Keller left him. Three stairs down, she bounded back up and grabbed him by the shirt.
"That phone call from Iliana's mother-does he really have the baby?" She need to know if it came to bargaining.
"I don't know," Brett moaned in a sick voice. He was clutching his stomach as if he were wounded. "There wasn't any phone call, but I don't know what he's been doing." He threw her a desperate look and whispered hoarsely, "What is he?"
Keller dropped him. "You don't want to know," she said, and left him again.
She took the stairs very quietly but very quickly. Her senses were open, but the farther she went down, the less useful they were. They were being swamped by an overpowering sickly-sweet odor and by a rushing sound that seemed to fill her head.
By the time she got to the last step, her fur was bristling, and her heart was pounding. Her tail stood out stiffly, and her pupils were wide.
It was very dark, but details of the room slowly came into focus. It was a large furnished basement, or had been. Now every piece of furniture seemed to be broken and piled in a heap in the corner. There was a raw hole in one concrete wall, a hole that opened into a black tunnel. And the sickly-sweet smell came from piles of dung.
They were lying on the floor all around, along with giant scratch marks that had dug grooves into the tile.
The entire place looked like nothing so much as a huge animal's den.
She couldn't sense anything alive in the room.
Keller moved toward the tunnel, fast but stealthy. Ripple, freeze. Ripple, freeze. Leopards could move this way across grassland bare of cover and not be seen. But nothing jumped out to attack her.
The mouth of the tunnel was wet, the soil crumbly. Keller climbed in, still moving lightly. Water dripped from the mat of roots and earth above her. The whole thing looked ready to cave in at any moment.
He must have made it The dragon. Goddess knows how; maybe with claws. Anyway, he wasn't too fussy about it; it was meant to be a temporary thing.
The smell was just as powerful here, and the rushing sound was even clearer. There must be an underground stream-or maybe just water pipes- very close.
Come on, girl, what are you waiting for? You're a grunt, it's your job to move! Don't stand around trying to think!
It was hard to make herself go deeper and deeper into that damp and confining place. Her senses were all useless, even sight, because the bore twisted and turned so she could never see more than a few feet ahead. She was heading blind and deaf into she had no idea what. At any moment, she might reach a shaft or a side tunnel where something could attack her.
And the feel of the earth above her was almost crushing.
She kept going.
Please let her be alive. He doesn't need to kill her. He should try to make her join him first Please, please, don't let him have killed her.
After what seemed like forever, she realized that the angle of the tunnel was changing. She was heading up. Then a current of air swirled to her, barely sniffable under the thick dragon smell, and it was fresh.
Night air. Somewhere ahead. The end of the tunnel.
A new panic invaded her.
Please don't let them have gotten away.
She threw aside all caution and sprinted.
Up, up-and she could smell it clearly now. Cold air, unfouled. Up, up-and she could hear sounds. A yell that suddenly broke off. The voice sounded like-
Galen! she thought, and her heart tore.
Then she saw light Moonlight. She gathered her muscles and jumped.
She scrambled out of the mouth of the tunnel.
And there, in moonlight that hurt her eyes, she saw everything.
A car, a black Jeep, parked under a tree. The engine running but the seats empty. And in front of it, what looked like a battlefield.
There were bodies everywhere. Several were vampires in black-dark ninjas. But also on the ground were the bodies of Nissa and Winnie and Galen.
So they followed, a distant part of Keller's mind said, not interfering in the slightest with the part that was getting ready for the fight. They followed the dragon-which must have done something to Winnie to get Iliana away from her. That was why I couldn't smell anybody; they all went into the tunnel while I was upstairs with brother Brett.
She couldn't tell if they were dead. They were all tying very still, and there was blood on Winnie's head and on Nissa's right arm and back. Blood and daw marks.
And Galen... he was sprawled out full-length, with no signs of breathing. He wasn't even a warrior. He'd never had a chance.
Then Keller saw something that drove the others out of her head.
The dragon.
It was standing near the Jeep, but frozen, as if it had just wheeled to face her. It was holding a limp figure in silvery-white casually, almost tucked under its arm.
And it still looked like Jaime Ashton-Hughes.
It was wearing Jaime's pretty blue dress. Its soft brown hair blew gently about its face, and Keller could feel its dark blue eyes fixed on her.
But there were differences, too. Its skin was deadly pale, and something yellowish was oozing from a cut on its cheekbone. Its lips were drawn back from its teeth in a grinning snarl that Jaime never could have managed. And when the wind blew the soft hair off its forehead, Keller could see horns.
There they were. Stubby and soft-looking-or at least soft on the outside, like downy skin over bone. They were so obviously real and yet so grotesque that Keller felt her stomach turn.
And there were five of them.
Five.
The book said one to three! Keller thought indignantly. And in rare cases four. But this thing has five! Five seats of shapeshifting power, not to mention the black energy, mind control, and whatever else it's been keeping up its sleeve just for me.
I'm dead.
Well, she had known that from the beginning, of course. She'd known it six days ago when she first leaped for the dragon's back in the mall. But now the realization was more bitter, because not only was she dead, so was all hope.