My vision tunneled.

  “He’s still bleeding,” Lillibet said quietly. “Which means he’s alive.”

  The nearest Frill let out a warning hiss as we stepped into the chamber. The rest echoed it, frills expanding, rattling like a macabre chorus.

  Something shifted in the shadows at the far end of the basin.

  A shape stepped out.

  It was man?shaped, sort of. Reptilian, covered in overlapping heavy black scales that caught the weak light in oily glints. Muscular, thick through the shoulders, roughly the size of a small bear. A row of spines ran from the back of its neck down to the base of its tail, each one jagged and sharp. Its eyes were a muddy amber, set deep under a heavy brow ridge.

  “Chupacabra,” Lillibet growled, and there was something in her voice I’d never heard before: not fear, exactly. Wariness.

  I’d never seen one. I was pretty sure it wasn’t in my compendium. This one looked like it had crawled straight out of someone’s worst folklore and into the drainage system.

  Then it spoke.

  “Ah,” it said, voice guttural and rough. The words were clipped, but they were words. “More children.”

  My brain did a brief blue?screen. They can talk?

  It took a step closer, claws clicking on the stained concrete, gaze sweeping over us with slow relish.

  “The boy,” it said, nodding at Theo. “He clearly wants to die. Came looking for it.” Its mouth split in a toothy grin. “Glad there are so many more now.” It inhaled, nostrils flaring. “We are hungry. Don’t kill the males.”

  The Frills hissed again, louder this time, and began to close the ring around us. There were more than I’d counted at first—fourteen, fifteen, maybe more, their frills a shifting wall of sickly color.

  We tightened our formation automatically, the drills from the field kicking in. Circle up. Blades out. Backs to each other.

  “Remember,” Lillibet said, voice low. “Cover your sector. Don’t chase.”

  Then the chamber exploded into motion.

  Frills lunged from all sides. We met them in a ragged, practiced way. Hana’s basic bone blade hacked at tendons; beside her, Jamal swung Moon Shadow in a tight arc that sheared clean through a Frill’s foreleg. Another leapt for him—he took a rake along his arm to step inside its guard and drove the black blade up under its jaw, the thing going limp almost before it hit the floor. Luis absorbed a body?check that would’ve slammed me into the wall and answered with a kick to a Frill’s knee joint that made it back off.

  I held my ground, sword up, counting breaths. One came for me, frill flared wide. I ducked around its swipe, slashed along its flank, felt bone bite through meat. It screamed and pulled back. Another took its place.

  We were…managing. Barely. It was chaos, but controlled chaos, and for a moment it felt like we might actually clear them.

  Then the Chupacabra moved.

  It had been watching, hanging back like a ringmaster. Now it padded forward, slow and deliberate, tail twitching.

  For a heartbeat, it stopped.

  Its head turned toward the entrance of the chamber. Its nostrils flared. Its eyes went…wider.

  It looked scared.

  I followed its gaze.

  The Reaper stood in the mouth of the tunnel.

  She looked exactly like she had the first time I’d seen her and nothing like it at all. Same black leather pants, same long coat, same razor?tight bun of white hair. Calm as if she’d been out for a walk by the lake.

  Her sword was still sheathed at her hip.

  She wore leather gloves tipped with green claws that curved like sickle blades. They were splattered with something dark and thick that dripped steadily onto the floor.

  Monster blood, my brain supplied helpfully.

  Her hard eyes locked on the Chupacabra.

  It took a step back.

  Then she moved.

  “Move” didn’t really cover it. One heartbeat she was at the entrance; the next she was among us. A glide, a sweep of her arm, a shift of her weight that barely disturbed the hem of her coat.

  The green claws flashed.

  From the center of our formation, it felt like the world strobed—Frills up, Frills down. One second, a monster snapping at Luis’s leg; the next, its throat open, black blood fountaining. A Frill rearing at my shoulder; a blur of motion; its head rolling away from its body.

