Page 5

“Do you think it’s monsters who caused the problem down here?” Gin asked me as we walked.

“No,” I assured her. “There hasn’t been a monster sighting on Earth in three years. Not since the Earth’s magic rebalanced and the gods and demons regained control over their beasts. They took the beasts to other worlds, to fight in other wars.”

“The gods and demons are at war again?” Gin said, her voice cracking.

I didn’t blame her. When deities went to war, mortals died.

“No, the gods and demons are not at war with each other at the moment,” I said. “They’re keeping to their truce.”

So far. But that truce was a sticky one, and they’d come way too close to war many times in these last few years. It was really hard to reverse millennia of fighting and distrust. The first few months of the truce had been the easiest, when the novelty of peace was fresh and both sides were united in fighting a common enemy. But no one had heard from the Guardians in three years, and each day that passed, each day that the Guardians stuck to the shadows, it grew harder to keep the peace.

“I doubt it’s monsters.” I shook my head. “It’s probably just bandits. I bet that’s why there was a magic barrier on the control house. So no one could inter?—”

A low, menacing growl cut me off. Then a trio of oversized rats emerged from the shadows, snapping their fang-filled jaws.

“Those don’t look like bandits,” Gin coughed.

Sighing, I drew my sword. I should have known the peace and quiet were too good to last.

2

A DIFFERENT KIND OF MONSTER

The rats were larger than I was—and twice as mean. They immediately pegged Gin as a noncombatant and went straight for her. I sliced my sword through the air, alleviating one of the rats from the heavy burden of its abnormally-large head.

Gin screamed when the severed head hit the ground in front of her feet. Then she kicked it into the pool of sewer water bubbling and gurgling one level down from us.

Claudia and Alec were fighting a giant rat each. Claudia had managed to set hers on fire with magic. Alec, to whom subtlety was a four-letter word, just threw an exploding potion at his. Flaming rat collided with exploding rat, sending both beasts tumbling over the edge of the walkway.

“Still not dead? Geez, what does it take to kill these things?” Alec said, looking down into the sewage lake below. He pulled out another exploding potion, this one far larger and more potent than the last.

“Wait!” I said, rushing toward him.

I was too late. The exploding potion hit the lake, kicking up a tidal wave of foul water that washed over us.

“Why, Alec?” I wiped my filthy face with my equally filthy hand. Every inch of me was filthy now. “Why do you always have to blow up everything?”

His brows struggled to arch under the weight of the sludge that caked his whole face. “That’s pretty ironic, you know, coming from the Angel of Chaos.”

I clenched my teeth. He had a point, of course. But then I had never created a tidal wave of sewage in a tight, enclosed space.

Alec gazed down at the dead rats floating atop the pool’s surface. “Well, it looks like the monsters are back on Earth.”

“No.” I squeezed out my long ponytail. My hair, usually pale blonde, was currently sporting an attractive shade of brown-green. “I didn’t feel any magic from them.”

“Leda, those were not normal rats,” Claudia said.

She was freezing the muck off her clothes, which seemed to be working pretty well, so I copied her. And so did Alec. But at least he was a gentleman and performed the spell on Gin first. Soon, the walkway tunnel was echoing with the icy clinks of frozen sludge sheets hitting pavement.

“No, they weren’t normal rats,” I agreed. “But they weren’t magical rats either. They’re a different kind of monster altogether.”

“I think I might have an explanation.” Gin pointed at the remains of a massive rats’ nest in the pool below. “I think that’s what was clogging up the water system. And look there.” She indicated the shredded remains of the cables leading to the dome camera on the ceiling. “They gnawed the cables, taking out the cameras too.”

“Huh, I think you’re right.” I watched as the pool started to swirl, dragging the dead rats—and their former nest—under. “Well, at least Alec’s explosions took care of that problem.”

A smug smile twisted Alec’s lips as he gave us a shrug. “You’re welcome.”

Gin turned her tablet, showing me the readings on the screen. “Leda, there are some pretty toxic chemicals coming from that water.”