“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 floorstretched 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 pouredout from it.
Barney shone a flashlight into the space, his jaw set in a hard line.
A wooden ladder disappeared into the gloom.
