“So why are we sitting here waiting?” she asked him.
“Because if we get out before Wellesley acknowledges our presence, bad things will happen. Wellesley was once an ordnance sergeant.”
“A what?” Anna asked.
He snorted softly. “I keep forgetting how young you are. ‘Ordnance sergeant’ means that he blew up a lot of things with chemicals found around battlefields, farmyards, and nineteenth-century factories. He has this whole place—maybe the whole side of the mountain—wired to blow. Or so Bran told me once.”
“Okay,” Anna said thoughtfully. “Does it worry you that Leah sent you and me here together? She’d happily see us both dead. You more than I, generally, but not at the moment.”
“Not in the slightest,” Asil told her. “I am not destined to be blown to bits by a mad and talented artist. No artist would willingly destroy such a work of art as I am.”
There was a clicking sound, then lights turned on around them.
“Now we can get out,” Asil said. Which would have been more reassuring if he hadn’t murmured softly, “I think.”
Anna hesitated, but remaining in the car was unlikely to protect her if Wellesley did decide to blow them to kingdom come, so she got out. As she closed the door, she took her time looking around.
The entrance had been natural, but the track they’d followed in looked more like a mine shaft complete with hand-scraped timbers holding up the dirt ceiling and railroad track unmoored and piled up along the wall.
The place where they’d stopped had been widened so it could accommodate three cars. Presently it held Asil’s Mercedes, an elderly Jeep, a motorcycle, and a snowmobile—the last two occupying one space. The ceiling directly over the parking area was ten feet high, if it was lucky, and I-beams supported giant concrete blocks that (hopefully) endeavored to hold the mountain off their heads.
A narrow and irregular opening just in front of the motorcycle drew attention to itself by being more brightly lit than anywhere else. Anna followed Asil past the motorcycle and into the opening, noticing that Asil seemed completely relaxed. If she were with anyone else, she’d have been reassured. But Asil had spent nearly a decade waiting for Bran to kill him—he didn’t care as much about safe as she did.
There was a small landing just inside the opening followed by a sort of winding stairway. This wasn’t a hand-carved work of art like she’d seen at Hester’s home. This was a round, mostly vertical tunnel with dirt sides and chunks of two-by-fours stuck into the earth at irregular intervals, more like a ladder than a stairway, really.
Climbing up proved to be interesting. Sometimes the boards worked as treads for her feet—and sometimes she had to duck the boards above her in order to climb. About twenty feet up, there were far fewer boards. She had to jump and grab the one above her, chin-up until she could throw a leg over it, then stand on it and do it all over again.
The boards were pitted with claw marks, and it occurred to her that this would have been a much easier climb in her wolf form. She also noted that there were holes in the dirt wall where boards used to be. A thirty-foot fall was unlikely to kill her—but all the boards she could hit on the way down might just do the job.
At the top, there was a gap with no helpful two-by-fours for a distance about twice as high as she was tall. Asil had led the way, and he made the jump easily. He stood at the edge at the top for a moment, blocking her way. Then he stepped to the side and bent, giving her an arm to grab at the top. She had a moment to visualize herself jumping high enough to make it but then having no way to move sideways at the top of the leap. A childhood of Bugs Bunny cartoons allowed her to picture it all quite clearly.
As it was, she managed the business with about half of Asil’s grace, even with his arm. But at least she didn’t end up back at the bottom.
The hole through which they’d emerged was centered in a small, plain room without windows, which was illuminated by a single electric bulb. The flooring was simple, packed dirt except for the rim of metal around the edge of the hole. The walls of the room were rough-finished concrete. The only door was flat metal without visible hinges or any way to open it from their side.
“If this is what it takes to reach the people on our list,” Anna told Asil, “we’re going to be at it all night and then some.”
“Wellesley will be the most difficult,” Asil told her. “His trouble makes him a little paranoid. I thought that we should start with him and work down to the one where the only thing we can do is put a note in a mailbox and hope he checks it sometime this month.”
“List?” said a gravelly bass as the door opened.
Asil was right. His voice did sound like Johnny Cash’s, if Johnny had been born in the Carribbean instead of Arkansas.
He was a black man of about average height, with a barrel-chested build and thick, stubby fingers. For a werewolf, his face was weathered and his mouth soft.
He looked like he should make candy for a living, or stuffed toys, or some other blameless occupation. He didn’t look like an artist, and he didn’t look like someone who could harm a fly. But as much as she loved his art, he was still one of Bran’s wildlings—he was plenty dangerous.
Asil said, “List of wildlings we are visiting today.”
Wellesley was looking at Asil’s knees, but he abruptly shook his head—a decidedly canid movement that involved his shoulders. His nostrils flared, he inhaled noisily twice. He jerked his head, rocking back on his heels, then looked at Anna with widened eyes.
Almost immediately, he ducked his head so his gaze hit somewhere near Asil’s boots. She got the impression that he wanted to look anywhere but at her.
“Sorry,” he mumbled. “I’ve forgotten my manners. I don’t usually get guests. Would you like to come into my house and have some … oh tea, I suppose. I also have a little cocoa and some orange juice.”
He stood back from the door and opened it a little wider in invitation, though he was still staring mostly anywhere except for Anna. It was the mostly that was disconcerting—because when he was looking at her, his gaze was yellow and desperate.
Anna could see that the living space beyond the door was the opposite of the tight little room they were in. There was lots of light, polished woods, and open spaces. She couldn’t see any paintings within the narrow visual window that the door gave her, but she smelled oil paint and turpentine.
“Not necessary,” said Asil politely. He didn’t exactly step between her and Wellesley but near enough for everyone to understand that he considered Wellesley a threat to guard Anna from. “Wellesley, we’re here to bring a warning.” He told Wellesley about the attack on Hester and Jonesy.
As soon as Asil told him Hester and her mate were both dead, Wellesley jerked the door to his house closed—as if to protect it from damage from the words Asil was speaking. The artist leaned against the closed door and heard Asil out, a hand to his mouth, his eyes closed, and his whole body twitching.
Anna hoped that there was some way to open the door from this side that she wasn’t seeing. Maybe he had another entrance?
When Asil was finished, Wellesley waited in the silence for a while. When his body was finally still, he said, in a hushed voice, “We are betrayed.”
“Yes,” Asil said simply.
Anna blinked at him a moment. And then at Wellesley. It had taken Jonesy’s note for Anna to come to that conclusion. Maybe she was stupid, and everyone else would have seen it without the note.
“It was not I,” Wellesley stated clearly. He raised his head and stared into Asil’s eyes. “I told no one by any means that Bran was gone. I have never to my knowledge spoken to a living soul other than Bran about Hester or Jonesy—though I knew them both quite well at one time.”
He dropped his eyes away from the more dominant wolf as soon as he’d finished speaking.
Anna’s ability to suss out lies was much better than it had been when she was human, but she wasn’t like Charles, who could feel them almost before they were spoken. If she didn’t know that Charles could lie to Bran … she’d have seen Wellesley’s declaration in front of Asil as proof positive that he had not betrayed them. It complicated matters that Wellesley’s reactions had been so all over the place in the few minutes since they’d arrived. His words felt like the truth, but she’d let Asil make that determination.