You expended too much capitol fending off exercise equipment.

  Even worse, it wasn’t merely the inanimate objects that the mages needed to worry about. I saw a man dodge a flower pot, only to have a huge wolf’s head stick out of a shadow and snatch him up. He disappeared without a trace, his scream lost in the darkness of some tunnel or other, as if he’d never been there at all. But other attacks were less subtle—like Granny Top-Knot and her group shot-gunning heads from hidden perches as we flew by.

  “Gimme the shotgun!” Caleb said, wanting to get in on the act.

  I passed it over, before barely avoiding decapitation from a rock ledge. They protruded out in patches all along the wall in this section, like clumps of weird mushrooms, and should have been knocked out ages ago as a safety measure. But they’d been left intact instead, to catch anybody who didn’t know this place well.

  Which, unfortunately, included us.

  As Caleb demonstrated when he got bonked on the head a second later, making him curse and spurt blood from an ugly wound. And miss his intended target, not that it mattered. The mages were hedged so tightly that the shell hit another guy, right behind the first.

  “You okay?” I yelled back, and had Caleb flash me a bloody smile.

  “Better than him!”

  This was true. The mage had dropped with a yell, holding his leg. And enhanced speed meant that he was left in the dust by his associates as soon as he fell, with nobody going back for him.

  Of course, a second later, there was nothing to go back for.

  But the wolves were having their own problems. I saw several drop from spells flung at them from above, including a brown Were who was all but incinerated on the spot. More were felled by gunshots and lacerated by exploding rock shelves, which in this section were taking the brunt of the overhead barrage. While another moved just fast enough to avoid a disruptor, the dislocator’s nasty cousin.

  Ensuring that it hit the mage to the right of him, instead.

  If the unfortunate man had been properly shielded, he might have gotten off lightly. A direct hit would have almost certainly ripped apart his shields, as the charge on those things was no joke. Yet, if he was lucky, he might have gotten them back up before anyone noticed.

  But he wasn’t properly shielded.

  He’d taken one too many dumbbells to the head, which was why I was suddenly looking at a statue-like figure, dull red and gloopy, as if a child had made him out of runny clay. The features were no longer recognizable, having melted into the amorphous mass of the head. But the mouth was still there and still screaming.

  For a moment, until the rock absorbed it, too, filling it up as if he was gargling lava.

  Disruptors didn’t send body parts flying off to attach to anything in the nearby area, like dislocators. They did something worse. They sent DNA, swapping it for whatever or whoever’s was handy.

  The choice was arbitrary, and the spell, unsurprisingly considering where we were, had glommed onto a nearby piece of rock. Leaving the wolves surging around the new, living statue as carelessly as if he’d been just another piece of stone. While, on a nearby piece of rock, a smear of color bloomed.

  I looked away, swallowing hard.

  The Corps didn’t use the awful things. Dislocators were permitted because they simply killed—most of the time, anyway. And were useful for taking on many opponents at once, or scaring a large group away once they realized what you had.

  Disruptors were different. They were designed to leave you alive, only as a terrible, twisted version of yourself that would intimidate the hell out of anyone who saw you. The dark had developed them some time ago, but while the Corps studied them, we didn’t use them.

  But we could still be affected by them.

  And, for the first time today, I felt true terror creeping over me.

  “Didn’t think those worked on non-living things,” Caleb said shakily, as if feeling the same way.

  “Well, now you know.” I gripped the steering wheel hard enough to bruise.

  I wanted out of here.

  I wanted out now.

  But that was a little hard to imagine, after half a dozen mages threw tethers onto the back of the truck, trying to bring us down. We whipped around a corner and they whipped with us, determined to get their prize. Or maybe, seeing their desperate faces, they were just trying to hitch a ride out of here.

  I wasn’t sure which, but I wasn’t having it.

  They’d put levitation spells on something under their boots, allowing them to surf along in our wake. But that didn’t really help, since the hall was just wide enough to allow me to sling them back and forth across the width of it. They went crashing into walls, smashing into ridges, and in one case, dragging face first over the stony ground, when whatever he was using as a platform shot out from under him. He was smart enough to let go before the rest of his flesh was scraped off, but the others weren’t. They doggedly held on, even when they started to get dangerously close to the fulminare’s electric field.

  Allowing Caleb to get a tether of his own around their ropy spells, pull them together, and jerk.

  That ended that, I thought, as the electrified mages fell away, smoking, onto the corridor floor. But they had accomplished one very important thing in the process. They’d slowed us down.

  Not by a lot, but by enough that a spell from above hit the engine hard enough to flip us. That didn’t make much of a difference to our momentum, since the engine wasn’t propelling us anyway. But it left us hanging upside down and clinging to our seats and whatever else we could find for dear life. Meanwhile, the truck started careening back the way we’d come.

  Right over the heads of a lot of enraged mages.

  Well, some were enraged. Others ducked the lightning storm, then seemed relieved to have a way out of the trap they’d found themselves in. They made a break for the open corridor ahead as soon as we were out of the way, thus splitting the ranks, with half continuing to pelt down the hallway and the rest bunching up to lob spells at the guy they still believed to be Sebastian.

