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22
The acidic smoke wafted up,tearing my eyes and making my nose run. Worse, it was making me wheeze. I’d never had a serious asthma attack, nothing I had to go to the hospital for, but I’d also never had an alchemist dump toxic bath beads at myfeet.
A shout came from the tunnel, and Synaru-van stepped out of sight. For a moment, I couldn’t see any of the darkelves.
I closed my eyes and concentrated on the lump of the lock-pick charm against my skin, then mentally willed it to deactivate the bonds. I didn’t truly believe it would work, but I had totry.
The charm grew warm against my skin, as if it was doing its best to help me. But the bonds remained intact, crackling bars of energy wrapped around me, stealing my ability to move. I focused harder, seeing the charm in my mind’s eye even as I imagined the magical bondsbreaking.
“Work,” I rasped, voice as raw as my breaths. “Work.”
The charm grew even hotter, almost burning me. I imagined smoke wafting up and my underwear catching fire. What a way togo.
“No,focus.” I poured all my mental energy into the charm, imagining the bonds breaking. Snapping likebreadsticks.
A surge of energy seemed to pour from me. Not from the charm but fromme.
The magical bonds pinning me against the wall disappeared so quickly that my knees almost buckled as my weight settled onto them again. I lunged and caught the counter forsupport.
Confusion washed over me as I shook the feeling back into my legs. Had the charm done that or hadI?
Beyond my innate abilities to sense magic and heal, I’d never been able to summon a lick of magic in my life. My ragged breaths echoed in my ears, reminding me that my healing ability wasn’t helping now. I had to figure something elseout.
As quietly and quickly as I could, I scrambled away from the vapors wafting from those beads. But getting away didn’t improve my breathing. I struggled to get enough air into my lungs, and panic made my hands shake. The dark elf had taken my sword, my gun, my sample kit, Sindari, and even my cursed inhaler. How was I supposed to get out of thismess?
Maybe I should have accepted Zoltan’s offer to make me a lung-clearing concoction. Not that the dark elves wouldn’t have taken it when they searchedme.
Wait, what had he said would work? An aerosol of manticore venom mixed with… what had it been? Magnesium sulfate. That was Epsom salt, wasn’t it? Maybe there was some in the alchemy lab. Would there be manticore venom? And had Zoltan been messing with me, or had he been earnest? The vampirehadsent a giant tarantula after me. Manticore venom sounded like something that would kill me, not saveme.
But if I couldn’t fix my lungs, I might dieanyway.
I scrambled to the cabinets and started flinging open doors, hoping I’d be able to identify whatever ingredients I found. If everything was in the dark-elf language, I wasscrewed.
More shouts came from the tunnel, and the floor quaked. Startled, I gripped the counter. Whatever was going on, it was more than two scouts warning their people of an intruder in thecomplex.
Two cloaked dark elves ran past the alchemy lab, their hoods down and their white hair streaming behind them. They didn’t glance my way. I didn’t know what was happening, but if it bought me a few minutes, I’d gladly takethem.
I spotted and lunged for a giant bag of Epsom salt. Not only was it not labeled with obfuscating dark-elf symbols, but it looked like it had come from Walgreens. Or maybe Amazon. Did they two-day ship to subterranean dark-elflairs?
With my breaths growing wheezier and more ragged by the moment, I verified on the label that itwasmagnesium sulfate—thankfully enough of that infrared light filtered back from the chamber for me to read. I tore open the bag and dumped some out. The tiny crystals that spilled onto the counter didn’t look like anything that one could inhale easily, but the stuff dissolved in liquid, didn’t it? Peoplebathedin Epsomsalt.
Leaving it, I went in search of manticore venom. Sadly, that wouldn’t be in a drugstorebag.
I saw an atomizer bottle and set it over by the magnesium sulfate. A mortar and pestle followed. A pen and a small notebook open and face-down on the counter caught my eye. I turned it over and spotted fresh ink in a foreign language and what looked like a list of ingredients, then shoved it in a pocket. It wouldn’t help me breathe, but maybe it had information about the formula the alchemist had used onWillard.
After checking a dozen more cabinets and not seeing anything venom-like, I tugged open a refrigerator door. Vials and vials of blood, ichor, and unidentifiable strangely colored liquids I couldn’t guess at hung inracks.
A boom rocked the tunnels, and the floor heaved again, the vials rattling. My senses were alive enough to tingle with awareness—someone was throwing magic around. A lot ofmagic.
Between the magic of the dark elves themselves and all the artifacts in the place, I couldn’t begin to sort out individual auras. And at that moment, I didn’t care who was giving them trouble. I felt faint, and the tips of my shaking fingers were numb. I wasn’t getting enough oxygen into mybody.
With fumbling hands, I pulled out racks, scanning the labels on the vials. These had all been labeled with sigils reminiscent of the one from Willard’s apartment. There were three vials with symbolsidenticalto that one—were these more of the same potion? They had to be. I snatched one in case it would help Zoltan create an antidote, and stuffed it in apocket.
In a rack in the refrigerator door, there were vials of dark red liquid—blood—mingled with clearer vials. The labels held drawings as well as sigils. They were of animals, lizards, and even fish. There was the kraken. I grabbed it for Zoltan in case I didn’t get my sample kit back and kept scanning. An elephant, a wyvern, a toad. I didn’t see any dragons. But there—my heart lurched. Lion head, wings, barbed tail. A manticore. There were two of them. One vial held blood and the one next to it was filled with a clearer liquid—it had to be venom. Ihopedit wasvenom.
As a female voice screamed nearby, more power was unleashed, back in the direction of the ramp. It was closer than it had been before, as if the dark elves were fighting off someintruder.
I dumped some of the Epsom salt into the mortar, then stared at the little vial of venom. There wasn’t nearly enough to fill an atomizer bottle or even mix with more than a few crystals. Maybe I was supposed to dilute it? That seemed logical. Breathing straight venom sounded suicidal, but maybe a smaller dose stimulated the airways into expanding without killing aperson.
