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.”