To two of their cousins, Ian said, “Secure the trapdoor once we’ve descended into the tunnel.” To two other men, he added, “Watch from the wall walk. If he leaves the tunnel while we’re trying to reach it, give us a shout out, and we’ll track him down in the woods.”
“Could be just someone out for a walk that stumbled upon the trapdoor, got curious, and—” Cearnach said, as Ian and his brothers headed for the main gate.
“Carried something to break the lock?” Ian asked, giving his brother a shake of his head. “Seems calculating, to my way of thinking.” Ian finally noticed that Duncan was wearing his sword. “Prepared for any eventuality?”
“Aye. If he’s willing to break into a fortress like ours, maybe he’s armed.”
“Maybe Flynn will scare the devil out of him,” Guthrie said, sounding amused. “You know how he doesn’t like strangers. If Flynn even realizes someone is roaming about underneath the castle who hasn’t been invited, he’ll greet him.”
Duncan pulled his sword out of its scabbard at his back. “Flynn can’t do anything to him unless the man is afraid of ghosts. But this…” He thrust the sharpened blade at an unseen enemy. “…this will put the fear of God in a man.”
“Unless he’s armed, don’t use your weapon, Duncan,” Ian said dryly, his blood hot with annoyance that anyone would attempt to break into their ancestral home. Yet he was concerned that someone might get hurt—not the idiot running around in the bowels of the underside of the castle, but his brothers who would stand by his side in any battle.
The culprit who had breached their defenses would soon learn how much wrath Ian could bring upon him.
***
Even though it was dark in the underground tunnel leading to the castle, darker still on the walls where torches once scorched the rock with flickering flames, Julia could see with her wolf’s vision. She hurried down a rickety ladder that creaked and shuddered and bent with every step. She imagined the ladder rungs breaking, leaving her stuck down there and trying to figure out a way to sneak out of the castle from the inside. But if that happened, she’d first try to locate her family’s box hidden in the wall somewhere on the third floor of the keep where the family’s quarters were.
She’d barely reached the fourth rung when the rotting wood cracked with a snap. Heart in her throat, she half slipped, half fell as she tightened her hold on the rails, slivers of wood embedding themselves in the palms of her hands and fingers. She attempted to reach the next rung without falling to the rock floor below and breaking her neck or a leg. Legs would heal after a while; necks wouldn’t.
But she hit the next rung so hard that it snapped, too. Stifling a strangled cry, she grabbed the ladder rails with all her strength, despite the slivers of wood digging into her hands and feeling like stinging nettles, and tried to keep from falling farther. Her arm muscles shaking, she managed to stop her fall, half sliding over the next rung and then finally managing to land on the one below without too much of a jolt.
Barely breathing, she navigated ten more. But when she reached the third from the bottom, it split in two with a nerve-racking crack. She fell too fast and broke the next rung—and missed the final one altogether. She dropped none too gracefully to the rock floor, jarring herself as she landed on her hands and knees with a hard whack. Pain radiated through her knees, making her realize just how little padding kneecaps had. Smacking her already splinter-filled hands against the rock floor added further insult to injury.
A stealthy cat she was not.
But at least with her faster ability to recuperate, she’d overcome her minor aches and pains more quickly than if she wasn’t a werewolf. And she hadn’t landed on her right foot, risking injuring her ankle further.
She glanced back at the ladder, her gaze rising until she stared at the open hole above. Now that it was missing several rungs, she wasn’t sure she could navigate it back to the surface. No sense in worrying about that right at this moment, though.
Turning her attention to the tunnel before her, she got to her feet, her knees and hands still hurting. If she couldn’t make it back up the ladder, hopefully once the film crew was on site, she could slip inside the castle and into the noise and confusion outside before anyone caught her.
Of course, the crew wouldn’t be setting up until later this morning, and she would have to hide until then. Which could be easy enough if the castle was half empty while Ian and his people monitored the film crew outside. Or she could remain down here. But that was a worst-case scenario. She had no intention of getting stuck in the cold, dark bowels of the castle for hours.The tunnel was narrow and the ceilings low, with water dripping into puddles and moss covering most of the walls. In some places, she had to crouch. She’d envisioned tall ceilings, maybe with smooth tile walls. Nothing this rugged or primitive. Or confining, damp, cold, and smelling of earth. Buried alive came to mind.
