Page 17 of Tell Me

She relented to my tugging and matched her footsteps to mine. “That doesn’t make me feel much better. What the fuck is going on back there?”

I dodged down the first tunnel I came across, going through my mental map and trying to figure out where we could come out. I was positive we’d been seen leaving the crypt, which meant Landry soldiers would be after us in no time. I didn’t want to fight them and protect Brooks at the same time. The girl could shoot but I didn’t want to face the possibility of her being hit.

The solution was easy: Lose them in the tunnels before they could find us. Or get out onto the street, where I could get a car and get the hell out of here.

“I’m thinking there’s an obvious answer there,” I responded, ducking around another corner. “Your father sent men after you.”

“Not possible. They were shooting at me, too. And I didn’t know any of those men.”

“Brooks, you’ve been gone for ten years. What makes you think you’d know any of your father’s men at this point?”

She stopped so quickly she almost yanked my arm out of the socket, and jerked me around to face her. “My father is many things, Lucien, but he’s loyal to his men. I still know everyone important in his organization. And I didn’t know any of those soldiers.”

Okay, that changed things. I went rapidly through all the options—that they’d come down just for a fight and hadn’t known Brooks would be there, and that they might not know who Brooks was in the first place—and realized that she’d been in even more danger than I realized. If her father had sent men to save her, they wouldn’t have been shooting at her. They’d have grabbed her and gone. But if he’d just had a crew there to make trouble, and that crew hadn’t known she was in trouble or even recognized her...

God, I’d been right about why they chasing her and Camille. They hadn’t recognized them as family members. They’d just seen women in the middle of a battle. Easy prey.

Fresh meat.

My stomach turned at the thought, and moments later fury was burning through my veins. They’d been shooting at the women until they realized they were women, and then they’d been chasing them. Reaching out to grab them. And what I’d thought was blood lust on their faces changed to something else entirely.

Lust. The need to dominate and conquer, without regard for whether the woman wanted to be a part of it at all.

Those men had been planning rape.

I growled and nearly turned back right then. They’d been planning to rape Brooks? Get her down, strip her clothes, and have their way with her? I’d kill them. Strangle them with my own bare hands. Chop of their dicks and make them eat their own flesh. I was furious—beyond furious—at the idea that anyone would come down into our catacombs and think they could do something like that.

And to my Brooks.

She yanked at me, though, and brought her face close to mine. “Get it together, Lucien. I see what you’re thinking and it’s not possible. We’ve got to get out of here.”

“I’m going to kill them,” I growled.

She gave me a quick grin. “Kill them later. Right now I want out of these fucking tunnels.”

It was the grin that got me. That sassy, self-confident smile that seemed to have grown in New York and spoke to an entirely different sort of Brooks. She’d turned from a girl who wasn’t sure who she was to someone who knew exactly how to handle almost any situation. And I was enthralled.

Before I could answer, she’d shoved me forward and started running again, and we were flying down the tunnel, our strides matched and our hands clasping each other as we ran for our lives.

* * *

We came out into an underground cathedral that I’d never even seen before, and from the looks of it, the place had been deserted for years. Everything down here was made of stone: the vaulted ceiling, the alter, the rows of benches. Columns climbed the walls and reached for the ribs of the ceiling, the outer layer of stone crumbling to expose spines of something lighter. The place was dark as a crypt—literally—except for the pools of lamplight coming in from the tunnel outside.

And it felt sacred, like it had long ago forgotten the touch and warmth of living humans. I shivered at the thought. My family had controlled the catacombs for years and I’d grown up exploring the winding waterways and deserted spaces down here, but I’d never been in a room that felt this feral.

We didn’t belong here.

“Where the fuck are we?” Brooks whispered.

“Someplace we’re not supposed to be,” I answered, my voice just as quiet as hers. I wasn’t a religious man, never had been, but you couldn’t grow up in New Orleans without a deep understanding of death and what came after it. I’d been hearing stories about the Afterworld, the Underworld, and everything in between since I was born. Voodoo was a very real part of our lives, here.

And this place reeked of all things dead.

I took a step back toward the door we’d come through but froze when I heard running footsteps outside. Shouted curses and instructions told me I hadn’t done as good a job of losing people as I thought I had, and I grabbed Brooks and spun, taking her into the shadow of one of the columns.

When the footsteps paused outside the door, I held my breath. I’d thought we’d lost our pursuers and didn’t have a plan, and I wasn’t sure I had any ammunition left. The last thing I needed was another gunfight, in a room so sacred I barely even wanted to breathe in it.

Whoever was there paused and held very still for a moment... and then moved on, and I blew out slowly. I wanted out of this room, badly, but if there were still Landry men out there, we were going to have to hide in here until they moved on.

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