Junk magic, p.31
Junk Magic, page 31
I targeted the Clan Council instead.
Of course, I didn’t reach them. A line of massive wolves stood in between us, and snarled and snapped at me as I approached. But they didn’t attack, didn’t bite.
They hadn’t been given orders—yet.
But it wouldn’t be long. Because the man who rounded on me was their master, the same one controlling the attack. And despite not being in wolf form himself, he gave off the same sense of menace, the same towering bulk, and the eyes—
Were wolf eyes, in a human face.
They burned dark gold, brightly enough to cast light shadows onto the beard that flowed down his chest. It was bigger and fuller than Ulmer’s, but had none of the other man’s grizzled appearance. It was truly magnificent, a black cascade with only one, stark ribbon of white running through it, the same one that continued up his temple and into his hair.
It looked like a divine painter had slapped him with a brush, but it was the only divine thing about him.
“If you have any influence on your clan leader, rogue,” he snarled, “tell him to get back before he ends up dead!”
“I thought that was the idea,” I said, only it wasn’t me. I’d been about to correct him, to point out that Sebastian’s title was bardric, as he knew very well. But once again, another voice spoke thorough me, and she didn’t seem to care if she got us killed. Because she was speaking to Whirlwind of Rand, one of the most powerful clan leaders on Earth, without the slavish deference he was accustomed to.
Or any at all.
I’d had a speech worked out, explaining that Jen and Chris were fighting on our side, and pointing out that threatening the Corps’ assets wasn’t likely to end well. I didn’t actually expect that to work on Whirlwind, particularly if he was using the attack as cover for another hit on his rival. But he wasn’t the only council member here.
I didn’t see many of Sebastian’s supporters, but there were plenty of clan leaders who fell in the middle politically and they were already looking appalled.
Yet I didn’t give that speech.
Instead, I was somehow through the line of wolves protecting the council and into the great man’s face. He looked surprised to see me move that fast, but not half as much as I was. Rein it in, I thought desperately. We don’t have anything left! Fucking rein it in!
I was ignored, maybe because my other half was busy roaring: “Traitor!”
“Be careful what words you throw around, child,” Whirlwind hissed back. “Or they may be your last.”
He wasn’t kidding. Peripheral vision showed me that the wolves who should have been guarding him had finally caught a clue and whirled on me, teeth bared.
But there was one thing that would stop any wolf in his tracks.
“Or yours,” I said. “Fight me! Or I’ll gut you where you stand!”
Things abruptly got very quiet in the nearby area. I could still hear the sounds of battle from above us, the moans and groans of the wounded scattered around and the whistling wind overhead. But mostly, I heard the pounding of my heart, as the enormity of what I’d just done sank in.
I mentally closed my eyes.
This was it, the last thing I would ever do. My wolf was insane and we were both going to be joining the corpses in the sand, any minute now. I had just challenged a council member and I was beyond fucked.
Whirlwind seemed to think so, too.
“Are you mad?” he asked, seemingly more taken aback than frightened. “Has the battle rattled your mind?”
I opened my mouth to say something, anything, that might diffuse this, but again, someone else spoke instead. And unlike me, she was not frightened or confused at all. She’d said exactly what she meant, and was still focused on that very thing.
And fuck the consequences.
“Fight me!”
Whirlwind gave what could only be called a roar and Changed. It was so rapid that I never even saw it. One moment, a huge, older man with enough muscles for an aging prize fighter was standing there, and the next—
Damn, that’s a big wolf, I thought, staring upward.
And it was a long way up, because he was bigger than Sebastian, a hulking, battle scarred, mountain of fur and savagery. His coloring was plain gray, without any interesting markings, but he didn’t need them. And he had the same dark gold eyes as before, because some of the most powerful—and feral—wolves didn’t Change back all the way.
He was a beast in both forms, but this one was about to tear my throat out.
But before he could, a slender, dark-haired man ran up. He didn’t look like he’d make much of a wolf, but if he was who I suspected, he didn’t need to. Farkas of Rand, Whirlwind’s Second, was known for being a shrewd, calculating type who fought with his mind not his brawn. He was young for a Second, being barely thirty-five, yet from what I’d heard, he rarely put a foot wrong.
I’d only seen him once before, at a clan meeting, and we hadn’t spoken. But those watchful, serious eyes were the same, although at the moment, they were pretty panicked. As were the hands that he dared to put on his master.
“Get out of the way,” Whirlwind growled, but his Second stood firm.
“Don’t you see what’s she’s doing?” he asked quickly, and to give the man credit, his voice was steady, at least. “They planned this! They’re trying to bait you—”
“Get out of the way!” And Whirlwind knocked him to the side, in a blow that might have killed a human.
But Farkas wasn’t one, and he was back in an instant and grabbing onto his leader’s massive mane of fur. “Listen to me! She’s a mage—”
“Gutted more than a few of those in my day.”
“That’s what Graywind thought,” I heard myself say. “Right before his blood stained these sands. As yours soon will.”
The bellow that followed that comment echoed around the arena, turning heads, but not enough of them. And not the right ones. His wolves remained on the attack, and had almost finished shredding Jen’s last defenders.
