Lion And The Falcon (Furry United Coalition) (14 page)

A
ll jocularity and sleep disappeared from his visage as Nolan took on a predatory cast, his lean body coiled as he prowled the area, sniffing and crouching for a closer perusal. When he got like this, she couldn’t help but admire, even covet him. Why he hid this male under his playboy persona she didn’t understand. Then again, maybe she did. If he had a hard time beating off the ladies as a foppish mama’s boy, imagine the troubles he’d have if they knew those mannerisms hid a strong and able male.

“
I scent two, maybe three shifters. Recently too.” He inhaled deep and coughed. “Definitely ours. I recognize one of the odors.”

“Which one?”

“The cat, Beverly was her name. Shy and a tiny little thing. Or she was. The other one could be Leroy, also one of our patients, one of the unknowns.”

“Could be?”

“There’s something off about the smell. Almost as if he’s sick.”

“You can tell that by smell?

“It’s not hard really. A body that is in ill health tries to eject the toxins poisoning it. Very distinctive
, trust me.”

“And the third scent?”

“Again, probably one of the patients, but I couldn’t tell you for sure which one. It’s really messed up.” His nose wrinkled.

Crab walking, Clarice moved over to a mound of something ooey and gooey. It didn’t appear healthy, or of natural origin. She grabbed a stick off the ground and poked at it. “What the hell is this?”

“Gross.”

She shot him a dirty look. “I can see that, but I asked if you knew what it was. This isn’t human or animal in origin. It’s too jellylike.”

“Maybe it’s hospital gelatin gone bad.” He shrugged. “I’m not a walking encyclopedia, you know.”

“And here I thought you had an answer for everything.”

“I’m glad to see you think so highly of me.”

He would take it as a compliment. “Idiot.”

“Are we back to the name calling?”

Ignoring him, she stood and scouted the area, trying to piece together what happened. Signs of a struggle littered a few spots
: torn sleeping bag, overturned cart with belongings strewn, an ear. Hmmm, which reminded her to ask, “What of the humans who lived here? What do you smell? In other words, do you think they’re dead or alive?”

Standing and wiping his hands on his jeans,
Nolan sighed. “Probably dead. Their corpses, or pieces of, are somewhere around here, I’ll wager. I can smell the beginning stages of rot.”

Kind of what she figured given the abandoned area. Having once
lived on the streets when she ran away from the aerie orphanage, she well knew how the homeless treasured their belongings. No way had they abandoned their stuff.

“So where are the bodies?”

He pointed at a fabric lump down a ways, and to brownish stains over the concrete barrier meant to keep people from accidentally falling in the river. Clarice wandered over to peek over the edge, which plunged about fifteen or twenty feet to the murky, sluggishly moving water. Hanging half-in, half-out of the stagnant river, caught on a metal grill, was part of a corpse.

She’d have to call in a
cleanup crew. No way would human authorities miss the obvious gnawing and chunks of missing flesh. She took a stroll amidst the makeshift camp. A few more body parts hidden amidst the detritus showed up on her search, but not enough to account for the number of people she would have assumed lived here.

“That can’t be all of them.”
A camp this size with a prime location under the bridge would have had at least half dozen or more. Clarice planted her hands on her hips as she peered around.

“Not unless they ate them.”

“Out in the open? They’re crazy, but not completely oblivious.” Not if they’d managed to evade them for so long. “They obviously took the bodies somewhere else to cannibalize. But where?”

Nolan paced under the bridge, the sun not quite penetrating the depths of the arch, but illuminating enough for them to see the metal service door
inset in the wall, its lock busted. Damn, she was hoping his nose would lead him away from the dark, enclosed space.

“Where do you think that goes?”

“Sewer system and the storm drains. City workers need a way to access them. Looks like the ones we’re tracking might have dragged their victims inside.”

Figured. Why couldn’t the hunt have involved a sunny,
flower-filled field? Moaning about it wouldn’t change anything. Clarice slapped away her annoyance and prepared to brave the dark. “Stay here while I take a look.”

“You are not going in there
alone.” He crossed his arms and his lips pulled into a stubborn line.

“
I won’t go far. Just enough to see if you’re right about them having gone to ground.”

“They have.”

“It won’t hurt to check.”

“You know what Kloe said. No confronting any of them without a full team.”

“We don’t even know if they’re in there.”

“Oh, there’s at least one, maybe more.
I’m calling for backup.”

“So quickly?
What happened to giving them the benefit of the doubt? Saving their souls?”

If possible, h
is face turned grimmer. “I changed my mind. It’s too dangerous.”

“
Pussy.”

“Is everything a challenge with you?”

She answered honestly. “Yes. Now are you going to get out of my way so I can do my job or not?”

“I forbid it.”

She choked. “You forbid it? Oh that’s funny.”

“I am not joking, Clarice. You are not going in there. It’s too dangerous.”

Hot as she found his newfound backbone, she also wasn’t about to give in to his orders. He didn’t own her. No man did. “This is what I do, doctor. I investigate dangerous shit. It’s why I carry a gun.” She patted her holster. “Now get out of my way before I make you cry for your mother.”

“You know, you keep assuming you can take me.”

“Because I know I can.”

“
Don’t be so sure. I’m not as useless as you think.”

“Says the man with more hair products than a beauty salon.”

“Just because I take care of myself doesn’t—you know what? I give up. You want to go in the nasty, dark sewer, then fine, be my guest, but I’m coming with you.”

What made him change his mind? Her brow creased.
“I thought you wanted to call for backup?”

