Chapter 4 - THE SUB-BASEMENT TUNNELS
The descent was a blur of rushing darkness and cold sheet metal.
The air shrieked against Hazel's ears.
She clenched her eyes shut, her arms locked around Gideon's neck.
Halfway down, Gideon slammed his heavy combat boots into the metal chute walls, using his sheer strength to brake their fall.
Sparks showered around them with a violent screech of tearing brass.
THUD.
They hit the mountain of discarded woolen laundry bags at the bottom.
Gideon took the entire shock through his knees and back, shielding Hazel completely from the impact.
They rolled onto the stone floor of the boiling room.
Steam pipes clicked and groaned in the shadows.
Huge copper vats hung from overhead iron chains like giant bells.
Gideon released her, immediately rolling to his feet and drawing his silver-plated revolver.
He scanned the cavernous room.
Empty.
Only the steady dripping of soapy water broke the silence.
Hazel pushed herself up from the damp canvas bags.
Her ribs ached from the speed of the drop, but her palm had stopped throbbing.
She looked at Gideon.
His pupils were fully dilated in the pitch dark.
"You can see?" she whispered.
"As clearly as day," he answered.
"The culvert is behind the coal reserve, correct?"
"Yes," she said, leading the way through the labyrinth of brick pillars.
"Follow the smell of river silt."
They reached the coal bin.
Behind a mound of black anthracite lay a round iron grate, four feet in diameter.
It was padlocked with a rusted chain as thick as a man’s wrist.
Gideon holstered his gun.
He hooked his fingers into the links of the chain.
The muscles across his broad back bunched beneath the tactical wool coat.
His jaw set.
A low, guttural snarl vibrated in his throat as his royal wolf surfaced.
Veins bulged along his forearms.
SNAP.
The steel links sheared apart like brittle twigs.
Gideon pulled the heavy iron grate from its mortar setting and set it aside without making a sound.
"Through," he ordered.
Hazel dropped to her hands and knees, crawling into the stone drainage pipe.
The air was frigid, carrying the bitter stench of frozen mud and decomposing river reeds.
Gideon followed directly behind her, his large frame scraping against the narrow curved ceiling.
Behind them, high up in the laundry chute shaft, an alarm whistle shrieked.
A man's voice echoed down the brass tube:
"They went down the chute!"
"Release the hounds into the sub-basement!"
Hazel’s heart leaped into her throat.
"The hounds," she gasped, picking up speed, her boots slipping on the slick moss.
"They're bred to hunt wounded wolves."
"They'll track your blood from my palm."
Gideon reached forward with his long arm, his fingers brushing the heel of her boot.
"Keep crawling, Hazel."
"A royal Alpha does not run from dogs."
"Gideon, there are twenty in the pack," she said over her shoulder.
"They are starved before the hunts."
"Then they will learn what it costs to hunt their king," he growled.
After two hundred yards of agonizing crawling through ice-water runoff, the stone culvert opened up.
A jagged breach in the brick foundation dropped six feet into the snowy banks of the frozen river.
Hazel scrambled out, tumbling into a drift of powdery white snow.
The freezing cold struck her bare face like a physical blow.
Gideon dropped down beside her.
He pulled up the hood of her wool sweater, tucking her loose auburn hair securely inside.
"The scent," he said, tapping her collarbone.
"Your mother used bitter soap?"
"Lye and juniper berry," she panted, her breath blooming into white clouds.
"She washed my hair with it every Sunday."
"It's wearing off," Gideon said, his voice deadly serious.
"The healing activated your scent glands."
"You smell of pure Aurelian blood now."
"To any wolf within three miles, you smell like a beacon of starlight."
Hazel pulled her hands to her chest in horror.
"How do we mask it?"
Gideon looked down at the icy river rushing between jagged sheets of black ice.
"We cross the water."
Before she could answer, a ferocious baying shattered the winter night.
From the culvert opening behind them, six massive black mastiff-wolves poured out into the snow.
Their eyes were milky red, their jaws dripping with foam.
Behind them, riding two snow-mobiles along the river ridge, came four southern trackers in dark leather armor.
"There they are!" a tracker shouted, cocking a semi-automatic rifle.
"Kaelen wants the girl alive!"
"Put two rounds in the man's legs!"
Gideon drew his silver revolver.
He did not fire at the men.
He fired two hollow-point rounds directly into the frozen crust of the river ice twenty yards ahead.
CRACK. BOOM.
The ice shattered, revealing a rushing torrent of black, freezing river current.
"Gideon, we can't swim that!" Hazel screamed over the roar of the engines.
Gideon wrapped his arm around her waist, hoisting her against his shoulder like a feather.
"We aren't swimming," he said.
He leaped twenty feet through the air, clearing the jagged chasm of black water, landing hard on the snowbound boulder of the opposite bank.
The first hound leaped after them, its jaws snapping six inches from Hazel’s heels.
Gideon fired once without looking back.
The silver bullet tore through the beast's chest mid-air, dropping it into the black rapids below.
The second hound hesitated at the edge.
May you like
On the ridge behind them, a high-caliber sniper rifle cracked.
The bullet ripped through the heavy wool of Gideon’s shoulder, tearing the flesh and spinning him sideways into the snow.
