Witch Way Out (Witch Detectives #3) (16 page)

Of course, there were plenty more people we couldn’t trust out there, too.

We headed down into the depths, seeking out the circular room where I’d met Ulm before. I kept an eye on Siobhan as we walked, wanting to make sure that she was okay. Not just because she was pregnant, but because she was going back into a place she had once called home, unsure of the reception she would get when she did.

We were almost to the circular room when a tall, handsome figure stepped out of the dark.

“Hello, Luc,” I said with a smile.

Luc didn’t smile back. He looked the three of us over, his gaze resting on each of us in turn. It seemed to linger on me the longest. “You shouldn’t be here. You can’t be here.”

“Don’t tell me where I can and can’t go, Luc,” I said. “We need to see Ulm.”

“You can’t. Listen to me, all of you. Turn around now and run for the surface. If you stay down here, you’ll die.”

Was he threatening us? I wasn’t sure, but I didn’t care either way. We had to see Ulm, and if that meant ignoring Luc, so be it. I moved to push past him and he reached out, almost blindingly fast, his hand closing over my wrist.

“Won’t you
listen
to me, you stupid…
human
?”

Niall stepped between us. “Elle isn’t human. Neither am I. Release her, or you will find out just how
inhuman
I can be.”

Luc bristled at that, his eyes narrowing as he stared at Niall. I took advantage of their posturing to tear my wrist from his grip, setting off for the room I’d met Ulm in with Siobhan and the others following behind me as best they could.

I got there and I saw straight away why Luc had been trying to keep me away. Unexpectedly, Ulm was there, sitting at the table almost like he’d been anticipating my visit. Which would have been fine had he not been covered in blood.

Ulm, the goblins’ leader, the force behind their attempts to come up to the surface, was dead. His red eyes were glazed over, and gashes marred his skin where something had sliced into it. There were burns, too. Patches where the flesh had almost melted away. Sitting there, he didn’t look peaceful. He looked like someone had posed him. Like they had taken the time to leave him there as some kind of insult.

“Ulm…how?” I asked, as Luc showed up with the others.

“No one knows yet. Nea and I found him like that. She’s gone for the others. You need to go before they get here, all of you.”

I shook my head. I needed to feel what had happened here first. I needed to understand. I stood in the middle of the room, as close as I dared to get to the late goblin leader, reaching out with my senses and trying to feel something, anything, that might help.

I could feel anger there, and pain. I could feel far more than that, though. I reached down, and just for a moment, I caught an impression, the final instant of Ulm’s life clinging to him like a cloak. I’d done this once before, back when I’d been looking into the death of a young singer, and it had been intense enough to make me gasp. This…this was worse.

The pain was everything. The pain, and the heat, and the sense of betrayal. I screamed as something sliced into my flesh. As something burned. I could feel the magic thundering into me, tearing through me, and I knew the despair that came as I knew that everything I’d tried so hard to achieve, everything I’d worked for…

“Elle!” I could feel Niall, pulling me upward, his emotions reaching out to mine, drawing me up to the surface like a hand reaching down to someone drowning. I reached up and let him pull me back to consciousness, staggering and almost falling until he caught me. “Elle, are you all right? What just happened? What did you—”

“What are
they
doing here?” The words were a roar, and other voices joined it. A whole host of voices, as goblins started to pour into the chamber from the surrounding tunnels. I could feel the fear there as they started to come in, and the confusion, but above all of it, I could feel the anger. And the strongest anger came from the goblin at their head. The goblin who pointed at me as he strode into the room.

Kal.

“What is she doing here?” Kal repeated. “She has no right to be here. Did they do this?”

“We didn’t do anything,” I insisted.

“Then why are you here? What are you doing down here? I told Ulm that he should have nothing to do with you, but—”

“Just shut up and listen to her,” Siobhan snapped from beside me. “We didn’t have anything to do with this. Elle would never do something like this.”

Kal stared at her. “You. The one who is going to bear a child in the light. You should not be back down here. You must leave.”

Siobhan shook her head. “Not until you start listening.”

“We didn’t kill him,” I said. “He was killed with…” I tried to push back the memory that had nearly overwhelmed me. “He was killed with blades, and with magic.”

“Magic?” This time, Kal’s fury echoed around the chamber like a shout. “The witches. You’ve been working for the witches all along!”

“It wasn’t
us
!” I insisted. “Will you just
listen
for a moment?”

“To murderers? To ones like the bitch who held us in thrall for so long? You came down here, wanting the same power that she had, and when Ulm wouldn’t give it to you, you killed him.”

He thought that? He really thought that I wanted the place Victoria had taken for herself? How could anyone think that? I could see it only too easily. After all, I was an enchantress. One who loved the same man she had called hers for so long.

Niall put a hand on my arm. “We should leave, Elle.”

“Leave?” Kal was practically incandescent by then. “The girl can leave. She has to go back to the surface.
You
…Luc, kill them.”

Beside me, Luc shrugged casually. “Kill them yourself. I don’t think they had anything to do with this.”

“Then take the girl back to the surface.”

Luc smiled as though he found it funny that Kal was giving him orders. Then he held out a hand to Siobhan. “Will you come with me?”

Siobhan started to shake her head as though she would stay. But I looked over to her. I was only too aware of the child she carried. Did I want her involved in the fight that might come? Would she be able to keep up with Niall and me if it came to running?

“Go, Siobhan. Get her home safely, Luc.”

“I look forward to seeing what the inside of your home looks like.” That came with another of those grins. “I will leave her there, but I will find someone else to wait with her. I’m sure I will see you again, Elle Chambers.”