  Who used his considerable bulk to abruptly flip the truck right-side up again, before a dozen spells hit the undercarriage hotly enough to melt parts of it.

  That saved our lives, but also unbalanced the truck, which started slinging around the small space in a circle, shedding sparks and electricity onto the crowd below.

  I fought with the sluggish steering to get us evened out, while acid from a potion bomb ate away at the floorboards under my feet, turning them to metal lace. I also tried to keep an eye on the battle, although that was difficult through the potion fumes seeping up from below and smoke billowing out of the merrily burning fire that had been my engine. And which finally decided to fall out, prompting a new barrage from those below.

  Several more spells tore at us from overhead, and they were better aimed, because they weren’t having to deal with dripping potion’s residue, smoke and a renewed attack from the pack of Weres, who had just caught up to their prey. The bolts barely missed the madly circling truck, and that was only because they’d been fired at an angle and on the run. The mages who had been pelting along the rocks above had taken a moment to reorient themselves and were now headed back this way.

  With a vengeance.

  I managed to slam a hex into one, knocking him into the melee below. But it hurt me almost as much as it did him, with the sprained-muscle feeling of bottomed-out magic echoing through my body like a struck funny bone. I wasn’t going to be throwing too many more of those.

  Which was a problem, since another blast took that moment to hit the wall beside us, bombarding the truck with a hurricane of shards that mimicked the sound of a machine gun. And felt like one, too, when shrapnel peppered my thigh through the missing door of the truck, and a jagged piece bit into my side, leaving me feeling like I’d been shanked.

  But I’d managed to get us straightened out again and we rocketed ahead. We were moving in the wrong direction, but right now, I’d take it. Right now, I’d take anything that wasn’t here.

  Because the mages up top had almost caught up, as indicated by a succession of explosions, creating craters in the walls and floor all around us. Rock flew, spells rained, people screamed. And it was so fast and frantic that I couldn’t stop trying to dodge long enough even to attempt to fire back.

  Caleb, on the other hand, had acquired a new gun. How I didn’t know, but I guessed that he’d used his tether like a whip to snatch it off a mage. He was firing back, and he dropped at least one of the bastards.

  But that left plenty more, and we weren’t likely to get any help from below.

  The fight on the corridor floor had turned desperate, with the mages deploying their entire arsenal to lay down a blanket of deadly fire from a swarm of animated weaponry. They were outnumbered now, but the Weres were outgunned. And everywhere I looked I saw terrified faces of both species, lit up by red and orange phosphorescent spells.

  Then a blast hit the truck a glancing blow, but it was hard enough to throw us at the wall, and almost cause me to bite my tongue in two. The main force of it took out someone below and it sounded like a human someone, but the mages didn’t seem to care. They were tired of trying to hit a moving target that they could barely see and had decided on a new tactic.

  Which was to rain fire until we were dead, and hang the collateral damage.

  And it was probably going to work, since our fulminare took that moment to cut out.

  I heard Caleb curse, probably because someone had managed to get another tether spell on us from below. Someone else had done the opposite, using his tether as a rope to slide down to us from the rocks above. Only to be met by a savage blow to the head from the butt of the empty shotgun when he arrived.

  I was the one wielding the gun, because Caleb was busy picking off the tether-holders beneath us. But there were too many of them and he quickly ran out of ammo. I felt us being jerked ever lower, while my beast clawed at my insides, screaming to be let out, and the cluster of mages overhead took aim, planning to finish us off.

  But they didn’t. Because they’d just been thrown aside, as something else took their place. Something huge.

  I craned my neck, because whatever it was, was on our side of the hall. But all I could see was a dark outline against the stars. It didn’t look like the bird thing I’d glimpsed earlier; it didn’t look like anything except a shadow, one with a Were’s snout when it turned its head slightly.

  But it wasn’t a Were. It was far bigger and strangely misshapen. And was suddenly dropping down on top of us, a jump of maybe fifty feet as if it was nothing.

  It didn’t hit us, but landed just alongside, crushing several mages in the process. It was tall enough that it could look me in the eyes, despite the fact that I was maybe fifteen feet off the ground. And now that I could see it clearly, splashed with fire and spell light, I felt a cold hand grip my heart and squeeze like a bastard, because it wasn’t a Were.

  It was worse.

  “Relic!” I yelled hoarsely, why I didn’t know. Most people here wouldn’t know what that meant, and weren’t likely to have the time to learn. Because three more giants had just leapt down into the crowded corridor, to join the first.

  And that, friends, was game over. In a confined space, we couldn’t take one of these creatures, much less four. I frankly doubted that we could have done it anywhere, because I’d somehow managed to forget exactly how terrible they were.

  There was none of the elegance of their Were cousins. This wasn’t a predator; it was a monster, and it looked every inch of it. From the hideously elongated arms and horribly hunched back, to the misshapen maw of huge, uneven teeth and matted, ugly coat, it was mind-alteringly awful, like something from another world that had no business in ours.

