chest constricted.
I heard Didi grind her teeth.
The witch took a shaky breath, placed both palms flat on the ground, and closed her eyes. Magic danced under her eyelids and across her hands. Several seconds passed.
When she opened her eyes, her expression had changed into a hard mask I didn’t recognize.
“I can feel the Lincoln sisters’ residual signature,” she said flatly. “Their healing magic leaves a particular imprint. It’s faint, but it’s unmistakable.” She faltered. “They were here.”
Samuel’s hands curled into fists at his sides. “How long ago?”
“It’s hard to tell. The other magic in this place is muddying everything. But the residue hasn’t fully faded.” Didi met his gaze. “Days. They were moved recently.”
My heart thumped against my ribs as we exchanged a wary glance.
“Esmeralda knew we were getting close,” I murmured.
“We don’t know if the woman your old neighbor saw was really her,” Gavin said, his tail twitching agitatedly.
“Want to bet?” Barney muttered.
Didi’s emotions washed across my white wolf senses in a hot, painful wave.
Shock. Anguish. Fury.
I felt the witch’s magic surge through her body as her instincts reacted to the unholy violation that had taken place down here, in this dark forgotten space.
She froze when I silently placed a hand on her arm. A shudder shook her, her cold fingers closing gratefully over mine.
Bo was practically vibrating with anxiety when we emerged from the cellar.
“What did you find?” he said, jumping nervously around me.
I hesitated before telling him. He whimpered, his ears flat and his tail tucked tight between his legs.
Barney studied the loading dock entrance with a frown. “The lock was changed at least twice. She was using this location regularly before they abandoned it in a hurry. There will be property records for this warehouse. An owner. A lease.”
Gavin swallowed. “I’ll check the county clerk’s filings.”
The thought that had been dancing at the back of my mind ever since we went down into the cellar finally found its way to my lips.
“What if this is more than just a kidnapping?”
The others stared.
Samuel frowned. “What do you mean?”
“Melody said the witch behind this wanted the Lincoln sisters. Not wanted to get rid of them. But wanted them. Their influence. Their power.” I swallowed. “Arthur said the Black Chalice Rite could grant whoever drank the potion the ability to consume the power of another and make it their own.”
Didi drew a sharp breath, the blood draining from her face.
Barney scowled, no doubt remembering what his nephew had attempted to do.
“You think she wants to steal the Lincoln sisters’ healing magic?” Gavin quavered, his nostrils trailing smoke.
I hesitated before dipping my chin.
Samuel stood in the center of the empty warehouse, his gaze locked on the gaping hole and the dark space where the three women had been imprisoned. The mate bond hummed with something I’d rarely felt from my alpha.
Cold, focused rage.
He turned to face us, his amber eyes catching the light that filtered through the broken windows.
“We’re done being one step behind,” he said in a deadly voice.
“Barney, I want whatever information those Alliance archives have on the Thornwicks by tomorrow. Didi, get in touch with Arthur Holt and see if he can map out where the ley line beneath this warehouse connects to. If this magic is tied to a specific configuration, he might be able to narrow down where they’ve been moved to.
Gavin, find out who owns this building and every property connected to the same entity.
” His gaze settled on me. “Abby, those shell companies are our fastest route to a name. Crack them.”