Curse the Dawn

Until someone forced my head back underwater.

It was so unexpected that I sucked in a lungful of mud and choked while I was towed what felt like half the length of the chamber. My head finally broke the surface again, but I couldn't seem to get any air. Pritkin hit me on the back—hard—half a dozen times until I probably had bruises but, mercifully, also clear lungs. I clutched the edge of something solid and pondered the wonder of oxygen for a minute.

Light spun up and expanded from a sphere in Caleb's hand, allowing me to see a few yards into the gloom. Not that there was much to see. The Senate's main meeting hall was normally mostly bare, with a high ceiling that disappeared into shadow, leaving plenty of space below for the massive mahogany table that formed its only major piece of furniture. Except for today, when little was visible besides the undulating black ocean. And what I could finally identify as the Senate table, floating despite its weight and currently serving as our life raft.

A loud clanking noise suddenly came from overhead. It sounded like rusty machinery and reverberated harshly off the walls. Caleb held up the sphere and light glinted off the jagged metal tips of the chamber's chandeliers.

They were enormous, easily twelve feet across, with rows of barb-filled rings sitting one inside the other. I couldn't tell how many darts there were on each ring, but it looked like a lot. And every time a ring emptied, it dropped back to a lower tier, allowing a new one to cycle up into place. The sound had been the closest chandelier rotating a new set of lethal darts to bear on us.

I'd forgotten the tendency of the fixtures in the Senate chamber for launching iron spikes at intruders, mainly because they had never before viewed me as one. "Why are they shooting at us?" I demanded. As if they'd heard me, a barrage of foot-long projectiles tore loose from their moorings and came hurtling our way.

Our combined weight had pushed half of the table underwater, leaving the other half raised like a partial shield. But even the rock-hard mahogany didn't stop them all. My eyes crossed, taking in a particularly vicious-looking dart that had partially penetrated the wood, stopping barely an inch from my face. It had hit with enough force to push out finger-length shards ahead of the razor-sharp point, one of which brushed my cheek. Somebody let out a small, hiccupping scream.

"Be silent!" Pritkin hissed in my ear. "The wards are attracted to motion and sound."

Now he told me.

"The ley line breach confused them," Caleb whispered. "They're targeting anything that moves. Shift us into the corridor outside!"

I started to answer when there was a reverberating crack overhead. One of the darts that had missed us was sticking out of the wall, where its force had widened a fissure that had already been leaking water. What had been a spout was now a waterfall, and from the sound of things, it wasn't the only one. It looked like an underground stream had ruptured. Trust me to find a way to drown in the desert, I thought as a flood of icy water poured onto my head.

It was heavy enough to knock my grip free and send me falling back into the void. I reached out, desperate to find a handhold, and something brushed my wrist. Something living, but not human-warm.

I jerked back, the small hairs on my arm prickling at the ghostly touch. I got a vague glimpse of it—motion, something like eyes that glittered in the almost darkness, teeth.

Oh, shit.

Hands grabbed me roughly under the armpits and hauled me back to the surface. Where I quickly discovered that I'd drifted beyond the protective shadow of the table. Pritkin jerked me out of the way right before two darts plowed into the water, and we ducked back into place with a slither of legs and flailing arms.

I gripped his shoulder hard, sca

"I'm more concerned about what's in the air!" Caleb snapped. "Get us the hell out of here!"

"And go where?" I demanded. "In case you've forgotten, there are wards in the corridors, too!" Dagger-edged sconces studded MAGIC's hallways every five feet. We wouldn't even make it to the stairs.

"Yes, but those don't work! We hadn't finished repairs from the last attack yet!" He meant the storming of the complex a month ago by a group of suicidal dark mages. For once, I was grateful to them.

I nodded in relief and grabbed his hand, but Pritkin pulled back when I reached for him. "It's your call," he told me seriously. "But we don't know what we'll find once we get out of here. It would be wise to conserve your energy if you plan to rescue anyone."

Caleb stared at him incredulously. "You actually think they made it out of here without being turned into shish kebabs? And even if they did, this place is more than half flooded—putting the corridors outside completely underwater!"

"Something that would not overly concern a vampire," Priktin said, meeting my eyes in understanding. Caleb was thinking about the disaster from a human perspective, but the people in this section of MAGIC hadn't been human in a long time. If they had survived the initial blast, they might actually be okay. Rafe might be okay. I felt a little light-headed suddenly.

"It looks like no easy way out, then," I said reluctantly.

"You can't be serious!" Caleb was looking at me like I'd lost my mind.

I bristled, because I wasn't any happier about this than he was. "I can only shift so many times in a day, and taking two people with me drains my strength pretty fast," I told him flatly. "Pritkin's right. If I exhaust myself now, I won't be able to help any survivors. Even assuming we find some."

"Then how do you suggest we get out of here?" he demanded, glaring at me. Like I'd come up with this idea instead of his buddy.

"You're war mages," I told him irritably. "You figure it out. Preferably before we drown."

"Yeah, you're a Pythia all right," he muttered.

"I'll check out the corridor," Pritkin offered, stripping off his heavy coat. "It might not be as bad as it looks." He took a deep breath and dove—leaving me alone with a war mage who, until a few minutes ago, had been doing his best to hunt me down. From his expression, I could tell that Caleb was thinking the same thing.

"I guess it's a compliment for one of us," I said a little nervously.

"Not really. If I kill you, how do I get out?" I stared at him, and he was expressionless for a drawn-taut moment. Then he sent me a brief flick of a smile. "John knows me."

Yeah, I thought darkly. He'd known Nick, too.

"What was that?" Caleb suddenly demanded, whipping his head around.

"What was what?"

He ducked the sphere underwater, but there was nothing to see but our legs churning up the mud. After a minute, he brought it back up, where it highlighted a scowling face. "I thought I felt some—" he began, and then his head disappeared.

I stared blankly at the spot where it should have been for a second before looking around frantically for a dart with a scalp. But there was nothing. Nothing except tiny ripples in the water.

I sca

My arm jerked up and my knives met the creature halfway through its arc, slamming into it right before it slammed into me. I had a brief impression of hot, stinking breath and bloodstained jaws, and then it was on me. A body thick with fur and muscle knocked me out of the water and back onto the scored and pitted tabletop.