Inked

Chapter 1

“Get it off! Get it off!”

“I’m trying!” Caleb grabbed a numb stick out of a drawer. “It would help if you’d stay still for half a second!”

“You stay still with claws in your ass!” I snarled, as they sank in a little deeper.

“I can’t do anything if you’re going to continue hopping around like that, Lia,” he rumbled.

I glared at him, but it didn’t do any good. It probably wouldn’t have anyway—Caleb did the strong, silent, imperturbable thing pretty well—but it was especially futile now. Like me, he was a war mage, part of the supernatural community’s police force. Unlike me, he was a respected, highly decorated member with years of experience. He was currently stuck with the worst job in the Corps—deactivating, categorizing and storing illegal weapons—only because he’d been wounded. An explosion had seared his retinas, leaving him virtually blind until his eyes healed.

“Are you sure you can do this?” I demanded, eyeing the swath of gauze wrapped around his buzz cut.

“Sonar vision,” he reminded me, tapping a small ward on his temple. The blue and silver tat showed up nicely against his cocoa skin, its colors flashing as the tiny dolphin smacked his finger with its tail. “I can see almost as well with echo-location as I could before. Now assume the position.”

“It’s the almost I’m worried about,” I muttered.

“I can let Jamie do it,” he threatened.

“Sure, I’ll take a crack at it,” the wiry Scotsman punned shamelessly.

Normally, I might have taken him up on it. Despite the ratty Arthur Dent bathrobe he insisted on wearing, Jamie was among the department’s foremost authorities on magical wards. But at the moment, he was also among the walking wounded, having been hit by a spell that had left him prone to fits of uncontrollable shakes. It set his hands and red-gray curls dancing on a regular basis, although it hadn’t noticeably affected his sense of humor.

“You stay away from me,” I told him severely, just as Caleb yanked my jeans down and pushed me over the specimen table.

“If you two want some privacy, I could always take a break,” Jamie offered.

“You make sure it doesn’t get away in case I miss,” Caleb ordered.

“What do you mean, in case you miss?” I demanded, only to have my face shoved down to the cold metal table-top. Since that was in no way necessary for the operation in hand, I had to assume it was to shut me up. I normally would have had a few things to say about that, but instead I bit my lip on what was actually quite a lot of pain.

“That’s better,” Caleb said, with the suspicion of a smile in his voice. “Now I just have to—uh-oh.”

“Uh-oh?” It was hard to talk with my cheek smashed against stainless steel, but I managed anyway. “What the hell is going on back there?”

“It appears to have…er, taken cover, lass,” Jamie volunteered. Caleb didn’t say anything, but his shoulders were shaking suspiciously.

“Gimme that thing!” I grabbed the numb stick away from him and twisted around. A small snout and a pair of bright yellow eyes peered up at me from the waistband of my panties for a second before disappearing again. “Son of a—ow!”

“They don’t like to be out in the open,” Jamie reminded me. “I think it’s trying to hide in your—”

“I know where it’s hiding!” I waddled to the adjacent storeroom, slammed the door and the jeans hit the floor—just as tiny fangs took another bite out of tender flesh. Miniscule they might be, but they hurt like hell. “Goddamn it!”

“If you need any help,” Jamie’s lilting tenor called, “don’t hesitate to ask.” I was thinking up a suitable reply when he murmured to Caleb, “Get the camera.”

“I’ve got pictures, too,” I reminded them as the damn thing made a dash up my back, its claws leaving tiny pinpricks all along my spine.

“You told me you destroyed those!”

“Military Tactics 101, Jamie. Never give away a strategic advan—Auggh!” I cut off as a wave of heat fried what felt like half my shoulder.

“Lia!” I heard the door open, but I didn’t care. I ripped my shirt off one-handed, still waving the numb stick around, and caught myself a glancing blow on the side. My left buttock immediately went dead, my leg collapsed and I fell to the floor.

I lost sight of the little menace for a minute, but spotted a tiny tail headed south when I rolled onto my back. “It’s on your leg!” Caleb informed me.

“No shit!” Something red and black and vicious had sprinted back down my torso to perch on my knee, and I could swear it was laughing at me. Caleb lunged for it with another numb stick, but it darted back up my thigh. He was too late to pull up and my right knee collapsed.

“Don’t help me!” I panted, as the damn thing reappeared on my stomach, its painted wings fanning out just above my belly button. It was 2D, as all wards are on the skin, merely thin black lines and brightly colored paint. But I swear it felt heavy, warm and all too real.

“Give me your stick,” I told Caleb, as the ward eyed me warily, a tiny cloud of painted smoke issuing from its nostrils. “I’m going to trap it between two of them.”

“And if you miss? That thing was taken off a dark mage, Lia,” he reminded me, suddenly serious. “I’m guessing it can do more damage than we’ve seen. A lot more.”

“Let me worry about that.”

“Not to mention that you’ve been hit with a numb stick twice already. Once more and you’ll be out cold.”

A few stray sparks tickled my stomach, glowing gold against my skin for a moment, before dissipating and leaving tiny scorch marks in their place. “I’m not going to numb myself,” I told him through clenched teeth.

“Uh-huh. And what am I supposed to tell the doc if—”

“Just give me the damn stick!”

The tat didn’t wait for Caleb to make up his mind. It suddenly dove for cover again, making it as far as the pink satin rose on the front of my panties before Caleb and I almost simultaneously stunned it. “You all right?” he demanded, as the tat froze against my skin, still wearing a small smirk.

“Ask me that in half an hour, when I can feel my butt,” I told him unsteadily, as I gave the thing a careful poke. It didn’t move, but it didn’t come off, either.

Magical wards appear as tattoos on the body, but in their inert form, they’re small gold charms that fall easily away from the skin. Only that wasn’t happening here. I poked it again. Nothing.

“Why isn’t it coming off?” I demanded, trying not to sound as freaked out as I felt.

One look in the reflective side of the nearest shelf told me I wasn’t fooling anybody: my gray eyes were wide and startled, my color was high, and my long brown hair was everywhere.

“I told you it was taken off a dark mage,” Caleb said, squatting down to have a closer look. He muttered the standard release spell we used on especially stubborn charms, and nada.

I glared at it, fresh out of ideas. I hadn’t worked in what the Corps only half-jokingly called the dungeon for very long, and wasn’t an expert on magical wards. I had one myself—a small horned owl that had been a present from my father when I joined the Corps—but it had never gone bat-shit crazy and attacked me. At least, not yet.

Caleb tried again, this time with a spell strong enough to raise goose bumps on my skin. But the tattoo was still a tattoo, its colors glowing warm and jewel-bright against my stomach. “It must be a talisman,” he informed me.

“So what? My owl’s a talisman.”

“Your owl is part talisman. It gathers energy from the natural world or pulls it from a built-in reservoir to avoid draining you every time you use it. But there are rare wards that are pure talismans—that don’t draw from your own magic at all. It looks like that’s what we have here.”

“That still doesn’t explain how we get it off!” I said, brushing at it uselessly. I could feel the raised outline against my fingertips, but there was nothing to grab hold of. Just skin and ink.

“That could be a problem,” Caleb said, helping me to my feet. “Talismans like that are illegal because they’re made by draining the magic of a living creature into the tat. It gives them a large reservoir, but sometimes characteristics of the creature are passed on as well. Tats like that have their own minds, in a way.”

“So you’re saying it’ll turn loose when it wants to?”

“Or when it runs out of power.”

“And that will be when?”

He smiled like a man who didn’t have a dangerous magical weapon stuck under his belly button. “No way to know.” He picked my jeans up off the floor and tucked the numb stick in the pocket. “I’d keep this, if I were you. The effect wears off after a while.”

Great. I grabbed my jeans and assessed the damage. On the plus side, the stinging pain in my backside was no longer noticeable, thanks to the numb stick’s deadening qualities. On the negative, the knee that had been hit didn’t seem to be working too well, and threatened to give way whenever I put any weight on it.

And then a flash went off, almost blinding me. “Jamie!”

“Now we’ll talk about those pictures,” he chuckled, clicking the door shut.

I threw my clothes back on and barreled through the door. “You conniving little bastard! Fork over that camera right now or I swear—”

“Mage de Croissets! What precisely is going on here?”

I stopped, jeans unzipped and shirt askew, blinking away afterimages. Shit. The boss never came down here. It was practically the only advantage to working in the dungeon. And now it didn’t have even that much going for it.

My eyes slowly adjusted to show me the wavy silver hair, high forehead and sour expression I’d feared. Richard Hargrove, better known as Dick to his friends or The Dick to the rest of us, had been brought out of retirement after the war started. He was old-school, demanding things spit-polished and perfect, like his excruciatingly correct posture. It made his too-thin form, which as usual was encased in a dark-colored three-piece suit, look even more skeletal than it was. I didn’t like the guy, but I kept wishing he’d eat a sandwich.

“Well?” The barked word surprised me, and these days, that wasn’t good. The piece of contraband we’d been working on before the ward went nuts flew off the examining table and through the air—straight at the source of the disturbance.

Hargrove ducked as the five-foot-long metal staff tore through the air just over his head. It went on to shatter a reinforced glass door, obliterate a computer, take a bite out of a wall and lodge like a quivering spear in one of the steel-plated elevator doors. That would have ended it, except that this was a wizard’s staff, which apparently still had some juice left in it. It melted a chunk of the door into a sizzling silver mess.

And then it exploded.

The remainder of the glass door protected us from some of the pieces of flying metal, and the shield Hargrove threw up while still on one knee absorbed the rest. I would have helped him, but it was all I could do to rein in the waves of magic thrumming under my skin, begging for a spell, an aim, a target. I concentrated on not gasping as the now-familiar vise clenched around my gut. It felt like all of my organs were twisting together, as if they were trying to wring themselves out. I’d have clawed at my flesh to straighten them out, if that hadn’t been a completely crazy idea.

As it was, my fingers clenched over the circle of radiating lines just below my third rib. It looked like a stylized sun a little larger than the pad of my thumb, but the ugly silver scar was a blank in my memory. They say you never hear the one that kills you. But you don’t hear the one that knocks you cold for three days, either.

Or the one that leaves you a magical cripple.

“Watch it,” Caleb murmured as the boss turned toward us, his shield riddled with glass and metal, like a porcupine with fully extended quills.

“Are you under some semblance of control?” Hargrove demanded icily.

I nodded and his shields fell, causing the trapped pieces to drop to the floor with a clatter. Jamie ran to gather up the remains of the staff, while Caleb helped the boss back to his feet. I didn’t budge. Hargrove had caught me on his glare like a bug on a pin, his expression somewhere between murderous and mortified. I didn’t understand that last part, until I belatedly noticed the man standing off to one side, out of the line of fire. No, not a man, I realized, as the spicy, musky scent of Clan hit me.

“It’s good to see you again, Lia.”

“Mr. Arnou,” I said awkwardly.

“Sebastian, please.” He paused, glancing at Hargrove’s furious expression. “We are family, after all.”

Well, crap.

Chapter 2

“You might have mentioned that you were related to the werewolf king!” Hargrove whispered viciously, as we trudged up eight flights.

I glanced up the stairs, to where the individual in question was being regaled with some story by Jamie. Despite his recent brush with disaster, Sebastian Arnou appeared unruffled. He reminded me of my mother, who had been so comfortable in human form that it had been almost impossible to believe that she was anything else. Only the occasional scent of something rare and wild gave it away, or a too fluid movement when surprised.

Or watching her morph into a 150-pound wolf, of course.

Not that I’d ever seen Arnou’s leader in wolf form, or caught off guard, either. And today was no exception. He was wearing a crisp tan suit that set off his short dark hair and vivid blue eyes. His shoes were Prada, his watch was Piaget and his demeanor was set on pleasant. It was difficult to imagine anyone who looked less like the slavering beast of legend.

“His title is bardric,” I explained. “The Weres don’t actually have a—” I stopped at the blistering look Hargrove sent me. “And he’s more of an acquaintance, really.”

Hargrove threw a sound shield around us with an impatient gesture; I guess he knew about Were hearing. “He said you were family!”

“It wasn’t meant literally. I recently did a favor for his clan and they, um, sort of adopted me. It’s an honorary thing.”

Hargrove didn’t look satisfied. “Then perhaps you can explain why he insisted on seeing you after the incident this morning?”

“What incident?”

“A Were, or what was left of one, was fished out of a ditch along Highway 91 by one of our patrols. They saw several men dragging it out of a drainage tunnel, and when they went to investigate, the men ran off, leaving the corpse behind. Of course we informed the Clan Council. I assumed they would send someone for the body, but imagine my surprise when the Arnou himself showed up to take possession! And demanded to see you and Kempster.”

“Jamie?” I’d assumed I was in for it, but I’d wondered why Hargrove had ordered him upstairs, too.

“And he wants the most current map we have of Tartarus. But he won’t say why.”

I assumed that Sebastian wasn’t asking for a map of the Greek underworld, but of its Vegas equivalent. Back in the eighties, an extensive network of drainage tunnels had been put in place beneath the city to help control the runoff from the brief rainy season. Since they were dry much of the year, they’d quickly been settled by bums, druggies and the portion of the supernatural population who couldn’t pass for human even with a glamourie.

Over time, bars, brothels, markets and casinos had opened up, forming a mirror image of the world above, only more desperate and a lot more dangerous. Someone in the Corps had named the place after the deep, dark pit reserved for evildoers in Greek mythology and it had stuck, maybe because it was so apt. I couldn’t imagine what interest Vegas’s shadow city could hold for someone like Sebastian Arnou.

“Jamie used to be a tunnel rat,” I said slowly. “If anyone is interested in Tartarus, he’d be the one to ask.” The Rats were a group of war mages who once patrolled the tunnels, before the current war in the supernatural community pulled them to other duties.

“But why you?”

“I’m dating his brother,” I admitted, because it wasn’t exactly a secret. Cyrus had haunted the infirmary while I recovered from my recent brush with the hereafter. And ever since, he’d been showing up for lunch in the cafeteria, despite what it considered food. He’d become so much of a staple that people had almost stopped staring at him as if he planned to eat them instead of the rubbery quiche.

“And is that all?”

I shrugged. “Technically, I am part of his clan. Sebastian trusts me. Well, as much as any Were ever trusts a mage…”

Hargrove threw an arm across the staircase, halting me in my tracks. “Let us have one thing perfectly clear,” he told me, gray eyes flashing. “Were or not, you are Corps. Therefore you answer to me, not to some bardric or whatever he is.”

“I’m not a Were,” I said flatly. “My mother was a member of Clan Lobizon, but my father was human.”

“Be that as it may, I won’t have someone on my team hiding things from me. The Weres have the right to deal with their own kind as they see fit, but if anything about this bears on our activities, I expect to be informed. Is that understood?”

“Yes, sir.”

Hargrove shot me a look that said it had damn well better be, but fortunately there wasn’t time for more. One didn’t keep a king—or the equivalent—waiting. A moment later, we caught up with the others at the top of the stairs and pushed through into the busy main corridor.

The Central Division of the War Mage Corps is part of the North American branch of the Silver Circle—the most powerful magical association on earth. Only it wasn’t looking much like it at the moment. The war had trashed our previous digs, causing a precipitate and only half-completed move to new quarters beneath a large warehouse. It was crowded, the air-conditioning didn’t work half the time and the place tended to smell of dust, body odor and the ozone tang of magic.

Today, it smelled like dung.

I glanced around, wondering what new problem had cropped up since I’d passed through this morning. Unlike the lower levels, this one was open to the public. As usual, it was crowded with a microcosm of the current war. Mages, apprentices and lab techs hurried along, skirting the long line of arms dealers waiting for permits. Informants slunk past with furtive expressions, hoping their tidbits were worth a payout. Mercenaries loitered against the walls, awaiting interviews for the kind of service the Corps preferred to pay others to do. And someone was selling chickens.

Okay, that was new.

A squat-necked, big-bosomed woman with nut brown skin and a graying braid squatted near the stairwell, surrounded by wicker cages of live chickens. They stared at us accusingly out of bright black eyes, their beaks protruding through slits in the weaving. A glance down the corridor showed a variety of other small food animals, bleating and squealing from cages dotted here and there among duffle bags, backpacks and fifty or so scruffy-looking people.

Hargrove grabbed a passing mage who couldn’t get away fast enough. “Lieutenant!”

The lieutenant stopped, looking resigned. His arms were full of baby goat, which was nibbling on his lapel. Like all war mage attire, his coat was spelled to resist damage, although that wasn’t working so well in this case. The goat took a nibble, the lapel grew back, further intriguing the goat. Repeat.

“Yes, sir.”

“What are all these people doing here?”

“I’m sorry, sir. We had to bring them down. They were picketing out front and drew the attention of the human police—”

“I told Aaronson to get rid of them an hour ago!”

“Yes, sir. But they refused to leave without seeing you,” the lieutenant said, before getting jostled aside by a man with black eyes, a weather-beaten face and a hank of greasy hair.

“It’s the gangs!” The man held up his arm, displaying a nasty burn. “They burnt us out this morning and we want to know what you’re going to do about it!”

“Where did this attack happen?” Hargrove demanded.

“In an encampment over on Decatur.”

“I know of no approved housing in that area.”

“It’s a flophouse, sir. In the drain,” Jamie explained.

Hargrove scowled at the injured man. “You were warned months ago that continuing to remain in an unsecured location puts you at risk. The Black Circle—”

“Do we look like we have anything those bastards would want?” the man demanded.

Personally, I thought he had a point. The powerful dark mages who composed our main enemy in the war tended to aim a little higher. But Hargrove wasn’t impressed. “They are known to hit civilian targets for the terror value.”

“All your secure locations cost too much!”

“We have arranged free safe houses for indigents—”

“Yeah, in the desert! Our homes are here!”

I couldn’t imagine anyone considering a murky, dangerous drain to be “home” and apparently, neither could Hargrove. “Be that as it may, you have the option. Should you choose to ignore it, there is little I can do. Other than offer you medical assistance for the wounded—”

“We don’t need charity! We need protection!”

“What you need is to moderate your tone!” Hargrove snapped. “And to face realities! I do not have the personnel to protect you if you choose to remain underground. That is why you were specifically instructed to evacuate—”

I stopped listening because a young man was tugging on my sleeve. He had gray eyes, dark hair and coltish limbs poking out of clothes that were at least two sizes too big. He looked like me ten years ago, before I grew into my height. He also looked lost, like maybe he’d misplaced his family in the crush.

“Do you know where I can find…” he glanced down at what I belatedly realized was an orientation packet. “Uh, Mage Beckett?”

Christ; the kid was a recruit. I opened my mouth to tell him to go home, to finish growing into his clothes, to finish growing up, but Hargrove beat me to it. “How old are you?” he snapped.

The boy’s eyes widened in dismay as he belatedly recognized Central’s resident terror. “Ei-eighteen, sir.”

“You don’t look it!” The kid appeared vaguely insulted, but he had the sense not to talk back. “Make sure you have proof of age. You will be asked for it,” Hargrove told him, before informing him where to find his drill instructor.

The young man nodded and backed off fast, only to trip over someone’s battered suitcase and lurch into a cage holding a piglet. The animal bit his shirtsleeve and held on. The boy panicked with his soon-to-be-boss’s eyes on him and slung a spell—which was just one syllable off. It should have given the pig a small electric shock; instead…

“Oh, dear,” Jamie said, as the pig swelled like a ripe melon, bursting through its woven home with a startled squeal.

I started to mutter the counterspell to shrink it back to size, when Jamie stepped on my toe. Oh, yeah. I fell silent and let him take care of it, then watched the red-faced teenager scurry down the hall toward the gym. It should have been funny—the kind of story you laughed at with your buddies years later. Only I wasn’t sure that kid would have a later.

“He doesn’a look eighteen,” Jamie murmured.

“He doesn’t look sixteen,” I said, my magic surging. I managed to tamp it down before we had another incident, but the effort made my headache worse. I had to get over this; I had to get well. We needed people in the fight who would do more than serve as target practice for the dark.

The lieutenant was left to deal with the angry man and we pressed on, but we’d only gone a few yards when Sebastian stopped by the doors to the medical facility. “Dr. Sedgewick will bring us the results as soon as he’s finished, Mr. Arnou,” Hargrove informed him, attempting to mask his impatience with a tight smile.

“I would prefer to see the body for myself.”

The smile vanished. “From what I understand, it was in…less than pristine condition when brought in.”

“Nonetheless.”

Hargrove waited, I guess expecting more of an explanation. He didn’t get one. “Very well. But I warn you—it isn’t pretty.”

“Bit of an understatement,” Jamie muttered a minute later, which was how long it took us to pass through the crowded waiting area, walk down a hall and enter a small room near the end.

I didn’t reply, because I was busy swallowing my breakfast back down where it belonged. Cafeteria food tasted the same coming up as it did going down, I decided, feeling pretty pathetic. But Jamie was also visibly green and even Hargrove had two spots of color high on his cheeks. It looked a little like rouge, next to his pallor. Only Sebastian appeared unruffled.

