Chapter 30 · Underwater Choke

A hand locked around Dante's ankle and jerked.

He dropped like lead. His heavy coat ballooned in the black lake, and the water around his bad shoulder bloomed thick and dark in the dive beams. Blood smoke.

I didn't think. I seized his collar with both fists and kicked down into the freeze.

Stupid move. The water was so cold my molars ached, and my ribs burned from the drop off the dock. Two beams swept through the murk, blinding white. Divers. Wetsuits, full face masks, regulators chugging bubbles in steady, lazy streams.

They had tanks. We had half a lungful of trapped air.

The first diver hooked a thick forearm straight across Dante's windpipe. Dante's eyes snapped wide. He clawed at the slick neoprene, but his right shoulder was already shredded from the courtyard ambush, useless and dragging. His left hand couldn't get purchase.

He didn't look at the diver. He looked right at me.

Like he'd rather drown than watch me go under.

Not happening.

I reached down his leg to the combat boot. He'd jammed a flat titanium blade behind the laces right before the iron gates blew. I'd called him paranoid. I wasn't laughing now.