She let out a shuddering gasp, hands shaking. She clenched the straps of her backpack to keep them still. “We’re close, but the way in is very tight.”
“We need to go.” Patrick grabbed her hand and pulled her forward, even though he didn’t know the way. “Tell me where we need to go.”
He had to drag her along after him, her feet not wanting to work, the ceiling slanting low as they kicked bones aside with their feet. Patrick’s heart was pounding double time even as they ran, the light from his magic and her headlamp bouncing around them.
Then somethingscreamedbehind them, the sound glass-sharp and echoing through the dark with the same ferocity he remembered on London streets.
Drekavacs.
The demonic-looking zombies threw themselves around the corner, crawling on the floor and walls and ceiling of the tunnel, moving shadows that smelled like rotten death. Their eyes reflected the light in a hideous way as they scuttled closer through the dark.
The ceiling dipped, forcing Patrick and Lisette lower, stunting their forward momentum. Patrick raised a shield between them and the drekavacs as he and Lisette were forced to their knees by the confines of the tunnel. His palms scraped against the cold ground as he pushed Lisette forward, trying to see around her in the dark ahead while hell nipped at their feet.
The tunnel was a dead end.
“Motherfucker,” Patrick ground out.
Lisette squirmed in the tight space, twisting free of her backpack and kicking it aside. “There’s a way through!”
Patrick couldn’t see what she was talking about until she shoved herself headfirst into a tiny opening that was maybe a little taller than twelve inches if he was lucky. Lisette pushed her way deeper using her toes, the panicked sound of her breathing echoing beneath the screams of the drekavacs.
Patrick did not want to go into that space.
He had no choice but to follow.
As Lisette’s feet disappeared, Patrick crawled after her, sliding flat with his arms outstretched, the ceiling so close he had to turn his head to the side, stone scraping against his cheek. He breathed out, a puff of cold air that left his mouth dry, magic the only thing keeping the drekavacs from tearing them to pieces as they desperately inched their way forward through the impossibly narrow shaft.
And then they didn’t even have that.
The spell that ripped through the tunnel crashed into Patrick’s shields with enough force to crack them, pain lancing through his head. The walls around them vibrated in a way that made him freeze, lungs gone tight. Stone dust fell onto his face, and he breathed it in, trying not to choke on it.
They were going to be crushed.
Then Lisette’s voice reached him, high and thin from panic. “Just the late-night trains. We’re beneath Gare Montparnasse.”
“Sure, just the trains,” Patrick muttered under his breath as they dragged themselves forward by their fingertips and toes while the drekavacs clawed against his thinned-out shields behind them. “Not like I need my heart or anything.”
The stone walls got impossibly closer, and Patrick swallowed against the tightening in his chest andkept going.
The only time he stopped clawing himself forward was when his shields broke.
The spell came out of nowhere, powered by an immortal’s strength, tearing through his focus like a bomb. His mageglobe sputtered out, plunging them into darkness, Lisette’s body blocking the shine of her headlamp.
Then the drekavacsscreamed, and Patrick didn’t know which way was up as his head spun, nausea from the backlash twisting his gut.
He could hear the dead clawing at the stone, wriggling through the space beyond his feet, and the thought of getting torn to shreds while trapped underground got Patrick moving through the pain. He reformed his mageglobe and dragged his shields back up. His bones ached from the weight of them as he pieced them back together, leaning into the soulbond to do so, drawing magic from a ley line far below.
Half a second later, a drekavac slammed into his shaky barrier, screaming loud enough to make Patrick’s ears pop. Patrick was ready for the next hit, bracing himself for the blow. The walls vibrated around them again, and he wasn’t sure it was the trains that time.
Lisette moaned, high and frightened, but she kept moving, kept dragging herself forward through the dark. Patrick followed her, listening as the stone creaked all around them while the drekavacs screamed like a nightmare behind them, forcing himself to breathe through the taste of hell.
Patrick didn’t know who had summoned the drekavacs, but he’d be unsurprised if it was Ilya. The necromancer could be anywhere in the Catacombs. Patrick only hoped Ilya wasn’t ahead of them, where the black magic roiled against his senses like crude oil in water—a poisonous, tainted mess.
He could sense the drekavacs clawing at his shields, desperately trying to break through. Patrick willed his shields as strong as they would go, painting over the cracks with magic. The anchors in his bones that Persephone had reset last summer hadn’t been damaged, but his head throbbed from the attack. The stone his breath blew against was so close he could feel the chill of it.
Another couple of inches, another rolling hit of magic, and then the ceiling above started to slant away from his body. Patrick’s lungs expanded the same way the tunnel started to. He breathed in dust, then air, fingers clawing at the ground as he dragged himself forward, following Lisette’s kicking feet.
The ceiling bent higher, and Lisette pushed herself to her knees, able to crawl. Another foot, and Patrick could do the same. Patrick’s breath came sickly fast, and he wished he could cast a spell of some sort, knowing the only magic he could use down here would be defensive wards, or he’d risk bringing down the stone and graves above them, burying them alive.