I was out of time.
“Call them off or die!” I said, and in that moment, I meant every word.
I suddenly didn’t care that this was beyond foolish, and would have been even under normal circumstances. As it was, with stubbornness and fear the only things keeping me on my feet, it was suicide. I would die, and Jen and Chris shortly thereafter, and none of this would do a damned thing!
My mind knew that, but surging through my veins was something far more primal, something from before higher mental faculties emerged from the primordial ooze, something from the lizard brain that said protect, protect the children at all costs, protect them with blood, with life, if need be, and I couldn’t turn away. Didn’t even want to. The wolf brain took over and I felt the Change spill through me, not physically, but in every other way. I was suddenly a mother wolf whose cubs were being threatened.
Making me the most vicious animal alive.
The others felt it, too. A shiver went through the surrounding wolves; Farkas yelped and tried desperately to drag his master back; even Whirlwind hesitated. But only for a second, because his honor was on the line. He’d been challenged twice, and before the council.
He couldn’t back down.
This was happening, it was happening now, and nothing on Earth could stop it.
Only someone else didn’t seem to know that.
“On what grounds?” A woman said, and pushed between us.
That was a good trick, because we’d been all but an inch apart, breathing in each other’s faces. But I clearly wasn’t the only one who could move fast when she wanted. Although the Lupa of the Red Mountain Clan was looking a little different than the last time I saw her.
The attractive, elegant woman with the silver bracelets and the smooth dark braid now had no jewelry, wild dark hair and a face full of drying blood. She was also wearing an incongruously cheerful, flower embroidered caftan that she’d sourced from somewhere, making it clear that she had Changed during the battle. And the arm she’d reached out to me with was covered in acid burns from a potion bomb that had come a little too close.
But she still had the arm, meaning that it hadn’t been that close.
Many of the others behind her weren’t so lucky. I finally noticed that I’d stumbled into the middle of a triage area, where people like Laura Brightfeather, Sienna’s cousin, were trying to help the wounded. There were a lot of them, and were about to be more if the Lupa didn’t get out of my way!
But she didn’t. Instead, she put a hand on both our shoulders, with a grip painful enough that it helped me surface slightly from the wolf mind. But not all the way.
“Move,” I told her, my voice as guttural as I’d ever heard it.
She didn’t try to reason with me; she could see that I was past that. Instead, she asked the only question that might have gotten a response. “Why? On what grounds do you make this challenge.”
“My cubs,” I snarled. “Mine.”
“What cubs?”
“There!” I gestured wildly at the two atop the rows of seats. “The ones being attacked—by his wolves! He stands them down or I rip out his heart!”
Considering that I’d already done that once today, it wasn’t an idle threat. And Sienna seemed to get that. “The necromancer?” She frowned. “She’s with you?”
“She saved you, fought for you! And now his wolves want to tear her apart. Call them off or die!” I snarled at Whirlwind, who snarled back.
“Her creatures threatened a council member,” he said harshly. “She used the bodies of our dead, in our sacred grounds—”
“Call them off!”
“—to attack us! That’s a death sentence—”
“Call them off, goddamn you!”
Dark gold eyes gleamed at me through strands of gray fur, and then the beast grinned. His back was to the others; they couldn’t see him. But I could, like I could see the contempt in his eyes. “No.”
And that was it. I couldn’t Change, but that hadn’t stopped my wolf before, and it didn’t this time. It leapt, in a movement so fast that I didn’t even know it was happening—
But someone else was faster.
The next moment, I was knocked on my ass and a massive wolf stood over me, but it wasn’t Whirlwind.
That was a surprise because it was huge, too, as big as Sebastian only with a pure white coat. And a bloody maw, one that snarled and snapped in Whirlwind’s direction until he backed off, too. And then the enormous creature stood between the two of us, tail thrashing.
“Stop it, both of you!” It was Sienna’s voice coming from the wolf, and she was looking at Whirlwind. “Call them off. We’ll hear what Lia has to say, then pass judgement.”
His lip curled, and it was almost a human expression. He didn’t even bother to answer, as if I wasn’t enough of a threat for that, something that made my beast thrash and howl. She wanted his blood and she wanted it now.
Sienna looked down at me, as if she felt some of my inner turmoil, but her undamaged paw came to rest on my chest. As if to say, let me handle this. My human brain was all about that, but my beast—
I didn’t know if I could control her anymore.
And then I knew I couldn’t, when I heard Jen’s terrified shriek. “Lia!”
I looked up to see what I’d expected, which was that the creatures Jen had raised to defend her lay shredded on the stairs, turning them into a waterfall of blood and gore. A few body parts still twitched here or there, but the only creatures still active were in a single line right around the two terrified children. A line which collapsed as I watched.
“No!”
The horrified cry rang out over the arena, not human, not wolf, not anything like either of them. And it didn’t need magical amplification to be heard. It surged over the sands, echoed off the walls, and bounced back, over and over again. But unlike most echoes it didn’t fade in intensity but seemed to get stronger and louder with every pass, until people were holding their ears and wolves were howling in pain.
And then, suddenly, there were no wolves.
