“Yeah.” I touched my ear lightly. “Riley to Directorate.”
“We’ve been listening,” Jack said. “I’ve got two bird-shifters on the way. They’ll watch the outside while you two go in.”
“ETA?”
He paused, then said, “Two minutes. Iktar will be there in five.”
“Tell him to take the main front entrance. We’re going in through the parking lot.” I paused, then added, “And tell him to be careful. This thing is big and bad.”
“Then you be careful, too.”
“You know me. I’m always careful.”
His disbelieving snort rang in my ears.
I hesitated, then asked, “No word from the hospital?”
“None yet, I’m afraid.”
Damn. The knot in my stomach tightened a little bit more, but I did my best to push the worry aside. I had a killer to catch, and if I didn’t dedicate all my attention to it, I might just end up in hospital right alongside Liander.
That would really make Rhoan’s day complete.
“So we’re going in?” Kade asked.
“We have no choice.”
He handed me a laser, then pulled the other one free from the waist of his pants. A dangerous place to shove it, I would have thought. “And help is coming?”
I glanced skyward. Two brown dots were soaring high up. I couldn’t help the sliver of envy at the ease of which they did that. “Our eyes are in the sky. Iktar will be coming in around the front.”
He pressed the laser’s trigger lightly and the weapon whined as it charged up. “Let’s go, then.”
I switched my laser on, then followed him across to the building, keeping as low and as close to cover as possible. Hopefully, the roar of traffic going up and down nearby Brunswick Road would mute the sound of our steps.
With the doorway reached, I pressed my back against the grimy brick wall, feeling the chill of it seep into my spine. Beyond the smashed door, the warehouse was dark and silent. No creaks, no wind moaning through broken glass, nothing that seemed spooky or out of place.
Yet I was spooked regardless. Probably because I knew what lay in wait.
I met Kade’s gaze. He held up three fingers, then pointed to the left. I nodded and silently counted. At three, I slipped in the doorway, laser raised and held at the ready as my gaze swept the room.
Silence met me. The air was thick with the scent of oil and age, the walls grimy and slick looking. The room itself was filled with shadows, despite the light filtering in through dirty windows. Perfect conditions for a black cat who wanted to remain unseen.
There was a concrete ramp to my left and a walkway that went up and around the room. Several doorways led off into deeper darkness from this. To the right was a set of high double doors. They were solid looking and padlocked, so the bakeneko hadn’t gone that way.
I glanced back at Kade and motioned him in. He moved to the right, nostrils flaring as he made a sweeping motion with the gun.
“She knows we’re here.”
Though he kept his voice to a whisper, his words seemed to slide off the walls as sharply as a bell being rung. Or maybe it just seemed that way because I was so damn tense.
“I can sense amusement coming from the general direction of door number two.”“I would have thought she’d be angry more than amused.”
“Well, a human probably would be, but this thing isn’t human.”
Very true. I blew out a breath, then quickly moved up the ramp and across to the first doorway. The deeper darkness looked unwelcoming. Despite the fact that Kade had sensed amusement coming from the direction of the other doorway, the smell of cat was coming thick and sharp from this one. Maybe the two corridors were linked farther in.
Maybe it was all part of the bakeneko’s plan. After all, cats delighted in toying with their prey.
Kade halted beside me. I motioned toward the door and gave the low signal. He nodded.
I blinked to switch my vision to infrared, then went in fast and low. Nothing moved in the corridor. Several doors led off it, but all of them were closed. A set of double doors waited at the far end. I centered my laser on it, then nodded a go-ahead.
Kade came in and moved quickly but quietly to the first doorway. With his back to the wall and laser at the ready, he wrapped his free hand around the handle then thrust the door open. Nothing jumped out at him. He checked the room visually, then glanced at me and shook his head.
I scampered to the next doorway and repeated his actions while he watched the double doors. There was nothing in the small room but rubbish and broken furniture. The other two remaining rooms were also empty.
Which left us with the double doors and whatever lay beyond them.
The cat smell was no sharper than before, and yet my skin tingled with awareness of her presence. Maybe it was fear, maybe it was my clairvoyance trying to send me a warning I really didn’t need, but either way, we had no choice but to continue on through our chosen route.
