Page 18 of Shifter’s Thunder

“Your part is done.” His voice was strained. “When Zephyr’s portal opens, you go through. That’s an order.”

“I’ll leave right after the team arrives.” The firmness of her voice surprised her. Captive Avelunne would have already been trembling. Rescuer Avelunne was too busy listening for trouble.

A shimmering tear in reality opened nearby. It wasn’t a clean cut, but a grievous wound in the fleshy wall, which began to weep the all-too-familiar thick, black, putrid ichor. Keteng and Rumnaan, already naked and in human form, leaped through.

They landed on the squelching floor. They only lasted two steps before they fell apart. Keteng, the powerful mammoth shifter, dropped to her knees, her eyes streaming as a thick line of drool spilled from her mouth. Beside her, Rumnaan, the master thief, bent double and vomited violently. The acidic odor was the final straw for Tanner. He turned away, his body convulsing as he retched.

Avelunne looked at the beckoning portal, then at the three powerful shifters in trouble. They were handling the environment better than most first-day captives, but they were temporarily vulnerable. She couldn’t be the flighty coward now. They’d helped her, and now they depended on her. She had to be the person who stayed and faced the danger.

“I’m not leaving yet. I’ll lead you to the shifter pens. Then I’ll go.”

Tanner wiped his mouth on the back of his hand, his expression furious. “Avelunne—”

“We don’t have time,” she cut him off, her voice sharp. “The alarms are already glowing in the central hub. They won’t send necros uncontrolled because they’ll attack and eat anything that moves, and they won’t risk valuable new stock. But they will send keepers.”

He took a step toward her, his anger a palpable force, like the pressure before a storm. “Are you suicidal?”

“No.” She met his glare without flinching. “Shout at me later. Rescue my friends first.”

For a long second, his eyes searched her face. Finally, he gave a single, sharp nod.

Keteng pushed herself to her feet, wiping her face with a shaking hand. She helped pale and trembling Rumnaan stand. Their eyes found Avelunne.

She turned from them and faced the dimly lit, winding tunnel that led deeper into hell. The pens weren’t far, but every second of slippery demesne time was precious. So many things could go wrong. A single misstep or a moment of hesitation would cost her everything.

Prayers to the moon gods had never worked for her before, but there was a first time for everything. Please look after us all.

Her heart ached with a terror that was all for the man behind her. Although she’d only just met him, she wasn’t sure she could survive losing him.

Chapter 9

The acrid stench of the demesne, a foul cocktail of decay and rot, was worse than a beating. Tanner’s agreement to follow Avelunne grated against every protective instinct. Her bare shoulders were set with resolve as she took the lead, her pale form a beacon in the sulfurous gloom, and plunged into the winding, fleshy tunnel.

Hell was an understatement. Avelunne had tried to warn them, but no words in any language were up to the task of describing the grotesque reality. The curving corridors reminded him of a museum exhibit he’d once seen, a walk-through model of an enlarged small intestine. Here, though, the walls pulsed with a sluggish, irregular rhythm, and the floor yielded under his feet like a tongue. A fresh wave of nausea roiled in his empty stomach, and he swallowed hard against the bile. How had she survived twelve years of this?

“I’d give my left tusk for a blowtorch for my sinuses,” Keteng muttered. The powerful mammoth shifter, whose shifted form could likely stop a charging rhino, was pale and sweating. Beside her, Rumnaan moved with a thief’s economy, his face a carefully blank mask, though the tightness around his eyes and clenched jaw betrayed the strain. They were all warriors, seasoned and capable, but this place fought with poison in the air and horror in its architecture.

His gaze returned to Avelunne. She moved with enviable ease, though she was probably terrorized. Her slender build, the gentle curve of her hips, and the elegant line of her spine seemed so delicate. Yet here she was, leading them through hell.

Shifters were casual about nudity, but he somewhat guiltily admitted that his focus on Avelunne was anything but casual. He watched the subtle play of muscles in her back as she navigated a particularly slick patch of floor, a possessive heat coiling low in him. His thunderbird half was torn between wanting to claim her and kill for her. He forced his eyes forward, re-focusing on the mission.

“Rumnaan?” Avelunne waved a hand to encompass the corridor. “Can you mark our path? Something they won’t notice, but that we can follow back.”

Tanner’s respect for her deepened. In his own tactical assessment, he’d been focused on the objective, the insertion and extraction. She was already planning the exit, a detail a commander should have thought of.

Rumnaan gave a short nod. Without breaking stride, he reached out and pressed his fingertips to the rippling wall. For a moment, nothing happened. Then, the flesh puckered and healed over, leaving behind a thin, silvery line that looked like old scar tissue. It was subtle, almost invisible unless you knew to look for it. He repeated the action every forty or fifty paces and at every intersection, leaving a breadcrumb trail through hell.

They rounded yet another tight curve that opened into a wide oval area that reminded Tanner too much of a mammalian stomach. Two branching pinkish corridors beyond it added to the impression. Avelunne stopped and pointed at a grotesque, fleshy version of a mechanical door. It was a flat, hexagonal shape embedded in the wall. The skin-like surface swirled with faint, discordant patterns. Waves of dark, suppressive magic pulsed from it, a dissonant jangling along Tanner’s nerves.

Rumnaan stepped forward, his expression one of deep concentration. His fingers curled in a pattern that looked like crocheting with air.

The hexagonal door quivered, then began to melt. Thick, viscous goo, the color and stench of spoiled meat, pooled briefly. The wall and floor absorbed it like a thirsty sponge.

The moment the last of the door vanished, the blowback hit. It was like plummeting into a sudden sandstorm, ears popping, senses overloading. Tanner staggered as a thousand tiny needles bombarded him.

The pressure subsided. He shook his head, the phantom stinging already fading. The air from the now-open pen washed over them, different from the corridor’s stench, but equally bad.

“Avelunne! You made it!”