That surprised me since the body lying on the autopsy table was Were. At least, that’s what Sedgewick, the Center’s chief medical officer, alleged. I had my doubts. At first glance, it just looked like a heap of raw, red flesh, bled out like butcher’s meat ready for carving. But on closer examination it resolved into a tangled mass of limbs, some recognizably human, others not. But it was virtually impossible to tell what it might once have been.

Because every inch of skin had been carefully removed.

“Oh, it’s Were all right,” Sedgewick said when Hargrove voiced my doubts. The rotund little doctor was more animated than I’d ever seen him, his blue eyes sparking over his dull green scrubs. “And one born to it at that.”

“How can you tell?” Hargrove demanded, his lip curling in disgust.

“They have fundamentally different anatomies from humans, even those later infected with the Were strain,” Sedgewick said happily. “For example, the subclavius muscle stretching from the first rib to the collarbone.” The scalpel he was using as a pointer flashed under the lights as he traced it. “Most of us no longer have one as we don’t need it to walk on two legs instead of four. But all born Weres have at least one.”

“As do some humans, as you just inti—”

“But that’s only one indicator,” Sedgewick broke in. He looked hopefully at Sebastian. “I’ve only done an external exam so far, as I know your people have some sort of problem with autopsies. But if I could remove the brain, you’d have a much clearer view through the cranial—”

“It is our custom that the body be left as untouched as possible after death,” Sebastian said evenly.

“Yes. Yes, well, of course,” Sedgewick said, his expression making clear that he didn’t think much more damage could be done to this body if he tried. “Well, if you could see inside the nasal cavity, you’d notice a series of indentations lining the septum. They’re powerful chemoreceptors for detecting pheromones. They connect directly to the hypothalamus, the brain’s control center for basic drives and emotions—sex, hunger, fear, anger. They allow a Were to track a mate, hunt for food and detect potential dangers—as they once did for our ancestors before we evolved beyond that sort of thing.” He rocked back on his heels, looking pleased with himself.

“But why does it—he—look like that?” Hargrove demanded.

Sedgewick frowned. His masterful display of medical knowledge had obviously not elicited the admiration he’d expected. “He looks like that because someone skinned him alive partway through the change,” he said impatiently. “That’s what killed him. Well, that and the massive blood loss, of course.”

I vaguely heard Jamie make a choked noise and run out of the room. I would have gladly joined him, except I couldn’t seem to move. If I hadn’t been staring at the evidence, I’d have said that what Sedgewick claimed was impossible. Weres changed in the blink of an eye—even faster, for the old ones. How could anyone—

A cell phone interrupted my thoughts, its jangling tune more than a little embarrassing under the circumstances. “Sorry,” I muttered, reaching for my back pocket. Cyrus had changed my ringtone a few days ago, and his sense of humor was rivaled only by Jamie’s. I didn’t get calls working so far underground and had forgotten to change it back.

Only it wasn’t my phone that was ringing.

“We may never get another body like this,” Sedgewick was saying mournfully.

Sebastian looked at the doctor like he thought he might be a little mad. “I sincerely hope not!”

“But I’ve already learned so much, merely from a topical exam,” Sedgewick wheedled, attempting to summon up some rusty charm. “For example, I never knew that the change begins with the extremities. For some reason, I always assumed it started with the trunk of the body and radiated outward. With a chance to do a proper autopsy, I could learn so much—”

“The body will be returned to the family intact,” Sebastian told him flatly.

“But Mr. Arnou—”

“Colin, leave it!” Hargrove snapped. “You’re supposed to be looking for clues to the man’s identity, not satisfying morbid curiosity.” He glanced at me. “And answer that thing or shut it off!”

“It’s not mine,” I said, wondering who else around here had “Werewolves of London” for a ringtone.

“It was found under the body,” Sedgewick said grumpily, waving at another phone that lay on a specimen tray. I hadn’t noticed it before because it was chrome-bright, like the tray itself.

Like the phone Cyrus had given me on my birthday.

Like the one he always carried.

An electric charge ran up my spine and down into my hands, making them shake. I clutched my phone tightly to keep from dropping it. It was 11:30, I reminded myself sharply. Cyrus was probably on his way here for lunch, ready to bitch about the cafeteria’s idea of chicken salad…

“And if you want to know who he is—or rather was,” Sedgewick said, picking up the phone. “Call one of the numbers in here and ask. Or do I have to do everything?”

He hit a button and the phone in my hands leapt. I dropped it and it went skittering across the tiles, spinning to a stop by the plastic container Sedgewick had placed hopefully at the end of the table. I stared at it, feeling my thoughts scatter and break, fracturing as the floor sank dizzyingly beneath me.

My chest felt pinched as I sucked in a lungful of air, but it didn’t seem to help. A bone-dead chill settled through me and my knees gave out. “Lia!” someone said, but I barely heard.

The last thing I remember before darkness washed over me was two tinny, cheerful howls merging with the white-rush-roar in my ears.

Chapter 3

“It isn’t him. Lia, do you hear me? It isn’t Cyrus!” Someone was holding me, close enough that I could feel the body heat radiating from him. It was hotter than usual for a human, and some part of me found that oddly reassuring.

“Mr. Arnou,” it was Sedgewick’s voice, sounding clipped and impatient. “It’s merely a faint. She’ll come around in a moment.”

Sebastian paused to draw a breath. And when he started speaking again, his voice had gone low and smooth and dangerous. “For all your vaunted knowledge of our anatomy, Doctor, it appears there are a few things you do not yet understand about Weres.”

“And that would be?” Sedgewick had obviously dropped the charm act, because his voice was almost nasty.

“A Were who has lost a mate can turn feral, knowing nothing, seeing nothing, except revenge. I have witnessed a small female of our kind carve her way through five strong Were guards to reach the one who had taken her mate. And then kill him, before dying herself.” His grip tightened enough to hurt. “I do not wish to see it again.”

I came around completely with a grunt of pain, to find myself draped across Sebastian’s lap. We were in Sedgewick’s tiny office, sitting on his ugly plaid couch. The doc was behind his overflowing desk while Hargrove hovered in the doorway. “But Lia isn’t a Were,” Sedgewick said testily. “Therefore, whatever questionable—”

“Colin,” Hargrove began warningly.

“—methods your people use for revenge don’t concern—”

“Colin!” Hargrove’s tone snapped like a whip. “With me.”

Sedgewick started to protest, but Hargrove somehow got him out the door without a major incident. I didn’t see them go because Sebastian had bent over me, his eyes searching mine as if he expected me to go berserk at any moment. I didn’t feel berserk; I felt sick. I really hoped I wasn’t about to yak all over royalty.

“It isn’t him, Lia,” Sebastian repeated, low and distinct. “It isn’t Cyrus.”

“Then who?” I croaked, struggling to sit up.

“Grayshadow,” Sebastian said, his face expressionless. “At least, that was his Were name. In the human world he was known as Alan Thompkins.”

“But the phone—”

“It’s Cyrus’s, yes, but the body isn’t.”

“How could you tell?” I asked thickly.

“Scent.” His mouth twisted in a wry half-smile. “Those archaic chemoreceptors. And if you noticed, the body was missing part of the right front paw. Grayshadow was missing three fingers on his right hand, a relic of an old duel.”

I swallowed. “I didn’t really look that close.”

My head was pounding and my throat felt like a desert. I spied a small fridge sitting at the end of the sofa, wedged in between an overstuffed filing cabinet and the wall. Its sole contents turned out to be a six-pack of mineral water and a beer. The beer was warm. I drank it anyway.

“If you already knew who he was, why let Sedgewick examine him?” I asked, after a minute.

“I was hoping he would tell me that the skin was removed after death, and that something else had killed him.”

“Yeah, because that would be so much better!”

“Yes. It would.”

The strain in his voice surprised me. While Cyrus was considered mad, bad and dangerous to know, Sebastian’s reputation matched what I’d seen so far—elegant, composed and levelheaded. Only he wasn’t sounding so much like that now.

“Don’t you think it’s time you told me what’s going on?” I demanded.

Sebastian wordlessly pulled a manila folder from under his suit coat and handed it to me. It contained photos, big glossy ones in full color that might have been taken from the exam room down the hall. Only the backgrounds differed. Instead of brushed steel, these bodies lay on red, rocky soil, cracked asphalt and scrub brush. Three bodies, three different places of death, but the same gruesome method.

“Grayshadow was the fourth—that we know of,” he said, when I looked up. “The first was a week ago. Forest Walker of Maccon. Then White Sun of Arnou and Night Dancer of Tamaska.”

“And Grayshadow belonged to which clan?”

“Arnou.”

“So two out of four were Arnou.” Sebastian nodded. “But why were they all…like that?”

“Our pelts are prized possessions in many circles. If taken at the moment of transformation, they retain much of the magic needed for the Change.”

He said it so matter-of-factly, that it took me a second to get it. “Wait. You think someone killed them for their skins?” I stared at him in horror.

“So it would seem.” His voice was as smooth and untroubled as if that earlier lapse had never happened. But his eyes were clouded when they met mine. “It appears that we have a Hunter.”

I looked down at the too-colorful photos. My nausea was back, big-time. “But how? Weres change so quickly—”

“A spell is required to strip the skin from the body before the change can be completed.”

“You think a mage did this?”

“They are one of the few predators to which we are vulnerable.”

My head was spinning, a combination of numb stick, shock and warm beer. It felt like I was simultaneously getting too much information, and not enough. “Okay,” I said slowly, trying to sort out my jumbled thoughts. “Right now, I’m not interested in this Hunter, mage or not. I’m interested in why Cyrus’s phone was found under a dead body, and one that had no clothes to hold it. Was it planted to make us think it was Cyrus? Because any Were would immediately know that it wasn’t.”

Sebastian’s jaw tightened. “It was, I think, a message to me.”

“What? Some kind of challenge?”

“More likely a warning not to interfere in this creature’s affairs.”

I frowned. “And you would need a warning because?”

“White Sun was my Second, my right hand. When I learned of his death, I asked Cyrus to check with his contacts in the underworld, to get me a lead on this creature. A name, a location, anything.”

“And did he?”

“I didn’t want to discuss this over the telephone,” he said, not answering me. “And as you know, Cyrus and I cannot meet.”

I nodded. Sebastian had recently been elected wartime chief, which was what bardric actually meant, of the North American Were clans. In order to get the votes of those leaders who were more impressed by brawn than brains (in other words, most of them), he’d asked Cyrus to challenge him for the right to lead their clan—a dispute that could be resolved only by combat.

As they’d planned, Sebastian won the fight and the election, but losing made Cyrus vargulf— an outcast—in Were society. The brothers intended to reveal the truth after the war was over, allowing Cyrus to reclaim his position. In the meantime, he was using his disreputable reputation to spy on the Were underworld for his brother.

“So how were you getting information?” I asked, and immediately knew I’d hit pay dirt. Because Sebastian licked his lips. Full-grown Weres, especially High Clan, don’t show nervousness. It’s viewed as a weakness and is drilled out of them early. So that little gesture was the equivalent of a human throwing a hissy fit.

“I didn’t like the idea of Cyrus chasing this thing alone,” Sebastian finally said. “And I knew he could cover more ground if he had help. I therefore sent Grayshadow to act as a go-between—”

“Wait.” I stared at the gory photos and, suddenly, my brain didn’t seem to be working at all. “That man in there…who ended up like that…You’re telling me he was working with Cyrus?”

“Yes. He was supposed to bring me a report this morning, but he missed the meeting. And shortly thereafter, we received the call from Central.”

“Then where is Cyrus?”

Sebastian met my eyes, and I knew the answer before he said it. “I don’t know.”

“You don’t know? And we’ve just been sitting here for the past twenty minutes?” I leapt up and started for the door, but Sebastian got there first. I tried to push past, but he wasn’t budging. I could have moved him; hell, the way I felt I could have moved the wall. But that was likely to bring security running and I didn’t have time for that.

“Lia!” Sebastian grabbed me by the upper arms, tightly enough to remind me of just how much brute strength that polished linen was hiding. “Listen to me! The only report from Cyrus I received said his quarry was hiding somewhere in Tartarus. But there are four hundred miles of tunnels. We could search for weeks and never find them!”

“So what are you saying? We just sit here and hope for the best?” Because that so wasn’t happening.

“No, we must go after him.”

That stopped me. “We? As in…”

“You and I.”

“But you’re bardric. You can’t put yourself—”

The skin along his jaw stretched white over the bone. “What I cannot do is let my brother die at the hand of a monster!”

“Then send someone else!”

“And who would you suggest? Cyrus is vargulf—dead, as far as the clan is concerned! I cannot send a team in after him without admitting the deception. And if I do that, the Council will be within their rights to call for a new election, one which almost certainly would go against me.”

“And your position is worth more than Cyrus’s life?”

Those blue eyes flashed, and for the first time, he looked more like a predator than a diplomat. “My most likely replacement is Whirlwind of Rand. He hates our alliance with the humans. One of his first actions in office would almost certainly be to undo it!”

I stopped struggling for a moment. The Corps was supposed to be a police force, not an army, but lately we’d had to be both. One of the few saving graces had been the Weres, who were as vicious in combat as legend said. They’d saved our asses more than once, however much the Corps might not want to admit it. I honestly didn’t know what we’d do without them.

“Grayshadow was my Third,” Sebastian told me more quietly. “And the only one, other than White Sun, who knew the truth about Cyrus. Now that they’re both dead, I do not know who I can trust, and I cannot risk making a mistake when the repercussions could be disastrous.”

I was trying for calm, trying hard, but it wasn’t working that great. “But how are we supposed to find him without help? The only witness is dead!” And if I didn’t find Cyrus soon, he might be, too. I suddenly couldn’t seem to get enough air in the claustrophobic little room.

“You will lead me to him.”

“If I knew where he was, don’t you think I’d have told you?” There was a weird, teakettle sound. The air around us had gone into motion, sending Sedgewick’s piles of clutter flapping against the ceiling like trapped birds.

“Lia!” Sebastian’s fingers bit into my arms, bruising hard. “Sedgewick was wrong! Our abilities are not defined by the limitations of anatomy. We are magical beings, and when we make connections, they are magical also. In some cases, mated pairs among our people have been known to share images of what one is seeing, or to experience something of what the other is feeling—”

“For Weres, perhaps. I’m not one!”

That won me a hard glance. “We both know that isn’t true.”

“My mother was Were; I am human,” I repeated, angry that he couldn’t seem to understand. “Considering how often I have to say that, maybe I ought to get a tattoo!”

“Tattoos are only skin deep. What you are runs through to the bone.”

“What my mother was. Lobizon tried to turn me, but they failed. You know that!”

The leaders of my mother’s clan had pressured her for years to have me undergo the Change, but she had always hedged, telling them it was my decision. And her rank was high enough that they had been unable to force the issue as long as she lived. But barely two days after she died, they sent a group to attack me, intending to take the choice out of my hands. Sebastian had saved me by adopting me into Arnou, which as the clan of the current bardric, outranked Lobizon. As long as I remained under his protection, they couldn’t touch me.

Sebastian didn’t say anything for a long moment. “How certain are you that we are not being overheard?” he finally asked.

“Pretty sure. The Corps usually spies on other people.”

“Be certain.”

I threw a silence shield around us. “Okay.”

Sebastian slanted a sharp look at me. “I could not allow someone into my clan, not even for Cyrus’s sake, without knowing the truth. You carry Neuri. Why bother to deny it?”

It hit like a quick punch to the gut, leaving me breathless. No one ever said that word aloud, not even me. It was the elephant in the room, the thing that even my mother had tiptoed around in case uttering it somehow made it more real. I’d been fifteen before I learned the name for the problem that would define my life: Neuri Syndrome.

It occurs sometimes when the mother is Were and the father is not, which is why female Weres rarely marry outside the clan. It’s a variation on lycanthropy, but doesn’t permit its carriers to change. It also prevents them from ever getting the full-blown disease—and therein lay the problem.

Weres have a low birthrate—the disease often proves deadly to children younger than five or six, killing many in the womb—and therefore periodic “recruitment” is necessary. The clans feared that carriers of Neuri might pass their resistance on to their children, who might disseminate it to their kids and so on. Married to Weres, they would weaken the clan by infecting the bloodlines. Married to humans, they might ensure that, one day, there would be no one left to turn.

Of course, that argument had made a lot more sense in the medieval world when people tended to live in small villages and rarely traveled. The local gene pool had been limited, and contamination from Neuri had been a real threat. With the much larger, more mobile population of the modern world, the danger was miniscule. But I hadn’t noticed anyone changing the old kill-on-sight rule.

My mother had fought her clan elders not to give me a choice, as she’d claimed, but because the disease I’d been born with had already made it for me.

“I haven’t denied anything,” I told Sebastian angrily, when I got my breath back. “I just don’t see any reason to broadcast my status as metaphysical leper to every Were I come across. That’s a good way to get dead, or have you forgotten?”

“I am not the one who has forgotten something! Carriers of Neuri are Were.”

“No! We aren’t! We’re prey, that’s why there’s so goddamned few of—”

I stopped because something rippled over my skin, something that raised the hair on my arms, on the back of my neck, and sent chills down my spine. Something liquid and dark and compelling. I stared up into eyes that were no longer blue, but brilliant, inhuman chartreuse. I tried to turn away, but hard fingers bit into my arms.

“Not Were, Lia?” he murmured. “Then you don’t taste the wind in the back of your throat? Don’t see the night light up for you, with every branch, every blade of grass crystal clear and vibrating with life? Don’t hear the earth under your feet, whispering to you, revealing its secrets?”

I was running, light as the wind ruffling the tops of the trees. It was almost dark, but I could see every stone, every bit of life scurrying, slithering or darting, quick and startled, out of my path. Every tiny tremor in the earth that bore my weight, every scent on the breeze that flowed around me, carried stories of friends and enemies, of water and food, of mile after mile of fascinating, vivid ground to be explored.

The forest came to life with sleek, dark shadows. They ran close enough that I could feel the heavy, nonhuman heat of them, smell the rich, heady scent of Clan, see the slide of fur over heavily muscled bodies. Their eyes filled with the lambency of living jewels as they howled, sending an unearthly chorus floating out over the valley below us. It tightened my skin, pulled at my heart, set my breath to racing until it tore out of me in a cry of pure delight.

Then Sebastian let me go.

The lights came on and the sounds of the busy medical facility rushed back—gurneys rolling over tile, nurses gossiping, the fridge humming. And the world went flat, like it had lost a vital dimension. The colors were just colors, washed out and lifeless, and although Sebastian’s arms were around me, I felt them less than I had the whisper of that scent on the wind. He sat, regarding me with a faint smile, even as part of me grasped for something rare and precious that was no longer there. And mourned its loss.

I’d seen my mother return from night runs, panting and out of breath, her eyes glowing, her cheeks flushed, more alive than she ever was between four walls. And I’d never understood until now. She’d never shown me what she saw, what she experienced. Maybe because she’d known how cruel it would be when I realized I could never reach that place myself.

The part of me that was wolf was trapped by my disease. It lived crippled and caged inside a prison of a body that couldn’t flow, couldn’t reform, couldn’t let loose the magic of its other self. I’d never even seen my wolf, and I never would.

Until today, I’d been at peace with that.

“That foolish doctor,” Sebastian was saying. “Pitying us for our ‘primitive’ anatomy, when we are privy to an entire world he will never know!”

“You’re privy!” I gasped, so angry I could barely see. “You did that!”

“Yes, but I could not have formed a memory bond with a human. Carriers of Neuri are Weres, Lia,” he repeated. “They simply do not change.”

“Then they aren’t Weres!” He was the head of my clan and I owed him big-time. So I didn’t curse him into next week. But it was close. My whole life I’d struggled to be accepted, had battled against the tide of prejudice from both sides. I wasn’t human enough for the Corps, wasn’t Were enough for the Clan. And always, always, there was Neuri, that damned disease that wouldn’t let me truly be either. But at least I hadn’t fully understood what I was missing.

For the first time, I realized the truth of the phrase I’d said so many times: I really wasn’t Were. And God, how it hurt.

“Many of us have spent much of our lives in human form,” Sebastian said—calmly, damn him. “It does not invalidate what we are. It does not make us less Clan.”

“But if you choose to stay in human form, no one cares! They don’t try to kill you for being what you are!”

“Perhaps not. But I regularly run into difficulty with the leading clans for trying to work with the humans instead of isolating ourselves in our own little world—and thereby limiting our voice and our power. I choose not to let someone else dictate the decisions I make or how I define myself.”

“But that’s just it. You choose,” I said, furious that he couldn’t see that simple but so important difference. “The Corps hates me for having a Were mother; Lobizon hates me for not changing when that’s the one thing I’m physically unable to do! I never had a choice about any of it!”

“And if you had?”

“What?”

“Would you have preferred a different mother?”

“Of course not!”

“A different father then? One who was Clan, so you would never have had to face the uncertainty of Neuri?”

“When Lobizon sent the squad to change me by force,” I told him, fighting to keep my voice steady, “my father stood by me against a dozen Weres. Despite the fact that every single one of them was faster, stronger…”

I broke off because I was once again back in those dark streets, watching a mass of shadows slink around a wall, expanding in a blink into larger, more graceful, and more deadly shapes. It had been the beginning of the worst night of my life, as they chased us for blocks, almost overpowering us a dozen times. And the whole time, I’d been certain that, just days after losing my mother, I was about to lose my father, too.