  There was no wasted effort. No spin, no extra step. Just straight?line violence applied with terrifying precision.

  By the time my brain caught up enough to count, the floor around us was littered with bodies. Over a dozen Frills lay in wet, twitching heaps, frills half?furled, eyes glazing.

  The Reaper straightened, blood dripping from the claws of her gloves, and turned her full attention back to the Chupacabra.

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  It charged.

  She still didn’t draw her sword.

  She just shifted. A slight twist of her torso, a half?step to the side, coat flaring. As it barreled past the spot where she had been, her arm moved—barely more than a flick of the wrist.

  For a second, nothing happened.

  Then the Chupacabra’s momentum carried it three more strides before its legs folded. Its body hit the floor with a wet thump. Its head rolled another foot, neck spines clattering against the concrete.

  Silence punched the air out of the chamber.

  The Reaper didn’t even look back at it.

  Her gaze snapped to Theo, hanging limp against the wall. Then to us.

  “Get the idiot down,” she said.

  Her voice was as hard as her eyes.

  The Reaper didn’t wait to see if we obeyed.

  She turned on her heel and swept back the way she’d come, boots leaving faint black prints in the monster blood.

  For half a heartbeat, no one moved. Then everything snapped into fast?forward.

  Luis stepped in under Theo’s sagging weight, wrapping his arms around his waist to take the strain off his arms. Theo’s head lolled.

  Jamal went for the chains. Up close, there was no lock—just links wrapped tight around Theo’s wrists and the railroad spikes, twisted on themselves until they bit into skin and rust.

  “Hold him,” Jamal said through his teeth.

  He wedged an Orc-bone sword into one of the snarled loops and heaved. Metal shrieked. A link twisted, then snapped with a sharp crack that echoed down the tunnel, leaving the weapon chipped but unbroken. One hand came free enough to slip out; the other still hung, fingers purpled.

  “Again,” Hana said, bracing Theo’s forearm to keep it from jerking.

  Jamal set the blade against the next knot of chain and pried. Another link gave with a grinding pop. The last of the pressure let go all at once. Theo slumped; for a second he was nothing but dead weight.

  Luis grunted and adjusted, taking all of it, lowering him carefully. We grabbed what we could—arms, shoulders, the back of his ruined shirt—and eased him down the wall, trying not to jostle the raw places more than we had to.

  He was a mess. New cuts over old scars, bandages ripped open, blood everywhere. Close up, his skin looked waxy, too pale under the smears of dirt and red.

  “Still alive,” Lillibet said, fingers pressed to his throat. “Pulse faint.”

  “Out,” she added. “Now.”

  Two vehicles waited at the curb: the familiar campus shuttle idling with its hazard lights blinking, and beside it a white panel van with the Northbridge crest ghosted on the side. The van’s back doors stood open, interior lit up stark and bright. Inside, it looked like someone had crammed an ambulance into a metal shoebox—narrow gurney, cabinets, straps, gleam of metal and plastic.

  A medic in dark scrubs and a Northbridge jacket stood in the open doors, gloved hands already out.

  “Here!” he called. “Bring him here.”

  Jamal and Luis didn’t need telling twice. They half?carried, half?dragged Theo toward the van, his feet sliding uselessly on the pavement. The medic dropped to one knee on the bumper, bracing as they maneuvered him up and in.

  “On his back—easy,” the medic snapped, already seeing the mess of torn bandages. “Count of three. One, two—”

  They heaved. Theo landed on the narrow mattress in a boneless sprawl, head lolling, rust smeared across what was left of his shirt. The medic’s hands were on him before he finished settling: checking pupil response with a penlight, fingers at his throat, then his wrist.

  “BP’s going to be a problem,” he muttered, mostly to himself. “Too much blood left down there.”

  He flicked a look over our crowd, eyes hard. “I can take two. That’s it. The rest of you go in the shuttle.”

  Shara didn’t wait for names. She climbed straight in, face white, hands already reaching for Theo’s.