  It was also absolutely the cause of Windward’s demise, as I couldn't get a scent read on the creatures even with them practically in my face. Except for one, the last to arrive, who had landed by the far wall. Yet my nose picked up on something so bizarre in the air around him that it had me wondering if I was losing my mind.

  And then I was sure of it, when the four sent up a terrible ululating cry, almost in unison, and fell onto the crowd below.

  But not onto us, despite the fact that we were out of both magic and ammo, and my furry blanket had passed the hell out on the seat beside me. And not onto the Weres, who had stopped fighting and were simply staring at the creatures in a cross between shock and horror. No, the monsters went on the attack, alright, but their target . . .

  Were our enemies.

  In less than a minute, the four relics savaged every mage there. And nothing the dark squad did made a damned bit of difference. Shields or no shields, magic or no magic, guns, potion bombs, snares, and everything else you could imagine was deployed by the mages who lasted long enough, and none of it mattered.

  And then, before I quite knew what had happened, it was over.

  The Relics bounded up the mostly sheer walls in defiance of gravity, and with no more effort than I would use to walk down the street. They disappeared over the top, leaving behind red splashed walls, a lot of freaked out Weres, and piles of red, oozing meat. And Caleb and I, bobbing slightly in my ruined truck, and staring at each other.

  Chapter Thirty

  There had been times after a battle when I’d almost wished that I’d been knocked out, as it would have been simpler. This was one of them. But instead, Caleb and I had to clamber down from the ruined truck, which neither of us had the strength to disenchant, after slapping the Were father around enough that he woke up and tried to eat my head.

  I didn’t hold it against him; it had been one of those days. I also didn’t mind that I sprained an ankle when I landed wrong, after using one of the mages’ disintegrating tethers as a rope, and had a limp as a result. I didn’t even care that I was bleeding like a stuck pig from the wound in my side, and a bunch more smaller ones peppering my jeans.

  But being bottomed out on magic sucked.

  Mages need magic to live as much as we do food, to the point that we can literally die without it. Getting too low was as bad as losing too much blood, although lucky me, I’d managed to do both. Which probably explained why I was staggering, cold, and clammy, and my skin felt like it was trying to escape from my flesh.

  Of course, there might have been for another reason for that.

  The area we were standing in looked like a bomb had gone off with us at the center, one that had selectively left out the Weres. Wherever they’d stood, the walls behind them were clean; everywhere else was a landscape of blood and meat and gore that climbed up a couple of stories or more. It looked like a crazy art installation, with broken rib cages and body parts slammed so forcefully into the walls that many had stuck there, like ships riding a red wave.

  “Careful,” Caleb said, grabbing my elbow. Because I was staring around instead of looking where I was going, and slip-sliding on the carnage as a result.

  The Weres were surer footed, and far less squeamish. Sebastian had already taken off for the arena while I was trying to get out of the truck, along with those of his people who remained in fighting form. But that left a lot of others, who had started digging through the mountains of the dead looking for loved ones who’d been buried underneath, and slumping to their knees whenever they found one.

  And they found a lot, judging by the howls echoing in the strange acoustics, loud and pitiful one second, and softened to whispers the next.

  It was haunting.

  “Come on,” Caleb said roughly. “We can’t do anything here.”

  I followed him through ankle deep viscera, hoping that things would improve after we left the area. But if anything, it got worse. Because less carnage makes you pay more attention to what is there.

  Like a piece of steel, possibly from my truck since it had the same rusted green paint job, that was imbedded in a wall just down the corridor. It resembled a knife that had been stabbed into the stone by a giant’s hand. But it had probably been hurled by Were instead, as it was holding up an almost bisected mage.

  He had died with a look of profound surprise on his face, as if he hadn’t realized just how strong his opponents were until it was too late. His guts were dripping down the wall, making a puddle underneath him. And nearby, a Were, possibly the one who had killed him, was splayed on the floor, a spell stuttering and flaming inside his body, lighting him up like a hairy lantern as it ate its way through to the stone.

  I looked away, only to encounter several more Weres silhouetted against the sails overhead, the moonlight just enough to limn them with light. I couldn’t see their expressions, for which I was truly grateful. Because everybody I passed felt like a personal failure, like their deaths could have been prevented if I’d been smarter, faster, or made better decisions.

  There was no time for recriminations in battle, which was why the aftermath was always harder. Even if you won—and I wasn’t yet sure that we had—there were always mistakes. And they were often written in blood.

  After a few more bends, we came across a lone patch of my initial levitation spell, which had broken off from the rest and somehow survived. It was moving, caught in some current I couldn’t feel twenty feet off of the ground, where it had trapped a collection of body parts. And was now whirling them about like a macabre carousel.

  Around and around they went, lit up by the light from spluttering battle spells, plenty of which were eating into the rock and chasing each other across the floor. They mingled with the smoking residue of potion bombs, broken furniture and household items, and still-active hexes fritzing over already dead bodies. But the light they threw off was dim, and left large sections of the corridor shrouded in darkness.

  Which was why I didn’t see what was in front of me until I ran into it.

  I staggered back with a curse, found my footing, and looked up—and discovered something looking back at me. But not something human. Not anymore.

 

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