“I’ve already texted the office. They’re sending a team.”

Sly kitty. She’d not even noted his flying fingers, too intent on their verbal sparring. She really needed to up her game around him. “Excellent. Well, if help is on the way, then what are we waiting for?”

“Sanity.”

“Way overrated.” Clarice pulled out her gun, one of them at least. “Where’s your weapon?”

He arched
a golden brow. “I don’t need one.”

She clucked her tongue. “
Such a man thing to say. Stick behind me. I don’t care how big these psychos are, it only takes one well placed bullet to stop even the largest animal in its tracks.”

“
Don’t count on it,” he muttered, but he didn’t impede her as she stepped through the door into a small, closet-sized room with a hole in the floor. The ladder bolted to its side headed ominously down.

Even her meager sense of smell twitched with discomfort at the
miasma wafting up. Perhaps this wasn’t such a good idea. She didn’t even have a flashlight, or…

A click and a feeble bulb encased in a metal cage lit up inside the hole. It didn’t improve the appearance of the ladder leading into the sewer.

“At least the electricity still works,” he announced.

“Yay.”
Her enthusiasm emerged flat.

“
Are you sure you want to do this?” he asked softly. “We can turn back.”

The sense of danger prickled at her f
rom all directions, a warning she should heed, urging her to head for the skies. To open space. Anywhere but here. She almost turned around. Almost. But she wasn’t a weak fledgling, the orphanage made sure of that. She straightened her spine, hardened her resolve, and mustered her courage. “I’m sure. Let’s go.”

And down she went into the bowels of hell, also known as every toilet in the city.

Nolan could have shaken
Clarice for her stubborn refusal to wait for backup. As it stood, he almost tossed her over his shoulder and dragged her away. However, he knew it would do no good. Not to mention might have ended up with someone getting hurt—more than likely him.

Despite only knowing her a short time, he
understood enough to realize Clarice wouldn’t back down. Something in her past made her feel like she needed to prove herself. Forced her to do the opposite of what common sense dictated. Short of knocking her out, she was going to explore the damned sewer. But she wouldn’t go alone.

Nose twitching, stomach not happy
, and his lion senses tingling, he followed. Danger lurked below. Waited. Watched. Nolan might not have the experience of his jungle cousins, but he retained enough of his heritage in his genes to know when something stalked him. It oddly enough roused the hunter in him, the beast who didn’t appreciate the fact something considered him prey. Even odder, his bestial side was angered at the thought something watched and hungered for the woman he followed into darkness.

More and more, he couldn’t deny his growing
regard for Clarice. He could blame it on their forced proximity. Relegate it to his cat’s curious nature, which wanted to know why she wouldn’t succumb to his advances even though he could smell her desire for him. Despite the vast differences between them, it wasn’t one-sided. Awareness sizzled whenever they got close. And if he were quite truthful, she fascinated him. Drew him. Enthralled him like no other. He’d never before wanted to get to know a woman like he wanted to know her, and not just know her in a carnal way, but in every sense, from her favorite color and movie down to the taste of her skin, and if she possessed ticklish toes.

Her prickly exterior didn’t scare him off
as she intended. Her anger and insults rolled off his furry skin. He could see underneath all the posturing lurked a woman looking for acceptance. A vulnerable woman who needed love, which he was sure she’d vehemently deny, probably to the death—his death.

What to do? Standing in a rank sewer probably wasn’t the time to ponder that question.

He took better stock of their location. The ladder had led them down to a rather cavernous room. Tunnels led off in all four directions of the compass. From the one to the east, the distinctive odor of malodorous river flowing under the bridge wafted. The cage-covered lights illuminated most of the path and daylight did the rest, if weakly, through the heavy grill plastered with debris, probably washed there from the last storm surge passing through.

In the other three directions resided the mysteries. He could see that the lights in the northern passage had burnt out in some spots and who knew what lurked in the side tunnels branching from it. The water running between the parallel walkway had only the most sluggish of currents. He couldn’t tell how deep it went and really didn’t want to find out.

To the west and south, something had deliberately ripped the lights out, the metal cages twisted and bent, some torn off entirely. Not an ounce of illumination gave any indication of what waited. But, his nose knew. It smelled the blood. The rot. The sense of
wrongness
.

Clarice rotated around slowly, pacing the area, taking the same visual inventory.
A scuff from a side tunnel halted her and he almost stumbled into her back.

“We should leave.”

“Scared, Sylvester?” she taunted in a low whisper.

“
Nope, smart enough to know we are underequipped.”

“I agree.”

He almost fell over in shock. She agreed? Perhaps the fumes of the sewer were stronger than he realized.

“
Let’s go back topside and wait for the reinforcements to arrive.”

Mark it on the calendar and declare a holiday. Clarice finally saw reason. Too bad it was too late.

*

Clarice regretted her decision to enter the sewer as soon as she hit the bottom of the ladder.
What was I thinking?
She was a falcon, meant for open spaces and the sky, not confined rooms underground where thick gloom hid everything. Her skin itched and crawled, and not just from the creep factor. The great bird in the sky only knew what germs this pest infested place held.

How she hated to admit she might have acted hasty
, though. In her quest to prove herself bigger and better than the FUC agents, she’d done a dumb thing, one her magpie sergeant would have croaked about for days. She’d gone into uncharted territory with a rookie, underequipped, undermanned, and against a direct order that stated to proceed with caution and wait for backup. Not only that, she took along a lion who was barely a step above civilian. If SGT Noireau were here, he’d ream her feathery tail out and clip her wings for weeks.