“Alone?” Gideon questioned tightly. “Is Alana Catherine with her? Is Chamuel?”
Tim shook his head. “I don’t know. I can only feel Jennifer.”
I glanced over at Gideon. His eyes were pinned on the cave and his expression was murderous. No, we couldn’t feel our daughter, but it didn’t mean she wasn’t in there. Going on assumptions would be a mistake. Fury and emotion made one sloppy. We didn’t have the luxury of being sloppy.
Placing my hand on Gideon’s shoulder, I squeezed. I wasn’t gentle. It was pointed and intense. “Don’t go there,” I said. “Stay in the present. If she’s in there, that will be wonderful. If she’s not, we’ll find her.”
His eyes shot to mine. There was so much pain in his gaze, my breath caught in my throat. “We should feel her,” he whispered harshly. “She’s our flesh and blood. If she was in there, we would know.”
I couldn’t disagree, but I refused to let it dictate how we moved forward. “One moment at a time. If we get ahead of ourselves, we’ll miss something important.”
The Grim Reaper nodded jerkily and touched my cheek. “Wewillfind her.”
“We will find her,” I repeated firmly as if saying it made it true.
Shitty Ritchie sniffed the air. He walked in a circle and continued to inhale deeply. We watched him with curiosity. After a good two minutes, he appeared satisfied.
“Cheese Dick isn’t here right now,” he told us. “The fucker was here, but not anymore.” He pointed to the mouth of the cave. “Jennifer is in there. Shitty Ritchie can feel that she isn’t good.”
Tim, usually mild mannered and kind, was enraged. His skin took on an eerie bluish glow and his eyes narrowed dangerously. Pulling out a sword and a razor-sharp dagger, he nodded at us to follow him. He wasn’t fucking around.
We all pulled weapons and quietly filed in behind. Our footsteps were silent as we moved forward. I noticed Shitty Ritchie opening and closing his mouth. The little freak was prepping to eat someone. In any other case, I’d electrocute him. Not today. If he was hungry, Cheese Dick would be a nice snack.
Chamuel wasn’t his to end, though. The Higher Power, who at one time represented compassion, was for Jennifer todestroy. She wasn’t a fighter. That had been established. My stomach cramped to the point of pain as I tried to work out a scenario where Jennifer could kill. My brain couldn’t get there.
Shit.
If Chamuel wasn’t here, there was a chance we could get Jennifer out and deal with Chamuel at a later time. It wasn’t perfect, but it was better than nothing. With every fiber of my being, I wished that we’d trained Jennifer to fight. Hindsight was twenty-twenty. Real time was sucking ass.
Tim was in the lead. Shitty Ritchie walked beside him. Candy Vargo was on their heels. I was behind Candy and Gideon brought up the rear. He walked backwards to make sure nothing snuck up on us from behind.
“It stinks in here,” Candy whispered as we entered the cave.
I’d thought the forest was awful. It had nothing on the cave. The path was narrow and littered with bones—animal and human. It was dark and dank, but Immortals could see clearly without light. Crude drawings of war and death were scrawled on the walls. The vibes in this place were sad and tragic.
A dim light ahead was where we were headed. Even I could feel Jennifer’s presence now. But… there was no hint at all of my daughter. I pushed my hysteria aside. If Jennifer was the only one here, she was the priority. Period. We get her to safety and then go after Alana Catherine.
“Stay low,” Tim said softly. “There are ancient animals above us.”
I swallowed my gasp. I hadn’t even thought to look up. When I did, I wished I hadn’t. The word animal wasn’t quite right. I’d never seen anything like the bird-snake looking things that were slithering on the ceiling of the cave. There had to be at least fifty of the messed up looking creatures staring down at us. Many had far more than two eyes. I counted ten eyes on the one upahead. And teeth… there were plenty of those as sharp as the daggers we carried.
“What the actual fuck?” Candy Vargo grunted as she glanced up. “I ain’t never seen nothing like them abominations.”
“Zamirs,” Gideon said. “I’ve seen them in the Darkness. Generally harmless, but don’t engage.”
“The word Zamir is also a name,” Tim whispered. “Often associated with music, melody and inner moral reflection.”
I shuddered. The animals, for lack of a more appropriate word, didn’t look like they had much inner moral reflection. They looked hungry to me.
“I can eat them,” Shitty Ritchie offered.
“Let’s leave that to a last resort move,” I told him. “But thank you.”
“Roger that,” Shitty Ritchie said. “Shitty Ritchie is rather full with Goober in my bowels, but Shitty Ritchie thinks it would be amusing if Goober had to deal with a few zamirs.”
His sense of humor was warped, but the thought of Hemah hanging out with zamirs was kind of funny.
We crept forward staying low. As the path widened the room came into view. It wasn’t a pretty picture. The walls and floor were stone lit by wooden torches attached to the walls. Zamirs slid and wriggled on the ceiling and bones were stacked in pyramid shaped piles on the floor. The centerpiece of the room was a cage. The thick circular bars shimmered with a dangerous enchantment. The door was wide open. It was large enough for a few people to stand in. The construction was crude and it held no creature comforts.
