Once I was done with the unpleasant task of photographing Piyusha’s body, I tucked the phone away and knelt, beginning the even more gruesome task of examining her wounds. Whoever took her had slit her throat just below her jaw, covering the runes on her chest and collarbones with a gummy-looking veil of watery red blood. There wasn’t enough blood for that to have been the wound that killed her; she’d already been bled almost dry by that point, probably via the slashes running down the length of her forearms and calves. I just hoped she’d been numb before they cut out her heart. It was a small thing to hope for, given the obvious and undeniable violence of her death. It was the only thing I had left to hope.

Her expression was a mixture of terror and raw confusion, like she hadn’t been able to believe what was happening to her. I blinked back tears as I reached down and brushed her eyelids closed. There was still a faint, lingering warmth to her skin, but not much; she’d been dead for a while.

“I’m so sorry, Piyusha,” I whispered. “If I’d known this was going to happen, I wouldn’t have left you alone. I’m so, so sorry.”

She didn’t answer me. There are ghosts in the world—my Aunt Mary is one of them, and she’s a lot of fun at parties—but they almost never result from ritual sacrifices. That kind of death commits the soul to something else altogether, and doesn’t leave anything behind. I just had to hope that stopping the bastards who’d done this would free Piyusha to move on to whatever afterlife waits for the Madhura.

I straightened, wiping tears from my eyes with the back of one hand. I couldn’t move her alone, and I wasn’t going to make her brothers come down into the dark. Maybe Ryan could help. Tanuki are stronger than they look, even when they’re in their human forms; he’d probably be able to shift her without any real—

Something hissed ahead of me. My head snapped up, shoulders locking as I took in the vulnerability of my position. Retreat was probably the best approach in this situation. I could return to collect Piyusha’s body, with Ryan to back me up and, more importantly, I wouldn’t wind up dead in a sewer.

The hissing started up behind me, even louder than the hissing from the front, just before the hissing started from the sides. Okay. Maybe I wasn’t going to be retreating after all.

I didn’t want to open with gunfire in an enclosed space until I knew exactly how many opponents I was dealing with. Since I lost my telescoping baton the last time I tangled with the Sleestaks, I’d been reduced to sharp things. That’s okay. I like sharp things. I reached back and drew the machete from behind my backpack with one hand, drawing the flensing knife from my belt with the other. Nice, sharp, and capable of hitting bone in a single thrust if I was using it correctly. If I ever wanted to see daylight again, I’d damn well better use it right.

“Well?” I asked the hissing darkness. I couldn’t see anything in the area illuminated by my halogen light, but there was a lot of sewer I couldn’t see at all. They had the advantage. “Are we going to do this thing, or what?”

The darkness boiled, and out of it came the servitors. There was no posturing this time; they moved with the speed of striking cobras, coming too fast for me to count. This gang was at least as large as the one Dominic and I fought off together, and that had been a close victory. If I couldn’t find an escape route, the best I could hope for would be a swift and reasonably painless death. Piyusha’s body provided a mute, horrifying example of what the worst would be.

I launched myself into a high kick, my toe catching the lead servitor in the chin as I slashed out to either side with my respective weapons. I felt, rather than saw, the machete find a target, hacking deep into scaled flesh. The flensing knife hit nothing but air, but at least it drove back the attacker on that side, giving me a little more space in which to maneuver. None of the servitors went down. That would have been too much to hope for.

My lead foot finished its arc, hitting the floor just in front of the servitor I’d kicked. He looked dazed. I took advantage of the hole in his guard, bringing my other leg up and kneeing him firmly in the groin. Whatever mutagenic process created the servitors, some attributes of their mammalian origins remained intact; as soon as my knee hit his nuts, he doubled over, allowing me to bring my machete down across the back of his neck. He toppled.

I was still wrenching my machete free when a tail snaked out of the darkness behind me and wrapped noose-tight around my neck, jerking me backward. My hand lost its grip on the machete handle, leaving me with nothing but the flensing knife, which I didn’t dare start waving around my own throat. I dropped it instead, frantically clawing at the tail that was in the process of choking me. Air had suddenly become a much more valuable commodity than weaponry.

My fingernails couldn’t find traction on the scales covering the servitor’s flesh. One of my nails caught and tore, the sharp flare of pain barely distracting from the all-encompassing pain in my neck. My vision was starting to blur around the edges as oxygen deprivation set in. I kicked and thrashed, but my feet didn’t make contact with anything. Suffocation is one of those things you just don’t learn how to fight through. Big problem, that.

A female voice spoke suddenly from up ahead in a language that I’d never heard before. It managed to be sibilant and fluid at the same time, like choral music written for snakes. The hissing around me stopped, replaced by confused clicking. The tail around my throat didn’t loosen. I continued to struggle, but I was losing strength, and without the leverage to break the hold, I wasn’t going to have much time to be curious about what was happening around me.

The woman spoke again, still in that strange snake-song language—but this time I recognized my name in amidst the trilling hisses. There was a distinct note of command to whatever she was saying. The clicking grew stronger, and the tail around my throat let go, sending me toppling to the ground. I managed to hit my knees and catch myself, preventing gravity from dropping me face-first onto Piyusha’s body. My right hand hit her shoulder, fingers sinking into her flesh. I shuddered and scrambled to my feet, grabbing my machete and wrenching it free before I turned to look toward the woman who’d ordered my release.

Candy was standing in the opening of a connecting tunnel, the fingers of her left hand pressed up against her cheek. She was staring at the servitors around me with enormous eyes glistening with tears. I’d never seen a dragon princess cry before.