Inked. Part 9

One lunged for me, and by the time my conscious mind registered it, I was already moving. My elbow slammed back into my a.s.sailant'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 G.o.dd.a.m.ned 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 h.e.l.l 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- 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 d.a.m.n dress unb.u.t.toned. He finally tugged it off, leaving her in a sc.r.a.p 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 b.u.t.ton 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 la.s.so, 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 h.e.l.l 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 f.u.c.king 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.

10.

I started to do the same when an image hit me hard from the other direction. 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 m.u.f.fled 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 that tired. 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 b.l.o.o.d.y 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 a.s.sailant'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 here and and alive 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 pa.s.sionate hunger.

He drew back after a few seconds, and the series of expressions crossing his features-disbelief, incredulity, outrage-was pretty impressive. "What the h.e.l.l 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 souffle 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 st.i.tched 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-p.i.s.sed, 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 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. 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 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 ma.s.s 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." 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."