Inked

as a barbeque pit. The ceiling was black with soot, the remains of a bonfire scarred the floor, and smoke had almost obliterated the graffiti burning across the walls. The only artwork still visible was four savage vertical slash marks, dripping with painted blood. Colorful.
    I could see, courtesy of the mass of wires that spilled out of a wall, like the innards of a small animal. It was the back of the vandalized junction box, which was being used to power a couple of bare bulbs. It looked like whoever had been last out the door had forgotten to turn off the lights.
    I poked around the ash that covered everything like matte gray snow until my back ached and my hands and pant legs were coated. But all I uncovered was a rotting corduroy couch, a few pieces of singed plywood and an empty whiskey bottle. I threw the last against the wall, just to watch it shatter. The Hunter was long gone, after torching anything that might give a clue as to his identity. This was a waste of time.
    I hit the corridor again in a foul mood, which wasn’t helped by the sudden appearance of a chorus of crickets. Their chirping filled the drain, echoing weirdly in the small space and sounding like a too-cheerful orchestra had moved in. The noise limited my hearing as effectively as the dark interfered with my sight. It made me progressively more paranoid as I went along; soon I was looking nervously over my shoulder every few seconds.
    That was stupid since I couldn’t see more than a few feet in any direction. I kept doing it anyway, though, and my imagination was working overtime. In that gloomy pit, every unidentified sound became the scrape of claws on cement, every watermark on the walls, a hulking monster.
    Which is why I almost ran into the real monsters coming from the other direction.
    There were three of them, still in human form, more or less, although the curtains of greasy, stringy hair and the baggy pants made it kind of hard to tell. But they were Weres, as their reaction on catching sight of me made clear. They didn’t change and they didn’t go for guns. But those were the only saving graces.
    I flung up a shield in time to keep from being skewered by the first guy’s knife, which slid off to scrape against concrete. But the impact sent me reeling, and successive jolts jarred through my bones as the men took turns battering my less-than-substantial shield. It was weak because of the leech, because of the power drain from my owl, and because shields don’t work that great against Weres anyway. It wasn’t going to last.
    “I’m Lia de Croissets!” I told them loudly. “Of Arnou!” If it was revenge they were after, fine, but I wasn’t the Hunter.
    The pummeling didn’t change, except maybe to get harder. “I’m Corps!” Nothing.
    I reviewed my options and decided they sucked. In such a confined space, a potion grenade would gas me, too, and any spell I could fling at the moment wouldn’t have much effect on three adult Weres. Fortunately, the whole silver bullet thing is a myth; lead works just fine—if you manage to connect.
    But therein lay the problem. A Were’s advantages are speed, recovery time, speed, inhuman strength, and speed—as the four of them were busy demonstrating. I couldn’t even see the punches battering my shield, but I could feel every one.
    I decided that debate was useless because I was going to be dead in a minute if I didn’t do something. I wrestled the shotgun out of its back holster and got a grip on my Luger. The next time they sent me staggering into the far wall, I whipped around, let the shield go and fired.
    And figured out why I was the only idiot using a gun.
    I’d emptied the Luger in an arc that was hopefully wide enough to hit at least one of them. It did—one screamed and went down, clutching his leg. But the rest of the bullets hit the walls, sparked off the concrete and ricocheted. The tunnel suddenly felt a lot like a shooting gallery, with bullets whizzing and striking everywhere.
    Another Were stumbled like he’d tripped, and crashed face-first into the water. The last tried to get up but slid on the scummy surface and went skating across the tunnel to slam into the other wall. It looked almost like a comedy pratfall, until he recovered, pushed off, and leapt at me, changing in a blur of motion.
    In wolf form he was more resistant to magic, and although I managed to get a shield up in time, it did little good. Claws raked my arm, hot and sharp, stripping my