“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?”