With all the work she’d done trying to get the door open, she’d gotten hot and sweaty. Now she was even damper than before and colder, despite the pure adrenaline rushing through her bloodstream and goading her on. She shivered.
She’d expected that the tunnel would lead straight to where she needed to be. But when she’d walked for some time and come to three different tunnels that branched out like a chicken foot from the first, she stared into the dark, trying to decide which might be the right one.
The longer she attempted to deduce the right one, the longer it would take to discover if she was correct in her assumption. She headed toward the one to the right.
Muffled voices in the keep way above her made her pause, but she couldn’t make out the words. They wouldn’t be able to hear her moving quietly along the wet, rough floor where she had stumbled a few times because of the unevenness and slippery, rocky ground, but she’d held her tongue in case a louder sound could travel through the ceiling of the tunnel into the lower part of the castle.
A misty light loomed deeper in the tunnel, and she halted, her heartbeat speeding up. But the light blinked out. A shudder slipped through her. She’d hoped to get the contract, return to the film crew, and take notes for her book—without anyone being the wiser—and then return to California at the end of two weeks’ time. Although the men in her story were now cowboys and the castle was a ranch where nearby underground caves stored food, and outlaws and Indians had once hid out—like in Salado, Texas, a place she’d researched once for a possible story.
But finding her way around under the castle was going to be a lot more difficult than she had thought. Her grandfather had made it sound as though it would be no trouble at all, a straight shot to the upper floor. Locating the chamber and the hidden niche might be harder. Had it been so long ago that he had forgotten? Or was there another entrance that she should have taken? Oh, hell, her grandfather hadn’t even been born when the MacPhersons left the castle. He must have been going on recollections from what his parents had told him.
She groaned. So much for being a super-sleuth.
Suddenly, footfalls walked behind her, headed in her direction, and she attempted to keep her rising panic from overwhelming her. She hurried as fast as she could. No place to hide. No alcove, just a narrow path where she had to squeeze through in some places. The footsteps sounded odd though, a strange steady rhythm as if made on a movie set, surreal.
Then she came to an opening where the tunnel split into two. She began to take the one to the right. Then halted. If she continued to take the rightmost path, she could find her way back, she reasoned. If she’d been in her wolf form, her footpads would have left a scent she could follow. But in her human form, unless she had bread crumbs to leave and no rats were gobbling them up behind her, her memory would have to suffice.
As soon as she walked forward through the rightmost tunnel, she again saw the light. The footfalls had died behind her. But they’d been in the same tunnel she’d been in. Had someone been following her, listening to her progress, and then when she stopped, he did also?
A wedge of panic stuck in her belly. What if the blackmailer had followed her?
For an instant, she wanted to continue on through the rightmost tunnel, to seek the light and find a way out. But the dark tunnel heading in the other direction beckoned her to go that way and remain hidden in the comforting blackness.
She glanced back over her shoulder, realizing that despite hearing the footfalls, she hadn’t seen any light coming from that direction. It still remained eerily silent, as if someone was waiting for her decision. But any lupus garou could still see her in the dark, just as she could see any of them.
The light ahead moved toward her, footfalls accompanying it, and that decided it for her. She hurried toward the leftmost tunnel, tripped on a bit of rock jutting out of the floor, and fell. She cried out, furious with herself as soon as she did, expecting the man with the light to rush forth and grab her, or the one who’d been following her from behind to do the same. But she’d hit her shin hard, bruised it, and torn her jeans, and from the way her skin was burning, she must have torn her skin, too.
Footfalls from much farther away ran down the tunnel she was in, real footsteps, men’s long strides, heavy and determined. She was in real trouble now.
A cold hand grasped her arm, and she gasped. No one was there, no one visible. But she felt the pressure of the hand on her skin as if it were real. A ghost?
Not seeing him, or something that looked ghostly, made her feel as though she was imagining the whole thing. But she didn’t imagine the cold, tight grip on her arm or the way the area surrounding her had turned from chilly to icy, her hard breathing coming out in little puffs of frosted air.
Trying not to panic further, she allowed the strange force to help her to her feet. She could barely walk, her shin shrieking with pain, and she couldn’t set her right foot down flat against the floor because it hurt so much. The unseen force guided her as she limped into the dark tunnel and up a long flight of stairs carved out of stone. He wasn’t gentle. Instead, like a caveman with his catch, he pulled her up and up, hurrying her until she reached a trapdoor above her. The cold hand receded and the ghostly entity was gone, she thought.