“He could have been killed. He almost was killed,” I finished, quietly furious. “He could have left me—they didn’t want him, they’d have let him go—but he stayed anyway. He risked everything for me.”

“You seem to admire the man a great deal.”

“Of course I do!”

“Then I must admit to being confused. You said you’ve never had a choice.”

“I haven’t!”

“Yet it appears that the life you have is the one you would have chosen.”

I started to fire back a response, and then stopped as his words sank in. “We cannot change what we are,” he said simply. “Only what we do.”

“And what do you expect me to do?” I demanded. “Because I don’t know how to make this connection you want. I don’t even know how to start.”

“It isn’t a task to be performed or a skill to be learned. It’s instinctive.”

“Can’t you track him?” I was desperate for another answer, any other answer. Cyrus’s life could not hang on the tenuous thread of my Were heritage. It just couldn’t.

“Not through a city, not without having a very good idea of where to start looking. There are too many conflicting scents.”

“But he’s your brother!”

Sebastian shook his head. “After the challenge I was forced to sever ties, and for it to look real it had to be real. In Were terms, I am no longer Cyrus’s brother. The ties between us were cut, metaphysically as well as legally, by the ceremony making him vargulf. And an Outcast wolf has no clan until he forms one by taking a mate.”

Leaving Cyrus exactly one hope. Me.

Chapter 4

“No.” Sedgewick didn’t even bother to look apologetic, not that I’d have believed it coming from him.

“I’m fine,” I insisted urgently. Hargrove had taken Sebastian off to confer with Jamie, and I didn’t have a lot of time. The release form was on Sedgewick’s desk, but so far, he’d refused to so much as glance at it. “I was planning to go back on active duty soon any—”

“Oh, were you? How kind of you to enlighten me.” He was in rare form even for him. He’d taken Sebastian’s refusal to allow him to carve up the so-fascinating corpse hard. And since this was Sedgewick, that meant that the rest of us were going to suffer, too.

“You know what I mean,” I said, trying for composed while a thrumming instinct urged hurry with every beat of my heart. “After you release me.”

“Which I haven’t done. And won’t, for at least another two weeks.”

“Two weeks!”

“You almost died, mage, not even a month ago!” he snapped. “Or did I imagine the puddle of blood in the hallway, and the five hours I spent in surgery patching you up after that son-of-a-bitch shot you?”

“I’ve been shot before,” I reminded him. Although not at point-blank range. I’d uncovered a traitor in the Corps and almost gotten killed taking him down. I was better now, except for my magic, which had yet to completely stabilize. But it would have to do. “And I’m not going to be doing anything strenuous—”

“I know you’re not, because you’re going to be here.”

“Sedgewick!”

“That’s doctor to you. And you can whine all you like, but I will not sign a release for anyone whose magic is acting as unpredictably as yours!”

“You said that would even out!”

“And so it will, once you’re fully healed.” I started to speak, but he cut me off. “Let me put this in very simple terms. Your body had too many assaults on its magic at one time. Now it is stuck on high alert, very similar to a person’s immune system revving up to combat a serious infection. With the exception that your magic is attacking anything it perceives as a threat—whether it actually is or not! That makes it erratic and dangerous and therefore restricted to base!”

“But—”

“Although if you think you can convince Dick otherwise after almost decapitating him this morning, be my guest,” he finished, with the smug expression that was factory standard for assholes.

I left before I was tempted to put Sedgewick in one of his own hospital beds. I slammed out into the corridor, furious but already planning how to get around his prohibition. He might not have a problem saying no to me, but the leader of the Clan Council was another matter. I’d let Sebastian talk to—

Something hit me with enough force to slam my head back against a row of lockers. I saw stars, and my lip split, spraying blood across my chin. I could taste it—hot and metallic-sweet as I grabbed for a weapon, before I belatedly remembered that I wasn’t currently authorized to carry one.

I threw myself around the side of the lockers, trying to prepare a rough-and-ready spell that might carve through my assailant’s shields without taking out half the corridor along with them. I expected another attack, one more serious than a crack to the jaw, but there was no follow-up. I peered out through the small clear space under the lockers, looking for feet, but there weren’t any. That didn’t necessarily mean there was no one there. But if someone was hiding behind a cloaking spell, the distinct lack of pummeling was odd.

After a breathless moment, I emerged to see the same white tile, the same pale walls, the same water fountain that no one had ever bothered to hook up. I put a hand to my face, expecting to feel the pain of a split lip if not a broken cheekbone, but only soft skin met my fingers. There was no wound, even though the ache was still there.

It wasn’t helped by the shock of icy water that came out of nowhere and hit me square in the face. I coughed, wiped my eyes, and looked up to find that the corridor was gone. In its place was a hot summer day, with the sun glaring down from a vivid blue sky.

It gleamed off the chrome fender of a beat-up motorcycle and the dark brown hair of the guy washing it. The hair tickled his neck because he didn’t get it cut as often as he should, like he remembered to shave maybe twice a week. Whiskey brown eyes that were the same shade in either form met mine, sparkling with challenge.

I blinked, but it was definitely Cyrus. He had the stripe of sunburn across his shoulders he got in the spring, after last year’s tan wore thin, and he was wearing the ragged cutoffs with the yellow splotches from the time we’d painted his living room. They rode low on his hips, showing off a hard stomach and thighs heavy with muscle. The sight was enough of a distraction that it took me a minute to notice his accessory—a now-empty bucket clutched in one hand.

“Big-time war mage,” he taunted, yelling to be heard over the blaring radio. “Is that the best you can do?” I followed his gaze down to the water balloon I gripped in one hand. “I bet you can’t even hit me,” he jeered, dodging back and forth along his driveway, deliberately using only human speed.

I took a drink of the beer I’d gone into the house to get and grinned back, making very sure not to watch the garden hose that was slithering toward him through the grass like a long green snake. And then it pounced, pumping jets of icy water all over his bare torso. He cursed and whipped around, grabbing it in a two-handed grip that only made it that much easier to spray him full in the face.

“You cheated!” he sputtered, looking outraged, before putting on a burst of speed that made him only a blue and tan blur as he tackled me around the shins.

I went down, but hit tile instead of grass, so hard that I slid all the way across the corridor, bashing my head on the side of the water fountain. I lay there for a minute, panting, until an orderly caught sight of me and hurried down the corridor, looking concerned. I waved him off and staggered back to my feet, amazed to find that I wasn’t dripping wet.

I exited medical and propped myself against an empty piece of wall down the hall while I waited for my heart rate to edge back into the safe zone. A couple passing mages gave me the once-over, but looked away when I scowled at them. I rested my head against the wall and swallowed, wondering if I was crazy.

The day I’d just relived had been a few months before I moved to Vegas, when I was still working for the Corps’s Jersey office. Like most Weres, Cyrus didn’t care for city life and felt claustrophobic in apartments. He’d had a house on a few acres in Galloway, close enough to Atlantic City to make his cover as a ne’er-do-well with a gambling habit believable, but far enough away that he could breathe. I’d driven down one Saturday with a six-pack and a birthday cake to celebrate his turning the big three-oh, and found him feeling playful.

He never did finish washing that bike.

I hadn’t thought about that day in months, but it had been just as clear as if it had happened yesterday. Clearer, because I couldn’t taste yesterday’s fettuccini like I had the chlorine in that water or the smoothness of that beer. I’d never had a memory that real.

If it was just my memory.

Had Sebastian been right? Was I somehow tuning in to what Cyrus was thinking about? If so, it would quiet the biggest fear I had about this proposed expedition.

Mated was a Were term, and not one that was usually applied to human-Were couplings. My parents had been married for more than four decades, but no Were had considered them mated. I think most of Lobizon had assumed that Mother was going through some kind of phase and would eventually come to her senses. Because human marriages, even long-standing ones, didn’t bind two people as closely as a mating.

Or so I’d heard. It wasn’t like Mom had bothered to explain exactly what the term meant. With Neuri forcing me to keep my distance from the clan, she’d assumed I would marry a human. So had I, until I met Cyrus. Not that we’d gotten around to talking marriage. In fact, we’d only recently gotten back together after a lengthy split. So mating didn’t seem too likely. Not to mention that Cyrus had never so much as uttered the term.

But despite occasional rumors about my mental stability, I didn’t go around hallucinating.

I didn’t want to feel hopeful, in case I was wrong. But I didn’t think I was—that crack to the jaw still hurt like a bitch. And if that was what Cyrus was currently experiencing, then he was already in trouble.

“And I’m telling you, a map won’t do you any good!” My thoughts were interrupted by the sound of Jamie’s distinctive burr coming down the hall. “Tartarus isn’t fixed like the city above. The tunnels are, o’ course, but the rest of it…floats around, so to speak.”

“What rest of it? I thought the tunnels were the city,” Hargrove was frowning at the map he had in his hand.

“That’s a typical newbie mistake,” Jamie said kindly. “The tunnels are like the roads above—they get you from place to place. But the markets, the shantytowns, the bars—they’re mostly carved out of the surrounding ground. One of these days, I fully expect half the city to implode, they’ve undermined so much of it.”

“Then those caverns should be on the map,” Hargrove insisted, trying to hand it to him.

Jamie didn’t even bother to glance at it. “If that thing’s more than a week old, it’s out of date; if it’s more than a month, it’s useless. There are turf wars going on all the time, and the city shifts with them. You have to have someone who knows the signs to get you anywhere, much less to get you back. You need a guide.”

“I thought you—” Sebastian began, but Jamie was already shaking his head.

“I’ve been out of it too long. Sure, I could figure it out, given time. The main markets are pretty stable, although I doubt your beastie is holed up anywhere so public. But what you need is someone who has been there recently. And that lets out every tunnel rat we have.”

They disappeared into medical, probably looking for me. I stared at Sebastian’s back until the closing doors hid it from view. Then I took off in the other direction.

If a dark mage was responsible for this, then a mage needed to go after him, not someone who would be just as vulnerable to his spells as Grayshadow had been. I knew Sebastian wanted to help, but he’d said it himself: if he died, the next bardric might not be so interested in maintaining ties with the humans. Not if it was going to get some of his people killed.

So I was going alone. Well, more or less.

“Nope, nothing.” The moon-faced mage behind the desk made a brief moue of disappointment to show camaraderie before preparing to blow me off.

“What do you mean, nothing? A bum, a bag lady, a freaking pimp. I don’t care!”

“Yeah, I got it the first time,” Michaelson told me, scowling. He was already having a rough day, and I wasn’t making it better. “Look, I gave you the report, okay? That’s all I got. If you want to talk to street people, go to a police station; hell, go to the street! But you won’t find ’em here.”

“Since when?”

“Since we started needing the lockup for more dangerous types.”

“Nsquital demons are not dangerous!” I pointed out, referring to the red-haired creature who had just been escorted in back.

“Ever had one spit at you? Anyway, he was selling weapons to the wrong people, so we picked him up. But he’ll probably be out on bail in a couple hours, after he gives up his cache. These days, if it doesn’t relate to the war, nobody cares.”

He motioned the next person in line forward, without so much as another sympathy pout. I was jostled out of the way, over near a window where a bounty hunter was waiting to turn in a prisoner. The guy in question didn’t look dangerous, just an average junkie with waist-length dreads, dirty cargo pants and a long-sleeved black tee. Except for the stench, which was enough to clear the sinuses. I gagged and looked around for another perch, but the place was packed.

“Thanks. I’ve been wanting to do that since I caught him,” the bounty hunter said. I realized he was talking to me, and glanced over. His prisoner’s matted mane now littered the floor around his feet, like long fuzzy brown snakes. Uh-oh.

The man clutched his head. “My hair!” he screeched. “What did that bitch do to my hair?”

The bounty hunter raised an eyebrow as the guy’s remaining locks sheered off. “You should learn some manners,” he chided.

“Witch! I said witch!” the guy told me desperately. Too late, because I couldn’t regrow hair. Not even when my magic was working properly.

“Been to Tartarus recently?” I asked him, as he felt around his now-bald head.

“What?” The guy looked at me like I was crazy.

“I picked him up in a bar there this morning,” the bounty hunter told me, collecting his payout.

“What’s the charge?”

“Possession, suspicion of dealing,” he said, on his way out the door.

“Possession of what?” I asked baldy. He ignored me. “What were you dealing?” I demanded, jerking him closer.

“You got no proof! I had nothing on me,” he spat, glaring at me. “And anyway, punch shouldn’t even be illegal. You’d think it was dangerous or something—”

“It is.”

“Punch” was the street name for a mind-altering concoction derived from a distilled wine made by the Fey. It was said to give a wicked high and to enhance latent magical abilities. But like all drugs, it carried risks—addiction, mental instability and, for longtime users, insanity.

“Only if you get greedy,” baldy sulked. “You can drink yourself to death, too, you know, and nobody cares.”

“Alcohol doesn’t give humans the ability to curse each other into oblivion,” I pointed out. “A couple brothers did just that last week. Seems they had some mage blood back in the family tree. They got into an argument over some girl after an irresponsible asshole sold them punch, and one of them wished the other would go to hell.”

Baldy winced. “Yeah, but you got him back, right?”

“Not yet. We don’t know which hell dimension ended up with him.”

I tightened my grip on baldy’s arm as a harried-looking Apprentice hurried over. As packed as this place was, it would take them most of the day to process and release him, which would seriously mess up my plans. I dug battered credentials out of my back pocket and flashed them.

“I know who you are,” the kid said, looking a little freaked.

Sheesh. Kill one department head and they never let you forget it.

“I need to question this one,” I told him. The kid nodded, already backing up. “I’ll bring him back later,” I called, then hustled my new guide out the door before anyone with seniority noticed what was going on.

“I’m not going anywhere until I see my lawyer,” the guy told me. “I know my rights! You can’t just shave my head!”

“Take it easy. It looks good on you.” Well, better than the dreads.

“Didn’t you hear me?” he demanded, starting to struggle. “I want a lawyer. I want—”

“You want to shut up before anything else comes off,” I said, dragging him into the locker room.

“Mage de Croissets to the CMO’s office immediately.” The magically enhanced voice was loud enough to make me jump.

Shit.

I parked the guy on a bench and yanked open my locker. A sawed-off shotgun, two handguns, a couple of potion grenades, four throwing knives, a stiletto that fit nicely down my boot, my potion belt secured around my hips, and I felt more like myself. That lasted until I opened the little packet on the top shelf, the one I’d sworn never to use again.

The two foil halves separated and something black and slimy oozed out onto my wrist. “Okay, that’s nasty,” baldy informed me, as a ward in the shape of a large black leech sank into my skin.

“This from someone with a tongue stud,” I said, right before the power drain hit.

It was like a blow to the gut, immediate and brutal. So that’s why they had me lie down last time, I thought dimly. I sank to the bench, waiting for the nausea, the dizziness and the all-around ick factor to die down a little.

My fingers ached to rip it off, with the skin if necessary. It’s worse at first, I reminded myself as the tat pulsed clammily against my wrist. It was heavy and cold, and made me want to shudder. But it was working. I’d never felt less like using magic in my life.

This class of ward wasn’t designed to give added power in combat, or to enhance the senses or to heal. It did just one thing—absorb magical energy—and did it very well. Wards like it were used in surgery to keep a patient’s natural protective energies clamped down so surgeons didn’t have to worry about being attacked while they worked. In my case, I’d worn one early in the healing process to help regulate my magic.

It had done the job, but had left me feeling weak and listless. I’d finally persuaded Sedgewick to remove it, promising to keep it on hand in case of emergency. I’d never planned to let it anywhere near me again. But if I was going into the field, I had to wear it or risk accidentally attacking someone who didn’t have Hargrove’s shields. The tat would make powerful spells impossible and even weak ones difficult, rendering me a lot less dangerous—to everyone, including the bad guys. But I couldn’t see an alternative.

After a moment, I got up, threw on a leather trench to hide the weapons, and grabbed my guide. “What’s going on?” he demanded. “Are you taking me to lockup?”

“Nope. You got a name?”

“Dieter,” he said suspiciously.

I didn’t bother asking for a last name, since it would probably be fake anyway. “Well, we’re going on a field trip, Dieter.”

“Where to?”

“It’s a surprise.”

Chapter 5

I parked my Hog next to the long concrete runoff channel along Highway 91. I didn’t have to ask if this was the place. The old Las Vegas sign, veteran of a million plastic mementos and gaudy key chains, was glittering right across the road. And according to the report I’d wheedled out of Michaelson, the body had been found practically in its shadow.

As usual, a couple tourists were taking turns posing in front of the sign, grinning toothily. It wasn’t a great day for it. To the west, the sky shaded dung brown at the horizon, then yellow, then a sick and ominous green. The air felt heavy, like maybe one of Vegas’s brief spring showers might not be far off.

“Aw, man! You gotta be shitting me!” My reluctant guide stared into the concrete gully below, looking a little wall-eyed. Then he took off.

I watched him scramble down the road for half a minute, before throwing a lasso spell around his ankles and giving it a yank. I’d been nice, waiting until he veered onto the curb so he’d hit dirt instead of asphalt, and twisting the spell so he’d land on one shoulder instead of full face. But he didn’t look appreciative when I walked over and jerked him back up.

I manhandled him down into the channel, our boots splashing through a thin, braided current and a bunch of soggy adult entertainment flyers. Ahead were two large tunnels, maybe ten feet wide by six feet high, a few of the thousands of concrete boxes linked together under the city’s urban scrawl. They were pitch dark and not very friendly looking, but I didn’t understand the severity of the struggle my prisoner was putting up.

“What’s your deal?” I demanded. “I thought you got pulled out of one of these this morning.”

“Not this one. And I’m not going in there. You may as well shoot me now! Better that than those damn things eat me!”

“What things?”

“Kappas. This drain’s infested with ’em. Everybody knows that.”

“Kappas, huh?” I peered into the mouth of the western tunnel, but saw only cobwebs and drooling algae. The place smelled like mildew and old shoes, but I didn’t pick up any of the distinctive fishy odor of kappa feces. “Kappas are Japanese,” I said. “We don’t have too many problems with them in Vegas.”

“I don’t know where they came from. But a bunch moved in and took over the whole tunnel.”

A heavy stream of runoff gurgled under my boots, but hardly enough to satisfy a river imp. “When did these kappas move in?”

“About a week ago.”

“Huh.” This was where the Hunter had dumped the body, so he wasn’t likely to be hanging around. But the kappas were interesting. It was exactly the kind of story someone would circulate who didn’t want anyone poking around his hidey-hole. And if he’d been here once, there was a chance he’d left something behind.

The guy’s acne-covered chin took on a mulish tilt. “I’m not going in there and you can’t make me. I know my rights. You have to guarantee my safety and you can’t! There’s too many of ’em. They’re like freaking piranhas! I’m—”

“You’re not going in there.”

He stopped midrant. “I’m not?”

“Nope.” I really didn’t expect any trouble, but you never know. I dragged him back up the embankment and across the road. The tourists had gone, so I lassoed him to the Vegas sign by one ankle. “You’re going to wait for me here, safe and sound and ready to interpret anything I bring back.”

“What happens if you don’t come back?”

“Then you’ll be waiting a long time.”

I returned to the entrance of the drain and pulled out my flashlight. I shone it around, but there wasn’t much to see. A stream of runoff swallowed my ankles before disappearing into darkness. Long skeins of cobwebs fluttered overhead. Mud squelched underfoot, smelling sharply of garbage and man-made chemicals. Oh, yeah. This was going to be fun.

My natural unease was strong enough that it took me a minute to notice the other, subtler urge plucking at my senses. The more I looked down that drain, the more convinced I was that I shouldn’t be here, like the very air was wrong, alien, not for me. I got the definite impression that this place didn’t like me; that it wanted me to leave. Now.

So I went in.

Patrol had noted the presence of a decaying protection ward over the west tunnel entrance. It was the kind that played with a person’s senses—in this case fear—and was the standard keep away for the supernatural community. It seemed like overkill to me. Like anyone would want to go in there.

The protection ward grew stronger as I moved forward, making me feel like I was battling the tide with every step. I pushed on anyway, trying to ignore the spell screaming that somewhere, just up ahead, something horrible waited. It was terribly real and absolutely convincing, like being a child staring into a dark closet and having complete certainty that evil lurked inside.

It didn’t help that, if I was in the right place, it just might.

And then my flashlight blew out.

I shook it a couple times, cursing, which only caused the bottom to come off and the batteries to fall out. Batteries I couldn’t find without a light. I bit the bullet and gave my owl tat a metaphysical nudge. I felt the power drain immediately, which wasn’t good, but when I opened my eyes the pitch black had transformed into something closer to a dark night—all outlines and shadows. I still couldn’t see clearly, but I comforted myself with the fact that neither could anybody else.

I found the batteries, but they didn’t help the piece-of-junk flashlight. I finally gave up and went on, deciding I might be better off. No need to announce my presence, assuming anybody was still hanging around. I actually doubted it; patrol had done a brief walk-through, and found nothing: no kappas and no clues.

