Freed of its weight, I kicked back to the surface.
When my head broke free, I gasped. Light! Dim light illuminated the channel and the platform speeding past me. I flung my hands out, reaching frantically for a handhold as the water carried me along. My fingers scraped across the rough concrete, then caught on a lip.
I jarred to a painful halt. The current pulled at me, splashing over my face and filling my mouth. I spat, coughed, and shook the water from my eyes. My handhold was a one-foot-diameter pipe. Hooking my arm into it, I felt upward with the other and found the edge of the platform.
Gasping for air, I dragged one leg up and stuck my foot into the hole. A terrified voice in the back of my head screamed I couldn’t do it, that I’d slip and fall and drown. I grabbed the ledge and launched myself upward as hard as I could. Arms grasping at the slick concrete, I heaved myself onto the solid platform. The water rushed by, dark as ink in the dim light.
Lying on my back, I panted harshly, my throat aching and limbs trembling. I was alive. Somehow.
The infernus under my drenched sweater pulsed, a brief flash of heat and vibration. With unsteady arms, I pushed myself into a sitting position and reached into my shirt. My numb fingers found a smooth stick. I tugged the blood tracker out and dropped it beside me, then slid the infernus out of my sweater.
“Zylas,” I rasped.
Red light flared across it. The power ballooned into his shape and he solidified beside me in a final blaze.
“Drādah.” He crouched, swiftly assessing my condition. “Are you hurt?”
I coughed up water. “Don’t think so.”
“I could feel your fear. You did not call me!”
Startled by his angry exclamation, I waved vaguely at the water. “I couldn’t. You might’ve drowned. Do you know how to swim?”
“Var! Why would I not swim?”
He wrapped his hands around my arms and pulled me up. I wobbled, my knees trembling and teeth chattering. Water dripped off my clothes and pooled around my feet.
“Where is this place?” he asked sharply.
“Under the c-c-city,” I chattered. “Need to f-f-find a way t-to the s-s-surface.”
He stared around, hands tightening on my arms, then pushed me backward until I bumped into the side of the channel, as far from the water as possible.
“Wait here,” he ordered. “I will find a way out.”
“I’ll c-come too. We should s-stay t—”
“You are slow. I will be faster.”
As he stepped away, I grabbed his wrist. My breath rasped with a hysterical edge. “Don’t leave me alone.”
His eyes moved across my face, his dark, dilated pupils more pronounced than usual in the red glow. A wolfish smile pulled at his lips, flashing one pointed canine. “Na, drādah, did you forget?”
“Forget w-what?”
He tapped a claw against the infernus. “I am never far from you. Now be drādah ahktallis and wait here. Quietly.”
Pulling away from my hand, he prowled swiftly down the platform and ducked through the spray falling from a four-foot-diameter pipe high on the channel wall. With a snap of his barbed tail, he disappeared.
Drādah ahktallis. “Smart prey.” If Zylas wanted me to wait quietly, then I would wait quietly.
I sucked in air, my whole body trembling. My coat would’ve drowned me if I hadn’t discarded it, but I regretted its loss anyway. The damp chill permeated my skin and my sweater stuck to my body. I slid down the wall and curled into a tight ball, my arms tucked between my stomach and my thighs.
Seconds dragged into minutes. I lost all sense of time as I shivered in the dim light. My gaze darted across the pipes and tunnels that vomited frothing water into the main channel. Had I fallen from one of those, or was that tunnel farther upstream, out of sight?
Would the others search for me? Had the rising water forced them back to the surface? I squinted nervously at the underground river, but it would take way more water to flood this massive channel. Hard to believe all this existed beneath the downtown streets, unseen by the hundreds of thousands of people who walked above it every day.
At least it wasn’t a sewer. It stank like rotting things, but it wasn’t that bad. Though my shivering continued, I didn’t feel as cold anymore. And it wasn’t pitch dark either. I glanced toward a small bulb, leaking a faint orange glow, that dangled from a black wire looped around a fat,