I glanced at Kade and half-motioned that I’d go through first, but froze as footsteps whispered across the silence.
Human footsteps, moving gently away.
Then laughter, soft and mocking.
The bitch definitely knew we were here.
I stepped forward and kicked the door open. On the other side, nothing but the darkness of a large room was revealed. I waited until the door had whooshed back toward us, then dove through the opening, coming back up onto one knee and quickly scanning the room. No bakeneko. Just her scent riding the heavy, musty air.
“She’s definitely playing,” I said softly, as Kade came through the door.
“I don’t care what she does, as long as we kill her at the end of it.” He nodded toward the stairs at the far end of the room. “She gone up that?”
“Smells like it.”
“Then let’s go.”
He led the way, his footsteps echoing across the silence. There was no point in being silent any longer. She knew we were here, and given a cat’s hearing had to be as sharp as a wolf’s, she would probably hear us regardless of how quiet we were.
We raced up the steps and ended up in a corridor that was long, thin, and even darker than the room below. There were eight doors leading off the corridor, and a larger, double set waiting at the far end.
“This place is a fucking maze,” Kade muttered, disgust in his voice. “Though our quarry seems to have run straight toward the door at the end.”
“‘Seems’ being the operative word,” I said, not trusting the fact that it was slightly open one little bit. I drew my gaze back to the nearest rooms. “Though infrared isn’t bringing up any life-heat close by.”
“The bitch is here somewhere, so let’s go find her.”
He strode forward, seemingly free of the fear that was twisting my stomach. It was weird. I mean, I’d faced things far worse than this bakeneko, and yet I was practically shaking at the thought of confronting her.
Maybe it was simply the knowledge of what she could do.
Being dead was one thing. We all had to go sometime, after all. But being dead and having your soul eaten was another matter entirely. I wasn’t at all sure that I believed in reincarnation, but I sure as hell wanted my soul to hang around and find out.
We moved forward as before, checking each room thoroughly before continuing on. Despite my fears, there were no traps waiting in any of them.
But the cat smell was getting stronger.
Which meant we were getting closer.
I stopped at the ajar door and glanced at Kade. He pointed at me, then to the right, and raised five fingers. I nodded and sucked in a breath, releasing it silently as I counted.
At five, we kicked out the doors and ran through—me to the right, Kade to the left.
The room was large and filled with windows, but the light seeping in was yellow and dusky. There were plenty of shadows for a cat to hide in.
Out of the corner of my eye I saw movement. I twisted around and sighted, the whine of the laser cutting through the silence as my finger pressed against it. I released it when I saw that it was something small and furry with a very long tail.
Not a cat. More likely a rat.
I blew out a breath and continued on, keeping to walls and running low. Kade was on the other side, keeping pace with me simply because I wasn’t moving at vampire speed. The whine of his laser was a sharp echo of mine.
Again, something moved in the shadow. I swung the laser around, but it was only another rat, scampering along the wall.
Which was odd. We weren’t anywhere near the rats to scare them, so if they were running from the cat, why couldn’t we damn well see her?
Even under infrared, there was no sign of life other than the rats.
Then it hit me.
The bakeneko could change sizes. Why wouldn’t she be able to go smaller than a tabby as well as larger?
I stopped and swung round.
Saw something big and black emerging out of the shadows where the rat had just been.
“Kade! Behind you!”
I fired the laser even as I screamed the warning, but the bakeneko was moving way too fast. She’d consumed a lot of souls, and now she was faster than anything I’d ever seen before.
It didn’t matter. I kept hitting the trigger.
And kept missing.
Kade twisted around and fired blindly. The shot scoured the creature’s side and she screamed—a high sound of fury that made my ears ache.
Then she was on him, her sheer weight and speed flinging them both backward, until all I could see was a fighting ball of black and brown.
I swore and raced across the room. They were still rolling, tumbling, across the filthy concrete floor, but Kade had somehow managed to get his hands around the creature’s neck. The corded muscles in his arms were evidence enough of the strength he was using to try to strangle her, but he seemed to be achieving little more than holding her wickedly sharp teeth away from his throat. And all the while, her claws were ripping at him everywhere else.I couldn’t risk a shot. Like before, I could kill Kade as easily as I could kill the bakeneko. So I reached out and grabbed her tail instead.