Inked

gun away. It went skittering across the muck, out of reach, and we hit the floor with the Were on top—all three hundred pounds of him.
    The impact alone was enough to drive the breath from my lungs, but I also hit my head against the side of the wall, stunning me. I expected to feel hot breath in my face, teeth ripping my flesh, oblivion. But instead he merely lay there, trapping me under a crushing weight I couldn’t hope to throw off. I heard the sound of feet limping past—his buddies going hell-bent for leather toward the mouth of the tunnel.
    And then nothing.
    The mountain of fur and muscle on top of me didn’t move, other than to drip something warm and sticky onto my face. After a minute, I realized that one of the ricochets must have hit him as he was leaping for me. What I couldn’t figure out was how to get him off.
    And it wasn’t like I had all day. He’d landed across me, with only my head, shoulders and feet sticking out. Water was running up to my ears, and his weight was slowly forcing me farther underneath. If I didn’t get him off, I was going to drown in less than two feet of water.
    Pushing and pulling did no good, and neither did attempting to wriggle out from under him. The body was almost completely muscle, with very little give. I had potions that could eat through flesh and bone, but even assuming I could reach one, I couldn’t use them without possibly dissolving me, too.
    I needed my power, and there was only one way to get it. My left arm was trapped under the beast, so I used my mouth, muttering the release spell while trying to find an edge to the leech with my tongue. The thing didn’t want to let go, still gorging itself on my power. But I finally snagged a slightly raised corner and ripped it away.
    It felt exactly like a huge slug wriggling in my mouth—beyond awful—and it immediately began trying to sink into my tongue. I spat it out, disgusted, and raised a shield, hoping it would lift the Were’s body a foot or so and give me some wiggle room. But instead, I got maybe half that much before the shield collapsed with a final-sounding pop. And the force of his body falling back down was hard enough to push my head under the filthy, mineral-tasting water.
    Whatever air was in my lungs rushed out under the pressure. My chest was tight and the urge to breathe, when I knew I couldn’t, was almost overwhelming. I don’t care what training you’ve had, being caught under water seconds away from drowning is one hell of a good reason to panic. So I did, throwing the dumbest possible spell under the circumstances—a fireball.
    It shouldn’t have worked. That spell requires a lot more energy than shields, not to mention it works best in dry conditions—or at least when not cast under water. So it was a shock to hear a muffled roar and to feel the huge body suddenly fly off me.
    I sat up, spitting out filthy runoff, and dragged in several huge breaths. I was so busy exploring the wonder that was oxygen that it took a second for me to realize what had happened. The red tide swirling around me was my first clue, the shattered bone sizzling in the water was the second. The body had literally exploded on top of me, leaving me sitting in what remained of a rib cage, along with blood and other substances I preferred not to think about.
    I’d forgotten: just as the tat took a few seconds to start working, it also took a few to release the stored magic back into my system. The shields had been pulling from a dry well, but the fireball had had more than an hour of accumulated force behind it. I was lucky it hadn’t taken out the whole freaking drain.
    A push got me to my knees, a stagger got me to my feet, and a step took me to the wall. I fell against it, the cool cement heaven against my cheek and palms. I just stayed there for a minute, breathing hard.
    But only for a minute. Because those guys hadn’t been Clan, they’d been vargulf . It was obvious by how they looked, by the untrained way they fought and by the lack of any and all Clan insignia. And I didn’t think a bunch of outcasts had shown up to avenge the murder of a High Clan wolf—especially not after attacking a member of the group that had found the body.
    So they’d been looking for something.
    Something I’d missed.

6
    I shoved off the wall, tripped on a spent shell casing and went down hard on one knee. I staggered up, wishing I had the breath to curse, and retraced my steps. My knee ached and almost gave