The Drowning Pens

Can a wolf drown in forty seconds, or does the panic kill her first?

The Atlantic did not care about the math. Waist-deep in the freezing black bilge of the lower holding pens, the water tingled with an acidic bite against my shins. Dim gray moonlight leaked through the hole we had just punched in the canning floor thirty feet above, illuminating the bronze sluice gate where House Tonnaragh’s leaping wolf was stamped right beside the Fuar-Chuan shark tooth.

I wiped salt slime from my eyes and drew breath against the freezing sludge. "Dropping thirty feet through rotted flounder boards into freezing brine is still only the third worst date I've endured in this harbor."

Lorcuin didn't laugh. His jaw set into stone as he looked at his father's crest. He didn't offer a defense for the high council that had cast me out into the gutters five years ago.

He raised the heir-blade. With a single, brutal downward chop, he brought the heavy steel down on the locking chain.

The impact tore through the subterranean chamber like a gunshot. Bronze sparked against iron. The chain link shattered, shearing off into the dark water with a heavy splash. The bronze gate groaned, swinging inward three inches before sticking on warped hinges.

The noise had a price.

Above our heads, iron grates rattled.

Bootsteps thudded against the upper catwalks. Heavy, wet breathing echoed down through the drainage chutes that lined the masonry ceiling.

"Company," I muttered, drawing two fifteen-inch steel dock spikes from my inner coat pockets.

"Three above," Lorcuin said, shifting his balance into the current. "Maybe four."

"Can you smell them?"

"Raw silver," he replied. "And rotting marrow."

The first body dropped through the central chute with a thunderous splash.

Water exploded outward in a blinding sheet. The rogue rose instantly from the foam, lunging on all fours with horrifying speed. His shoulders were distorted, the muscle fibers swollen and gray beneath torn leather. His eyes were milky white, weeping dark fluid down his hollow cheeks. Stage Two Airgiod-Rot. He had no human thought left behind those eyes. Only the chemical hunger to tear meat.

Two more dropped behind him, hitting the water ten feet to our right.

"They’re fully turned," I said, bracing my feet against the submerged flagstones. "No mind left to reason with."

"Then don't waste breath talking," Lorcuin growled.

The lead rogue leaped from the water, his claws hooking toward my throat.

I didn't back up. Backing up in waist-deep water gets you drowned.

I stepped into the lunge, dipping my shoulder beneath his reach. The cold brine dragged at my coat, but I used the water's resistance to anchor my pivot. As his chest cleared my head, I drove the tapered point of my left dock spike straight upward through the soft hollow beneath his jaw.

Bone cracked. The rogue shrieked, a wet gurgle that choked on black blood.

His weight crashed down on me, driving me into the stone floor. Before his claws could rake my face, a heavy hand grabbed the back of my collar and hauled me upright. Lorcuin's heir-blade whistled over my ear, severing the second rogue's arm at the shoulder in a clean, spraying arc.

The scent of crushed cedar and cold Atlantic rain rushed over my senses.

My chest constricted violently. A sudden pulse of heat tore through the scar on my collarbone, radiating down my spine in a jagged bolt of pure lightning.

The world narrowed to the sound of his breathing.

Mate.

My wolf snarled the word inside my ribs, clawing at my chest with fierce, desperate hunger.

Not now, you idiot, I told her, shoving the rogue's dead weight off my spikes.

The third attacker came from the dark corner by the intake pipe, lunging low beneath the water line to take Lorcuin's knees.

I didn't think. The connection between our bloodlines fired before my mind could register the threat. I felt the displacement in the current three feet behind him, the ripple of displaced water against my calves matching the shift in his balance.

"Drop!" I barked.

Lorcuin dropped into the brine without hesitation.

I vaulted over his submerged shoulders, driving both iron spikes down through the murky water into the lunging rogue's collarbone. Metal met cartilage with a sickening crunch. The rogue thrashed, his jaws snapping inches from my thighs, but Lorcuin surged upward from the depths like a rising leviathan. His left arm locked around the rogue's throat, twisting with brutal, hydraulic force until the neck snapped.

The chamber fell dead quiet, save for the sound of our ragged breathing and the continuous rush of water through the pipes.

Three dead rogues floated face-down in the scummy tide.

I wrenched my two steel spikes free from the floating carcasses and wiped black blood from my cheek with the back of a wet sleeve. "You're getting slow, heir."

"You took his jaw before he cleared the rafters," Lorcuin said, wiping his blade on his thigh. "I had to let you have the first kill."

"Generous of you."

"Always."

A harsh metallic screech cut through our banter.

Above us, the heavy iron trapdoors on the drainage chutes slammed shut. Thick bolts slid home with a series of heavy clunks.

Then came the hiss.

High on the northern wall, an auxiliary bypass pipe shuddered. The rusted valve wheel spun rapidly, turned by some unseen mechanism on the floor above. A thick, iridescent stream of purple-tinted liquid began gushing into the pen from the three-inch overhead conduit.

The smell of boiling sulfur and burned copper hit my nose instantly.

"The secondary still," I said, my voice hardening. "They're purging the holding tanks down here."

"The timer in the upper loft," Lorcuin said, looking up at the ceiling. "The broken chain must have triggered the overflow bypass."

"How long until this chamber fills?"

"Ten minutes. Maybe eight."

I looked at the water around our hips. The purple runoff was already swirling through the black brine, leaving oily rainbow slicks that sizzled against the stone walls. Where the liquid touched the surface, tiny plumes of caustic white steam hissed into the cold air.

If that concentration hit our skin for more than two minutes, the silver distillate would seep through our pores. It would rot our nervous systems before the tide even reached our chins.

"We can't climb back up," I said, pointing to the sealed iron chutes. "They’ve barred the drop doors from above."

"The foundation wall," Lorcuin said, turning toward the bronze sluice gate. "If we force the gate, can we swim the seaward pipe?"

"No," I answered flatly. "The main conduit runs three hundred yards under the cliff before it hits the open bay. It’s narrow, choked with intake grates, and filled with five hundred gallons of boiling chemical waste. We’d be dissolved before we made fifty yards."

Lorcuin looked at me, the dark water rising toward his ribs. "Then what is your play, tracker?"