Even now, my heart was pounding. I had never met such an old, powerful fanghead.
“Thief,” she’d hissed. Rick had drawn his weapon and prepared to fire. But the outclan priestess had immobilizedhim with her mind. He couldn’t even breathe. I knew what it felt like to be held like that. The adrenaline-spiked terror.
We had survived. Barely.
I pulled myself away from the terror-memory and stared at the space where the chapel had once stood. I swallowed hard.
Then I recalled the front porch. When Rick and I had walked across it, had our boots sounded a little more hollow than the rest of the chapel flooring? I leaned over the foundation and looked into the muddy mess of standing water within the low walls. The area where the porch had once stood was wetter and sloppier than the rest. “Wrassler? You got a shovel?”
“I do. But the Dark Queen won’t be shoveling this muck.”
“I need the exercise,” I said. “Shovel.”
Bruiser and Wrassler exchanged glances, and both shrugged.
I pointed to the foundation and said, “Sit.”
Amused at the dog-trainer-style command, they did.
I gave my nice waterproof boots a workout and ruined the fancy work clothes in the first fifteen minutes. From now on, I was going back to jeans and casual clothes. I really was not made to sit around and let people do things for me. On nonformal days, I needed to dress for who I really was, not what Leo and fate had made me. The men sat on the wall watching, entertained at me strong-arming a shovel and waterlogged earth.
The mud kept caving in, but I finally got below the surface of the water table, and my shovel hit rotten wood. Wrassler and I exchanged tools, and I hefted the pickax. I liked it. Well balanced and heavy enough to brain an enemy. I lifted the ax in both hands and brought it down on the wood. Putting my back into the blow. The wood split and parted. Two more strikes and water appeared, along with an underwater brick wall. The water was murky-muddy as any bayou. I stepped back, sweating but feeling really good. More like myself than in ages.
“Tunnel,” I gasped.
“No mold, no mildew, no slime on the brick,” Wrassler said, staring into the hole I had made. “Fire scorched thestone to the ground level, but not below it. Maybe this is where Sabina dug her way out?”
“I don’t think so,” Bruiser said, looking over the muddy area. “It doesn’t look disturbed.”
Wrassler said, “This looks like a water witch working, like in subbasement five. Maybe astasisworking and a spell to keep it dry. Looks as if it failed or was deliberately destroyed.”
I tossed the pickax out of the short pit and asked, “Can we get some divers?”
In a sequence that was too fast to follow, the black water erupted. Something wrapped around my throat. Claws dug in. And pulled me under.
CHAPTER 8
You Got It, Legs
In a split second I knew.Sabina. A burned, charred husk, her claws at my throat just like the first time. I remembered the burned crispy critter who had ripped off the unknown vamps’ heads.
Swimming strongly, she pulled me along a water-filled tunnel, blacker and colder than the pit of hell. The water felt thick and heavy, and my body moved through it oddly. I hadn’t gotten a breath and I needed to inhale. My lungs burned. I tried to pry her fingers off, but I might as well have been gripping titanium.
I needed air. Panic built. I struggled, my body whipping back and forth. Though there was no way I could drown, because my throat was clenched shut. My stomach roiled. I might vomit and aspirate, drowning on my own breakfast if she didn’t—
She yanked me up through the thick water and shoved my body high. She let go. I sucked in air. Rank, dank, horrible, wonderful air. My feet kicked, the water feeling so heavy it felt like treading in oil. I gripped my throat, coughing. Breathing. Coughing. Gagging.Breathing.
“Yellowrock,” she rasped.
Sabina.
I wanted to ask how she got from the Garden District to here, but she was the outclan priestess. She had some sort of witch magic and training from before she was turned. There was some evidence she could timewalk. And there was magic in the water, sparking on my skin. Too much magic.
My body began to shift.Nonononono,I thought. If I became Beast, I might drown. My skinwalker magic rose, silver with darker motes of power. My bones snapped and popped, and something in my spine twisted in agony. But the transition stopped at half-form, a form much stronger than either of my natural forms. If Sabina came at me again, I might have half a chance.Right. Sure I would.
She lifted me by the throat and sat me on something. Like a beam under the water or a half wall. She let go of me, and I nearly fell, sucking in another gasp of stinking air. I grabbed on to my perch with both legs and one hand. With the other, I wiped water from my eyes.
“Yellowrock,” she said again. Behind her head was a pale pink light inside a water-filled glass globe. The pinkish light came from an amulet in the bottom, and it waved and sparkled as if the water moved, though it appeared motionless.
