"We'll just see about that. Here's our stop."

"You are angry."

"No, this isn't my angry face. This is my if-I-can-fight-demons-I-can-sure-as-hell-fight-the-cosmos face." He gave her hand a squeeze. "Trust me."

She trusted no one more. If she had been permitted to take a lifemate, it would have been Harper Doyle. His strength, his honesty, his courage had stolen her heart. She would miss, for the rest of her life, his strange humor, his bravery, his skilled mouth.

When they had defeated Sorak, she would go quickly and spare them both the pain of leaving. And now she would treasure the time they had left as companions. She would relish the great deed they were fated to accomplish together.

The first order of business, Harper thought, was to get down on the tracks and into the tunnels while avoiding detection by the subway cops. He explained the problem to Kadra as they moved down the platform away from the bulk of the waiting commuters.

"Very well," she said, and solved the dilemma by jumping down onto the tracks.

"Or we could do it that way," he grumbled. He flashed his ID in the direction of a couple of gawking businessmen. "Transit inspectors."

Hoping they subscribed to the New York credo of minding their own business, he jumped. "Move fast." He took her arm. "Stay out of the light. Once we're into the tunnels our main goal is to avoid being smeared on the tracks by an oncoming train. Then there's the third-rail factor. See that?" He pointed. "Whatever you do, don't step on that, don't touch it. It'll fry you like a trout."

He pulled his penlight from his pocket as they followed the track into the tunnel. "There are some areas in the system where homeless people set up housekeeping."

"If they have a house to keep, they cannot be homeless."

"We'll save the tutorial on society's disenfranchised for later. Some of the people who manage to live down here are mentally unstable. Some are just desperate. What we're looking for, I figure, are the maintenance areas. Off the main tracks, where there's room to establish a lair."

"There is no scent of people or demon here."

"Let me know when that changes." He felt the vibration, saw the first flicker of light in the dark. "Train. Let's move."

He doubled his pace toward the recess of an access door, and pulling her up with him, he plastered himself to the door. "Think thin," he advised.

He held on as the roar of the train blasted the air, gritted his teeth as the air pummeled them. Through the train's lighted windows, faces and bodies of its passengers blurred by.

"It is more exciting to be outside the box as it flies by than to be inside it."

He looked over at Kadra as the last car whizzed past. "One of these days you'll have to tell me what you do for entertainment back in A'Dair. I have a feeling I'll be riveted."