Wicked Bite (Night Rebel #2)(14)

“My apologies for my misdirected ire before,” I said.

Cat grunted. “Don’t worry. Love makes us all crazy—”

I hung up so fast, I didn’t hear the rest of her reply. Was what I felt for Ian that obvious? Silver whined, laying his head on the console between our seats. He always sensed when I needed comforting, and yes, I needed it badly right now.

Still, I had a job to do. That’s why I pet his head only once before turning my attention back to the road.

The day before yesterday, a man had been arrested for causing a disturbance at the famed Lion Gate in the ancient city of Mycenae. Nothing unusual there, except cell-phone video showed the man shouting in a sixth-century b.c.e. Greek dialect. Add the man’s off-camera escape from no fewer than five security officers, and this was a lead I would have investigated right away if I hadn’t had to rush off to court.

If this was another resurrected soul and Ian’s lawsuit meant that Dagon beat me to him again, I’d be so pissed.

I sped up. Over the next hour, city lights were replaced by the faint glow from the stars. By the time I reached Mycenae, modern buildings were nowhere in sight. There was only the rolling hills of Argos and the ruins of the former great citadel.

“Mycenae rich in gold,” Homer had written in his famed poem about the fall of Troy at the hands of the Greeks. The riches of Mycenae were long gone, but hints of the citadel’s former glory remained, such as part of the fortress’s wall on the highest hill; the tall stone entryway to the rumored burial site of King Agamemnon, or the aforementioned Lion Gate, where two leonine stone carvings marked the entrance to the city.

During the day, this area was dotted with tourists. At half past four in the morning, it was empty. Or it should have been. When I parked in the lot reserved for tour buses, I heard a faint cut-off scream.

I’d dressed for court, not for battle, so I didn’t have any weapons on me. I grabbed a satchel I’d packed some demon bone knives and silver knives in, then flew toward the sound, leaving Silver behind in the car. As I flew, I prayed to any gods that might be listening. Please don’t let me be too late, please don’t let me be too late . . .

The citadel was now silent. I detected no movement among the pale stone ruins, either. I dipped lower, losing my visual advantage to utilize another sense. Yes, there. By the entrance to the underground cistern. I smelled blood.

I landed and then crouched low to enter the tunnel where the ancient city’s former water supply had been stored. It was dry now, which was unfortunate. I could’ve pulled the energy the water contained to increase my strength, but the only liquid I now sensed in the cistern was blood. The scent was almost choking as I descended the rough, uneven steps of the steeply sloped tunnel. But no scent of demon. Just blood and the sickly smell of terror.

Then a soft, anguished noise came from farther ahead. I abandoned caution and flew the rest of the way. I knew that sound. Someone was dying in agony.

After two turns, the end of the narrow tunnel came into view. A white-haired, dusky-skinned man with unlined features raised his head from the ripped-open belly of another man, whose eyes were glazing over in death.

My impact knocked the gore from the murderer’s mouth.

Our tight quarters meant my momentum slammed us both into the wall. The white-haired man cursed me in preclassical Greek as he tried to bite me with a mouth now stretched to impossibly large dimensions. I leapt back, avoiding his snapping jaws.

Not a demon or a vampire. Ghoul, to use the modern word. They normally ate the dead, but from the state of the four bodies strewn like rubbish in the tunnel, these victims had been eaten alive. And I’d arrived too late to save any of them.

“Murderer,” I spat in the same preclassical Greek dialect.

“Dead walker,” he replied in a hiss.

An ancient slur against vampires. Another hint that he was not from this era. “The world has no shortage of dead for your kind to feast on. You ate these people alive. Why?”

He smiled, showing that he still had chunks of viscera in his teeth. My stomach heaved. “The dead do not make beautiful music with their screams.”

Some of the souls that were released are very dark, my father had warned me about the people Dagon had trapped inside himself. No shit. This ghoul was cruel enough to be Dagon’s best friend, if he was one of the resurrected ones.

I had to find out.

“Did you wake up and find that the world had vastly changed since the last time you saw it?” I asked as I avoided his next attempt to grab me. With the tight confines of the tunnel, I had to bash into the walls to do it. The ghoul grinned, enjoying the sight of me in pain.

“Everything I know is gone.” Confusion and rage thrummed through his tone. “Now, metal horses bring strange-tongued invaders to gawk at my city’s bones, so I feast on theirs!”

He was one of the people I was looking for, all right, and he’d chosen to squander his second chance at life by eating innocent tourists. I couldn’t kill him fast enough, but I’d packed my satchel only with knives, and I needed a sword for ghouls. My car had a sword in it. Could I get it and return before the ghoul fled?

Ghouls couldn’t fly. I had a chance.

“Don’t go anywhere,” I said, and flew out of the tunnel.

Silver was growling when I got back to the car. He probably smelled the blood from my close contact with the flesh eater. I didn’t have time to reassure him. I grabbed the sword, slammed the door, and flew back toward the cistern.