Deadly Desire

But that's how you tracked that sorcerer to the warehouse?

That and the smell of death.

I nodded. At least it explained how he'd come to be watching the sorcerer from within the shadows of her black wall rather than walking straight through it and getting sprung as I had.

But then, I hadn't expected to find hellhounds or a sorcerer-just a dead man walking. Kye obviously had a better idea of what was going on than I did when he'd walked into that place.

The farther we moved down the hallway, the staler the air felt, and I had the odd sensation that we were moving down into the earth itself. There was little noise in this place, and the silence felt heavy, as if it was carrying a weight that it didn't want and we couldn't see.

The floorboards beneath my feet gave way to colder concrete, then to a mix of dirt and stone. Grit wedged in between my toes, forcing me to pause every now and again to shake it lose. Despite the earth flooring, the walls and ceiling were still concrete-although it was rough looking, as if it had been slapped on in a hurry, and without care.

The crawl of magic began to get stronger, its touch stinging like angry gnats. Something stark and white appeared in my infrared. I switched to normal vision, saw a flickering golden glow begin to seep through the darkness ahead. It framed a rough-hewn archway that had only been half concreted.

I couldn't sense anyone or anything waiting, but my uneasiness grew.

Looks like the sort of light you get from a torch, Kye commented. Though his mind voice was flat and without emotion, his tension rolled over me, increasing my own. It's an odd choice when were under the earth and there seems to be little ventilation.

I cant smell any smoke, though. And I don't think our sorcerers would be too worried about air quality.

Or life, for that matter.

Because the magic wasn't the only thing that was getting stronger. The stink of blood and death rode the air, so powerful that even my wolf soul was turning her nose.

We approached the arch cautiously. Dust stirred the air with each step, but little else seemed to be moving.

I cant feel or smell anyone, Kye said.

No, but they may have laid traps of the magical kind. We need to be careful.

Then you go low, and I'll go high.

There was a whisper of movement, and suddenly I felt the burn of silver across my skin. How the hell did you get a weapon into the club undetected? And how come I didn't sense it before this?

He raised an eyebrow. You have a psychic sense about guns?

No, I'm allergic to silver.

We all are. We're werewolves. Amusement laced his mental tone.

Well, yeah, but I've been hit too often by it and I'm now extrasensitive to its presence. So how did you conceal that weapon?

The weapon is in a lead-lined holster, and if you know whom to pay, you can get anything you like into this club.

So whom did you bribe?

His smile flashed. There's no need to bribe when the manager is fucking a stripper, and the wife knows nothing about it.

And how do you happen to know that?

Because I bugged him. Made for interesting listening, I have to say.

Perv.

And as a telepath, you've never listened in to other people's thoughts or conversations, he said dryly. It's all the same, Riley.

We'd neared the archway, so I didn't answer, just wrapped the shadows around me and moved with vamp speed to the far side of it. Then I shook off the shadows, glanced at him, and nodded.

Go, he said, and we moved as one into the next room.

Which was actually a cavern. It was small, dank, and the air was putrid with the aroma of blood, death, and rotting flesh. The torches that lined the walls and provided the flickering light had to be battery powered, because they certainly weren't real. Nor could I see any power outlets or electrical cords. But at least they provided enough light to see by, although deeper darkness still haunted the more distant corners. Without them, and with no natural light, even my infrared would have been useless.

A stone table sat in the middle of the cavern, its top stained a dark reddish-black and its side streaked with the same heavy color. I had no doubt that its source was blood-blood that must have been spilled over years and years rather than merely the few months they'd been here in Melbourne.

Black candles sat around the base of the table, each one marking the point of a pentagram that had been etched into the stone flooring.

Which meant this wasn't the hideaway of the sorcerers.

It was their place of deep magic.

Nice setup, Kye said. His gaze paused on the bloody table, then he looked at me. This where they raise the zombies?

It feels like the same sort of magic. I stopped at the end of the wide ramp, right on one of the pentagram points. There didn't seem to be any magic coming off it, so maybe it wasn't active, but the room itself still burned with energy. With death.

My gaze moved across the stone table to the rough-hewn wall on the far side. Hollows had been carved into the stone, and in each one sat several items. A little pile of hair and a football in one. A brush and a football sweater in another. A pair of Nikes and a hubcap in yet another. All things men would generally have owned, not women.

Had these things belonged to the men raised from the dead? Did part of the ritual require something that was precious to them?

My gaze went back to the table. All I knew about zombies came from fiction and Hollywood, and I had firsthand experience at just how wrong they could get it. But there was one thing that remained absolute, regardless of the truths and half-truths that might abound-and that was the fact that life required blood. Hell, even unlife required blood.

The question here was, whose blood was she using to reanimate her dead?

Kye walked past me, his clean musky scent like heaven against the foul stench of the room. Though he was careful to avoid the pentagram and candles, his attention seemed to be on the ground itself.

Which piqued my interest. What's wrong?

These, He squatted and pointed a finger toward the dust-covered stone.

I walked over and stopped beside him. What he was actually pointing at looked like two wheel marks.

It's probably tracks from Jessica's wheelchair, I said, dismissing it.

He glanced up at me. One of our sorcerers is paralyzed?

The zombie raiser is. That's why she was resting on her belly when she was in crow form at the warehouse.

At least it explains the ramp getting into this place. He rose and followed the tracks around the room. There's a lot of tracks going from the pentagram to these hollows in the wall.

Meaning this is her workplace, not Ha