Sinister Magic: An Urban Fantasy Dragon Series (Death Before Dragons #1) - Lindsay Buroker Page 0,85

ahead, both powerful people and powerful artifacts, Sindari reported.

Ideally, we’ll avoid all of that and detour to the alchemy lab. I led the way through a second hatchway, and then things got complicated. A four-way intersection offered three options. Any idea which way? Can you smell chemicals?

Wouldn’t chemicals be locked away in containers?

I don’t know, but isn’t your sense of smell amazing?

All of me is amazing. But I still don’t smell chemicals.

What about blood? She’s mixing blood and charcoal for some ceremony to welcome new evil minions into the cult. I was fairly certain the names the speaker had mentioned were the same names Zav had shared, the criminals he wanted me to retrieve along with his broken-egg platter. Later, I’d happily let him know they were down here, but I was just here for blood. There would be no side trips to run errands for dragons.

An inner emotion that didn’t seem to be my own oozed disapproval at this line of thinking. I gritted my teeth, annoyed that Zav had imprinted some compulsion on me, that stupid eagerness to please him.

I smell much blood. Sindari twitched his tail.

Can you lead me to it?

I shall try.

It was a testament to how strange my life was that I wanted to be taken toward the copious amounts of blood and not away from them.

Sindari headed right, took a left at another intersection, and then opted for a sloping ramp heading upward instead of stairs leading deeper underground where a moist mildewy odor wafted up from below. The idea of this place having multiple levels daunted me. Seattle was at sea level, so it was hard to imagine that the dark elves could have dug many extra tunnels down here without water creeping in.

My lungs did not like that mildew scent, so I took a puff from my inhaler. Better to use it preemptively now than need it in a fight later.

New noises joined the clangs and thuds, a clanking and grinding. It sounded like machinery—did they have pumping equipment running down here?

As the ramp led us higher, the rumble of cars driving somewhere above us also seeped down through the layers. Lastly, I heard the chanting of voices. A lot of voices.

They rose and fell in a creepy cadence. If they were speaking a language, it was one my charm didn’t know how to translate. Maybe it was nonsense. It had the repetitive nature of some ancient mantra.

I slowed my pace. I don’t think this is the way to the alchemy lab. Not unless it’s a popular place.

What if the lab was where this ritual would take place? Surely not. Who sacrificed goats or virgins or whatever in a science lab?

Sindari glanced back. We are still going toward the smell of blood.

This place probably smells like blood all over.

That is not untrue, but it is stronger up ahead. I also detect charcoal. You mentioned that, yes?

Yes. Reluctantly, I kept going. After all I’d faced in my life, I shouldn’t be afraid of a little blood and chanting, but something about this place gave me the creeps.

For the first time, we reached a series of doors along the sides of the tunnel. Some were open, some closed. Some were made of sturdy metal full of rivets, some of old rotting wood.

I peeked inside the open doors, hoping for the lab, but they appeared to be personal quarters, meeting rooms, and storage areas. One of the latter was full of shelves of knives, skulls, and human body parts in jars. Torture implements, some I could name and far more that I couldn’t, hung on racks.

My stomach lurched queasily, and I reached for the pouch of grenades I’d brought, but I thought better of it. As much as I’d like to blow up all of their evil torture stuff, that would only draw the dark elves down on me. As it was, we likely had only minutes before the two who’d found the female reported back. That would put an end to the chanting and a beginning to hunt-Val time.

We rounded a bend, traffic still audible rumbling by overhead, and for the first time since I’d left the surface, light reached my eyes. Infrared light, similar to what Zoltan had brightened his laboratory with.

The tunnel ended at a wide balcony lined with a metal railing and overlooking a chamber below. The source of the red light was over on the far side of the chamber, a huge two-story statue of a multi-limbed, insectoid figure with