Trevor was trying to figure out if he should go left or right when he smelled smoke. A second later, he noticed a flicking orange glow softly highlighting the tunnel to the left. There was obviously some kind of fire or torch burning down there. Without thinking twice, he spun around to motion for Owen to turn off his flashlight.
The paranormal investigator fumbled with the light so much he almost dropped the damn thing, but he ended up getting it together enough to flip the switch before splashing the beam all over the tunnel.
“What is it?” Owen whispered loudly. “I can’t see a thing.”
Trevor grabbed his shoulder and turned him in the direction he’d seen the fire, leaning in close to the man’s ear. “Keep looking in that direction until your eyes adjust to the darkness.”
Not twenty seconds later, he felt Owen tense.
“Crap, is that a fire?” Owen asked softly. “These frigging creatures know how to use fire? How the hell is that possible? They’re monsters.”
Trevor wanted to point out that there was probably something prejudicial about that but decided not to bother. Something told him that Owenwouldn’t get anything he tried to tell him. It was better to save himself a wasted effort.
“I know it’s dark as hell in here for you,” Trevor said instead. “If you want to keep going, I’ll have to guide you with a hand on your shoulder. That’s probably going to be tough for you, so if you want to stay right here, that’s not a problem. Hale and I will go check out whatever is up ahead, then come back and get you.”
“No. I want to keep going,” Owen said, barely hesitating before giving his answer in a voice a lot stronger than it probably had any right to be given the situation.
At a nod from Trevor, Hale drew his handgun and moved across the tunnel, reaching the far wall, then motioned back for them to follow. Trevor started forward, holding his weapon with one hand and keeping the other on Owen’s shoulder to steer him in the right direction. Owen moved with slow, careful steps, feeling out in front of him with his toes, obviously afraid of falling flat on his face.
Once they reached the wall, Trevor turned Owen to the left, then slowly started edging them closer to the soft glow of the fire ahead of them. Hale crept silently as a wraith across the stone floor toward the next curve in the tunnel. Trevor could tell the moment his pack mate was able to see around it because Hale froze before dropping to one knee, motioning Trevor and Owen toward him. When hegot there, Trevor slowly poked his head around the round corner, stunned at what he saw.
The tunnel ahead opened into a broad cavern that was easily fifty feet across and twenty feet tall, with three small fires burning in pits in the center of the space. Earthenware pots hung over the pits, smoke curling up and around them before heading for vent holes in the ceiling.
There were at least twenty ghouls that Trevor could see, some of them female—at least that was what he had to guess from the toga-like wraps they wore across their left shoulders. But more surprising than that were the three humans moving around the cavern. Two women and a man, they all wore filthy rags. The man was hauling pieces of wood for the fire pits, while the two women tended the earthenware pots.
Damn. Davina was right. The ghouls did keep humans as property.
“What the hell are we going to do?” Owen asked softly after they’d moved back down the tunnel a bit. “There are way more of those things than I thought there’d be.”
Trevor wished he had a good answer. He hadn’t seen any obvious weapons anywhere in the cavern. Not that it mattered. With the claws the ghouls had—along with their impervious skin—there was no way he, Hale, and an unarmed Owen could hope to deal with twenty of the creatures.
Not without getting the three captives killed—and outing their own supernatural identities to the last person on earth they’d want to share it with.
Trevor glanced at his watch to see that it was getting close to time for them to head back anyway. “We’ll go back to the rendezvous point and meet up with the others, then come up with a plan to get those people out of there.”
“Should we tell the police?” Owen asked, looking back and forth between him and Hale.
That was the plan most people would go with, so he couldn’t fault Owen for it. But in this situation, that wasn’t going to help.
“You want to take a guess how cops would respond to something like this—assuming we could get them to believe us with anything less than a psychiatric evaluation?” Hale asked softly. “They’d send a couple dozen heavily armored cops into the tunnels above us, making more noise than a herd of elephants, and the ghouls would be long gone before the police ever saw them—along with their captives. Then where would we be? Back in the hospital for round two of that psychiatric evaluation. That’s where.”
In the darkness, Trevor could see Owen consider that idea. Finally, the logic of it must have seeped in, because the man nodded.
“Okay, you’re right,” Owen said. “We get out of here and come up with a plan. Then we’ll come back and get those people out.”
Trevor breathed a sigh of relief. He’d thought for a second that Owen might give them some trouble. But the guy merely turned in the general direction of the tunnel they’d descended down, waiting for Trevor to guide him out.
Before he could, the clanging of metal on metal filled the tunnels, seemingly coming from everywhere at once. Okay, that couldn’t be good. A fraction of a second later, Trevor heard snarls and the slap of unshod feet on stone coming their way from the cavern. He had no idea what had happened, but yup, they were screwed.
“What’s that?” Owen asked nervously.
“Trouble.”
Trevor barely got the word out before a handful of ghouls ran around the corner, fangs and claws reflecting the dim light coming from the fires behind them. Owen’s flashlight flickered to life, illuminating the area of the tunnel around them—and all the creatures coming to kill them.
Hale started shooting first, Trevor pulling Owen behind him before firing the 9mm that STAT had given them to use. It wasn’t the caliber he preferred, but it was better than nothing. Unfortunately, in this case, the rounds simply bounced right off the creatures’ skin, not even leaving a dent.
“Davina was right!” Hale shouted. “Bullets are worthless against these things.”
