Inked

how I noticed when a rainbow of colors streamed over his face—light from some outside source. And suddenly, they were gone.
    I let go of the pipe and the water swept me after them, but not before throwing me against the wall. My shields popped and my shoulder took the brunt, twisting violently. I screamed, but it didn’t matter; even wolf ears couldn’t hear me over the drain’s ceaseless roar.
    A sliver of light grew in front of me, the ceiling rolled back and I found myself in an open air channel. Steaming hot rain was sluicing down, daggering into the swirling current and threatening to send my head under. Ahead of me was another tunnel mouth, and curtains of cement rose on either side at least fourteen feet tall.
    Even with the flood, that put them well over my head. But they were topped by sturdy metal safety rails. I threw a lasso, but it hit the side of the channel and bounced back, almost snaring me. I let it dissipate and tried again, just as I was sucked into the yawning mouth of the next tunnel. My spell caught on something but I couldn’t see what; rain and waves of filthy runoff slapped me in the face, blinding me.
    But the lasso held, holding me back from taking a wild ride beneath the Strip. I concentrated on shortening it, slowly pulling myself out of the tunnel’s mouth and toward the wall. My reaching hand grazed something rough and I looked up to see a sheer expanse of wet concrete, with the top looking impossibly far away.
    Lassos are not usually difficult to maintain, but then, they’re not designed to be used for climbing a concrete mountain where one little slip can mean disaster. It was just as well my shields were gone; I couldn’t have concentrated well enough to maintain two spells. But the result was that I got battered against the side of the channel as I slowly pulled myself up, my injured shoulder screaming every inch of the way. I shredded my palms hoisting myself over the top, but I made it.
    I rolled through the bottom opening of the safety rails and lay flat in the muck and dead leaves, trying to listen past the sound of my heart slamming into my ribcage. What I heard was the same thing I saw—steaming hot rain pouring down like ark-building wouldn’t have been a bad idea. After a moment, I staggered to my feet, swaying a little from sheer exhaustion. But there was no time to rest. Ahead, the Strip was backlit by garish plumes of dark clouds, like a Vegas showgirl in full regalia, and in front of that backdrop two dark shapes were engaged in a fight to the death.
    The flickering taillights of passing cars cast bands of ruddy light over them, causing their shadows to sprawl monstrously behind them. But even in the dim light, it was obvious where Grayshadow got his name. He moved like gray smoke, faster than any Were I’d ever seen. Faster than Cyrus, who was very obviously losing.
    Grayshadow hadn’t bothered to change to his wolf form, a studied insult to his opponent. Despite being in what should have been the stronger, faster body, Cyrus had dripping wounds covering his torso, and his right leg was trailing, almost useless. It wasn’t hard to see why. There were four jagged gashes in his thigh, each at least six inches long, a mess of crushed and mangled muscles and tendons awash with blood. The skin around the edges was white, crinkled like tissue paper.
    It was a bad wound, almost to the bone. In a formal challenge, a wound like that would almost certainly mean death. But this wasn’t a formal challenge and I had no compunction at all about cheating.
    If only I had something left to cheat with.
    My potions were gone, my guns empty, my magic reduced to little more than shields, assuming I could get them up again. I still had my knives, but I’d have to throw them the old-fashioned way and they’d probably do nothing more than make him mad. And hand to hand with a Were was just a messy method of suicide.
    Before I could settle on anything, Grayshadow saw me. He gave me a brief contemptuous glance, and the world exploded in pain. My shields had snapped back into place, but they were weak and the assault was like nothing I’d ever experienced. It was as if lightning had struck the ground at my feet. The world went soundless for a moment, full of white light and savage, tearing pain.
    And then it was gone, veering off with the fickleness of all wild magic with no proper spell to hold it in thrall. And the final piece of the puzzle slipped into place. “You’re the