Inked

And my doubts grew along with it.

What if all the gang knew about was the death of the old man? Yes, I wanted them brought in for that, but waiting a little while wouldn’t do further harm to Wilkinson. The same couldn’t be said for Cyrus. And this little trip seemed less and less likely to yield results the longer I thought about it.

With a setup like that, I was surprised Wilkinson hadn’t been murdered long ago. And although it hadn’t looked like anything had been taken, I didn’t know what he’d kept on hand. As for the Were, maybe he’d followed me from the first drain, waiting for the opportunity to reclaim his property. He might not have had anything to do with Wilkinson at all.

Likewise, the fact that that body had been dumped along 91 might have nothing to do with the gang. Maybe the Hunter had placed it there at random. Maybe he’d learned that the gang was using the drain for a hangout and was taunting them. Maybe a lot of things. Because the other alternative was that a bunch of Weres were hiding a Hunter. And why did I have trouble believing that?

I started to pull back, but stopped when the drain flickered out, like a T.V. switching stations. For a moment there was nothing, no rushing water, no dark tu

He was standing in his living room, clutching a small plastic guitar. “I Love Rock ’n’ Roll” was blasting from the T.V. And a woman who looked a lot like me was standing in the kitchen behind him, holding a small casserole dish.

“Okay, rock star. I think it’s done,” she said, sounding dubious.

“I’m almost through,” he told her, fingers flying. He was going to win this with human speed, damn it. If every nine-year-old in the country could do it, how hard could it be?

“You realize that’s only level one, right?”

“You mean, sort of like making a soufflé?” She’d been at it all day, with much creative cursing. It still amazed him that a woman who brewed her own potions couldn’t cook worth a damn.

“A soufflé is Freebird on expert,” she said crossly, as the last few notes faded away.

Your mother doesn’t count as a fan, the screen informed him.

Damn nine-year-olds.

He joined her in the kitchen to find her staring into a small white container and biting her lip. They watched as the contents slowly melted, like the witch in The Wizard of Oz. “We could try it,” he offered manfully.

“Try what? There’s nothing left!” She poked at the sad remains with a spoon.

Cyrus threw an arm around her shoulders and kissed her flour-streaked cheek. She was warm and smelled like butter and spices and Lia. He was suddenly starving, but not for food.

“You know what they say about the best way to a man’s heart?”

“Yeah.”

“They lie.”

An hour later, she dropped a daub of sauce from the calzones they’d ordered in, and he leaned over the kitchen table and caught her wrist, putting his mouth over the pulse point. He slowly licked the sauce away, daring her with his eyes. The taste of her pulse under his tongue was enough to escalate the slow rolling pleasure of her company into something more. He wanted. Now.

They’d been dating for months, but he sometimes wondered if she realized it. Lunches and di

It was driving him out of what was left of his mind.

She gri

They did, although he was never quite sure how.

The scene abruptly flipped back to the drain and I staggered, the water almost sucking me through the opening. A hand came down on my shoulder and Caleb said sharply, “Lia,” in the tone that meant he’d said it at least three times before.

I grabbed on to him, breathless, queasy and more than a little freaked out. That just didn’t get any easier. Especially not when viewed through someone else’s eyes.

“What is it?” he demanded. “What happened?”

“Nothing.” I got my legs back under me. “It’s just…I think we might be in the right place, after all.”

Caleb looked uncertain, staring past me into the drain like he thought something was about to jump out at us.

And then something did.

“What! Hold!” Jamie threw a shield up, which knocked Caleb’s spell awry. It bounced off and crashed into the water on our left, sending a great wash of steam into the air. “Are ye daft, man?”

“Sorry.” It looked like I wasn’t the only one who was a little jumpy. But Caleb recovered fast. “Why’d you go in without us?” he demanded. “What if you’d had a seizure in there? What if it left your head under water?”

“What if you stop acting like I have one foot in the grave?” Jamie shot back. “And I went in because I needed to check on conditions.”

“How are they?”

“Bad. And going to get worse. It’s raining in the mountains.”

“So? We’re here,” I pointed out.

“Vegas sits at the bottom of a basin,” he said impatiently. “It’s surrounded by mountains and a lot of hard desert soil used to four or five inches of rain a year. When it gets a couple all at once, like the forecast for today, it can’t handle it and all that water comes ru

“I think we can handle a few inches!”

“Inches in the mountains translates to feet here. And of all the drains in the system, this is the worst to be caught in during a flood. It runs all the way under the Strip, with no manholes or cross tu

“We have shields,” I reminded him.

“And how long do you think they’ll last when we’re slamming into concrete like three idiots in a pinball machine?”

“So you’re saying we need to do this fast?”

“I’m saying we need to do this later!”

I shook my head violently. “Cyrus is in there. It has to be now!”

I pushed into the drain, which at this point mostly involved just letting go of the outer edge of the inlet. It swept me through the mouth of the tu

Once I got back to my feet, I discovered that the tu

But without light, it was difficult to imagine how I was supposed to find anyone in here. There were no markers, no stuttering wards, no anything. Just a long, dark tu

Cyrus ended up on his back, with Lia prowling up his body. She’d left her hair undone and it flowed over her shoulders in a dark wave, tickling his chest after she stripped his shirt off. His hand slid under that shining mass, the strands sliding silken-slick between his fingers, to grasp her nape. He brought her down for a scorching kiss before skimming down her back and over the sweet curves below. She groaned and that combined with the skin-to-skin contact to bring a growl to his throat.