Kindhearted yet firm, Balthazar had taken him into the Lair, brought him up as his own son. The older man collected strays like him, bringing them into the fold, helping them to assimilate into a life in the shadows, finding useful work for them, from running street cleaners to servicing office buildings at night when everyone else slept.
Balthazar raised Gryph and another lost boy who’d been the child of a crack addict with no other family to call her own or to claim the child. Broke, homeless and strung out, his mother had holed up in the basement of a building. When the maintenance super had discovered her temporary lodgings, she’d tied her baby to her back and hidden beneath a trap door, clinging to a ladder to avoid being evicted. She’d descended the metal ladder until her feet touched the bottom of the well.
A light glowing at the end of a long tunnel led her to the center of the underworld city. Balthazar had taken her in, offering food and shelter for her and the baby as long a she resisted the lure of her addiction and promised to keep the community secret.
Not long afterward, her hunger for drugs drove her back to the surface. She never came back.
The baby named Lucas came to live with Balthazar and Gryph when Gryph was eight.
Balthazar, a college professor in his former life amongst the humans, had taught Gryph and Lucas to read and write, instilling in Gryph a love of classic literature and the arts. Determined to give them all the educational advantages of the surface dwellers, he’d set up a computer lab in the Lair, running ethernet cables from above to allow them to learn about the world in the light.
Though he’d never traveled outside the city limits of Chicago, Gryph could name all the countries on earth. He’d learned about finance and day trading, becoming quite good at following the news and anticipating market changes. Using seed money he’d earned cleaning buildings after sundown, he’d amassed a small fortune he kept stashed in banks stateside and abroad. Five years ago, he’d come out of the darkness to buy the building he now lived and worked in.
He’d dreamed of one day visiting other countries.
For now, his home was in the basement of his office building with a shaft that led to the maze of passages beneath the city.
He worked his way to the center of the Lair, passing old Joe Lowenstein, fast asleep in his cubby, blankets tucked up to his chin to ward off the chill and damp of the underworld. Joe had been a chemist until he’d been severely scarred in a chemical accident. Half his face melted off, blind in one eye and his right arm completely useless, he now made a living carving beautiful figurines out of wood, with his good hand and a vise grip Balthazar had appropriated from an abandoned workshop. Each finished figure sold in an upscale art gallery on 35th Street for thousands of dollars. Still Joe slept in the cubby, his money accumulating in a bank.
He rolled over, his good eye opening. “Gryph? That you?” Joe’s voice was as mottled as his face, gravelly to the point of almost being unintelligible.
“Go back to sleep, Joe,” Gryph whispered.
“Trouble’s brewin’,” Joe rasped.
“How so?”
“Some say it’s you.” Joe rubbed a hand across his scarred cheeks. “Don’t know what they’re talkin’ about. Balthazar will know.”
“I’m headed there now. Thanks for the heads-up.” Gryph continued toward the forgotten city’s center, the hairs on the back of his neck spiked, the inner beast clawing at his insides to be released to attack the tension in the air.
A small gathering ringed the entrance to the rooms he, Balthazar and Lucas had called home for so long. It was nothing more than a former storage area beneath the city, where supplies had been kept. It consisted of four large compartments. Gryph, Lucas and Balthazar each claimed one as his own and the fourth was a common area they still gathered in to share the events of their days or nights when time permitted. Balthazar had refused to move in with Gryph in his building nearer the surface, claiming he preferred the darkness to the light after all these years.
Now Balthazar stood at the entrance, his voice ringing out over the angry shouts of the small crowd. “Keep calm, people. I’m sure there’s some kind of misunderstanding.”
“What if he leads them down here?” someone asked.
Balthazar held up his hand. “He wouldn’t. He’s much too smart and cautious to let that happen. Please, go to your homes. Let me talk to Gryphon. I’m sure he can clear it all up.”
“Clear up what?” Gryph strode across the wide, open space where the old tracks had switched and turned down the long tunnels leading to the ends of the old city. He clutched his cloak around him, to hide the tattered remains of his clothing beneath.
“There he is!” a woman shouted. “What have you done? What kind of monster are you to attack a defenseless woman?”
“I’ve done nothing.” Gryph stood straight, his shoulders thrown back. “I’m no more a monster than any of you.”
“You killed a surface dweller.” Raymond Henning, a man with the ability to blend into the surroundings as easily as a chameleon, shook his fist at Gryph. “We all took an oath when we came to live here. No one hurts anyone. Now that you’ve let your beast kill, it will crave more bloodshed.”
