My fingers and toes went numb with cold, and soon I began to tremble. I didn’t know if it was the cold or the fact that I was nearly out of air, but I began to shake. Sacha pressed me harder against the wall, but I began to slide down as my legs buckled and my head lolled.
I opened my eyes—which probably meant pink eye for life if I survived this—and glanced left at Sacha. A faintly glowing red bubble encased his head, and his shadowed features moved—he was trying to talk to me, but his voice came out all muffled.
I frowned. He seemed agitated. Darkness crept into the edges of my vision, and I went limp.
15
LUDOLF CATERWAUL
“She dead?”
I blinked rapidly, my vision blurry. A burst of bright orange heat stung my cheek, and I groaned. “I’m not dead.” My voice came out choked, and I rolled to my side and coughed up water. My hair hung in stringy clumps across my face, and I shivered with cold.
As the world came back into focus, I looked down at my hands and found that I couldn’t see them under the thick, black sludge that coated the bottom of the tunnel.
“Oh, snakes.” I coughed again and pushed myself to sitting. “This is disgusting!” I lifted my filthy palms and gawked at the guys.
Sacha slumped against the side of the tunnel next to a round opening, his barrel chest heaving. Victor skipped around the center of the tunnel, kicking up little splashes of filth and giggling.
“She’s not dead!”
Neo stood doubled over, his hands on his knees. All three were as soaked and covered in sewer filth as I was.
I sniffed and gagged. “It smells awful.” Like a mixture of sewage, rat droppings, and seaweed. I made a face at Neo, who looked up and glared at me. He shot an arm out and pointed at Sacha.
“Who gives a crab about the smell?!” The whites shone around his dark eyes. “If it weren’t for Sacha risking his life and diving after you down the tunnel, you’d have gone right into the chute!”
I glanced toward the opening next to Sacha. Darkness loomed beyond. I wasn’t sure what the “chute” was, but it didn’t sound good.
“Why didn’t you use magic?” Neo righted himself and jerkily drew a circle around his head. He raised his brows at me, agitated.
The truth was, I had no magic and couldn’t form a breathing bubble, but I didn’t love to go around sharing that tidbit with just anyone. In fact, Will and Heidi were the only people who knew the truth. I’d have been an instant target if anyone in the Darkmoon knew I had no magic with which to defend myself or my (few) possessions.
I turned my head and roughly brushed my hair out of my face with my upper arm. I glared right back at Neo. “Why didn’t you take us down a safe route that wasn’t about to be flooded with sewage?” I narrowed my eyes. “Oh right. It was a shortcut.”
He huffed and pulled his wand from his pocket, then used it to dry himself off. Green magic flared from the end and steam rose from the shoulders of his leather jacket. Victor, still skipping about, did the same.
I stayed sitting, as did Sacha. He slowly pulled his wand from the inside pocket of his coat.
“Hey, Sacha?”
The brutish man looked up at me from under his thick brow bones.
“Thank you.” I nodded. “For saving me from going into the chute… whatever that is.”
His eyes shifted to his left and the round opening. “See for yourself.”
My hip ached as I pushed myself to standing. Rivulets of sewer water dripped down my cheek as I dragged myself through the sludge over to the other side of the tunnel and stood beside the opening. Sacha handed me his lit torch and I held it out into the darkness.
A hundred feet below, the orange light glinted off the water at the bottom of the chute. Jagged pieces of metal protruded from the surface, and metal handholds rose up the side of the round tunnel, all the way to right below my feet.
The stone sides of the hole were stained and striated with the different water levels. At the moment, it seemed pretty empty. My stomach lurched—it would’ve been a long drop that would absolutely have left me dead.
Feeling slightly nauseous, I kept my eyes on the jagged metal below. “Hey, Sacha?”
He grunted.
“Have I mentioned, thank you?”
He let out a low, slow chuckle.
WE REGATHERED, and I asked Sacha to spell me dry and clean, giving my exhaustion from passing out earlier as an excuse for not using my own magic. We continued down the tunnel and soon took a right turn.
We had to duck under a fallen piece of stone archway and entered a strange, though dry, room. It was already lit with torches spaced out on the wall. Someone, or someones, had painted murals. One wall featured a window that looked out onto a grassy field, another a painted bookshelf and armchair.
Blankets and sheets sat in a dozen neatly folded stacks against the wall, and cast-iron pots and pans occupied a sooty corner painted with kitchen cabinets. I frowned as Neo, Viktor, and Sacha moved past me.
“Do—do people live here?”
Viktor giggled up ahead and grinned at me, his gold teeth gleaming. “Course! Whole city under here.”
I eyed a wall painted with framed photographs and shivered. It was odd, people living underground like this, but clearly longing for a proper home. Again I thought of my flat and realized I had it better than I’d known.
As we continued on, it became clear that we’d entered the inhabited parts
