Wild Sign (Alpha & Omega #6)(87)

She was on her way out, halfway up the squeeze-chute tunnel, when she heard a soft click and all the lights in front of her went out. She paused. Could she find her way out in the dark? The darkness of the cave was not the darkness of night. There was no light. She’d be able to make it out of the narrow passage, where there was only one direction to go, but after that? When her memory of how they had made the trip in was foggy?

She slid back out into the bedroom cavern. Improbably, given that it was presumably attached to all of the other lights, the single bulb was still lit, but the lanterns on either side of the bed were out. She picked one of them up and pressed the red button to turn it on. Nothing happened.

It had just been lit. It was a simple, battery-operated device. She tried the other one with the same result.

She was trapped.

And that was when she became aware of the sounds. Muffled scuffling noises with an odd wet edge to them. Groaning. A shushing sound almost like a croon that ended in a sound like grain spun in a basket. Then a wet squishy smacking sound, like someone had thrown a giant sponge out of an airplane so it could land on pavement.

She stood frozen, curiosity pushing her forward, curiosity and the desire to see what the hell was making that noise. But caution and that small voice in her head held her still.

And then the sound changed, becoming a rhythmical squicking, as if some film director decided to make a parody of sex. It was too loud and too . . . harsh, as if something huge and wet scraped over and over against a rough surface. Someone—Zander?—cried out in a mix of passion and pain.

It sounded, she thought, with a sort of revolted horror (and a weird desire to laugh), like the tentacle sex in the old anime movie that had been passed around the high school girls’ locker room. Yes, she had watched it.

She and her best friend had consumed two buckets of popcorn and laughed themselves sick. Her dad had caught them. Being her dad, he’d grabbed a handful of popcorn and stayed to observe a tentacle enter a place a tentacle had no business being. He’d winced theatrically and then rolled his eyes before wandering out.

She wished her dad were here now.

A very distinctive odor hit her nose. The sounds did not lie. Sex was taking place.

She also caught a whiff of something else, musk and mint like the flannel shirt she wore as armor, but lighter somehow and vaguely familiar. There was a gentle scuffing sound just outside the cavern—and a naked, very dirty woman padded in on soft feet.

For a moment, she reminded Anna of Zander.

Then she came closer, dispelling the illusion—a thing of shadows and the shape of her eyes.

“Anna?” the woman said in a whisper so quiet Anna was surprised that she could hear. “Are you okay?”

The woman, even naked and dirty, carried with her an air of command that had Anna responding to her as if she were here to help. Anna looked at the bed, then pointed in the general direction of the sloppy wet noises—and shook her head definitively.

The woman nodded and then gestured for Anna to follow her back the way she’d come—the direction that Zander had not taken. This section of the tunnel was still lit, and Anna couldn’t help but look the way Zander had gone, but it dropped down and turned. All she could see was that the light from that direction had a distinct orange tinge and looked too bright to have been provided solely by ordinary bulbs.

The woman stopped and Anna stopped with her. There was something odd about Anna’s own reaction to this woman—who was a stranger, a naked stranger, even. And she felt like a trusted comrade, if not a friend. But unlike the happy, safe feeling that Zander’s music inspired, this felt true.

She turned to Anna as if to say something.

Anna spoke first. “Who are you?” she asked. “Have we met?”

The other woman’s eyes flashed to icy blue, as if she wore some kind of contacts designed to make her look like a superhero or an alien.

Wolf eyes. And that thought felt true as well.

The woman didn’t answer Anna’s question, her voice still quiet—though she would have had to be singing full-throated opera to have pierced the noises coming from behind them. “You need music to clear your head. The wrong kind of music will make you vulnerable to him—anything soft or emotional. Music in general is dangerous. The Singer’s powers are music and memory. But they can also be used to defend against him. You need something defiant. A war song. Maybe something like—” She hummed a little and Anna recognized the tune.

“Queen,” Anna said. “I can channel Freddie Mercury.”

“Wait until we get somewhere safer—or if the enemy appears. Think defiance while you sing, or it will backfire. I hope it won’t be necessary, because we are going to try to make it out before they are finished back there. I warn you, though, this next cavern is bad. Stay beside me.”

“What if he cuts the lights?” Anna asked.

“I have a flashlight,” the woman said. “I picked it up at the cave entrance.” For the first time, Anna noticed that she was carrying a small black flashlight in one hand. In the dim light, it blended with the dirt on the woman’s hands.

“Something killed the electric lanterns back there.”

“Well, then, Anna,” said the woman in a biting tone—so familiar. Who was this woman? “I guess we’ll have to fight in the dark, or”—she nodded her head toward the disturbing sounds behind them—“you can go back and wait until he gets done in there.”