“I didn’t kill anyone, and I don’t crave blood,” Gryph said, his voice urgent but calm. These were his people. Most of the money he earned through his day trading and businesses went to providing food and comfort for them. He’d only ever told Balthazar, whom he’d sworn to secrecy.
“How soon before they start a city-wide manhunt for you?” A young woman with blue and green fish scales on her neck and face pulled a scarf up over her head, her eyes darting around the group. “They’ll find us and drag us back into the light, or worse, exterminate us.”
“Will any of us be safe if the authorities discover what we have built down here?” Raymond asked.
“No!” shouted a mutant man with a bulbous blob completely covering the entire left side of his face spoke up. “We’re doomed. The authorities will track him here. They can’t have a killer on the loose in Chicago. It’s bad for tourism. They had an eyewitness, they know his face, and they won’t stop until they string him up for the woman’s murder.”
“I won’t lead the authorities down here. I’m careful to preserve what we have. It’s as much my home as yours. You all know me.” He waved a hand at Raymond. “Raymond, didn’t I lead you here when you’d passed out drunk in an alley and given up hope?”
Raymond frowned. “Yeah, but—”
Gryph continued, “Tara, when you first came to the Lair, didn’t I show you around the maze of tunnels until you were comfortable on your own?”
The furry woman nodded. “You did.”
“Many of you have known me my whole life. Have I ever hurt anyone?”
Many in the crowd muttered no.
Gryph lowered his voice and said softly, “I wouldn’t condemn the people I love to exposure to those who don’t understand us.”
Lucas, who had long dark hair, draped an arm over Gryph’s shoulder. “That’s right. You all know Gryph. He’s a good man. He might not be able to control his beast, but he’d give his life for any one of you.”
Gryph frowned at his brother. “I have control.”
Lucas’s mouth twisted. “Of course you do, even when you’re angry, right?” He clapped his hand on Gryph’s back. “Always the hero who could do no wrong.” Though he smiled, Lucas’s lip pulled back on one side in almost a sneer.
Gryph stared at his brother whose hand on his shoulder was tight, his fingers digging in.
Balthazar held up his hands. “You heard the man, he didn’t kill the surface dweller. Go home and get some sleep. Everything will be better by morning.”
Reluctantly, the crowd of misfits dispersed, muttering and grumbling as they trudged to their makeshift rooms constructed of abandoned pieces of plywood or cardboard in offshoots of the derelict rail tunnels.
Not long ago, Balthazar had worked with a handful of people to tap in to the electrical grid of the buildings, reactivating the lighting system in select tunnels so that they wouldn’t have to live in total darkness. For safety’s sake, everyone was required to have a stash of emergency flashlights. Every inhabitant knew that when city workers descended into the underground tunnels, they had to make themselves scarce. If they were discovered, the good surface-dwelling citizens of Chicago would force them to the surface, where they’d be pitied and treated as freaks.
“Where have you been?” Balthazar asked as he led Gryph and Lucas into his chambers.
“Recovering.” Gryph whipped the cape off his shoulders exposing his naked chest and the bandage Selene had carefully applied.
Balthazar’s lips pressed into a thin line. He peeled back the bandages and examined the ragged scabs over Gryph’s shoulder. “Who did this?”
“Question might not be who, but what?” Lucas said. “Looks like an animal attack. Did you do this to yourself?”
Gryph cast a tired glance at Lucas. “What reason would I have to attack myself?” he asked, then turned to Balthazar. “The woman was attacked by a large black wolf. I got to her as he was ripping into her.”
Balthazar’s brow lowered into a V. “Wolf, you say?”
“Since when have there been wolves in downtown Chicago?” Gryph asked. “I thought they stayed well north. Could they be shifters?”
“Are you sure that’s what it was?” Lucas lifted the tattered shirt. “You didn’t black out when you transformed?”
“I didn’t black out,” Gryph assured him.
“Were you unconscious at all last night?” Balthazar asked.
Gryph hesitated. “Yes. After I made sure the woman would be okay, I left her for the emergency medical technicians and got away before they could see my face.”
“But not before the woman saw yours.” Balthazar walked to a bookshelf and selected a brown leather journal. “Unfortunately, the victim was able to describe you in sufficient detail for a sketch artist to draw a reasonable likeness of you in your half-shifted state. And equally unfortunate, the news publicized it. Did anyone else see you? Did you pass anyone while you were running?”
