Page 90 of Property of Crypt Keeper

The other thing that settled like a rock in my guts was that for the first time in years—I wasn’t hunting a target.

I was hunting one of my own.

22

KATALINA

The catacombs stretched endlessly beneath the cathedral. Ancient tunnels branched in every direction. Some looked hundreds of years old. Others looked… older.

Far older.

Demon markings covered portions of the walls—ancient symbols from before this land had been settled by humans. Warnings. Wards.

The tunnel we’d chosen opened slightly. Lining each side were… cells. Old iron cages. Rusted chains. Evidence of imprisonment that predated modern construction, likely by centuries.

I ran my hand along the wall at the end, checking for another secret level but finding nothing.

Hack slowly turned in a circle. “Holy shit, this is insane,” he whispered.

Nobody disagreed. Because suddenly one thing became terrifyingly clear. The Doctor hadn’t started this.

He’d inherited it.

Whatever this place was… it existed long before him. Long before Rafael. Maybe long before any of us existing at this moment. The realization settled heavily over the group.

Because if that was true—then the conspiracy wasn’t years old. It was centuries old. Possibly older.

“Let’s go back and take the other corridor,” Boomslang grimly announced.

“What if this isn’t the right place?” Spook quietly asked as he paused ahead of me.

“It’s the right place,” I insisted and pushed past him.

“How do you know?” Mako halted me by grabbing my arm.

Glancing first at his hold on me, then up into his gray-blue eyes, I shook him off. I pressed my splayed hand to my chest. “I know.”

He stared intently into my eyes before nodding.

I carried on.

Behind me, I could sense the hesitation in the others. They didn’t believe me. Until we eventually came upon something that definitely didn’t belong.

Steel.

But not just any kind of steel… modern steel.

A massive reinforced security door sat at the end of the tunnel we had chosen. Completely out of place among the ancient stone.

It was also hard not to notice the keypad and the fresh electrical wiring that ran along the ceiling.

Hack pointed out the cameras up in the corners as he quickly went to work on a small laptop he pulled out of his backpack. He handed a wire to Zeus, who boosted Spook up to clip it to the camera’s cables.

The laboratory. It had to be. My pulse surged. Gideon was beyond that door. I knew it. I felt it. The mate bond pulsed deep inside my chest.

Weak. Muted. But there. Alive.

Thank goodness. Relief washed over me like a wave.