But then, they hadn’t had my motivation.

The protection ward finally cut out twenty or so yards up the tunnel, allowing me to breathe. That was a huge relief, but it was the only improvement. The floor had sunk or the water had risen, because it was now shin high. The temperature had also gone up, enough to plaster my hair to my skull and stick my T-shirt to my skin. And I became increasingly aware of an ache running up both legs, like maybe spelunking through the drains of Vegas wasn’t on my approved activities list.

I’d gone maybe three hundred yards when I spied flashes of dim light up ahead, spotting the wall like visible Morse code. It turned out to be coming from behind a ward, if you could call such a half-assed attempt by that name. It was spitting and crackling around the edges, lighting up a graffiti-covered junction box. It made me wonder why anyone had bothered.

Usually, going through a warded door into an unknown location makes my skin crawl. Most of them are designed so that the outside resembles the wall or whatever surface they are mimicking, but the inside is transparent. That leaves the person outside blind, while anyone inside has a clear view—and a clear shot. But in this case, the gloom of the drain ensured that all anyone saw was blackness until I stepped through, with shields up and gun drawn.

And realized that the most dangerous thing about the place was the smell. The acrid tang of wet, charred wood hit my nostrils like bad breath. The ward was concealing a cave maybe twenty by twenty-five, which looked like it had recently been doubling 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 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.

Chapter 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 out on me twice, and my left arm throbbed in time with my heartbeat. I checked myself out in the dim light of the cave.

Gore matted my hair, slicked my coat, and stuck my shirt to my skin. My bum knee felt weak and rubbery, but probably more from the adrenaline afterburn than any real damage. But the arm was another matter. My shields had slowed the attack down, and my coat had provided an extra layer of protection. Yet it was still lacerated badly enough to need stitches.

Great.

I wrapped a handkerchief around the wound and tugged my sleeve back down. The coat had already started to heal the tears in the leather, with short brown filaments stretching across the gaps like threads in well-worn denim. Too bad flesh doesn’t heal as fast.

I really hoped I didn’t have to beat up anyone else.

The cave was still silent, smelly and frustratingly empty when I returned. Had those guys really been headed here? Or was there some other hidden space along the miles of drain ahead? I decided to do a check of the immediate area before sifting through the ashes again, and started for the door.

And looked up to see myself lounging at a bar.

Cyrus wasn’t looking, but she was hard to miss: with long, messy dark hair, clan-gray eyes and a red-stained mouth that stood out starkly from her pale skin. She was leaning back against the bar on her elbows, her mile-long, leather-clad legs in front of her, crossed at the ankles. Watching him.

It seemed to Cyrus as if the volume of the room suddenly turned down, as if the colors dulled to shadows, except around her. Because even better than those stunning looks was the faint but unmistakable scent of Clan. It wreathed his head like the finest of drugs, cutting easily through the smoke and alcohol and cheap cologne of the bar. It caught him off guard, with no defenses up, and landed like a sledgehammer.

It was hard to believe that it had only been two months since he found himself out on the street: a pack animal with no pack. He’d told Sebastian he could handle it—hell, this whole thing had been his idea. It would be hard, he’d assured his brother, he wasn’t kidding himself about that, but the goal was worth it. He’d been so certain he was right, so sure of himself, so cocky.

He almost pitied that man now.

Of course, that man had never had people he’d once called friends turn away in disgust at the sight of him. He’d never had his own family refuse to look him in the eye, their glances jumping over him as if he was an interruption, a glitch in their visual field. An error. He’d never lain awake at night with the gnawing, ever-present, sickening absence of something as vital to him as the air he breathed. That man had been Cyrus of Arnou, High Clan and wolf born, with the whole weight of a prestigious house behind his every word and action.

This man was just Cyrus. And he’d been appalled at what he’d discovered about him.

Just Cyrus avoided places where he was likely to meet Clan, dodging confrontations he knew he couldn’t win. Because he fought alone now, while even the feeblest member of the weakest clan had dozens of brothers behind him. Just Cyrus ducked his head and turned away when he saw family coming, before they could do it to him. Just Cyrus desperately wanted to slink back, tail between his legs, begging to be taken in, even knowing what it would cost his brother.

Because Just Cyrus was weak.

The only thing that still allowed him to look at himself in the mirror everyday was the knowledge that wanting and doing were two different things. He might not be the man he’d thought he was, but he wasn’t quite that sniveling creature that haunted his nightmares, either. Because he hadn’t done it. Not yet.

And now he found himself by the bar, with no memory of how he got there, staring at an obviously High Clan woman like she was the last oasis in the desert. He expected to be ignored, rebuffed, cursed, although there was no way she could immediately know what he was. Lately, it had started to feel like he had his shame permanently tattooed across his forehead.

She swung her legs around and tipped her head sideways to look at him. “Buy you a drink?”

“I thought that was my line,” he said, not trying, because this wasn’t going anywhere.

“Yeah, but I’m the pushy type. I like to get it out there early.”

“You’re Clan. It goes with the territory.”

“I’m not, actually.”

He leaned in despite himself, the heady scent of a fertile female of his people flooding his senses. “Oh, you are,” he said, already half drunk with it. “You very definitely are. To whom do you belong?” The usual Clan courtesy slipped out before he could stop it.

“Myself. How about you?”

Her answer didn’t make sense, but the question did. It was almost the first thing two strange Weres asked each other, because the answer would influence everything that followed: who are you, where do you rank, who are your people?

Where do you belong?

“I’m vargulf,” he said shortly. “I don’t belong to anyone.”

It came out sounding harsh, even to him. He waited for it, the look of disgust, the hastily mumbled excuse, the rapid retreat. And didn’t get it. “Good,” she said, leaned over, cupped the back of his head, and kissed him.

And she was right, he thought vaguely, his hands on her waist, sliding over silk and skin-tight leather. She was the pushy type, at least until he got on board. Then the practiced tricks gave way to something soft and startled. It went through him in a rush, a tidal wave of emotions carrying him along with it, even as part of him wondered what the hell he thought he was doing.

“Got someplace to be?” she asked as she broke it off.

“I’m all yours,” he told her hoarsely, already sliding off the seat.

The bar dissolved into a dank, smoke-blackened room. I fell back against the wall, eyes stinging hot and watering. I remembered that night, but it was a little different seen through Cyrus’s eyes.

I’d kept getting saddled by the Corps with any and all cases involving Weres, supposedly because of my “special insight.” But the fact was that Mom rarely spoke about her other life, and she’d been so ill those last years that I’d hated to constantly bother her with my problems. I’d decided I needed an outside source, someone I could pay for insights into the Were world. And as luck would have it, a few days later a patrol logged a report about a brutal beating behind a bar involving an “unaffiliated Were” and members of a local clan. I’d gone to check it out.

It had been a night of surprises, starting with how I’d reacted. Cyrus was handsome enough to turn heads, but I’d met plenty of attractive men before. And none of them had made my stomach tighten at one glimpse, had need crawling over my skin, had my fingers itching with the urge to stroke. And when we kissed, heat and power, hunger and desire thrust into me in a wave of sensation that had left me reeling. I’d spent the entire evening—at a restaurant, because I didn’t dare take him home—quietly freaking out about my sudden lack of self-control.

It had also been a surprise to learn that he was vargulf. The report had seemed to suggest it, but most outcast wolves look like the guys I’d met in the drain. They weren’t hard-muscled types with thick dark hair and assessing brown eyes. And although the few I’d come across still smelled like Clan, there had always been a faintly sour undertone to it. Cyrus had smelled good, rich and male and musky-sweet.

I looked around and wondered what surprise I was supposed to find here.

I decided to start with the couch, because it was the most disgusting thing in the room and I wanted to get it out of the way. I’d already been over it once and had found nothing under the dust and ash except a few hundred cigarette butts shoved between the seats. The fire had eaten away one side, but given up halfway, probably because of the soggy state of the moldy cushions.

The remaining fabric was coming apart and a hole gnawed in one end raised the possibility of rats. I pushed my useless flashlight in there and rattled it around. Nothing ran out, so I formed a shield around my hand and poked it through the hole. And immediately felt something weird.

I pulled out a small velvet pouch that looked pretty new—no mold, no smoke damage, no bite marks—and opened it. Inside were three gold charms, each in the form of a miniscule wolf. All were different, all were beautifully made, and all were powerful. I could feel the hum of their energy even through the shield, a thrumming beat, almost like the pulse of tiny hearts.

Despite working with Caleb and Jamie for two weeks, I wasn’t an expert on wards. But I knew quality when I saw it. These had to be worth a small fortune, especially now, with prices inflated due to the war. So what the hell were they doing here? And what, if anything, did they have to do with Cyrus?

I wrapped them in one of my socks, having run out of handkerchiefs, and stuffed them in an inner pocket of my coat. I tagged the body on the way out, to let patrol know it was mine, and picked up the slug ward—now extra slimy—off the floor. I stuck it back on my skin without looking at it.

Calling in had to wait until I made it back to the mouth of the drain, where I was able to get decent reception. Caleb must have still been at lunch, because I actually got through.

“Sedgewick’s frothing at the mouth,” he told me, without so much as a hello. “The man is pissed.”

“He’s always pissed.”

“Yeah. Not like this. You need to get back here.”

“I’m working on that. By the way, have any licensed wardsmiths reported a robbery lately? A big one?”

“The Black Circle’s hit a few places,” he said slowly. “What are we talking about here?”

“Wolves. Powerful. Expensive. Three of them. I don’t know what they do yet.”

“I thought you were looking for your boyfriend?”

“It’s complicated.”

“I’ve noticed that with you. But no, no wolves.” And that settled that. Because Caleb would know. He didn’t usually work in the Dungeon, but he’d been there for three months since his injury. And he was the kind who paid attention.

“Thanks. Uh, and can you let patrol know that there’s a body in that drain off 91?”

“Another one?”

“Yeah. Tell them to bring a baggie.”

“Lia…” He sighed. “Just be careful, all right?”

“Aren’t I always?” I hung up before he could answer that, and went to collect my guide.

He was taking photos for a family, but dropped the camera when he saw me emerge from the wash. I waited until the tourists drove off, then crossed the street. He looked a little pale. In retrospect, I probably should have used the handkerchief on my face before making it into a bandage. Oh, well, too late now.

“What…what…”

“You were right. Those kappas are a bitch. Any other mysterious new monsters suddenly turn up anywhere?” He shook his head, wide-eyed. “How about wardsmiths? You know any of them?”

He blinked. “Like personally?”

“Like any way.”

“There’s lots in the tunnels. Everybody’s making wards now.”

Yeah, like the idiot who had done the protection ward on the cave. But the charlatans getting rich off people’s wartime paranoia weren’t who I needed. Becoming a master or even a journeyman wardsmith took decades of training. No fly-by-night con man had made those wolves.

“I’m talking about someone good. Someone professional.”

“If they were good, they wouldn’t be in the drains.”

Normally, I’d have agreed, but I didn’t think the guys who attacked me had had the money to buy those wards. And no local, licensed wardsmiths had been robbed. So whoever had made the wolves either wasn’t from around here, or wasn’t licensed.

“I guess we’ll just have to stay here, then,” I told him. “And clean out those kappas.”

“There’s a guy who hangs out at Tilda’s Place, over by the Tropicana,” Dieter said quickly. “They say he’s pretty good.”

I smiled. “Let’s go find out.”

Chapter 7

I peered into the dark drain dubiously. “There’s a bar down there?”

Dieter nodded. “Tilda’s. It’s been there forever. The dwarves like to drink at her place, so they cut her a deal on the rent.”

“Dwarves?”

He scowled. “Yeah. Nasty little fuckers. They run the market.”

I peered into the maybe eight-by-six tunnel again. I spotted cockroaches, spiders and a few creepy orange crawfish. But no people—of any kind. “There’s a market down there?”

He shot me a pitying look. “You don’t know much, do you?”

“Lately, it doesn’t feel like it.”

“It’s one of the biggest in Tartarus. And they know it, too. You wouldn’t believe what they wanted to charge me for a booth. So I tried just walking around, hitting the entrances and stuff, you know? And they still wanted to charge me! Like, I wasn’t even sitting down and—” He stopped abruptly. “You know, come to think of it, there are probably other wardsmiths if I ask around.”

I grabbed him by the back of the shirt as he started off. “Let me guess. The dwarves don’t like you, either.”

“They might have said something about not coming back.”

“For how long?”

“Like, you know. Ever.”

“Then we’ll do this quick.”

The tunnel curved after half a dozen yards, blocking out the rectangle of light behind us. Smothering blackness came crushing in on all sides, and the ward hiding the market had no telltale light leaking through to help me zero in on its location. I could feel it, buzzing somewhere up ahead, but couldn’t quite—

A skinny young guy with spiked red hair came barreling out of a wall on a wash of light, pushing an overloaded shopping cart. He skidded to a halt, the cart’s wheels making tracks in the muck. “Potion supplies?” he asked, not missing a beat.

“Excuse me?”

“It’s one of the main reasons your type comes down here,” Dieter said, as the vendor started pawing through his mobile shop. “It’s either buy contraband, hire an assassin or find a good time. And you look like you could do your own killing.”

“What about the good time?”

The vendor suddenly thrust something into my face—something brown and scaly, with a gaping maw of teeth. I put two bullets in it before I realized it wasn’t moving. It landed on the floor a few feet away, spinning slowly on its curved shell.

“If you ask me, you could use one,” Dieter said, swallowing. “You’re real tense.”

“You shot it, you bought it,” the vendor added, picking up the still-smoking carcass.

“What the hell is it?”

“Dried armadillo. Keeps evildoers out of your home.”

“Too late.”

I forked over a ten rather than waste time arguing, which turned out to be a mistake. As soon as the pale concrete wall rolled back, I found myself mobbed by a line of hawkers selling the magical equivalent of snake oil. I barely noticed. Because stretching out behind them was a sight designed to make anyone’s jaw drop.

I’d expected something along the lines of the previous drain—gloomy, smelly, depressing, dangerous. I’d expected a bunch of little dirty caves filled with huddled, desperate people. I’d expected a low ceiling, bad air and vermin. I hadn’t expected an enchanted forest.

But that’s what spread out in front of us in a dazzling expanse. Softly glowing branches shed a delicate white light over a huge cave. They draped the booths that filled the space, crisscrossed above footpaths and climbed up stone support pillars. Some people had even stuffed twigs into colored glass jars, making lanterns that spotted their booths with watery puddles of amethyst and plum, turquoise and jade, ruby and amber.

My brain finally supplied the name—hawthorn. I recalled a few basics—originally from Faerie, burns brightly with the application of a simple spell—but that description left a lot to be desired. The branches threw gently waving shadows on the walls, ceiling and floor, shadows with leaves and berries, neither of which the dried branches had.

“This way!” Dieter was tugging on me, obviously embarrassed to be seen with the gawking tourist.

I followed him through a maze of cardboard and plywood shanties. Inside, medicine women, folk doctors, astrologers, fortune-tellers and cut-rate sorcerers plied their wares. Dogs and children ran underfoot. People laughed and bartered around the shops, or called to each other across the aisles. After the deadly quiet of the drains, it felt like a madhouse.

Dieter skirted the main aisle, heading for a narrow path where animals bleated and squealed from cages on either side. Most were nothing out of the ordinary, but the same couldn’t be said for the smell. I stopped, gagging at the most offensive odor I’d ever encountered. “Is there another route?”

“Not unless you want to go by yourself. I’m not supposed to be here, remember?”

My eyes were already starting to water. What the hell was that? “And the dwarves don’t come this way?”

“Nobody comes this way since they moved in the bonnacon.”

He nodded at a huge shaggy animal with small curled horns pacing back and forth in a nearby pen. Unlike the other large animals, this one wasn’t in a barbed wire cage. Instead, pieces of corrugated aluminum had been nailed haphazardly to the sides of a wooden frame, creating a pen that was almost six feet high. Maybe the height was to help block the smell, but if so, it wasn’t working. I’d encountered poison gas that didn’t reek like that.

“Do I want to know?”

“You really don’t,” Dieter said as we edged around.

A large black nose with a ring through it poked over the top of the pen as we passed, and a low, menacing sound issued from behind the metal. “I don’t think he likes you,” Dieter observed.

I would have made a comment about that making us even, but it would have required taking a breath.

We finally emerged into (relatively) fresh air beside a packed bar. It was outlined with a row of lanterns made out of green and amber beer bottles. They swayed cheerfully on their wires, splashing moving colors on the floor below. Behind the counter, vegetables were being stir-fried in huge, shallow pans, sending clouds of fragrant steam skyward. My stomach reminded me that I’d skipped lunch, but we didn’t stop there.

A couple streets over was an even more impressive establishment, in a tent formed out of army blankets. Over the entrance, someone had rigged an old Vegas sign: cocktails was spelled out in fat, fifties-era orange bulbs. Inside, hot dogs sizzled on a cinderblock grill next to the bar and every folding card table had its own flickering candle. They weren’t needed for lighting, but added to the unexpectedly inviting atmosphere.

We didn’t stop there, either.

We did stop at the entrance to a small dark cave, sitting all on its own at the end of a side street. Once my eyes adjusted, I understood the reason for the lousy lighting—and why the place made no effort to advertise. The smugglers, assassins, illegal arms dealers and narcotic pushers that made up 90 percent of its clientele probably preferred their privacy. I recognized half a dozen wanted criminals slouched at tables in the shadows. One must have recognized me, too, or maybe just what I was. He raised a glass in a mock salute. He knew I wouldn’t take him in—not when he’d be back on the street in an hour.

“Stop looking like that!” Dieter said, sounding a little stressed.

“Like what?”

“Like you want a fight!”

I realized that my hand had automatically gone to my potion belt. I slowly removed it, and the shadowy shapes on either side of the door relaxed slightly. We threaded our way through the crowd to a slab of plywood raised on sawhorses—the bar, I assumed. The tables were packed, but the area around the bar was empty. That probably had something to do with the presence of a large, reeking Awsang behind the counter.

“That’s Tilda,” Dieter said, appearing unfazed by the smell. I found that I wasn’t that bothered myself. I had new standards now, excitingly.

I perched on a stool and summoned up a smile. It was a little hard to tell if Tilda smiled back. She was busy slurping something from a plastic Burger King cup through her hairy proboscis. Since Aswangs are carrion-eaters, I was just as glad I couldn’t see what half-rotten delicacy lay inside.

“Beer in a bottle?” I asked hopefully.

The slurping continued. Guess that meant no.

“I’m looking for a friend,” I told her, figuring it was worth a shot. I reached for my wallet intending to show her Cyrus’s photo, but found that it was gone. And a moment later, so was the stool. I hit the floor and a giggling kobald scurried out from under me, heading for the door as fast as his childlike legs could carry him.

My lasso caught him around one chubby foot before he could make his escape. He tried to shake it off, but I strengthened the spell and started dragging him back, ignoring the stream of profanity I couldn’t understand anyway. He wiggled and squirmed and left furrows in the dirt floor with his fingernails, but I wrestled him closer. Until he shape-shifted again, into a column of fire, which the lasso couldn’t hold.

He flew out of the door on a wash of sparks, but with no hands he’d been forced to drop my wallet. It hit the floor with a thud and a sizzle, so I lassoed it instead, put out the flames and pulled out Cyrus’s photo. There was no visible reaction from the barmaid to any of this.

I added a twenty to the picture, and the bill disappeared faster than I could blink. But Tilda only shook her head. “She doesn’t know him,” Dieter translated unnecessarily.

“He might have been in Were form—”

I was going to describe his markings, but never got the chance. Tilda spat a great wad of brown-tinted yuck on the floor. “She doesn’t serve Weres,” Dieter interpreted.

“Why not?”

“Since you guys left, the gangs have turned into a major pain in the ass. They’re all bad, but the Weres are the worst. Like this morning, a bunch of them burnt out the settlement where I was staying. I lost everything.”

“That sucks. So do you see him?”

Dieter put his head down on the bar. “I lose my entire stash, get caught by that fucking bounty hunter and meet you—all in the same day. My life more than sucks. Sucking would be a step up.”

“Yeah. So do you see him?” I repeated.

“See who?”

“You said there was a wardsmith here,” I reminded him, striving for patience.

Dieter’s eyes flitted around the bar, or at least as much of it as he could see without actually sitting up. “Guess he’s not here today. He don’t come in all the time.”

If he’d had any hair left, I’d have pulled it. “Do you know where he is when he’s not here?”

Dieter gave a horizontal type of shrug. Then he seemed to find an idea worth getting vertical. “You know, if you bought me a drink, it might—” I slammed a knife down, catching his collar and pinning his head back to the bar. “You could have just said no,” he told me irritably.

“Answer the question!”

He rolled his eyes up at Tilda. “That ward guy been in here lately?” She made some odd noises that in no way resembled speech, but Dieter seemed to understand. “She said he’s got a shop around the corner, only he likes to drink so he’s usually here. But she hasn’t seen him today.”

“What’s the name of the shop?”

“They don’t have names. But you’ll know it.”

