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Before the werewolves can sort themselves out and slither into the cave, Timas yells, “Everybody down!” I catch sight of him pushing a button on a tiny detonator as I leap for safety. Then there’s the mother of all explosions and the roof around the entrance comes crashing down, muting the howls of the werewolves, plunging us into darkness, entombing us beneath the ground.
Nobody says anything for several minutes. We can’t — the air’s clogged with dust and bits of debris. We crawl away from the rubble in search of cleaner air, heads low, covering our faces with jackets and T-shirts, breathing shallowly. The roof slopes downwards and after a while we have to bend. When that becomes uncomfortable, we sit and wait for the air to clear. I’m exhausted. I could happily fall asleep where I’m sitting.
Shark breaks the silence. He coughs, spits out something, then says, “Who’s still alive?”
“Me,” Timas answers brightly.
“Me,” Prae Athim gasps.
“Me,” Stephen says morosely — I think he was good friends with Liam.
“Me,” I mutter through the fabric of my T-shirt, not ready to chance the air yet.
“Me,” Meera groans, “though I feel like half my ribs are broken. What the hell did you throw me in for, Grubbs?”
“I was trying to save you,” I growl.
“I could have saved myself,” she snaps.
“Ungrateful cow!”
“Chauvinist pig!”
We laugh at the same time.
“Cute,” Shark huffs. “Now somebody tell me they brought a flashlight.” Nobody says anything. “Brilliant. So we’re stuck here in the —”
Something glows. I tug my T-shirt down and squint at the dim light. It’s coming from Timas’s gun, from the small control panel I noticed earlier. Humming, Timas makes a few adjustments and the glow increases, just enough to illuminate the area around us. He looks up. His grin is firmly back in place, though it looks a bit eerie in the weak green light.
“Remind me to kiss you when this is over,” Shark says, struggling not to smile.
“Me too,” Meera adds. “Seriously.”
Timas shrugs as if it’s no big thing, then raises his rifle so we can see more. We’re in a tight, cramped cave (or spacious tunnel, depending on how you look at it). The roof is much lower than it was at the entrance and dips even more farther back. The rocks are jagged and jab into me. The floor is sandy and littered with sharp stones. It’s humid and dusty from the explosion. But I’m too grateful to be alive and in a werewolf-free zone to feel anything but utter delight — love, almost — for our surroundings.
“How far back does this run?” Shark asks.
“That information wasn’t on the charts,” Timas says, then sets his rifle down. “Wait here.” He crawls away from us. We wait, breathing softly, nobody needing to be told that air might be precious. Timas is gone for what feels like two minutes… three… four.
I see him returning before I hear him. He can move in almost perfect silence when he wishes. He returns to his rifle, picks it up, and sets it on his lap. “The news is both positive and negative,” he says. “The cave is approximately one hundred feet long, but it doesn’t finish with a wall. There’s a small gap between roof and floor. Air is blowing through from the other side. So we needn’t fear suffocation.”
“That sounds good to me,” Shark says. “What’s the bad news?”
“The floor isn’t solid.” Timas scrapes a nail through the layers of sand, grit, and small stones beneath us.
“So?” Shark growls.
“This area is riddled with small caves and tunnels. I’ve no idea how large the opening on the other side of the hole is — it wasn’t on any of the maps — but if it’s large enough to permit entry, or if it can be enlarged, and the werewolves catch our scent, they’ll be able to burrow through.”
Shark frowns. “If the hole’s small, we could block it.”
“Yes,” Timas says, “but that won’t hold them. As I said, the floor isn’t solid. With their claws, it wouldn’t take them long to dig through. We could shoot the one in front and use its body to jam the entrance. But the soil here is extremely poor. Others would be able to dig under or around it.
“But, hey,” he adds with a shrug. “It might never happen.”
“Let’s assume it will,” Shark sniffs, then peers around for me. “What about that window you promised?”
“I’ll get to work on it.” I lean against the wall and rotate the creaks out of my neck. I’d kill for Tylenol.