He took Siobhan’s hand in his, pulling her gently toward the exit. The goblins around us seemed to pause as she left, obviously mindful of the weight of expectation that lay on her. They waited until she was gone, well away from all of us…

…and then they surged forward.

I grabbed their anger, turning it into power and throwing it back at them as a spell that sent half a dozen of them sprawling. One ran at Niall and Niall hit it in a blur, knocking it flat just as another came at him. And another, and another.

There seemed to be so many of them. I knocked goblins back with raw power, kicked away another, stepped back to avoid a sweep of claws and barely ducked in time as one threw himself at me. I saw Niall and Kal locked together in a death grip, the goblin’s teeth bared to try to rip out Niall’s throat. I threw a blast of magic that smashed a goblin aside just as it tried to come at Niall from the blind side.

I was trying not to kill them. The only person I’d ever truly wanted to kill was Victoria, and I certainly didn’t want to start killing goblins over what was ultimately just a misunderstanding.

I tried reaching out for the emotions around me, trying to calm the goblins the way I’d once calmed a hostile mob. But that time, I hadn’t been their target, and there hadn’t been anything like the amount of anger that there was here. It washed over me like an ocean, far too much to drink down and transmute.

“Die, vampire!” A goblin girl who didn’t look much older than Siobhan came at me with a knife. I whirled away, trapping her arm and wrenching it hard enough that she had to drop the knife before throwing her at another goblin. They both went down in a tangle.

Niall kicked away Kal, fighting his way back toward me. “Elle, Siobhan must be out by now!”

I nodded. He was right. We’d stayed to fight because it had seemed like the best way to give Siobhan enough time to get to safety. Staying now…it wouldn’t achieve anything. We couldn’t convince the goblins, at least not for long. We certainly couldn’t defeat the goblins, because there were too many of them. I didn’t want to start killing them. Running was the only option.

“Shut your eyes,” I said to Niall, and he did it without question. I summoned up power and turned it into brightness, building on the most basic of witch light spells until it became something so much more. Flare and brilliance burst from my hands, filling the space around me so that it was almost blinding.

No, not
almost.
To goblins, raised in the flickering lights and half dark of Underneath, so easily hurt by the sun, it was blinding. In the magnesium flare of the spell, even I saw afterimages as Niall grabbed my arm, pulling me back toward the tunnel that led up to the Vaults.

We ran.
We ran as only we could run. A goblin, half-blind, got in my way and I smashed it aside. One swung a blade at Niall and he leapt over it without stopping. We plunged into the tunnels beyond without slowing down, running faster than any human could have run, knowing that we needed to run that fast to outpace any goblins following us.

How far would they follow? To the edge of the Vaults? All the way to the surface? How far would they get before the fury that had made them come after us ebbed away? I decided to help things along a little. I threw calm out behind me like a wall, hoping that it would do something to lessen the murderous resolve of any goblins following us.

Somehow, scrambling, we made it to the surface. We tumbled out into the Vaults, almost knocking over a tour party. I pushed away their attention on instinct, and then thought better of it, pushing out authority instead.

“Ladies and gentlemen, your attention, please. There has been an emergency, and we need to clear the Vaults as quickly as possible. Please make your way to the exits.”

I didn’t want tourists having to deal with any furious goblins who emerged. As the people started to file out of the Vaults, I fell into step with them. Niall did the same. I could feel the worry rising off him like steam as we walked for the exit, and I put my arm through his, trying to reassure him. When had our relationship changed enough that
I
was the one who comforted
him
?

“It’s all right, Niall. I don’t think they’re following. We’re safe.”

“Safe?” Niall shook his head. “Elle, the goblins’ leader is dead, they are furious, and we are caught up in a situation that could explode at any moment. Believe me, we are anything but safe.”

We stopped by my place to check on Siobhan, and to my surprise, I found Ulm’s sidekick, Nea, there with her.

“Luc couldn’t stay,” Siobhan explained, “but he called Nea here and asked her to come round. I tried to tell him that I don’t need watching.”

“You are precious,” Nea disagreed. “With Ulm gone, your child is a symbol. We need to keep you safe.”

I wasn’t sure about the prophecy, but I could agree that Siobhan needed to be kept safe.

“Nea’s right, Siobhan. We need to keep an eye on you. We’ve already had attacks on you, after all, and I can be here all the time. I’ll get Fergie over to do it.”

“Fergie? What’s he going to do, sue people to death?” Siobhan’s exasperation was easy to pick up.

“I am happy to stay,” Nea said. “It’s why I came. It…it’s what Ulm would have wanted, and…well, I’d like the chance to talk to you, Siobhan. About everything that’s happening.”

I could feel the sorrow coming off her as she said that, and I guessed that Nea needed to do it as much as Siobhan needed the protection. Of course, I could simply have stayed down there with Siobhan, but I knew that Niall and I had too much to discuss. The death of the goblin leader changed things.

We didn’t leave my home though, instead heading upstairs to the pristine minimalism of my bedroom. It seemed almost unfamiliar. I’d been spending so much time over at Niall’s place.

“Do you think Siobhan is going to be all right down there?” I asked Niall.

He went to sit on the edge of the bed. “I am worried that none of us will be all right if this continues the way it is going.”

He didn’t look quite as perfect as usual. Oh, Niall looked wonderful, but his jacket was torn, obviously having been clipped by one of the goblins we’d fought.

“We should get that off you,” I suggested, moving to slip the jacket from his shoulders and catching him with a kiss as I moved to sit beside him. Was it just the restless energy of what we’d just been through that made me want him like this? The coming down from a wave of adrenaline? Or maybe it was just that, whatever the situation, Niall was utterly irresistible to me.