“How?”

“Well, a little clue would be that it has ‘wards’ over the door,” he said, pretty sarcastically for a guy with a knife millimeters from his jugular. But then, considering his personality, it probably wasn’t all that unusual for him. “Can I get up now?” he whined.

I pulled out the knife and manhandled him out of the bar. Around the corner, we came across a support column that seemed to serve as a sort of community message board. Up close, it was obviously dwarf-made, smooth and organic-looking, like wind-sculpted rock. Only the wind wasn’t responsible: the minerals needed to form it had been magicked from the surrounding soil.

We found an ad for “wards and charms” and directions to a shop near the end of the path, in a primo location where three trails merged. It was the usual tent made of army blankets and two-by-fours, but was bigger than most and had a plank with a hand-painted thunderbird above the entrance. It didn’t actually say “wards,” but around here, a pictogram was probably better anyway. I pushed back the blanket serving as the door and we went in.

The tent appeared to have several rooms, with the outer fixed up as a showroom. A lantern swung overhead, casting golden light over a couple chairs, a tattered Navajo rug, a floor-length mirror and a glass showcase. There didn’t appear to be anybody here.

I walked over to the showcase. Two glasses stood on the counter, the light through their contents casting a pink stain over the case. I bent over and sniffed the nearest one—and almost passed out.

“Is this what I think it is?” I held it out to Dieter.

He snatched it and took a long breath. “Whoa. No wonder he stopped buying from me!”

“The wardsmith was a customer?” Dieter suddenly looked shifty. “I won’t turn you in,” I told him impatiently. “I’m after a killer, not a drug user.”

“A killer?” His expression veered into panic.

“No one you need to worry about. Now answer the question!”

“He bought pretty regular,” Dieter admitted, his eyes on the bright swirl of ruby liquid. “That’s how I knew him.”

“But you didn’t sell him this?”

“Are you kidding? That’s Fey wine!”

“Isn’t that your stock in trade?”

He rolled his eyes. “I sell punch, okay?”

“What’s the difference?”

He picked up the glass and held it next to the other. “That.” The contents of the second glass were pale pink, the color of rosé. The liquid in the one I’d handed him was a deep bloodred.

“Punch is cut,” I guessed. A lot, judging by the color.

“Hell, yeah. Full strength, that shit’ll make a vamp drunk!”

“What would it do to a human?”

Dieter shrugged. “Depends how long he’s been using. You build up a tolerance after a while. But I don’t know any human who uses it straight. By the time you get that far in, you’re usually gone.”

“Gone?”

He made the circle around his temple that was the universal sign for crazy. Great. The guy I needed to question might be passed out somewhere, or worse.

I tipped the contents of the uncut glass onto the dirt floor and scraped my boot across it. Dieter’s face fell. “Aw, man! Do you know what that was worth?”

“About ten years, assuming you don’t have any priors. You need to find a new line of work.”

“Maybe I should start making wards,” he said sullenly. “This guy must be doing okay to afford the pure stuff.”

I followed his gaze downward, to the case the glass had been sitting on. It was full of small gold wards. Nice ones.

A chill ran up my back.

Dieter slid open the back of the case and picked one up. It was more like a chain than a charm, consisting of six ants linked together in a golden line. “Hey, what do you think this one does?”

“I don’t know.” I was more concerned about why the case hadn’t been spelled shut.

The blanket covering the door into the next room fluttered slightly. I pulled a gun, moved carefully around the case and snatched it open. “Auggh!” Dieter let out a screech, and I almost shot him.

“What the hell is wrong with you?”

“Look!” He stuck out his right hand. The ants had done what they were designed to do and melted into his skin. They were roaming around, checking out the territory, crawling over his fingers and down to his wrist.

“You shouldn’t pick up powerful wards without knowing what they do.”

“Now you tell me?” He started jumping around, shaking his hand uselessly. The ants ignored him. So did I.

A walk-through of the next room yielded nothing of interest, except that a cabinet full of expensive supplies was unlocked and unspelled. Yet there was no sign of a struggle. There was also no third room where the wardsmith might be taking an ill-advised nap. He was simply missing.

I went back into the front and found Dieter half naked. He’d torn his shirt off and was slapping at his chest. The ants had crawled up his arm to his torso, where they were roaming around like dogs on a scent.

I felt around in my pocket for the numb stick, and looked up to find Dieter glaring at me. “Do something! You got me into this, you crazy bitch!”

“That’s witch,” I said mildly, and left the numb stick where it was.

The glass case contained a few dozen wards, mostly smaller ones that you could buy in any shop. But a few were outstanding, including a large elk, a popular Native American totem for stamina. I shielded my hand and picked it up. A smooth, steady energy throbbed under my fingertips.

I couldn’t figure out what a wardsmith this good was doing in Tartarus. Even with a drinking problem, most shops would take him on, or at least buy his work—and for more than he was likely to get here. Wards like this were worth their weight in gold these days, and those that could be used as weapons were even more—

Dieter suddenly thrust a long, pale foot onto the display case. He was down to a pair of faded blue briefs, so the movement gave me more of a view than I liked. “Look! Look what they’re doing!”

The ants had congregated around a bruise on his ankle and appeared to be nibbling away at it. Every time one of them took a bite, a tiny piece of the bruise disappeared, replaced with unblemished skin. “Cool.”

“They’re eating me!”

“They’re healing you,” I told him. “Shut up.”

I glanced down at the case, and noticed something strange. All the wards were totems associated with things like healing, stamina or defense. I knelt and checked out the under stock, and it was the same story. Not a single one was for combat, despite the fact that those were the ones bringing the most money these days.

I stared down at the gleaming menagerie and it stared back, unable to tell me if I was onto something or if I’d started off on a wild-goose chase. I was beginning to think the latter sounded the most likely. All I had for a day’s work were some expensive wards and a missing wardsmith, neither of which might have anything to do with Cyrus.

It wasn’t unusual for a bunch of outcasts to stockpile weapons. The war had a lot of people paranoid, and vargulfs had no clan to back them up if they got into trouble. And a bunch of Weres might prefer those weapons in the form of wolves.

As for the wardsmith, he was probably passed out somewhere, courtesy of too much wine. Waiting for him to wake up and stumble back wasn’t too appealing when he might not have anything useful to tell me. Barring more clues from Cyrus, my best option was old-fashioned police work. I needed to know where he’d been seen last, who he’d talked to, who had been with him. I could circle back and question the wardsmith later, assuming he ever showed up.

“Get dressed,” I told Dieter. “We’re out of here.”

I checked my phone, having some questions for Jamie or Caleb, but I didn’t have any bars. And then I didn’t have a phone, either, because one of Dieter’s flailing arms ripped it out of my hand. He was dancing around again because the ants were on the move. They’d finished with the ankle, leaving only pale skin and coarse black hair behind, and were crawling up the inside of his leg.

He brushed at them frantically until they disappeared beneath the edge of his boxers. And then he lost it. He tore the shorts off, slapping at his butt and various other things while I went for my phone. And found something a lot more interesting.

Dieter’s dance had disturbed the rug, revealing a line in the sand covering the floor. I retrieved my phone, tossed the rug back and found a trapdoor. And a second later, I found the wardsmith.

Chapter 8

He’d been folded double and wedged into the small space so tightly that it took me several minutes to get him out. But it was obvious from the start that there was no real rush. A cigarette still dangled from his lips, but there were no lungs left to smoke it with. They’d been torn out along with the rest of his chest.

It had been a Were attack. The claw marks were clearly visible, but I didn’t really need them. Few things kill a man so fast that he doesn’t even have time to look afraid.

I heard an odd, choking sound, and looked up in time to see Dieter’s bare ass heading out the door. I threw a lasso spell after him, but only got it around one leg. He went down, scrabbling for purchase in the dust. A few people stuck their heads out of nearby tents, attracted by the noise, and wasn’t that just all I needed.

“Cut it out!” I told him, irritably, but he either didn’t hear or didn’t care. He turned over onto his back and started kicking his leg, trying to shake the spell off, but only succeeded in tightening it further. “He can’t hurt you,” I pointed out, reeling him in.

“It’s not him I’m worried about!” He leaned back, trying to use his weight against the spell, but that just resulted in him getting yanked down the street in little hops, one leg stuck out straight in front of him. I gave a final heave and he fell through the door, his nose landing maybe a foot from the corpse. “Auggh!”

“Just tell me what you know,” I said, because something had really spooked him. I couldn’t believe that this was the first dead body he’d seen—he lived in Tartarus after all.

“That’s the Predators’ mark!” He pointed a shaking finger at the deep wounds on the man’s chest. “They always leave the body carved up like that. It’s like their signature or something.”

“The Predators?”

“A Were gang. One of the worst!” He took off again and this time, I let him go. Things were starting to get a little dangerous for a bystander, even a not-entirely innocent one.

I bent over the wardsmith again. He had a bent back, a scraggly beard, pouchy cheeks and was wearing an old pair of jeans and a faded sweatshirt. He looked like a street person, but the Thunderbird tat on his arm was a stunner. I’d never seen one like it, and it practically screamed quality. It was also a talisman, or it would have fallen free of the body when he died and his magic failed.

I brought out the three wards I’d found in the sofa and compared them. Each wardsmith has his or her own personal style, sort of a signature on their pieces. An expert could probably have told at a glance whether the same hand had made these. Unfortunately, I wasn’t one. But there was something in the rounded, almost abstract quality of the pieces that looked awfully—

The attack came so fast that I never even heard it—at least consciously. But my shields slammed into place right before a blow landed across my chest, jarring through my bones into my teeth. If I hadn’t had shields, it would have killed me. As it was, I went skidding on my back through the side of the tent and across the road, before rolling into the open side of a used-clothes shop.

I landed in a pile of sweaters the proprietor was sorting and bounced back up, fighting with the smothering blanket I’d taken with me. I tore free just in time to see someone lunge for me in a blur of motion. And the next thing I knew I was flying backward through the air with what felt like half my ribs broken. I struck down with a thud that jarred my whole body, momentarily knocking my breath out, and then he was on me.

The guy—young, greasy brown hair, angular face, baggy pants—was one of the Weres I’d fought in the first drain, the one who had taken a bullet in the leg. Only the wound didn’t appear to be slowing him down much. He hadn’t changed, which limited his strength, but then, he was doing fine without it. He picked me up by the legs and began bouncing me back and forth between the floor and the low, rocky ceiling, trying to pop my shields.

It wasn’t exactly a textbook maneuver, but it was doing a hell of a job anyway. I’d have flung a spell, but the commotion had brought people running out of their booths, clogging the walkway. A Were would shrug off anything safe enough to use around the vendors, and the ricochet effect in here meant no guns.

I was trying to get a hand on my potion belt when he slung me into a column. My shields collapsed, my head struck rock and everything whited out for a second. I blinked back to consciousness in time to see a blur of motion streaking down the corridor, about the same moment I realized that the wolf wards were gone. Damn it!

I got up and then went back down to one knee, as a stab of agony ran through my temple and spread over my skull. My head was spinning, my wrist had almost been wrenched off and whatever had been done to my chest was making it hard to breathe. That was okay. I wasn’t planning any heroics in a cavern full of civilians. I just wanted to get close enough to get a tag in place.

By the time I got to my less-than-steady feet, the screaming had reached earsplitting decibels. That seemed a little odd for a group used to Weres acting badly. And then a crowd of people almost ran over me, headed for the back of the cavern. One of them was the Were.

He blew past me like lightning, and close on his heels was a huge, malodorous beast with small curled horns, a large shaggy body and an evil glint in its eye. Someone had let the bonnacon out, and it seemed to have a grudge against Weres, or at least against this one. It let out a bellow worthy of an enraged ox and plowed past me at a full gallop. The fumes in its wake were almost suffocating, but even worse, everywhere the creature went a trail of destruction followed. And not merely because it weighed a couple tons and didn’t bother sticking to the paths. But because—

“Oh, my God!”

“Cool, huh?” I glanced over my shoulder and saw Dieter. He’d acquired some jeans and a pair of sandals, courtesy of one of the abandoned shops, I assumed. He also appeared to have found some backbone. Instead of shaking, he was bouncing on his toes, looking pleased with himself.

“It shits napalm?”

“I said you didn’t want to know.”

“I assume you let it out?”

“Yep.”

“Why?”

“’Cause this is why everybody pitched in and bought the thing. Bonnacons hate wolves; it’s like they’re natural enemies or something.”

“I meant, why help me?”

“I wasn’t. That fucker was one of those who burnt me out this morning.”

“He’s a Predator? You’re sure?”

“Damn right I’m sure! I woke up to see my tent burning over my head and that bastard holding a torch. I lost everything because they decided they didn’t need the competition.” He grinned as the Were ran past screaming, with his hair on fire. “Let’s see how he likes it!”

The Were didn’t seem to be liking it. It also distracted him enough that he ran full tilt into the large cocktails sign, which crashed to the floor, sending bulbs bouncing and then shattering against the hard-packed ground. A second later, he changed, leapt over a counter and was gone—impossibly fast for so huge a beast.

“You said you were staying off Decatur, right?” I asked Dieter.

“Yeah.”

I smiled. I hadn’t managed to tag the Were, but it didn’t worry me too much. You don’t need a tag when you have an address.

“So, we going back to jail now?” Dieter asked hopefully.

“Naw. They’d just process and release you.”

“Yeah, but sometimes they feed us first.”

I tucked a fifty in his jeans. “Lunch is on me.”

It took me precious minutes to get out of Tartarus. The old man weighed maybe a hundred and fifty pounds, and no way was I in any shape to carry him out of there. But leaving him behind wasn’t an option, either. Not with a ten-thousand-dollar tat on his arm and a hungry Aswang in the vicinity.

I would have normally used magic, but right then I didn’t have any to spare. So I rigged up a travois out of plywood and blankets from the shop and dragged him out. Weak sunlight was filtering through angry clouds when I emerged, matching my mood. I leaned against the side of the drain, heedless of the mildew sliming my coat, and dug out my phone. The fact that it took me three tries to grab it probably wasn’t a good sign.

“You wouldn’t happen to have seen a young man?” Caleb asked, before I got a word out. “Bad skin, lots of piercings, dreads—”

“Doesn’t ring a bell.”

“Well, I’m sure it’ll come up at your court-martial!” Jamie said heatedly. Oh, great. We were on speakerphone.

“I don’t think I’m likely to be put on trial for borrowing a junkie for a few hours.”

“No, but you might be for disobeying the direct command of a senior officer!”

“Hargrove isn’t that much of a—”

“Not him! Sedgewick! The old man told him he’d sent you on an errand, or he’d have you up on charges right now!”

“Hargrove is covering for me?” Okay, now I knew I was hallucinating.

“Yeah, and I’d love to know the story behind that one,” Caleb put in.

“So would I,” I told him. “But it’ll keep. Right now, I need some—”

“You need your head examined!” That was Jamie, of course.

“Yeah. Concrete is pretty hard when you get slammed into it by a three-hundred-pound Were.”

There was a brief silence. “Is that the body the patrol just brought in?” Caleb demanded.

“I’ve only tagged two today so far, so—”

“And where’s the other one?” Jamie again.

“Tartarus. Some big market over by the Tropicana. I found a wardsmith stuffed into his own drop safe and then got jumped by a Were. He stole some wards, so I’m assuming he’s the one who did him, although—”

“What wardsmith? What was his name?”

“Like I said, we never made it as far as introductions. But he was still warm when I arrived; no rigor. So I’m guessing—”

“What did he look like?”

“Would you let me finish a sentence?”

“It’s important, Accalia.”

Something in his tone cut through the static. Not to mention that he never used my full name. “Older guy, shabby clothes, Thunderbird tat on his left arm—”

“Shit!”

Jamie didn’t say anything else, and Caleb took over. “Sounds like you’ve had a busy day. Why not come in? We can get your story straight before you see Sedgewick.”

“Can’t, although it would be great if you could reroute a patrol by here to pick up the body.”

There was some quiet conversation I couldn’t quite hear, and then Caleb came back on the line. “Will do. It’ll be about fifteen minutes.”

“I’ll be here.”

I passed the time on the phone with a guy I know in research. The Predators were composed of outcast wolves, as I’d assumed. There were twenty to thirty of them and they were known for being big dealers of illicit drugs—including the Fey variety. I guess I knew what Dieter had meant about competition. They also had a reputation for brutality.

“I kind of got that from the name,” I said, as an ambulance came around the corner. Four guys got out, two medics and…crap.

“Nice to see you, too,” Caleb said, hiking an eyebrow at me. I guess I might have said that last bit aloud.

“Where is he?” Jamie demanded, splashing through the current. A stretcher was whizzing through the air behind him, trying to keep up. That was definitely not SOP in an open area in broad daylight, any more than was the huge sword he’d slung over his back. But Jamie didn’t look like he gave a damn.

I indicated my makeshift travois, which I’d parked inside the drain to keep it out of sight of passersby. Jamie knelt beside it and pulled back the blanket. And said a word he rarely employed in the presence of a lady—or even me.

“You knew him?”

“His name was Toby Wilkinson, and he was a damn fine wardsmith.”

The two orderlies reached us and transferred the body to the stretcher. “Why was a talented wardsmith hanging around the drains?” I asked.

“Because he was a stubborn old coot who wouldn’t listen to reason, that’s why!”

“Could you be a little more—”

“Six years ago, Toby was one of the best weapons-grade wardsmiths in the southwest. Then a group of kidnappers took his daughter and demanded an exorbitant ransom. Toby paid it instead of coming to us, afraid they’d kill his only child if he didn’t do precisely as he was told.”

“I’m assuming they killed her anyway?”

Jamie nodded. “Didn’t want to risk being identified. But it wasn’t her death that sent Toby over the edge. It was the fact that they killed her using one of his own wards.”

“Jesus.”

“What could they possibly have hoped to gain by that?” Caleb asked.

“Nothing. That was the devil of it. We caught them eventually and one of them cracked. Said they’d thought it would be quieter than shooting her or some such. It was pure coincidence that the ward they used to suck the life out of her was one made by her father.”

“And afterward?” I asked, pretty sure I already knew.

Jamie shrugged. “Toby went off the rails. He started drinking, lost his practice, disappeared for a few years. The next time I saw him, he’d hung out his shingle in Tartarus. Turns out he’d been studying with some Native American master out in Arizona—healing spells, defensive wards and the like.”

“And weapons. I didn’t find any in his shop, but I’m pretty sure he was killed over some wolf tats. And I didn’t think they were used for defense.”

“They’re not. But Toby didn’t make weapons. He swore he’d never again allow his energy to be used to destroy the innocent.”

“Are you sure? Because—”

“He’s dead, isn’t he?” Jamie snapped. “I warned him when we had to pull out that Tartarus wasn’t safe—not with his inventory and with the price of wards these days. I practically begged him to at least make a few weapons for his own use. He flat-out refused.”

I frowned. This case was getting murkier, not clearer, as I went along. I needed some answers, and I knew of only one person who might have them.

“What are we waiting for?” Jamie echoed my thoughts. “Let’s go!”

“Go where?” I asked, starting to worry.

“Don’t tell me you don’t know who did this!” He glared at me, hands on hips, red-gray hair flying, face fierce. His whole five-three frame was quivering with emotion.

“I have an idea, yes.”

“Or where to find him?”

“Yes to that, too. I was waiting around to ask if you know anything about the drain over on Decatur.”

“I know everything about it,” Jamie said impatiently.

“Can you draw me a map of the interior?”

“I’ll do better than that. I’ll show you!” He hopped back into the drain, splashed over to where I’d left my bike and threw a leg over.

“Jamie!” He waved, started the engine despite not having a key and took off in a cloud of dust, leaving Caleb and me staring after him.

“I didn’t know he could ride,” Caleb said, as Jamie ripped through a median, slung across the path of an oncoming truck, jumped the sidewalk, clipped a streetlight, wobbled, corrected, and tore away in a squeal of my tires.

“He can’t.”

“Maybe we can get a ride with the ambulance,” Caleb offered after a moment.

Well, crap.

Chapter 9

The ambulance let us off on a patch of raw desert by Decatur Road. Jamie was nowhere to be seen, but my bike was leaning against a chain-link fence. The fence protected what had been an open air channel and was now a raging river.

A few dust-dry areas still ringed the sides of the channel, but through the middle, the wash seethed. Water with a skim of oil and gas rushed past a corroded stove, lying on a rapidly diminishing sandbar. Trash—beer bottles, cigarette butts, and fast-food wrappers—bobbed in the current, swirling madly toward a tunnel protected by a large grate and a patch of weeds.

I stared at it dubiously. This had seemed simple enough in my head: the gang lost their old hideout this morning, so they burnt out their rivals in the shantytown to make themselves a new one. But the reality wasn’t looking so cut and dried. I glanced around, but there didn’t appear to be any lookouts. Maybe they thought that with Were hearing they didn’t need any.

Or maybe no one was crazy enough to want to hide out in the middle of a river.

“Could we have the wrong address?” I asked hopefully.

“My luck’s not that good,” Caleb muttered, swinging himself onto the fence. I hauled myself up after him and we dropped to the other side.