Again Gryph hesitated. “No.” The lie came hard to him. But he didn’t want any of the otherkin to seek out Selene or the other woman and consider them threats to the Lair’s existence. The two women had helped him when he might have died of his wounds or from exposure to the potentially toxic river water. The fewer people who knew he’d spent time in Selene’s apartment, the better. He hoped that she wouldn’t tell the police he’d been there. If she did, it might hit the news and the inhabitants of the underworld would once again see it on their televisions, even in the depths of the tunnels.
Yes, cable television was another improvement, along with internet connection, that Balthazar had been adamant about bringing to the people who lived below Chicago. Because of his desire to bring technology to the underworld, Balthazar had opened up an entire world of learning to Gryph and Lucas.
Balthazar checked Gryph’s wound and bandaging. “Since when did you learn about poultices, son?”
Lucas’s pale gray eyes narrowed, watchfully.
“I’ve been studying the internet for holistic cures. It was one of the remedies.”
“Made of what?” Lucas leaned close and sniffed. “Some kind of herb and mud?”
“Something like that.” Gryph strode into his old room and dug a shirt out of the dresser, his gaze lingering on the world map tacked to the wall.
“Traveling among the humans is dangerous. You risk your life and anonymity each time you walk among them.” Balthazar held up a hand. “I know you’ve been doing it for the past five years, but this was exactly what I feared might happen.” Balthazar stood in the entrance to his room. “Last night you thought you had control of your beast, yet you still transformed.”
Gryph stiffened. “What else was I supposed to do? I couldn’t let him kill her.”
“Indeed, but by transforming and showing yourself as such, you’ve made yourself a target.”
“No one in my office knows.”
“But the woman you saved saw you with your face half man and half lion.”
“I saw the drawing on the television. They won’t link it to Gryphon Leone. The features weren’t specific enough. She concentrated on the animal.”
Balthazar nodded. “True enough. In the meantime, you’re better off taking a leave of absence. Tell your office staff you’ll be out of the country.”
Already shaking his head, Gryph stepped forward. “I can’t.”
“What is so important you can’t lay low for a few weeks until the furor dies down?”
“The charity ball for the children.”
Balthazar’s lips formed a thin line. “The charity ball. Why do you have to be there?” Balthazar’s eyes narrowed. “Can’t you just spend the money and let someone else take the reins on planning?”
“My company is sponsoring it. The money raised will go to the homeless children of Chicago. I’ve helped sponsor it for the past three. This year, GL Enterprises is the main sponsor. The Women’s Aid Organization is demanding that the head of GL Enterprises needs to attend the ball to show his support.”
Lucas chuckled. “My brother, a home-grown Chicago celebrity. A wanted man in more ways than one.”
“Believe me, I’d let them handle all of it, but they said our donations have dwindled and the public wants to know the man sponsoring the ball is fully committed. They’re afraid I’m Mafia or something—you know, dirty money.”
“That’s right, father, the philanthropic Gryphon needs to put in an appearance, to set the old biddies’ minds at ease.”
“You can’t risk it,” Balthazar insisted. “If you transform during the ball, you’ll have the entire city on you so fast you won’t have a chance to escape.”
“The children need me.”
“They need you alive. Not dead.”
“I’ll keep my exposure to a minimum. At least until the ball is over. Perhaps, in the meantime, the police will find the animal responsible for Miss Grant’s attack and death.”
If the animal was a shifter, there had to be others in the city. Gryphon would put out feelers among his staff.
All his life he’d held on to the dream of traveling to other countries. After the previous night, he was certain he couldn’t risk getting too far from his haven beneath the city. Where else would he go if his inner beast emerged unbidden? Where would he hide if his secret was unleashed?
“Son,” Balthazar said, “none of this would be an issue if you hadn’t transformed.”
“I had to transform to save the woman,” Gryph said.
“And her attacker came after you.” Balthazar spoke like it was a statement instead of a question.
Gryph nodded, his thoughts processing the information and coming up with what lay at the back of his mind during his escape to the Lair. “It had to be a shifter.”
“Why do you say that?”
“How else could it have entered the hospital without being detected to finish the job it started? A wolf can’t open doors without hands.”
“Are you sure it was the same person or creature who attacked the woman in the first place?”
“Why would anyone come back to smother her unless he wanted to make sure she didn’t expose the true nature of the animal that attacked her?”
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