“Damn it,” he snarled. “He turns you against me and leaves you to your fate. Help me find him.”
The lead Feline didn’t budge. “You’ve shit on me for years, Kendrick. Now you get to know what it tastes like.”
He attacked. A few of his friends joined him. Kendrick swung the sword in a perfect arc, which would have taken off the Feline’s head if that had been Kendrick’s intent.
Kendrick timed it so that the tip grazed the man’s throat, leaving a tiny line of blood seeping out where a Collar would be.
“Is that what you want?” Kendrick demanded. “Certain death or captivity? You keep on like this, the humans will find you and lock you in a cage.”
The Feline, not learning, attacked again. Kendrick shifted his weight and swung his body all the way around, bringing up his right leg in a roundhouse kick. The Feline danced back from the blow, but Kendrick kept spinning, coming up next to the Feline to bring the hilt of his sword down on his head.
The Feline crumpled into a ball with a grunt and went still.
“Where’s Lachlan?” Kendrick called to the remaining Shifters. “I want him.”
Half of them roared, raising fists in fealty and swarming to his side. Kendrick had to stop them trying to touch him for reassurance and led them out into the next corridor.
Which way Lachlan had gone was anyone’s guess. Lachlan had been right that the place was a maze, with blind corners everywhere. Kendrick needed a tracker, an exceptional one, like Tiger.
He brought his party to a halt. They would look for a way to the surface, join with the rest of his Shifters and Dylan’s, and scour the grounds for Lachlan. Kendrick started to give the orders for the Shifters to split and begin searching for a way out, when a rumble alerted him to danger.
Kendrick knew that noise. He hadn’t lived in underground places most of his life to not understand what it meant.
“Run!” he shouted. “Find exits—meet at the leader’s house!”
His words were drowned by a tearing roar as the ceiling of the tunnels started to come down, tumbling huge slabs of concrete and a half ton of dirt onto the Shifters below it.
* * *
The earth shook under Addie’s feet. She and Kendrick’s Shifters, plus a few of Dylan’s, had moved around to the back of the house, where Tiger said tunnels emerged from the extensive cellars.
The roar of an explosion rumbled across the ground, and dust and debris shot out of the open back door of the leader’s house.
“Shit!” Dimitri was running toward the house, Seamus and Ben behind him.
Jaycee stood her ground next to Addie, but the anguish in her eyes told Addie she wanted to sprint after them.
“Tiger!” Addie called. “Where is this other way down? The risky one Dimitri talked about?”
Tiger growled and pointed into the open fields beyond Shiftertown. “There.”
Very specific. “Well, come on then,” Addie said. “Show me.”
“Hold on,” Jaycee seized her by the arm. “Are you crazy?”
Another Shifter came to them, big and gruff—Addie wasn’t familiar enough with Shifters yet to tell what kind he was. “What are your orders, ma’am?”
Addie’s thoughts whirled. Her only desire was to find Kendrick any way possible, to drag him out and hold him to her.
“Find a way in,” she said, her voice barely working. “Come at him from all sides you can and grab this Lachlan guy on the way. Do anything you have to. Ask Seamus to organize it.”
“Yes, ma’am.” The Shifter looked a bit doubtful, but he gave her a nod and an encouraging look.