Even standing on the bank, I could feel the ground tremble. Angry gray floodwater rushed around my legs and threatened to sweep me off my feet as we angled into the channel and sloshed across to the grate. It was festooned with newspapers and old crime scene tape, which it was attempting to keep out of the maybe four-by-four tunnel opening. Caleb shone his flashlight inside. “See anything?”

“No.” Nothing good, anyway. Water churned around a small area just inside, like acid in a stomach. It foamed along grimy walls, mixing with bits of trash that had made it past the grate, before being sucked down the dark gullet of a tunnel. I could feel the current growing, pushing relentlessly against my shins, trying to shove me inside the hungry mouth.

And my doubts grew along with it.

What if all the gang knew about was the death of the old man? Yes, I wanted them brought in for that, but waiting a little while wouldn’t do further harm to Wilkinson. The same couldn’t be said for Cyrus. And this little trip seemed less and less likely to yield results the longer I thought about it.

With a setup like that, I was surprised Wilkinson hadn’t been murdered long ago. And although it hadn’t looked like anything had been taken, I didn’t know what he’d kept on hand. As for the Were, maybe he’d followed me from the first drain, waiting for the opportunity to reclaim his property. He might not have had anything to do with Wilkinson at all.

Likewise, the fact that that body had been dumped along 91 might have nothing to do with the gang. Maybe the Hunter had placed it there at random. Maybe he’d learned that the gang was using the drain for a hangout and was taunting them. Maybe a lot of things. Because the other alternative was that a bunch of Weres were hiding a Hunter. And why did I have trouble believing that?

I started to pull back, but stopped when the drain flickered out, like a T.V. switching stations. For a moment there was nothing, no rushing water, no dark tunnel. And then I was staring at Cyrus.

He was standing in his living room, clutching a small plastic guitar. “I Love Rock ’n’ Roll” was blasting from the T.V. And a woman who looked a lot like me was standing in the kitchen behind him, holding a small casserole dish.

“Okay, rock star. I think it’s done,” she said, sounding dubious.

“I’m almost through,” he told her, fingers flying. He was going to win this with human speed, damn it. If every nine-year-old in the country could do it, how hard could it be?

“You realize that’s only level one, right?”

“You mean, sort of like making a soufflé?” She’d been at it all day, with much creative cursing. It still amazed him that a woman who brewed her own potions couldn’t cook worth a damn.

“A soufflé is Freebird on expert,” she said crossly, as the last few notes faded away.

Your mother doesn’t count as a fan, the screen informed him.

Damn nine-year-olds.

He joined her in the kitchen to find her staring into a small white container and biting her lip. They watched as the contents slowly melted, like the witch in The Wizard of Oz. “We could try it,” he offered manfully.

“Try what? There’s nothing left!” She poked at the sad remains with a spoon.

Cyrus threw an arm around her shoulders and kissed her flour-streaked cheek. She was warm and smelled like butter and spices and Lia. He was suddenly starving, but not for food.

“You know what they say about the best way to a man’s heart?”

“Yeah.”

“They lie.”

An hour later, she dropped a daub of sauce from the calzones they’d ordered in, and he leaned over the kitchen table and caught her wrist, putting his mouth over the pulse point. He slowly licked the sauce away, daring her with his eyes. The taste of her pulse under his tongue was enough to escalate the slow rolling pleasure of her company into something more. He wanted. Now.

They’d been dating for months, but he sometimes wondered if she realized it. Lunches and dinners spent talking about her cases had slid into movie nights at his place, laundry dates at hers and weekends spent riding the motorcycles they both loved. Yet she still treated him more like a colleague than anything else.

It was driving him out of what was left of his mind.

She grinned, and it was purely her, the insolent charm that made him respond to her from the very beginning. “All right, rock star. Let’s see what you’ve got.” He just sat there for a moment, sure he’d misunderstood. Until she laughed and pulled him up from the table. “You keep looking at me like that, and we won’t even make it to the bed.”

They did, although he was never quite sure how.

The scene abruptly flipped back to the drain and I staggered, the water almost sucking me through the opening. A hand came down on my shoulder and Caleb said sharply, “Lia,” in the tone that meant he’d said it at least three times before.

I grabbed on to him, breathless, queasy and more than a little freaked out. That just didn’t get any easier. Especially not when viewed through someone else’s eyes.

“What is it?” he demanded. “What happened?”

“Nothing.” I got my legs back under me. “It’s just…I think we might be in the right place, after all.”

Caleb looked uncertain, staring past me into the drain like he thought something was about to jump out at us.

And then something did.

“What! Hold!” Jamie threw a shield up, which knocked Caleb’s spell awry. It bounced off and crashed into the water on our left, sending a great wash of steam into the air. “Are ye daft, man?”

“Sorry.” It looked like I wasn’t the only one who was a little jumpy. But Caleb recovered fast. “Why’d you go in without us?” he demanded. “What if you’d had a seizure in there? What if it left your head under water?”

“What if you stop acting like I have one foot in the grave?” Jamie shot back. “And I went in because I needed to check on conditions.”

“How are they?”

“Bad. And going to get worse. It’s raining in the mountains.”

“So? We’re here,” I pointed out.

“Vegas sits at the bottom of a basin,” he said impatiently. “It’s surrounded by mountains and a lot of hard desert soil used to four or five inches of rain a year. When it gets a couple all at once, like the forecast for today, it can’t handle it and all that water comes running down here. That’s why the drainage system was created in the first place.”

“I think we can handle a few inches!”

“Inches in the mountains translates to feet here. And of all the drains in the system, this is the worst to be caught in during a flood. It runs all the way under the Strip, with no manholes or cross tunnels to catch you. If a wall of water came up behind us, we could be washed for miles.”

“We have shields,” I reminded him.

“And how long do you think they’ll last when we’re slamming into concrete like three idiots in a pinball machine?”

“So you’re saying we need to do this fast?”

“I’m saying we need to do this later!”

I shook my head violently. “Cyrus is in there. It has to be now!”

I pushed into the drain, which at this point mostly involved just letting go of the outer edge of the inlet. It swept me through the mouth of the tunnel and onto what remained of a sandbar. The noise was deafening, with the small, enclosed space amplifying every sound. Each car rattling overhead sounded like a 747 taking off, and the river around my legs roared like the ocean. But at least I couldn’t hear Jamie cursing anymore.

Once I got back to my feet, I discovered that the tunnel itself was fairly spacious. But that was the only good thing. The air was murky and the same shade as the water, but I didn’t dare use a flashlight. In the inlet, it could be mistaken for sunlight; farther in, it would immediately announce the presence of an unwanted visitor.

But without light, it was difficult to imagine how I was supposed to find anyone in here. There were no markers, no stuttering wards, no anything. Just a long, dark tunnel and me. If there was ever a time for metaphysical bread-crumbs, I thought, just before an image vivid enough to touch slammed into me.

Cyrus ended up on his back, with Lia prowling up his body. She’d left her hair undone and it flowed over her shoulders in a dark wave, tickling his chest after she stripped his shirt off. His hand slid under that shining mass, the strands sliding silken-slick between his fingers, to grasp her nape. He brought her down for a scorching kiss before skimming down her back and over the sweet curves below. She groaned and that combined with the skin-to-skin contact to bring a growl to his throat.

“Down, boy,” she told him, sitting up to straddle his shoulders. Her eyes were a perfect ice gray in the moonlight filtering through his bedroom curtains. Wolf eyes.

The brief glimpse into Cyrus’s brain flickered out, leaving me staring into the dense gloom of the drain. That was all right, I told myself as I pushed off from the wall. It looked like I had a guide.

The pressure against my legs doubled as I moved forward into the channel, because the water was compressed into a smaller area. Making things even more interesting were the seams in the concrete where the rectangular drains had been slapped together. They formed dangerous ledges underwater, vying with rocks and bottles and submerged sandbars to see which could trip me first.

“Why would the gang kidnap your boyfriend?” a voice demanded.

I whirled to find Jamie right behind me. All the noise had muffled his footsteps, and I hadn’t heard him approach. “I’m not real clear on that yet,” I said, lowering my gun. “But Caleb’s right. You shouldn’t be here.”

“And you should?”

“This isn’t Corps business. It’s personal.”

“And what d’ye think it is for me?” Jamie demanded. “I’m not about to let Toby’s killer walk free!”

“You’re the one who just said we should leave!”

He threw his hands into the air. “Because no one’s here! Tartarus dwellers are very conscious of the weather—they have to be. They probably cleared out hours ago—”

“Not this group.”

“Are we going to do this or not?” Caleb asked, appearing out of the gloom.

Jamie rounded on him. “I don’t even know why you’re here!”

Caleb raised an eyebrow. “I see better in the dark than either of you. And you can’t take on a whole gang on your own.”

“There is no gang! If they were here, they’d have to be in the old shantytown. There’s no other caves in this drain.” Jamie sloshed around a bend and up the tunnel with the surefootedness of someone who knew where he was going. Caleb and I followed as best we could. “There!” He pointed at a decaying ward that was buzzing fitfully, showing glimpses of the room beyond. “And as you can clearly see, there are—”

“A whole lot of Weres in there!”

Caleb threw out a shield as Jamie dove for one side of the entrance. I stayed where I was, scanning the group for Cyrus. He wasn’t there, but the guy I’d fought at the market was. He was easy to pick out with all his hair singed off on one side. He met my eyes and a shiver went through the group, a mass change that left us staring at eight full-grown Weres—for about a second. Then they melted into the back wall and were gone.

I ran after them—or tried to. But the ward over this entrance wasn’t just for show. I hit what felt like solid rock and bounced back. I watched the ward flicker on and off while Caleb and Jamie were debating whether or not the tunnel could hold up to the blast necessary to take it out. And then I jumped through the next time it failed.

I lost the tail of my coat when the ward flicked back on again, but no skin. I was across the room in a heartbeat, barely slowing down at the wall. It was an illusion—it had to be—because Weres could do a lot of things, but dissolve into thin air wasn’t one of them. I missed the hidden door slightly, and banged my left shoulder on hard stone, but then I was through.

A long tunnel stretched out in front of me, supported by wooden braces every few feet like an old mine shaft. It wasn’t lit, and visibility was no better than it had been in the drain. But unlike the tunnels outside, this one was absolutely quiet—no rushing water, no rattling cars, no pounding footsteps. It was as silent as a tomb, and wasn’t that a great mental image.

I jumped when Jamie and Caleb came in behind me, even though I’d been expecting it. “Something’s wrong,” Caleb said, an array of weapons hovering around him like a lethal cloud.

“What gave it away?” Jamie asked testily, throwing up his own shields. He looked pissed, maybe at me for rushing ahead without backup, maybe at himself for overestimating the gang’s intelligence. Or possibly the long, silent corridor was creeping him out, too. “The fact that with Were hearing, they should have heard us coming a mile away?”

“Yet instead of ambushing us in the tunnels or attacking when we showed up, they run?” I added, ripping the leech off my wrist. There were no civilians here.

“All of that,” Caleb agreed, just as a Were came out of nowhere, slashed at his face and leapt back through the opposite wall.

“Caleb!” I saw him fall, but didn’t have time to grab him before the tunnel was suddenly full of Weres.

One lunged for me, and by the time my conscious mind registered it, I was already moving. My elbow slammed back into my assailant’s ribs, my body turned into the movement, and I used the momentum to spin my opponent face-first into the nearest wall brace—and was thrown back against the opposite wall hard enough to stagger me. Then the Weres were gone again, like lightning.

“Lia!” It was Jamie’s voice.

I looked around, panting. He was on the floor beside Caleb, who was swearing inventively. “How is he?”

“He is feeling like a goddamned punk,” Caleb said, struggling to his feet.

I checked him out. It looked like the blow had been hard enough to knock him off his feet, but hadn’t gotten through his shields. He was unhurt, except for his pride.

“The gang was using another den until this morning,” I told them. “How did they set this up so fast?”

“They didn’t,” Jamie said, getting to his feet. “We’ve lost more than one suspect down here through the years and could never figure out why. Looks like the residents of the shantytown carved themselves a back way out.”

“A lot of back ways,” I amended, wondering which innocent-looking stretch of wall was going to open up next.

“All right. Form up,” Caleb ordered, taking point.

“Why do you get to go first?” Jamie groused.

“Because I’m the only one here who can see through illusions,” he said, tapping his little dolphin. “Sonar doesn’t bounce off them like it does real walls.”

We formed up with Jamie in the middle and me bringing up the rear, our shields out and our nerves tight. Or at least, mine were. Caleb was back to his usual, unflappable self. “There’s a doorway on either side of us, like a cross tunnel,” he told us. “You want to go straight or branch off?”

“How the hell should I know?” Jamie demanded. “There’s no way of telling where they are in all this!”

“Lia?”

“Give me a minute.” I bit my lip, trying to feel for the bond Sebastian had said was there. I was past doubting him—it was either responsible for the glimpses I’d been getting into Cyrus’s brain all day, or else I’d totally lost it. Since Cyrus’s life might hang on it, I preferred to believe the former. The only problem was that I still couldn’t sense anything.

Come on, Cyrus, I thought desperately. You’ve been chatty all day. Don’t cut out on me n—

Her skirt had ridden up to midthigh, and he pushed it higher. She had a few days of stubble on her thighs, enough to feel under his hands as he worked to get the damn dress unbuttoned. He finally tugged it off, leaving her in a scrap of silk thin enough that he could put his mouth on her and still feel her heat. He rubbed his nose against her until she snarled, “Stop teasing.”

“You were right,” he told her. “You are pushy.” Her only answer was to reach back and pop the button on his jeans, pulling his briefs down. She ran a finger over the tip of him, turning his whole body into one exquisite ache. “You win,” he gasped, and snapped the flimsy cords on her panties before tossing them aside.

The scene cut out abruptly enough that I staggered and nearly fell. But it had been worth it. Along with the images, I’d received a definite sense that they were coming from somewhere directly ahead. “Go straight,” I told Caleb.

“How do you know?”

“I just do. Go!”

A dozen yards ahead, Caleb snapped, “Cross tunnel,” seconds before we were jumped from either side. My brain registered the number—too many—and then I wasn’t thinking anymore. Just senses, reflexes and training, surer than conscious thought.

Explode a potion grenade, watch sickly green smoke immediately obscure everything. Feel the burn, eyes watering—ignore it—veer to the side as they lunge for my old location. Grab the nearest Were—one in human form. A hard chop to his wrist and bone snaps; he yelps and his hold on his weapon loosens. Twist it out of his hand, shove the Luger to his jaw and pull the trigger twice.

I looked up, searching for another target, but they had vanished like smoke. Caleb was on his feet, breathing a little hard, a glowing whip tight around the neck of a Were in full wolf mode. It was basically the same spell that I used for a lasso, except without the safeguards. As was demonstrated when he pulled away and the head lolled, burnt through to the bone.

“Which way?” Jamie demanded, panting hard, his blade sheened with blood.

His fingers returned to her hips, sweeping up to her back as she moved closer, finding heat and soft, soft skin. Her eyes slid closed, her lips parted as he licked deep into her. She wasn’t vocal; the most he received was a soft “oh, yes,” but she started to move with him after a few minutes, breathing quick and fierce. He gripped her thighs with both hands and pushed deep, his hips straining helplessly into the air at the sounds she made. She arched against him and came, so hard he felt her throbbing against his tongue.

“Straight!”

We ran.

An arm lashed out of the left-hand wall ahead, and Caleb threw the whip around it, severing it at the elbow. “Cross tunnel!”

Something jumped out at me, all hot stinking breath and yellow eyes, jaws grinning madly as they opened in front of my face. And then disappeared after taking a face full of a potion designed to eat through metal. Something hit like a hammer blow to the small of my back, and I stumbled and went to one knee, but my shields absorbed most of it. At this rate they weren’t going to last much longer, and how the hell many of them were there, anyway?

“Which way?” Caleb panted.

She sat back on her heels and gulped a few breaths while his body took him from desperate to something close to crazy. She looked down and laughed, her bare skin gleaming in the low light, taut and smooth except where the sweat beaded and distilled the light. He grabbed for her, his fingers leaving tracks in the sweat on her skin. But she had a hand on his chest, pushing him back down. His wolf growled, taking it as a challenge, but she only grinned and backed down his body, sleek and lithe and fucking slow, and all he could do was lie there while she took her own sweet time.

“Lia!” Caleb was shaking me.

“Straight!”

“There is no straight! There’s a cave wall dead ahead!”

“There can’t be!” I moved around Caleb, who took up a defensive position at my back. The wall was solid under my hands, with no magical camouflage that I could detect. But I knew what my senses were telling me. “He’s here—right here. I can feel it!”

Caleb glanced at me over his shoulder. “There may be a chamber on the other side, but we’ll have to go around to get to it. Which way?”

I hit the wall with a fist. “I don’t know!”

A Were grabbed Jamie, plucking him off his feet, shields and all, and dragged him through a ward on the left.

“Left it is,” Caleb muttered, and dove after him.

Chapter 10

I started to do the same when an image hit me hard from the other direction.

She sat up over his thighs and worked his jeans the rest of the way down his body. “There’s, in the—” he said, and choked off, squeezing his eyes shut as she wrapped her hand around him.

The image cut out as quickly as it had begun, leaving only one thought behind. Cyrus. I needed to get to Cyrus.

I went right.

The side tunnel was smaller, with little room on either side to maneuver. There was no time for subtlety; they already knew we were here. It was only a matter of time before they found me, and moving slowly did not improve the odds. I threw a silence shield over me and pushed ahead, as fast as the narrow opening would allow.

The pale illumination from the main hall cut out after the first curve, leaving me in utter darkness. So I felt my way, trying to go slow enough not to miss anything, while every extra second felt like a betrayal. The shield masked my footsteps and labored breathing, but it also muffled sound coming to me from outside. Not that there appeared to be any. A silence that was almost physical descended, syrupy and heavy in my ears.

He heard the dresser drawer slide open and the crinkle of a condom wrapper. It got a little easier once she rolled it on him, and then she just climbed on him and slid down in one move, and it went straight from hard to impossible. He heaved up from the bed and she met him halfway, sliding her arms around his neck and licking into his mouth. She could probably taste herself on his tongue, he thought dizzily, as he rolled her over onto her back.

Much later, as he was trying to choose between an imminent heart attack and the unprecedented disgrace of having to ask for a break, she rolled on top of him and whispered in his ear. “You know, you might really be a rock star.”

And, okay, maybe he wasn’t all that tired.

I tripped on the uneven floor and hit the opposite wall, hard enough to cause my concentration to wobble. The sound shield slipped and I bit my lip on a curse, before carefully reinforcing it. I didn’t know why I bothered. I was sweating, my skin hot and stinging where the salt had soaked through the makeshift bandage on my arm and hit the bloody claw marks. And these tunnels didn’t reek like the drains, giving me no scent camouflage. A Were would smell me coming a mile away.

The tunnel curved abruptly, bending around to the right again, and dim light stained the walls ahead. It was enough to let me see the dark streak coming at me, flying down the corridor. I fired two blasts from the shotgun and threw myself to the side. A large Were slid to a stop at my feet, half his head missing, a swath of red painting the floor behind him.

I leapt over the body before it stopped moving and, a moment later, the tunnel dead-ended into a small chamber. An electric lamp threw a single pool of light in the otherwise dark room. I had a split second to notice a large shape slumped by a chair, then I was grabbed from behind.

I spun, forcing my attacker into the wall. I pressed up against his back, my forearm locked across his throat, a knife in my hand, coming up—

“Lia!”

I froze for an instant, then my tat managed to focus on my assailant’s face. I spun him around and stopped, staring. For a second, I didn’t get the whole picture, just pieces here and there. Dark hair stuck up in wild tufts, sweat gleamed at a temple, a bruise decorated a tightly clenched jaw. And there, finally, what I’d hoped to see most—whiskey dark eyes glittering in the low light. Cyrus.

And then I started noticing other things, like the fact that his skin was gray from exhaustion, his lip was split and half his face was a yellowing bruise. But none of that mattered next to the fact that he was unquestionably, miraculously here and alive. He pulled me to him, slowly, careful not to startle the half-crazed war mage, and then his hands were in my hair and he was kissing me with passionate hunger.

He drew back after a few seconds, and the series of expressions crossing his features—disbelief, incredulity, outrage—was pretty impressive. “What the hell are you doing here?”

I licked my lips, trying to make the transition from making out to making up. “I came to rescue you?”

“Rescue me?”

I glanced around. Cyrus looked pretty beat up, but he was in one piece, which was more than I could say for the Were slumped on the floor behind him. A set of manacles had been ripped out of the wall and the chain wrapped around the creature’s neck, hard enough to half sever it from the body.

“Well. It seems awkward now.”

“I warned you off—twice! And I know you received the messages!”

“What messages? I haven’t heard from you since—”

“The memories!”

“Oh.” Those messages. “I thought you were sending me clues how to find you.”

Cyrus threw up his hands. “How is sending you Danger/ Ambush an invitation to come closer?”

“You never sent me—”

“The garden hose?”

“What?”

“You ambushed me.”