I’d barely had time to register that the sound had come from me, before every wolf in the arena shivered all over, all at once. And I saw a sight that I’d never seen before, that no one had ever seen before, except for some who still remembered the war. And the battles in which hundreds of wolves had suddenly Changed together, only this time it was without warning or preparation.
It left naked, bloody people sprawled on the benches, stunned and slip sliding in the blood their human feet couldn’t grip through. It had others tumbling downward, as if the benches were stairs, Changing halfway through a lunge and then hitting hard and rolling. Still others were slumping on rock or sand, unable to move with the dazed feeling that follows a forced Change catching them off guard.
And that included Whirlwind, who hit the ground and stayed there, stunned and cursing, his power deserting him along with his wolf.
Leaving an arena full of people staring at each other in confusion, and then slowly, almost as one, turning to stare at me instead.
Chapter Thirty-Two
I finally got my wish and passed the hell out. At least, I guessed so, since I woke up back in HQ. I could tell by the feel of the wards wrapping around me, even before I opened my eyes. Familiar and powerful, they were like a security blanket I hadn’t known I needed.
I wanted to grab them and pull them closer, but couldn’t. That sort of thing would set off a couple dozen alarms, even if I had the stamina to attempt it right now, which I didn’t. My body felt like a limp noodle, except for the headache pounding behind my eyes.
Or maybe that was something else.
Pound, pound, pound. It was a rhythm, but not like a machine with a perfect, measured tempo. More organic, as if a very determined toddler was whacking the hell out of something with a toy.
It was just on the edge of my hearing, distant but persistent, and very annoying. So much so that I finally groaned and sat up. And opened my eyes expecting to find myself in the infirmary with Sedgewick standing over me.
But he wasn’t there.
Nobody was.
And yet, I wasn’t alone.
I stopped dead, my body halfway through a slide off of the exam table that I’d woken up on, with the hospital gown I was wearing riding up a thigh. It was an awkward pose that didn’t do my back any good, which felt like somebody had been going at it with a baseball bat. Or my side, which had been bandaged up but hurt like a bitch. And all of those small crashes in the car might have given me whiplash, because turning my neck was also really painful.
But right now, my physical state was the least of my problems.
The room in front of me wasn’t the expected infirmary, although it was large, tile floored, and bright. But it was also crammed with display cases full of . . . things. Things I couldn’t name. Things that my eyes didn’t want to focus on, despite my telling them to.
And then my blurry vision cleared up, and I really wished it hadn’t.
I finished the slide, the shock of cold tile on my bare feet a distant sensation, because I was too focused on the nearest case. It was suspended from the ceiling on cables as many of them were, as if it was a frame containing a piece of modern art. But instead, it boasted a severed forearm with a hand attached, but not a human one.
It also wasn’t Were or vampire or anything else I’d ever encountered. I didn’t know what it was, just that it was muscular, to an almost absurd degree, like something off a comic book hero. And scaley, with interlocking gray green plates that flooded down to the wrist, where they became smaller and finer before cascading onto the elongated, webbed hand.
I took another few steps, fascination warring with disgust, and the whole overridden with a sense of unreality. I’d just been in the arena, surrounded by every conceivable kind of gore, but this was worse. I didn’t know why, but it turned my stomach into knots even while pulling me closer, although all I wanted was to get the hell out of here.
I ended up nose to glass instead, staring at the hand, which was something else. It had talons that curved like exotic daggers and were absurdly large. They started off black as sin near the nail bed, but shaded into an ombre of gray as they progressed, and finally into white, with an almost translucent color at the tips.
From start to end, they were almost as long as the forearm, which was itself ridiculously oversized. Making me wonder how big the creature had been that it was taken from. And then to decide that I didn’t want to know.
Like, really, really didn’t.
I also didn’t want to see the face on the head a few cases over, which was turned away from me, but which boasted massive, curled horns. I didn’t want to look for the body that went with it, or the huge, barbed tail nearby, which was coiled like a rope but was as thick around as a man’s leg. And I definitely didn’t want to examine the plants in another case stretching up to the ceiling, which had green faces protruding from the stalks with thorn-like fangs.
I stared at them for a moment, because they should have looked absurd, like something out of an old science fiction movie. A prop rejected for being too crazy for any audience to believe and relegated to a corner of a warehouse somewhere. But maybe because of the day I’d had, which would stretch even a war mage’s imagination, they completely freaked me out, not least because the fangs had gnawed through parts of their stalks, like a person chewing on their lips out of anguish.
Or someone desperately trying to commit suicide.
Juice from the wounds had seeped down the stems like blood, thick and viscous, along with hanging pieces of “flesh.” And it had all been preserved by whatever stasis field was at work behind the glass. Leaving the strange massacre frozen in time, unlike my rising panic.
I moved in the direction of the only door I could see, limping a little from my bad ankle, but limping fast. The door was on the other side of the room, which left me floundering through the trophy section, knocking my head on the very hard edges of suspended cases and setting them swinging. Or barking my shins on the floor mounted kind, which were almost transparent except for their gruesome contents, making them hard to see with vision that kept graying out.
