I readied my shield, already acutely aware of how little energy remained to me. I kept it small, maybe three feet across, and had started to rise when I saw a shape flit into my peripheral vision above me: Tessa, in the middle of an airborne leap. She cried out again, and I yelped and pulled into a tight fetal curl behind my shield as another bolt of lightning ripped through the air.

Pressure slammed my shoulders against concrete floor. Light blinded me, and sound deafened me, leaving my world nothing but one long white tone. My lungs forgot their job for a couple of seconds, but my legs were on the ball, scrambling to get beneath me.

I had just managed to sort out where I was when another deafening flash and crack hit somewhere close and flung me to the ground again. And then a third. I tried to keep my shield up, but I couldn’t see anything but yellow spots, and there wasn’t anything left to put into it, anyway. It was like walking along and suddenly finding myself without any floor—which happened more literally a second later, when I tripped over a bleacher seat and fell a couple of rows down, banging myself up pretty well in the process.

Some dazed part of me realized that I’d made a mistake in my assumptions. Tessa wasn’t trying to take me out. She was just trying to keep me dazed and disoriented long enough for her people to arrive. That same part of me realized, even more belatedly, that I’d let myself be goaded into attacking by their words, let my heart rule my decision instead of playing it smart.

Something slapped my staff out of my hand. I went for my gun, only to be slammed to the ground by another terrific physical force. Then something like an iron bar slammed across my throat.

The light spots began to clear away in time for me to see a Denarian I’d never seen before atop me, this one like an androgynous, naked, bald statue of obsidian, green eyes glowing above human eyes of bright blue. A second shapeshifted creature, this one covered in a shaggy coat of grey, dusty-looking feathers, its face a grey mass of fleshy, hanging tendrils, had my wrists pinned to the ground.

Tessa stood over me, watching something on the far side of the room, her eyes narrowed. “Don’t choke him out,” she snapped. “He can’t talk if he’s unconscious.”

The obsidian statue eased up the pressure on my neck a little.

“Report,” Tessa said.

“We think the Hellhound is hiding in the bathrooms,” came a strained-sounding, harsh woman’s voice.

“You think?”

“Varthiel and Ordiel are down and McKullen is dead. They were searching there. The exit is watched. There’s no way for him to escape the room.”

“Their coins?” Tessa asked.

“Recovered, my lady.”

“Thank you, Rosanna. Any other word?”

“We’ve found Thorned Namshiel, unconscious and gravely wounded. There was extensive damage all around the area in which he fell.”