It took me a moment to get it. “Oh, come on! That’s hardly the same thing as—”

“At that distance, there was no way to send anything but memories, and the most powerful are the ones we both shared. That’s why I sent the soufflé for Disaster. As in, coming in here would be a very bad idea?”

I blinked. “You used my cooking to mean disaster?”

“It was a metaphor.”

“And what was the scene at the bar supposed to tell me?”

“What bar?”

“Never mind.” It sounded like I’d been picking up on a little more than was intended.

Cyrus bent to relieve the dead guard of his gun and his shirt rode up. He looked as though he’d been stitched together out of spare parts, his belly livid with bruises. I drew in a sharp breath. “You’re hurt!”

He shoved the gun in his waistband. “They used me for a punching bag for the last twelve hours, hoping Sebastian would sense it and come looking for me.”

“Sebastian?”

“This was a trap for him. Luckily, he was smart enough not to fall for it. What I’d like to know is why you weren’t.”

I did a little reciprocal glaring, half-pissed, half-scared. You had to do a lot of damage to Weres to outstrip their healing ability, but his body clearly hadn’t been able to keep up. I strongly suspected that he was on his feet out of pure stubbornness.

“I came because Sebastian asked me,” I told him. “He showed up at Central this morning, after patrol hauled Grayshadow’s body out of a ditch—”

“Grayshadow is the one behind this! He was here until a few minutes ago, torturing me. Then you showed up instead and now he’s gone to challenge!”

Cyrus strode back the way I’d come. I caught up with him edging around the body of the Were. “I think I’m a little behind on—”

“Yes, you are! Which is why you don’t come charging alone into a maze infested with creatures who have nothing left to lose!”

“I thought we’d settled this. It’s my job.”

“No. Your job is policing the human population. This is Were business. Sebastian had no right—”

“Sebastian had every right! Or am I not part of Arnou?”

Cyrus rounded on me, quietly furious. “You were brought into Arnou for your protection! Not so you can take on an entire gang by yourself!”

“And what about you? I wouldn’t have been here in the first place if you hadn’t decided to take on a Hunter alone!”

“There is no Hunter! And I had no plans to play hero. I was trying to find out who was killing our people. I intended to hand Sebastian any information I discovered and let him deal with it.”

“So what went wrong?”

“Everything,” Cyrus said bitterly. “Starting with my supposed helper. Grayshadow wants leadership of the clan. He hates the alliance with the humans and he’s half insane with ambition. He knows that replacing Sebastian now will not only give him control of Arnou, but will also make him bardric.”

I shook my head. “There must be some mistake. Grayshadow isn’t doing anything these days. We have his body at Central—Sebastian ID’d it for us himself.”

“He ID’d the corpse of a vargulf, an enemy of the gang Grayshadow hired to help with his scheme. The man was once part of Arnou, so he smelled right, and with that much mutilation, who could tell?”

I sorted through the mass of information he’d just dumped on me, and grabbed the biggest nugget. “You’re saying Grayshadow is the Hunter? But he’s a Were.”

“There is no Hunter! Grayshadow used the terror that term holds for us to cover his tracks. If Sebastian had shown up to rescue me, he’d have killed him as he did White Sun and blamed it on the Hunter. Then with both of them dead, he’d waltz into Sebastian’s position with no opposition. He’s my brother’s Third.”

“But Sebastian didn’t show.”

“No, he sent the Corps instead. So Grayshadow has gone with Plan B: to challenge. Sebastian’s inability to stop the Hunter gives him cause. And White Sun was the only warrior Arnou had likely to win against him. No one else will dare take the challenge, meaning Sebastian will be forced to fight himself.”

“I take it you don’t think he can win.”

Cyrus paused at the entrance to the main tunnel, breathing heavier than he should have been for the short hike. “People think that because Sebastian is a diplomat, he’s a pushover. He’s not. I’ve sparred with him enough to know that. And he’s younger and faster than Grayshadow, although possibly not as strong. If it was a fair fight, it would be an even contest.”

“If it was?”

“Grayshadow doesn’t want a chance to win,” Cyrus told me grimly. “He wants certainty. And he thinks he’s found a way to get it.”

“The wolf wards.” A few things started to click into place.

“You’ve seen them?”

“I had them in my hand—briefly.”

“Well, Grayshadow has them now. He showed them to me when he returned this afternoon. He wanted to gloat about the fact that while Sebastian might defeat him, he couldn’t take out five wolves at once.”

“Five?”

“Himself and the four wolves he killed. The life force he stole from them will give him unbelievable strength. No way can Sebastian stand against that. No single Were could!”

“That’s why he was at the wardsmith’s,” I guessed. “To pick up the final ward. And once the man had delivered it, he was of no further use. So he killed him and left one of the gang behind to wait for me, to retrieve the rest of the weapons once I tracked the guy down.”

“I don’t know about that. I just know what he plans to do with them now.” Cyrus started for the corridor, but I pulled him back.

“But why did Grayshadow go to all this trouble? If he wants to discredit Sebastian, why didn’t he just tell everyone the truth about you? Sebastian said he knew!”

“Because the only way he becomes bardric is by inheriting the office,” Cyrus said impatiently. “By our laws, the bardric is the chief of the leading clan—in this case, Arnou—whoever that may be. But if a new election is called because Sebastian has lost the chiefs’ respect—which would almost certainly happen if they found out about me—”

“It would go to Whirlwind of Rand.”

“Very likely.”

“So instead of discrediting Sebastian, Grayshadow plans to kill him. But that doesn’t explain what you think you’re going to do.”

Cyrus’s jaw tightened. “Kill him first.”

He changed and slipped out the door so fast, I didn’t even see him go. But I heard Jamie curse and the sound of a knife hitting wood. “Jamie, no!” I hit the main tunnel at a run, to find Jamie and Caleb facing off with a huge black and tan wolf.

“It’s Cyrus!” I told them.

“That would be more reassuring if his hackles weren’t raised,” Caleb commented.

“And if he wasn’t growling at us,” Jamie added, yanking his knife out of a support beam.

“You just tried to stab him!”

“Well excuse the hell out of me!” Jamie said, livid. “It’s not like the rest of us can tell the difference! One huge hairy beast looks much like—”

Caleb gripped his shoulder. “Don’t go there.”

I belatedly realized that my feet were wet. There was maybe an inch of water in the hall, enough to slosh against the sides when I moved. “What’s going on?”

“This place is flooding, as I told you,” Jamie snapped. “We have to get out of here.”

Cyrus bounded away and we followed. Water was inching its way down the tunnel as we neared the warded wall again. The floor must have been slanted, because the farther we went, the deeper it got. It was halfway up my shins by the time we reached the end.

Caleb threw a sound shield around us. “Careful. Some of them are still in the outer room.”

I hadn’t needed the warning. Someone had a light and it lit them up through the thin skin of the ward, like silhouettes in front of a bonfire. I cautiously stuck my face through the faux clay and got a shock.

The remaining Weres—and shit, there were a lot—were standing on the far side of the cave, near the door. The ward was still coughing and sputtering, hiccoughing floodwater into the cave every time it flickered out. When it flicked back on, the waterfall coming through the gap was chopped off like a neck on a guillotine. The level in the cave was rising fast, but for some reason, the Weres weren’t leaving.

Then one of them was shoved forward by an older man with flowing silver hair and a goatee, a leather coat and dusty boots. Cyrus whined softly and I got the idea. Grayshadow.

The younger Were didn’t look happy, but he cautiously approached the ward anyway, as if waiting for it to cut out again. It should have been permeable from this side, with no need to wait. But the water must have messed up the charm, because when he tried to jump through as I had, he missed.

Badly.

The ward flicked back on and sliced him in two lengthwise, killing him before he had a chance to scream. One half of his body tumbled back into the cave, the other fell into the river raging in the tunnel outside and was immediately swept away. Grayshadow made an expression of distaste, kicked the remains aside, and selected another guinea pig.

We watched as this one made it through—barely—and another took his place. This one wasn’t so lucky. “He’s trying to wear out the ward,” Jamie muttered from behind me. “He’s using them to sap its strength.”

“Why are they doing this?” I demanded. “They don’t owe him any loyalty! They’re outcasts!”

“Not for long,” Cyrus said, his voice tight. Jamie and Caleb did a double take. I guess they hadn’t thought Weres could talk while in wolf form. Or maybe it was the deep, guttural sound of his wolf voice that startled them. “Grayshadow offered them a place in Arnou once he takes power.”

“He’s lying!”

“Of course, but they’re desperate. It’s the best chance, maybe the only chance, most of them will ever have to regain Clan status. So don’t expect them to disobey him—or to show us any mercy.”

“Let’s make sure we don’t need any,” Jamie said, pulling his huge sword.

“What is that?” I demanded. It was definitely not standard-issue.

“Claymore. I’ve noticed that knives don’t work too well on these beasties,” he told me. And then he charged, throwing himself through the warded stretch of wall, yelling at the top of his lungs.

The rest of us looked at one another, and then plowed through after him.

The reaction was a little different than I’d expected. The odds were heavily in our opponents’ favor and Weres don’t spook easily. But they were a gang, not trained troops, and they’d already been under 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!”

Chapter 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 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 mage,” I said, gasping in surprise and pain.

Grayshadow paused, his face twisted in anger. He looked like he thought I should be dead. And I probably would have been, if I hadn’t been storing up my magic for most of the day. But that reserve was mostly expended now, along with my remaining strength. My legs felt like jelly and I had to fold my arms to keep them from shaking.

He threw another volley at me, combining the brute force of wild magic with the speed of a Were. It was a deadly combination. The best I could do was to deflect it and send it crashing into the railing, melting a section larger than my body. Grayshadow scowled, watching metal drip down the side of the channel, while I struggled not to let my shields collapse completely.

“Wild magic is difficult to control,” I told him, trying not to wheeze. My whole body was clamoring for rest, for oblivion, but I couldn’t afford to look like it. “You’ve obviously been doing some studying.”

“Do not presume to think you know me, human.”

“Laurentia of Lobizon was my mother,” I reminded him.

“You are human.”

Great. The only one who agreed with me was the bad guy.

“Pot, kettle. If you didn’t have some human blood yourself, you wouldn’t be a mage. Somewhere back in the family tree—”

“You know nothing about me!”

“I know you murder your own kind.”

Rage paled his eyes to silver. “Better that than have them remain enslaved to the humans!”

“As opposed to what? Enslaved to the Fey?” It had been a stab in the dark, just something to keep him talking instead of tearing out Cyrus’s throat. But I saw when it hit home. “That’s how you developed your talents, isn’t it? There are almost no Weres born with magical ability, and certainly none as strong as you.”

“Because your people made the substance that would free us illegal! Your only advantage over us is your monopoly on magic. Break that, and Weres will rule instead of serve!”

I didn’t try to point out that Weres in no way served the magical community, much less the Corps to whom they were much more likely to give orders than to take them. Because you don’t argue with a madman. And unless I was very much mistaken, that’s what I was dealing with here. His voice was husky with feverish vehemence, his eyes were bloodshot and his hands shook.

“What substance?” Cyrus demanded, shifting Grayshadow’s attention back to where I least wanted it to be.

“Fey wine,” I said, scowling at him. “It brings out all sorts of latent talents.”

“It also drives people mad,” Cyrus pointed out, glaring right back. He must have guessed how close to bottoming out I was, or maybe he was picking up on my thoughts as I’d done his. Damn it, Lia! Get out of here!

The words rang in my head as loudly as if he’d spoken them. How the hell did you do that? I demanded, but got only a scowl in return.

“The weak-minded, perhaps,” Grayshadow was saying, with the arrogance of all addicts. “It will weed out the feeble among us, enhance the power of the strong and make us invincible!”

“And subject you to the whims of your suppliers,” I pointed out again, trying to calculate how long it would take Jamie and Caleb to find us. Too long, echoed in my mind. I wasn’t sure if it was my thought or Cyrus’s, but either way, it was likely correct.

“The Fey are weak. They fight amongst themselves too much to be anything else.”

“And we don’t?” Cyrus demanded, pulling those flat, silver eyes back to him.

“Once Sebastian and his human sympathies no longer divide us, that will cease to be a problem.”

“Good plan,” I said. “Unfortunately, there will be a dozen war mages here in a couple minutes to drag you off to face charges ranging from kidnapping to murder.”

It was a lie, because I doubted Jamie and Caleb had the bars underground to call for backup, even if they’d managed to avoid getting their phones drowned. But there was no way for Grayshadow to know that. And if he got spooked enough, maybe he’d decide that a discredited war mage and an outcast who nobody would believe weren’t worth the trouble.

“I answer to wolf law,” Grayshadow told me haughtily, before glancing around like he expected my backup to come crawling out of a drainage ditch. Which, okay, fair enough.

“Wolf law takes a dim view of those who kill Clan.”

“This one is vargulf,” Grayshadow said, glancing scornfully at Cyrus. “No one cares what happens to him. Not even his own brother!”

“And White Sun? Last time I checked, he wasn’t vargulf. And you had at least three other victims, two more of which were High Clan wolves!”

“None of which can be linked to me once you’re dead!”

The final volley came fast and hard, my shields collapsed, and blood made a dark gash across the ground. I waited for pain and worse—and was still waiting when the smoke dissipated. I saw Grayshadow writhing on the ground, his coat half melted to his skin, one arm and shoulder a livid mass of black leather and red meat.

I glanced behind me, because no way had I done that, but there was no one. And then there was no time to worry about it, because Grayshadow stumbled back to his feet, snarling. I stared back at him, my hands hanging limp and nerveless at my sides, like they were attached with string. I was going to die, I thought blankly.

Then Grayshadow took off, clutching his ruined arm.

I watched him blankly for a second, until the pelting rain hid him from view. And then my knees gave out and I hit the muddy concrete, stunned and dizzy. Cyrus was staring at me, looking equally bewildered as I crawled over to him. He didn’t change back—he probably didn’t have the energy—but it didn’t matter. As soon as I laid my head against the silkiness of wolf fur, the hard ball of panic in my chest shrank until I could almost ignore it. I took the opportunity to breathe deeply for the first time that day.

Someone fumbled a hand over to grab mine, holding it so tightly that my fingers throbbed with both pulses. And I looked up into Cyrus’s whiskey dark eyes. It seemed he’d had the strength to change, after all. “You okay?”

“Yeah, but I’m not sure why,” I told him.

His nod of agreement was a ripple of shadow. “What the hell just happened?”

I felt something on my arm and looked down to see the dragon tat, frozen in place with a superior look on its tiny face. And something Caleb had said came back to me. “I think somebody decided to change sides.”

“What?”

I held up my wrist. “It came off a dark mage, but it chose to help us out.”

Cyrus looked at me strangely as he tried to heave himself to his feet. He slipped on his own blood and went down to one knee. “Lia. Wards don’t think.”

“Depends on the ward,” I said, and stunned him.

A few minutes later, Jamie’s head poked over the side of the channel, red-gray curls plastered to his skull. Caleb followed him out, both looking like hell but still standing. Jamie limped over and looked from the numb stick in my hand to Cyrus’s slumped form. “Isn’t that your boyfriend?”

“Yeah.”

He frowned. “He won’t be out long. That isn’t strong enough to incapacitate a Were, even an injured one.”

I dragged myself to my feet, stiff and soaked. “So take him in.”

“On what charge?”

“Suspicion of…something.”

“Suspicion of something? I don’t think that’s on the books.”

“Just give him to Michaelson to process once the docs get through. It’ll take at least a couple hours.”

“And what are you going to do in the meantime?”

“Something stupid.”

Chapter 12

Two huge Weres in wolf form guarded the almost invisible path that served as an entrance to the meeting place of the Clan Council. One of them moved to intercept me, changing fluidly from Were to human without so much as missing a step. His ebony skin gleamed in the light of a torch that had been wedged into a crack in the wall behind him. A lantern would have been a more practical choice, or nothing at all since I was the only one here without decent night vision. I assumed it was for ambiance.

It did add to the overall mystery of the place, not that it needed it. A sheer rock face rose five or six stories high, striated in uneven bands of cinnamon and gold. It wasn’t raining here, and the black, clear sky with its pinprick stars and the sighing wind sliding over the cliff was beautiful and more than a little eerie.

The guard was doing his best to add to the effect. His skin melted into the night, leaving only the rippling muscles of his chest visible in the torchlight. His dark eyes gleamed, pricked with reflected flame. He might have been a creature out of legend, some mythical god of the desert.

And then he ruined it. He looked me over and one eyebrow went up. “Bad day?”

My clothes were streaked with mud, cobwebs and runoff, I smelled absolutely foul, and I had at least three pebbles in my boot courtesy of the hike here from my bike. I was in no mood to exchange banter with a naked guard. “Lia de Croissets, of Arnou.”

“I know who you are.” A slight smile crept over his face. “I thought you’d be taller.”

If he’d treated my mother that way, she’d have ripped his face off. “Are you issuing a challenge?” I snapped.

His eyes widened fractionally. “No, I—”

“Then get the hell out of my way!”

I brushed past him and through the entrance, an oblong gash in the rock. The sides of the passage were inches from my fingertips, with no way out except straight ahead. It was the perfect place for an ambush should any unwanted visitors be stupid enough to try to enter. I hadn’t asked Caleb and Jamie to back me up, because they’d have never made it past the guards. And Cyrus would have been killed on sight for daring to sully with his presence a place meant only for Clan.

Once Grayshadow passed into these walls, no one but another Clan member could touch him. So this was my fight. And, as exhausted as I was, I was glad of it. Some war mages specialized in the hunt, painstakingly piecing together clues, interviewing suspects, gathering evidence. I was a competent investigator, but I’d never pretended to enjoy it. I’d take a direct confrontation any day.

I just hoped I’d put the clues together right, or this was going to be a very short fight.

The passage twisted and curved, so I expected to hear the commotion before I saw it. But there was only the haunting sigh of the wind, a tendril of which reached down into the chasm to ruffle my hair. And then I was spilling out into open air and a wide expanse of hard-packed red sand.

The Clan Council met in a natural amphitheater, with jagged ledges of stone cascading down to a flat bottom. It was huge, maybe the size of a football field, and open to the sky. The wispy glitter of the Milky Way arced directly overhead, bowed along the curved surface of the heavens. Were elders stood on every side in ranked rows, torches flickering here and there to highlight craggy faces and brilliant eyes. Most were only a dark presence, a texture of shadow. I could feel them waiting.

I wasn’t sure for what.

And then I spied Grayshadow, striding across the sand, heading for the dais on which the Council sat. Any Clan member could attend a council meeting, but only the leaders were supposed to speak. It looked like Grayshadow wasn’t feeling much like following the rules tonight. Luckily, neither was I.

I put on a burst of speed and caught him just as he reached the dais. There was no time for subtlety—once issued, a challenge couldn’t be rescinded. Grayshadow was opening his mouth to speak when I arrived, so I put my fist in it.

He didn’t go down, but at least I had the pleasure of seeing him spit blood. Right before he lunged for me. It might have been over right there, but the flat side of a spear caught him in the chest, holding him back. It was in the hand of the Speaker, the elder charged with voicing the decisions of the Council. He also kept order when needed, as it often was.

The current Speaker was Night Wind of Maccon, a grizzled powerhouse more than a century old and still built like a Mack truck. His straight black hair, streaked with silver, sharp dark eyes and strong, hawklike nose revealed his mother’s Native American ancestry. But I wasn’t stupid enough to think that our shared human blood would bias him in my favor.

“Accalia of Arnou, why have you broken the sanctity of Council?” he asked, in a voice loud enough to carry to every corner of the vast space.

“To challenge,” I said quickly, before Grayshadow could cut me off. And before I could talk myself out of it.

“Whom would you challenge?”

I thought that was kind of obvious, considering I’d just punched him in the mouth. But for once I bit my tongue. “Grayshadow of Arnou.”

As soon as the words were out, I almost felt relieved. The die was cast now, one way or the other. To back out of a formal challenge meant death.

“Until this moment, Grayshadow was presumed to be dead,” the Speaker said, his sharp black eyes flicking between us.

“As he arranged. He killed a vargulf and mutilated the body to make certain it would be mistaken for his.”

“This is ridiculous!” Grayshadow hissed. “She can’t issue challenge. She is human!”

“The challenger speaks first, by Clan law,” the Speaker informed him.

Grayshadow sucked in a breath. “You would put the claims of this creature before mine?”

“She is Arnou. It is her right.”

“She isn’t Arnou! She isn’t anything! And even if you accept that ridiculous adoption, I am Third. I outrank her and I will speak!”

I rubbed my fingers together, trying to get rid of the tacky feel of Cyrus’s blood drying between them. Some of it had settled into the lines of my palms and left a dark stripe underneath my nails. And suddenly I was so angry I could hardly see. “I am the daughter of Laurentia of Lobizon, wolf born, Clan reared. And an adopted daughter of Sebastian of Arnou. You do not outrank me!”

Grayshadow started for me again, but the Speaker’s spear point was back against his chest. “She is allowed to speak.”

