Dread sat like a lead weight in his stomach. Ursino might have done almost anything to Reinhold. He’d still been alive when they left The Pride, otherwise Teresa would have called. But that could change in an instant.
At least Sam was safe. Alistair clung to that knowledge as his only source of comfort, and tried not to remember the look of confused betrayal on Sam’s face when he sent him away.
Sam’s train would have left by now, whisking him away to his new life. Sooner than Alistair would have liked, but wasn’t that always the case? At least this time there would be no agonizing shattering of a bond, no ghastly realization that the man he loved was dead.
Alistair caught himself. Loved? No, no, that wasn’t right. It couldn’t be; he wouldn’t let it. Love was a word that belonged to Forrest, to the dead, to a heart burned to ash. It was a memory, caught in amber, unchanging, just like Alistair himself.
He knew how the world worked. Nothing ever changed for him; everyone always left. It was ridiculous to think otherwise, to imagine the burst of sunlight and color that was Sam might have been a true break in the clouds.
Fur and feathers, now wasn’t the time to be distracted. Alistair drew a deep breath in past the ache in his heart. Wanda flung open the door and climbed out, and he followed.
There were any number of entrances into the freight tunnels that ran beneath the Loop, most of them in the basements of securely locked buildings. Vescovi had directed them to an easier point of access; a sidewalk coal chute cover that could be pried open in order to reach the basement beneath. Doris hopped down from the bed of the truck, an iron bar in her hand. It took only a bit of searching to spot the round cast-iron cover for the chute, embedded with glass vault lenses to let daylight into the basement below. Another few seconds and a round of curses, and Doris had it popped off and shoved aside.
Philip shifted into snow leopard form. He peered down into the darkness, then disappeared, bounding off the wall to keep from falling straight down. Since cheetahs weren’t nearly as good at such acrobatics, Alistair remained in human form and climbed down using the rungs. Wanda followed, and Doris came last.
They found themselves in an arched brick vault, which had once been used to store coal but now stood empty. Wanda led the way forward, and the brick gave way to a concrete basement. A narrow-gauge train track ran through it, emerging from a tunnel on one side and vanishing into a corresponding opening on the other.
The arched tunnel bordered on claustrophobic, just large enough for the small electric trains, their cargo, and their operators to fit through. Lights glowed at the junctures, revealing the names of the streets above painted onto the concrete for ease of navigation.
It was eerily silent beneath the city, only the occasional drip of condensation or far off echo from a distant basement broke the quiet. They passed loading docks and cut through other basements, some of them packed with barrels or boxes.
Philip shifted back into human form. “Do you think this will work?” he asked.
“This isn’t the time to wonder,” Alistair said. “Just focus on doing the job.” That was the only way to get through a battle; put your head down and push forward. Hesitation could mean getting hit by a shell, or shot by an enemy who acted without that instant’s pause. Even worse, hesitation opened a space for fear to get in. Fighting was terrifying enough; no reason to be afraid a moment before you had to.
Something in his voice must have betrayed his thoughts, because Philip said, “I suppose after going over the top, this doesn’t seem like much.”
“Our job is to fight for each other, and for Reinhold. So not all that different, in some ways. That’s what no one ever talks about. When we were over there fighting, it wasn’t for some grand purpose. You carried your weight for the sake of the man beside you, and the one beside him, and the men in the other units who relied on your unit doing the job.”
“Oh,” Philip said quietly. After a long moment, he added, “I never thought I’d hear you talk about it.”
“I wonder what changed?” Doris said from behind them.
Alistair wanted to argue, but couldn’t. Opening up to Sam had done something to him. As though talking about things once made it easier to do so again.
But Sam was gone now. If Alistair survived this night, he’d have plenty of time to rebuild his shell.
Was that what he wanted? To go back to things as they’d been? To keep everything locked up inside?
“Hush,” Wanda said. “We’re almost there.”
They all shifted to cat form, just in case there were guards waiting for them. The tracks passed along the outer wall of a small, shabby basement with the symbol of a black rabbit painted on the wall in place of any other identification. A ladder ran up to a trap door, currently shut.
There was no sign of any guards, though it would probably make more sense to have them stationed on the inside anyway. With luck, Sullivan’s distraction would have pulled them away from their posts.
Wanda took on human form, climbed the ladder, and pressed an unlocking hex to the trapdoor, on the assumption there would be mundane locks as well as magical. “Clear the way,” she whispered, and there came a muffled click from the other side. She let the spent hex fall, then spoke what they hoped was the disarming phrase for the alarms: “Ray Grimes.”
She glanced down at them, then pushed on the trapdoor. It fell open; no alarms or angry shouts broke the silence.
“Show time,” she said.
Sam pounded on The Pride’s steel door. Though his heart clenched at the thought of seeing Alistair again, this was too important to let hurt feelings get in the way.
The trip from the train station had taken too long, thanks to a traffic snarl caused by the collision of a car and a wagon. As night fell, Sam’s nerves drew tighter and tighter, and he found himself unable to shake the sensation of time running out.
The peephole in the door slid open, and a blue eye peered out at him. A moment later, the door swung open, revealing Joel. “Sam? What are you doing here? I thought you’d left town.” Without waiting for an answer, he beckoned Sam in, then shut and locked the door behind him.
Sam tossed his bag onto the counter. The pieces of the hex he had already had tucked into the inner pocket of his coat, as safe as he could make them. “I have something to tell everyone. Where are the others?”
Worry creased Joel’s face. “Mr. Vescovi told them about a secret entrance into The Black Rabbit. They’ve gone to try and get Reinhold back.”
Sam’s heart plummeted. “Then I’m too late.”
“What’s going on?”
As Sam explained his epiphany, Joel’s eyes grew wide. “Let me check in with Wanda through the bond,” he said, and closed his eyes. A moment later, he opened them again. “I can’t reach her—she must be in human form. Damn it!” He paced a few steps away, then held up his hand. “Give me a moment.”
Puzzled, Sam watched him run into the back. There came the sounds of someone rummaging through a drawer, then Joel reappeared. “We’ll take Wanda’s car to The Black Rabbit. Maybe we can still negotiate with Ursino, before more blood is spilled.”
“But what about Sullivan? He won’t be happy if we give away his hex.”