Hunted (The Iron Druid Chronicles, Book Six)

floor to the ceiling. But there had to be a way out besides the Old Way in.
    The drain, perhaps? Too small for me. Where was the conveniently human-sized ventilation shaft that appeared in every movie?
    Ventilation, I surmised, was supplied by tiny holes no bigger than a sparrow underneath the shelf of candles. They were gaps, basically, between stones. Large and numerous enough for good air flow, far too small for the tooth faeries—or me—to get through.
    My attention returned to the drain. Too small tosqueeze through, but perhaps it led to plain old earth below, something I could tap into and replenish myself.
    Something else was draining through the grate besides my blood. It thinned out and flowed more quickly near my feet. There was water coming from behind me, but just beneath my feet.
    I tried to push myself up using my right arm, but that was a fail; my abdominal muscles, not to mention parts of my back, had been chewed upon and were on strike. I had to pull myself around using only my right side in extremely awkward fashion.
    The water trickled out from a source in the rock wall, no bigger than the ventilation holes above, so it offered no escape. It did offer hope, however.
    That thin trickle represented the only source of water for the pieholes, so they had been careful not to shit anywhere near it. The space on either side was clear for a few feet, and what it revealed was blessed, glorious bare earth. The quarried stone didn’t extend all the way to the walls—it had simply appeared that way on all other sides because the hills of faerie shit obscured the stone’s edge.
    I should have known there would be earth here somewhere. There could hardly be an Old Way without it—nothing to bind to otherwise. Now all I had to do was drag myself over there before I died. It was probably fifteen feet.
    I pushed it as much as I dared and it still took me three or four bloody minutes to inch my way across the slick stone that distance, but the agony of my left side made it seem longer. Based on the look I’d had at my arm and hand, I imagined that my left side looked like ground beef, or like Hel’s dead and rotting half. Most of the motor function was gone, so it was all deadweight. I curled my fingers around the edge of the stone and made one last heave before flopping the back of my undamagedright hand onto the earth. Energy rushed into me through my tattoos, and with it came relief. I drank deeply from the water stream to rehydrate, laboriously shut off every source of pain, and drifted off to sleep, healing now on autopilot.
    When I awoke an indeterminate time after, the candles had either burned out or the magical switch had snuffed them due to a profound lack of movement. I shivered and a new thrill of pain washed up my spine. I was running a fever and had the chills because my many open wounds had no doubt become infected. I took a drink from the stream to slake my parched throat—I’d been unconscious for a good while—and my bladder informed me it was ready for a blowout special. I had to move.
    I tried to lift my left arm experimentally to see what kind of calamity would ensue. Turned out I couldn’t extend it properly or raise it far from my side. It was locked into a bent position because vital hunks of my triceps were missing. My leg was in much the same shape; my range of movement was very limited and it sure wouldn’t hold my weight. I could rebuild all that tissue in a week provided I ate a whole lot of protein and kept in touch with the earth, but there was no food in this chamber. I had been the food. I couldn’t get better until I escaped; I’d only get weaker.
    I filled up my bear charm and then reluctantly removed the back of my hand from the caress of the earth. Firmly bearing down on the pain in my side, I pushed myself up with my right hand until I was leaning, awkwardly, on what I supposed I must call my right flank, though I didn’t generally think of myself as having flanks. The darkness remained uncomfortably Stygian.
    Grunting and sweating with the effort, feeling tugs of tissue that I knew would be screaming at me had I let them, I forced myself to a precarious sitting position—enough that I could take my weight off my right arm fora few seconds. I lifted it from the floor and waved it madly over my head and almost cried in relief when the candles relit. That was a remarkable binding, and I hoped I’d have an opportunity to learn it.
    Using my right arm for support