I made it fast, but not because I feared another interruption. I was afraid I’d go for his throat and get killed before I ever found out if my theory was right. “There is no Hunter; there never was. Grayshadow killed four wolves—three High Clan and one vargulf—to pave the way to the bardric’s position. With White Sun out of the way, he could challenge Sebastian and take it all. He killed the others as camouflage.”

As short as the explanation had been, I’d had to raise my voice almost to a yell by the end of it. At the word Hunter, the stands had cascaded in one long ripple of fur and skin as hundreds of Weres rushed down the slope to the lower levels. None attempted to advance into the flat area, but they were as close as they could get. There was blood in the air, something no wolf could resist.

“She lies! The human lies!” Grayshadow was practically apoplectic. “I barely escaped alive from the clutches of the vargulf Cyrus, once of Arnou. He and this one conspired together to weaken the clans by killing our leading members! They care nothing for our ways, for our traditions! They think to use the war to destroy us, to dissipate our power and to allow the humans to enslave us!”

It wasn’t a bad story, playing to all the hot buttons for the clans: raging xenophobia, distaste for the human war, and fear of those who possessed a magic they didn’t understand. A rustling murmur came from the crowd, growing louder by the second, and I briefly wondered if I was about to be lynched. And then the Speaker’s spear struck the ground with three heavy knocks that I swear I could feel through the soles of my boots.

“Challenge has been issued.”

Grayshadow looked at him incredulously. “She is human! She has not accepted the Change! There is nothing in the tradition that defends it!”

“And nothing that prohibits. I say a second time, challenge has been issued against you, Grayshadow of Arnou. Do you accept?”

“This is outrageous! She and her human father killed four representatives of Lobizon! Her birth clan wants nothing to do with her! She is clearly—”

“For the third and last time. Challenge has been issued against you by a lawful member of the Clan. Do you accept?”

Grayshadow’s mouth compressed into a sharp line, a wince of anger and contempt. But I wasn’t worried. Clan law is remarkably simple in comparison to the human variety. If he wanted to clear his name, he had to fight me. To refuse would be an admission of guilt, and ringing us on all sides were members of the clans who had lost members to the Hunter. He’d never make it out of here alive.

Of course, if he accepted, I might not either.

He finally gave an abrupt nod, his eyes filled with not just pride but rage. It paled them out to silver, hardening a mouth shaped for smug, superior smiles and stiffening his walk to angry, snapping strides. I stood there, watching him move to the middle of the great space, unsure what happened now.

“Challenge has been issued,” the Speaker intoned. “Challenge is accepted.”

I started after Grayshadow, almost deafened by the renewed uproar of the crowd, only to be jerked back by an iron grip on my arm. I smelled the musky scent of woods and predation and looked up to see Sebastian. He was in human form, but his eyes were chartreuse and they didn’t look happy.

“I asked you to find my brother, not to issue challenge!” he hissed, so low I could barely hear him over the crowd.

“I did find him. He’s fine. Well, not fine,” I amended. “But he’ll live.”

“Then your job is done!”

“Not yet.” I tried to tug away, but got exactly nowhere. Sebastian might have been a column carved out of the surrounding rock.

“I’ll take the challenge for you,” he told me, his jaw tight.

“Like hell.”

“Lia! Don’t be a fool. I’ve seen Grayshadow fight! You can’t win!”

“I guess we’ll find out.” The death grip on my arm didn’t change. “Let me go, Sebastian.”

“I’ll repudiate you, dismiss you from the tribe! It will render your challenge meaningless.”

I blinked. He looked utterly serious. “And that would help how? Then they’d kill me for being here.”

“I will guarantee you safe passage.” He started pulling me away, toward the sidelines.

“Then Lobizon will kill me tomorrow!” I dug in my heels, which did nothing but carve furrows out of the dirt. “Sebastian! He came here to challenge you! As soon as I leave—”

He rounded on me, furious. “I can fight my own battles!”

“Not this time. You’re just going to have to trust me.”

“I am not going to tell my brother I let his mate die!”

“Thanks for the vote of confidence.”

“You don’t understand. It would kill him! Our mother—” He stopped, a flash of pain cutting across those striking eyes. “She died in a contest much like this one.”

“She was the woman you told me about,” I realized. “The one who died defending her mate.”

“Yes. And I can’t watch that again!”

“You won’t.”

“You don’t know Grayshadow like I do. He will kill you.”

I looked over my shoulder, to where Grayshadow silently waited. Unlike me, he’d taken time to change clothes before approaching the Council. I could have picked him out as Arnou anywhere. It was in the shape of his long, dark cloak, cut from a template hundreds of years old that had been copied from one worn by their first clan leader. More obviously, it was in the peculiar mix of arrogance and elegance that no other clan quite managed, that calm conceit that said we are first because we are best.

My stomach clenched. “No,” I told Sebastian. “He won’t.”

“You’re afraid; I can see it on your face. Relinquish your challenge and let me get you out of here.”

“Fear isn’t a bad thing, if you use it right,” I told him, and wrenched away.

The Council’s servants had been busy lighting more torches, probably for the benefit of my lousy human eyesight. I wasn’t sure if I was grateful or not. A circle of them now ringed Grayshadow in fire, shedding sepia light over the sand and gilding his face, deepening the crags, highlighting the lines and making him look like what he was—a warrior with a hell of a lot more experience than me. He seemed to think so, too, because he wasn’t looking too worried.

“Tell me, human,” he called before I’d even reached him. “Do you remember the story of Red Riding Hood?”

“Let me guess. You aren’t the benevolent woodsman.”

Grayshadow laughed. “He only exists in the modern version. Today, the foolish little girl is saved by the woodsman who kills the wicked wolf. But in the original French story, she was given false instructions by the wolf when she asked the way to her grandmother’s house. She took his advice and ended up being eaten. And that was it. There was no woodsman and no grandmother, merely a well-fed wolf and a dead Red Riding Hood.”

“Guess we’re lucky it was only a fairy tale,” I said, stepping inside the ring of torch light.

“But it reflected reality. The original story is from a harsher time, when my ancestors fought with yours for territory, for food—for survival. The writer understood: you were our enemy, and we were yours.”

“Once, maybe. But we’re allies now, in case you haven’t—”

A clawed hand shot out and ripped through my shirt. I had shields up, or I’d have probably been bisected. As it was, talons like blades rattled across my ribs like a stick along a wrought iron fence.

Grayshadow rolled up his sleeve, exposing blistered flesh, while I fought to remain standing. “Now we’re even.”

I thought of the wolves he’d butchered, of the ruin he’d made of Cyrus, and my lip curled. “Not even close,” I hissed, and pushed a section of my shields outward in a band that wrapped around his throat. Something hit me in the side, and I could hear the crunch of shattered bone. I bit my lip on a scream and held on, until a burst of raw power exploded against my ragged shields like a firestorm.

I staggered back and he tore away. My shields had to be almost gone, because this felt like a direct hit, with every cell in my body screaming that it was dying. The only thing keeping me vertical was the memory of countless training sessions, stretching on until I was so tired I could have wept, and my father’s voice telling my mother “You underestimate her strength. Again, Accalia.” He’d wanted to be sure that, if I joined the Corps, I was as prepared as he could make me. And no matter how much it hurt, it had been less impossible to do what was asked than to prove him wrong.

It still was.

The fire abruptly cut out and I staggered, gulping for air that wouldn’t come. And when it finally did, it filled my lungs like ice water. I glanced around and realized that the last of my shields had dissipated along with the flames. Instead of protecting me, what remained of my magical ability was going haywire.

The desert floor, which hadn’t seen a drop of water, was suddenly wet with an icy sludge. Cold bit at my face and hands as the moisture in the air began to crystallize. The water around my feet solidified as ice crawled across the sand, tracing delicate patterns in the muck. My feet went numb, my skin started to ache and there was frost in my hair and on my eyelashes. And still the temperature dropped, until I was gasping, trying to draw enough oxygen out of the thinning air.

Grayshadow was backing up from the approaching frost, uncertainty in his eyes. It couldn’t hurt him—it was only ice. But he wasn’t experienced enough with magic to know that.

“You’ll never defeat me with wild magic,” I taunted, as he hit a torch and jumped in a very undignified way. “You have power but no precision. Any war mage worth his salt could tear you apart.”

“Feel free to try,” he growled, whirling back at me.

So I threw a lasso around his feet and jerked. He hit the ground on his back and went sliding on the ice, an expression of almost comic surprise on his face. His feet were held immobile by the spell, and his arms were thrashing about in a vain attempt to stop himself. It didn’t work, and he crashed into the torches on the other side of the ring, obliterating them.

The abrupt movement tore something in my wounded shoulder, and the pain was blinding. I gasped and had to fight not to let it turn into a cough, abruptly aware of a liquid, unpleasant sensation in my lungs. Wetness was spreading across my lacerated stomach, warm at first but chilling fast against my skin. I was running out of time.

“You know,” I rasped, as Grayshadow threw off the spell and stumbled back to his feet. “I’ve often wondered how that story would have turned out, had Red been a mage.”

“You’re not the only one with tricks, human!” he snarled, and four flashes of gold spilled into his palm.

I barely had time to recognize them as the missing wolf wards before they sank into his skin and changed, showing their true colors. They were beautiful; easily the best wards I’d ever seen, crystal clear and glowing with power. One was a rich dark brown with white streaks, another a beautiful russet and a third a blinding white, like the sun at midday.

The last was smaller and dimmer than the others, a slightly bedraggled gray with a white streak on his nose. The vargulf, I realized, and a new rage burned in my stomach. It wasn’t bad enough that Grayshadow had stolen his life just because he needed a doppelganger; he was now planning to use what remained of him to kill me.

Only it looked like the tats had other ideas.

As soon as they touched him, Grayshadow started trembling like a fever had gripped him. He tried to brush them off, but they’d already taken hold, becoming part of him. They sprang up his body, and wherever they went, great gashes opened up in his flesh. He clawed more furrows out of his skin, trying to tear them off, but they stayed one step ahead. He screamed beneath their careful savagery, because it couldn’t be borne and had to be; because there was no bracing to meet it and no escape.

He crouched a few yards away from me, hissing. I knew what was coming before he snarled and sprang, but there was no time to get out of the way. The air around him flared and his body came apart, more violently than any change I’d ever seen. I braced myself, even knowing it was useless. My shields were gone, and no way could I stand against an assault like that. But instead of being struck by a four-hundred-pound wolf, a wave of blood and raw, red flesh hit me like a fist.

I swiped my arm across my face, smearing the gore but not caring, staring around wildly. I didn’t see anyone and went into a crouch, expecting another attack. But it didn’t come, and slowly the truth dawned. The wards made from the wolves Grayshadow butchered had been thorough in their revenge. The only thing they’d left of him was a spreading pattern of blood on the ice.

Okay, I thought dizzily. Now we’re even.

Chapter 13

“Get it off!”

“I’m afraid I can’t do that,” Caleb told me, trying to look sympathetic. He failed miserably.

“Then get me someone who damn well can!”

“I don’t know why you’re upset,” he said, flicking a finger at the tiny beast currently roasting my elbow. “That’s an expensive ward you’ve acquired.”

“I haven’t acquired it! I don’t even know why it’s working again! It cut out on me last night, just when I needed the damn thing, and now—”

“It’s a talisman, Lia. It expended most of its store of magic energy and needed to recharge.”

“That doesn’t explain why it won’t leave!”

“It appears that stunning it caused it to reset. It now believes you to be its owner. That’s probably why it fought for you as long as its power lasted.”

“If it thinks I’m its master, why won’t it turn loose when I tell it to?”

He shrugged. “How would I know? It’s your ward.”

The door flew open and Hargrove bustled in with his usual air of having ten other places he needed to be. I really wished he’d find one of them. I so didn’t feel up to this today.

Caleb, the coward, slipped out behind the boss’s back as he picked up my chart. He let the silence drag out while he stared at it. “The good news is that the docs say the battle used up my excess magic,” I told him, not able to take the suspense. “So, uh, no more flying staffs. Or anything.”

“Sanjay is running a pool in the pharmacy,” Hargrove said after a moment. “They’re taking bets on which bones you’ll break in a given week.”

“Really? What’s the pot?” He looked up, eyes narrowing. I should have remembered; the guy had no sense of humor. “Look, I know I disobeyed your orders,” I began, fully prepared to grovel. But I didn’t get the chance.

“Which orders would those be?”

“The ones about not leaving the base?”

“That was between you and the doctor. The only command I gave was for you to report if any of this had to do with the Corps. Did it?”

“Uh, no.”

“That is what Sebastian Arnou said, when he called on me this morning. As I informed him, Were politics are of little concern to me. I have enough trouble keeping up with our own.”

I blinked. “Um. Sir? It almost sounds like maybe I’m not being fired?”

Hargrove rubbed his eyes. “I knew your father when he was in the service,” he said abruptly. “He was impetuous, headstrong and occasionally reckless. He was also the best commanding officer I ever had. It would be well for the Corps if you managed to survive long enough to emulate him.”

“Yes, sir.” I tried really hard to keep the silly grin trying to break out over my face under control. I couldn’t believe I was getting off this easy.

“Oh, and by the way,” Hargrove paused halfway out the door. “Mage Beckett has requested to be reassigned to combat duty.”

I frowned. “Why would he do that? He was one of our best instructors.”

“He said he needed the rest.” Hargrove smiled, and it was vicious. “You’ll be taking over his trainees as soon as you recover.”

Cyrus limped in a few moments later, while I was still reeling from the shock. He’d brought flowers, which I took as a good sign. He usually forgets stuff like that, although oil changes on my Harley are done like clockwork.

“So I guess I’m forgiven?” I asked, as he leaned over for a kiss.

“It will be at least a week until that happens. This is merely an injury-related time-out in my being pissed off at you.” He settled himself gingerly in a chair, his own injured leg stretched out in front of him.

“Come to think of it,” I told him, “I don’t know what I have to apologize for.”

“How about knocking me unconscious? Again?”

“I didn’t have a lot of time for a discussion.”

“And to think I used to dislike arguing with my girlfriends. Of course, that was before I encountered your method of ending a conversation.”

I sighed. “Fine. No more numb sticks.” Caleb had taken mine anyway.

“And as long as we’re on the subject, what about taking on Grayshadow on your own and almost giving me a stroke?” Cyrus’s words were light, but his expression was anything but.

“To be fair, you didn’t know about that until later.”

“I had a front-row seat courtesy of our bond. And without knowing you planned to sic his own wards on him!”

“About that bond thing—”

Cyrus shook his head. “That’s not going to work. For once, we’re going to finish one argument before we start the next.”

“Fine,” I said, giving him a look. “Although it should be pretty obvious that I couldn’t tell anyone my plans. Not even Sebastian. You know what wolf ears are, and Grayshadow was right there! He might have overheard.”

“And if he hadn’t used the wards?” Cyrus demanded. “If he’d assumed he could beat you on his own? What then?”

“He didn’t know my tat had run out of juice,” I pointed out. “And it had already hurt him once. He had no way of knowing that wouldn’t happen again.”

“And you had no way of knowing if that would be enough to convince him! Or that you’d guessed right about what his wards would do. They could have fought with him!”

“I took a calculated risk.”

“Based on what?”

“Jamie’s knowledge of the maker, for one thing. Some of the surviving gang members were rounded up and questioned last night. They’d been trading Wilkinson Fey wine now and again in return for protection wards, so they thought nothing of taking him the wolf pelts. He initially refused to have anything to do with them, but after they knocked him around a little, he agreed to give them what they wanted: weapons. What they didn’t know was that he’d ensured that those weapons would only work against them.”

“But if the interrogation was last night, you didn’t know any of that when you challenged!”

“No, but I knew that a guy who’d had his only child killed by a gang wasn’t likely to bow to pressure from another one. And he had to know he’d be killed as soon as he did what they wanted. He’d seen the wolf pelts and therefore was in a position to identify the ones who had taken them. It was the same reason his daughter was killed six years ago. So if he was going to die anyway, I thought there was a good chance he’d like to take a few of the gang with him.”

“A good chance?” Cyrus looked like he was swallowing something sour. “If you’d been wrong you’d be dead!”

“If it had to be me or Sebastian, better that it was me,” I told him, struggling for calm. Arguing with Cyrus was usually fun, adding frisson to whatever we were doing. But not when he got on this subject.

“Sebastian knew the risks when he assumed his position—”

“As did I. I’m a war mage trained to do exactly this kind of thing.”

“I think if other mages went around fighting duels to the death in front of the Council, I might have heard.”

“Maybe not in front of the Council,” I agreed, “but just about everywhere else. And with the war on, it’s likely to happen again. Particularly with my new job.”

Cyrus looked up from glaring at the rug. “What new job?”

“Hargrove has stuck me with the worst group of trainees you’ve ever seen. They scare me. I may be in here for a while, considering I have zero incentive to get well.”

“You love teaching.”

“They blew up the gym, Cyrus! Within a day of arrival! And I’m supposed to have them combat ready in six months!”

“Sounds like they already are.” He looked much cheerier suddenly. I didn’t have the heart to tell him that, in the Corps, teaching was considered one of the more dangerous activities. “But at least you weren’t fired. By the way, why weren’t you fired?”

“The same reason Caleb and Jamie weren’t. Hargrove prefers to keep us around to torture.”

He grinned. “I thought Sedgewick was the problem.”

“He was, until he decided to autopsy a certain off-limits corpse. Caleb dropped by with the news a few minutes ago. Sebastian noticed the difference when the body was delivered and made it sound like it was going to cause a major diplomatic incident. In reality we don’t even know for certain who the Were was.”

“That’s a politician for you.”

“So we did a trade. My little lapse for Sedgewick’s.”

“Sounds like things are looking up.”

“Yeah. So about that bond—”

“I have some news, too,” Cyrus said quickly. “I’ve talked Sebastian into putting together a group of vargulfs to act as informants and to keep an eye on the Were gangs that remain in Tartarus. Grayshadow was able to turn them because there’s almost no way for outcasts to redeem themselves. If they end up being of service during the war, he’ll get them clan status after the dust settles. It’ll be a low-ranked clan, but it’s a start.”

“What about you? He could tell Arnou that you caught the Hunter. Allow you to redeem yourself and rejoin the Clan.”

“And then who would coordinate the vargulfs? A Clan wolf can’t be seen talking to them, nor would they be likely to take orders from one.”

“But you could go home, Cyrus.”

He leaned over to kiss my neck. “I already am.”

I smiled back and slipped a lasso around his shoulders. “So, about that bond—”

He tried to pull back, and found he couldn’t. He started to look a little panicked.

“Lia—”

“Don’t even try it. You’ve been yelling at me for the last twenty minutes—”

“That wasn’t yelling.”

“Berating, then. So it’s my turn. How come Sebastian knew we were bonded and I didn’t?”

Cyrus closed his eyes and sighed. “You were so insistent that you weren’t Were. It was almost the first thing you ever said to me. I didn’t think it could happen. You’re only half-Were and there were none of the usual signs—until you left. I almost went crazy the first week; it was worse than leaving Arnou, ten times worse. And when I realized why…” His eyes opened, and there was genuine pain in them. “How could I tell you? I’m vargulf. I have nothing to offer you.”

“You have you.”

He gave a short, unamused laugh. “Yes, and I’m such a prize. You had to rescue me.”

“You were the one who found out what was going on,” I pointed out. “If you hadn’t told me, I never would have figured it out in time. And as I recall, you’d already freed yourself by the time I got there.”

“Lia,” he paused, searching for words as Cyrus never did. “This isn’t wounded male pride talking. You could have died yesterday; you almost did die. And I could do nothing to save you.”

His eyes looked haunted, and it wasn’t hard to guess that he was thinking about the other woman he’d failed to save. Sebastian had said they’d only been children when their mother was killed, but I knew Cyrus well enough to know he blamed himself for it. “You’re right,” I agreed, and his head shot up. “You couldn’t have done anything. Grayshadow was both a Were and a mage, albeit an untrained one. Only someone who was also both could have beaten him.”

“I should have found a way, should have figured it out—”

“Even if you had, he would never have feared you enough to use those damn wards. Not after having pulverized you for most of the day. It had to be a Were who possessed the same advantages he did to make him believe that he needed extra protection.”

“A Were?” One eyebrow shot up. “You’re actually admitting to being one of us?”

“After today, the facts are kind of hard to ignore,” I admitted. “If I wasn’t Were, I would never have found you in time or been able to get before the Council to fight the duel. But if I wasn’t also a mage, I would have lost.”

Cyrus gave a lopsided grin. “You’re saying I’m mated to a mutt?”

“You tell me. I have quite a few questions about—”

Cyrus was suddenly on his feet, bad leg and all. “Damn, look at the time. Visiting hours are already over.”

“I don’t think that applies if you’re also a patient—” I began, but the door closing after him cut me off.

I stared at it in disbelief for a moment, before falling back against the pillows with a thump. Men! I picked up my bedraggled flowers, which had gotten a little squashed somehow. They looked like he’d picked them himself, from Sedgewick’s potion garden, judging by the contents. I grinned. “You can’t run forever, Cyrus.”

“I guess you’ll just have to get well enough to catch me.”

Now that was what I called incentive.