Inked

enough stress. A screeching war mage brandishing a huge sword was the final straw.
    The Weres started shoving toward the door, those in back pushing the rest in the direction of the ward’s deadly bite. The ones in front panicked and started fighting back at the same time that we attacked from the rear. And things disintegrated from there.
    A few of them either kept their heads or decided they’d have a better chance against us than the door. One ran at the wall, launched himself into the air and landed on four legs instead of two. And jumped straight at me.
    I shoved my forearm sideways into his jaw and prayed the spelled leather would keep him from ripping my arm off while I stabbed him hard over and over in the side. He got claws into me anyway, under the shortened hem of my coat, before I could close a shield. I screamed—they hurt like knives— and snapped a shield in place.
    We staggered together into the wall, my shield trapping his paw. He was unable to finish tearing me apart and unable to pull back, my spelled daggers following him like buzzing hornets. He smashed us into the wall repeatedly, trying to break free, as I struggled to get my gun up.
    It was useless; I’d have to drop my shields to fire and he’d gut me before I could pull the trigger. I concentrated on tightening my shields instead, drawing the power into a tight band around his wrist, slowly squeezing. A moment later his paw popped off in a gout of blood and my shields snapped shut around it.
    The Were fell away, howling, and I found to my surprise that I was still in one piece. More or less. And then I was jumped by two more.
    There was no more time to think after that. The fight grew too furious, and it was down to reflexes and training. It could have been five minutes or fifty before I looked up to see Jamie sever the neck of one Were, thrust his sword backward to impale a second, jerk it out and whirl to decapitate a third.
    Caleb was fighting with his back to the wall a little way off, hard-pressed by two Weres at once. I reached for my potion belt to help him, only to find that it was empty. The pile of half-melted corpses bobbing in the water around me might explain that, but it was no help to Caleb. Then he proved he didn’t need any, sending twin fireballs to engulf his opponents.
    The bodies fell to the floor, splashing into the lake the cave was fast becoming. There were five more Weres standing, but Cyrus wasn’t one of them. Neither was Grayshadow.
    I clamped down on the panic rising in my throat, swallowing it back down like nausea. I had to shut down that line of thought before it could take hold. Before it could take me places I couldn’t afford to go.
    “Where—” I started.
    “That way!” Jamie waved his huge sword at the entrance. “The cowardly bastard left a minute ago and your man took off after him.”
    Caleb nodded. “We can handle this. Go!”

11
    THE water level outside the ward was higher than in the cave, coming up chest high on me. And the current was unbelievably fast. It swept me away before I got a single foot on the floor, pushing me down the pitch-black tunnel at a crazy pace.
    I crashed through cobwebs, was tossed into unforgiving concrete, and then a pipe in the ceiling poured more water on me as I passed underneath. I surfaced, gasping and spluttering, only to be grabbed by the flow and thrown down a long stretch of tunnel that turned and slanted like a mine shaft. Cement blocks and rocks the size of bowling balls tumbled through the flood, pounding my shields over and over. Every time I started to stand up, the current knocked me down and I finally quit trying.
    My waterlogged coat was threatening to drown me, so I shrugged out of it, then narrowly avoided being beheaded by another water pipe. I snagged it with one arm and stared around frantically for some sign of the others. Even with my owl tat, the tunnel was pitch dark, and all I could hear was the wind screaming like a banshee overhead. But I didn’t think they’d gone out the way we’d come in. Weres are strong, but they don’t have shields. And no one was battling that current without them.
    A glance back the other way showed me I was right—two shapes, black on black, were thrashing in the water farther down the tunnel. It might have been my imagination, but I could hear Cyrus’s breathing like the beat of my own heart, smell his sweat, see details I shouldn’t have been able to pick out in the dark this far away. Which is