Iwasfreezing, every slow step like plodding through thick molasses, my torchlight flashing over the walls, the ceiling, the rippling surface of the black water. Big, heavy iron rings were bolted into the stone walls, chains hanging from them, jangling quietly with every ebb and flow of the currents.
This was…how stupid people died.
Maybe I should go back.
I couldn’t swim. Which was the dumbest thing—a vampire, gifted with superhuman speed and strength, undone by a few feet of water.
Because Enzo didn’t raise a quitter, I edged forward another two steps, close enough my fingers brushed therough stone wall, water lapping at my collarbone as I pushed up onto my toes and waved the torch around.
Gods, I must be insane. If I don’t see something, I’m turning around.
There, just above the water line, light glinted off metal.
A new, shiny latch on a watertight plastic box jammed into an alcove in the wall, the glow of a simple protective spell gently pulsing in the mortar.
“Oh, you bastard,” I breathed, “You really did…”
Something hard slammed into the back of my head.
Pain exploded behind my eyes, white-hot and blinding. The world lurched; my cheek smashed into the rough wall, skin ripping. Water rushed into my mouth, cold and choking.
Then the world went black.
51
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Isurfaced slowly.Painfully.
To a slow, repetitive slosh, like the world was breathing.
In. Out. In. Out.
My head throbbed from the vicious pounding behind my eyes. My mouth tasted of vomit and canal water, and when I tried to move, bolts of agony crackled down my skull, sharp enough to drag a groan from my lips.
Consciousness slid back in horrifying clarity.
Freezing cold.
Water up to my chest.
My back pressed against something hard and unforgiving—the wall. My wrists burned. I tugged and realized they were bound behind me, sharp wire biting into my skin. My ankles were anchored to something underwater.
I opened my eyes.
My flashlight was gone, but someone left a candle burning across the room, set on a jutting stone a foot above the water line.
To remind me I was still in the basement.
To know the water had risen.
Was still rising.
Ripples radiated out from my chest, every panicked breath sending out a fresh circle of movement, the coldcreeping into my stiff muscles and bones. I was soaked, bleeding… trapped.
Panic surged up my throat.
“No,” I whispered, jerking at my restraints. “No, no, no?—”
