Chapter 12 · Sign or Bleed

The maintenance door slammed open hard enough to crack against the tunnel wall.

Carson shoved me behind him before I could blink. His shoulder hit my chest. Hot blood soaked through the back of his shirt, sticky against my fingers.

Sera Voss stood at the top of the concrete stairs in a black coat that looked way too clean for a sewer tunnel. Three hunters filled the steps behind her. Silver batons. Moon masks. Guns pointed down.

“Well,” Sera said. “There you are.”

Carson’s claws dragged over the floor.

The sound made my teeth hurt.

“Don’t,” I whispered.

“I’m trying,” he said, and his voice was already wrong around the edges.

His pupils had swallowed nearly all the gray in his eyes. The silver wound under his ribs was smoking through his shirt. Every breath looked like somebody was punching him from the inside.

Sera smiled at that.

“Still fighting it?” she asked. “That has to be exhausting, Carson.”

“Go to hell.”

“Been there. Bad management.”

She lifted one gloved hand.

The hunters came down the stairs.

I grabbed Carson’s arm. “We need another way out.”

“There isn’t one.”

“Then make one.”

He looked at me for half a second.