  “Sinclair.” Lillibet’s voice snapped me back. She had a hand on the shuttle door, the Sera and the others bunching behind her. “Go with them. I need to keep an eye on the rest.”

  “But—” I started.

  “That’s an order.” Her gaze cut to Theo, then back. “You’re the other member of our team. Go.”

  My legs moved before my brain could argue. I scrambled into the van; the medic grabbed a strap on the door and yanked it shut behind me. Metal thunked. The world shrank to white walls and the reek of antiseptic and blood.

  “Hold on,” the driver called through the tiny window to the cab. The van lurched away from the curb, throwing me sideways onto the narrow bench opposite the gurney.

  Shara had a death?grip on Theo’s free hand, knuckles bloodless. Her other hand shook where it rested on his shoulder. The medic stepped around her like he’d done this in tighter spaces.

  “We’re going to Annex infirmary, trauma bay,” he said, more for my benefit than hers. “You two stay out of my way unless I tell you otherwise. If he wakes up, talk to him. Keep him oriented.”

  He snapped open a cabinet overhead. Clear plastic rustled; tubing clinked. In three practiced motions he had an oxygen mask over Theo’s face, the elastic biting into tangled hair, a green hose snaking down to a small tank. He cracked the valve; cool air hissed.

  “Come on, kid,” he murmured, watching Theo’s chest. “Breathe with me.”

  He peeled back soggy bandages with a pair of trauma shears, cutting cloth and gauze in long, ruthless strips. The wounds underneath looked worse out of the tunnel—angry red slashes, punctures, ragged bite marks, the older stitched injuries swollen where Frill claws had reopened them.

  “Jesus,” I breathed.

  “Yeah, well, let’s see if he’s got one more miracle this week,” the medic said, not unkindly.

  He slapped a blood?pressure cuff around Theo’s upper arm and hit the button. The machine whirred and squeezed. Numbers blinked to life on a small monitor clipped to the wall.

  “Low,” he said. “Not catastrophic. Yet.”

  He swabbed the inside of Theo’s elbow, then slid a needle in with the kind of confidence that made my own veins ache. Clear fluid started up a line into his arm, bag swinging lightly from a hook above.

  The van hit a pothole. Everything bounced—bottles, straps, my stomach. Shara flinched, curling more protectively around Theo’s hand.

  “He’s going to be okay, right?” she whispered, eyes on the rise and fall of his chest.

  “He’s bad,” he said. “But he’s young, and he made it out of there. That counts for a lot.”

  He pressed thick pads over the worst of the open wounds and wrapped them down tight with fresh gauze, hands moving fast but careful not to rip what skin was left. Every time he cinched a bandage, a fresh seep of red bloomed and then slowed.

  “Still bleeding,” I said, before I could stop myself.

  “That’s what blood does,” he replied. “What matters is that it slows down and stays inside where it belongs. And that he keeps breathing.” He glanced at me. “Talk to him. Give him something to come back to.”

  I swallowed and leaned forward, gripping the edge of the bench so I wouldn’t grab for him instead.

  “Theo,” I said, voice too loud in the cramped space. I swallowed and tried again, softer. “Theo, it’s Diana. You did something incredibly stupid and we’re all very mad at you, so you don’t get to die, okay?”

  The van took a hard turn; the world outside the tiny rear window smeared into dark and streetlights. The campus shuttle’s headlights ghosted behind us for a second, then vanished when we crested a hill.

  Theo didn’t move. The only sound from him was the faint hiss of oxygen through the mask and a ragged, wet rasp under it. The monitor beeped in a slow, stubborn rhythm.

  Shara pressed her forehead to his arm. “Please,” she whispered. “Please don’t go.”

  The medic adjusted the IV flow, watched the numbers, then nodded once to himself.

  “Come on, kid,” he said again, the words quiet but fierce. “You made it this far. Don’t quit now.”

  The van barreled through the city, lights strobing across Theo’s pale face, the little box of an ambulance rocking around us like we were at sea.