Then the smell assaulted him. It was a combination of old dirt and that distinctive oily musk that he’d smelled before, back in those tunnels in Turkey.
Caleb opened his mouth to warn Brielle and his teammates as he sprinted around a curve in the tunnel, but the sight in front of him stopped him cold.
Harrington’s daughter, Kiara, was on the ground, her back wedged against a wall. Blood soaked her blond hair from a wound along the left side of her head, and she looked a bit woozy. There was a rusted steel pipe on the ground beside her, but from the dazed look in her eyes, he doubted she’d be able to defend herself with it.
A dark-haired man stood in front of her, his body positioned protectively, another one of those rusted steel pipes in his hands. His light dress shirt and dark slacks were heavily smudged with dirt in some places, ripped and tattered in others. It only took a fraction of a second for Caleb to realize that some of the stains weren’t dirt. The guy was bleeding. Badly enough to soak through his clothes.
Yet no matter how badly the man might have been injured, he was still standing strong, facing off against an armed man wearing dark tactical gear and night-vision goggles as well as two of the baboon-sized creatures—aka “diggers”—they’d run up against under Incirlik. The man with the gun wasn’t supernatural, but the two creatures more than made up for anything the goon might lack.
Caleb got the sensation that the bad guy and both creatures were trying to get past the man with the pipe in order to reach the girl on the ground, but shockingly, they seemed leery about getting too close. Maybe because there was a dead man in matching tactical gear lying on the ground a little farther down the tunnel right beside a dead digger.
The first thought that hit Caleb was that this guy had apparently killed a digger with nothing but a steel pipe. The second was that this guy was probably Julian Fontaine. Caleb wondered if he should be impressed, but then decided he’d rather keep hating the man.
The matter became irrelevant when the sound of boots on gravel and the flickering glow of five moving flashlights alerted the bad guys that they weren’t alone anymore. The man in the tactical gear took a step to the side and lifted his weapon in Caleb’s general direction. Caleb wasn’t too concerned about getting shot, but the bullets from the guy’s assault rifle would hurt Brielle and his teammates a hell of a lot more than they would hurt him.
Caleb threw himself forward, closing the distance between him and the guy with the weapon, doing his best to keep his inner omega in check. He hated the idea of losing control with Brielle and his friends crushed into the tight confines of the tunnel. But containing his werewolf half was even harder to do than normal with Brielle in danger.
As soon as Caleb took down the man with the assault rifle, the two diggers retreated, crawling into holes that looked way too small for them to fit into. A second later, Brielle was at his side, her eyes catching his in the darkness. The gentle touch of her hand on his jaw calmed the omega immediately. Then, just that fast, Brielle was moving away, crossing the tunnel at a run to throw her arms around the guy with the steel pipe.
Caleb now had confirmation the guy was Julian—the fact that Brielle was calling out his name and asking him over and over if he was okay was kind of a dead giveaway.
“You’re bleeding!” Brielle said, tugging at her brother’s shirt. “Were you shot?”
Caleb stepped closer as Julian quickly hugged his sister, then started extricating himself from her grasp. “No, I wasn’t shot. It was those damn ghouls. They clawed the hell out of me.”
“Ghouls?” Forrest asked curiously, dropping down beside Kiara to check on her. She still seemed out of it but was reaching for Julian all the same.
“Yeah. That’s what we call those things,” Julian said, pointing to the dead baboon-shaped digger a few feet away.
Julian moved across the tunnel and knelt beside Kiara, murmuring softly to her that it was going to be okay. Even as unobservant as Caleb normally was, he could tell that Julian had a thing for Kiara Harrington.
“Careful,” Forrest warned. “She probably has a concussion, maybe a neck injury, too. We should wait to move her until the support team can get a medic down here to look at her.”
Julian stared first at his sister, then at Caleb. Then he slowly scanned the rest of the team. Caleb had built an image of Brielle’s brother in his head based on what she’d told him. He had to admit, the reality wasn’t matching up to the preconceived notion. Caleb had pegged him as juvenile and selfish, but given how hard he’d fought to protect Kiara and how attentive he was being to her right now, he guessed those assumptions might not apply to the man in front of him.
“I’m assuming you people are all from STAT,” Julian finally said. “And any other time, I’d be more than willing to defer to your expertise in a situation like this, especially since you saved our lives. But after being herded for the last few hours, I don’t think staying here would be a very good idea. We need to get out of these tunnels, the faster the better.”
Caleb frowned. “What do you mean, herded?” He scanned the part of the tunnel that was drenched in darkness, just out of reach of the flashlights. “The ghouls we saw weren’t the only ones after you?”
“Oui,” Julian said. “There are more of them out there, cutting us off every time we got close to escaping. I swear it was like they knew exactly where we were going. If it wasn’t for them closing in around us, we never would have come into this abandoned part of the subway system. But we didn’t have a choice. I assume they steered us this way so they could attack without anyone hearing anything. I doubt they’re going to give up simply because you arrived. Harrington isn’t the kind to let anything important out of his grasp. And Kiara is very important to him.”
While Caleb didn’t know much about Xavier Harrington, something told him Julian was right. About everything.
“We’re getting out of here,” he announced.
Julian didn’t need to be told twice. Ignoring his own injuries, he immediately bent down to tenderly scoop Kiara up in his arms, cradling her like she was the most precious thing in the world to him.
They’d barely gone twenty feet before Caleb’s ears and nose let him know that a handful of bad guys and as many ghouls were closing in around them. Shit. It looked like Julian had been right about being herded into an ambush. The few attackers he’d been trying to hold off were probably intended to slow him and Kiara down and stop them from getting away while everyone else moved into position.
“We’re being surrounded,” Caleb said. “Move!”
The next few minutes were insane as they ran back to the Fourth Street Station as fast as they could. He thought they just might make it all the way to the platform and the basement stairs that led to the surface when three ghouls stepped out of the darkness, teeth bared and claws at the ready as they blocked their escape. At the same time, two of Harrington’s goons closed in on them from the rear. Only they weren’t regular humans. They were the pale-skinned supernaturals they’d gone up against in Russia.