Chapter Three #2
And fight as I would, I just stayed there, splayed out and writhing, suspended halfway up the wall and unable to break free of the dozen spells eating away at my protection.
They were eating fast, and not just at my shields.
I felt the wall start to crumble around me, the plaster splintering, the concrete blocks tumbling and then flying and then—
Freeing me, when I burst through to the other side, which was just another ballroom, this one being prepared for dinner.
I was flung into a banquet table being set with heavy silver chafing dishes by a bunch of startled employees.
They must have been human, because they hadn’t heard me coming, and just stood there, staring for a second.
But their supervisor was a vamp, who snatched a full punch bowl off the table before I could fall through it.
And then used it to bean the shit out of the mage who had followed me through what had been a wall.
Have to remember to tip, I thought wildly, and followed up the vamp’s attack with a series of three spells in quick succession, putting everything I had behind them. And okay, that got his attention, when the combo collapsed his shields. And then the vamp fell on him and got him by the neck.
Tip well, I amended, as the blood began to fly.
Then the other two mages were coming through the shattered wall, and I was frantically looking around for a weapon because they weren’t allowed in clan meetings.
Weren’t allowed for invitees, I corrected myself, as the two dark mages double-teamed me along with a cloud of levitating guns, knives, and potion bombs.
The room quickly descended into chaos, with the remaining staff screaming and running, the vamp feasting, and the massive hole in the wall showing the same kind of pandemonium happening next door.
Or it was for a second. Then my field of vision was obscured by a peppering of bullets, which had hit my shield and gotten trapped there.
Along with enough knives to stock a chef’s kitchen, a boiling red spell snapping and snarling at my protection, and quickly followed up by half a dozen more of the same, because these guys weren’t the patient types.
But I was.
I’d been trained to be.
So I just took it for a minute, letting them pile it all on, everything they had, before flexing my shields and sending the mass of weapons back at them.
Bullets that had lost momentum suddenly regained it, peppering the now-empty room.
Knives went flying, zipping back at their owners, with one burrowing almost as far as the crossed eyes of one of the mages.
And spells and potion bombs flung at me now hit their masters instead, and while none got through their shields, they caused a distraction for a second, allowing me to dive for the door to the hall.
I almost made it.
A snare grabbed me a yard or so short, curling around my back leg and bringing me down, while enough electricity pulsed through me to stun a platoon.
“Finish her,” one of the mages told the other. “I’ll get the bardric.”
But his companion didn’t seem on board with that plan. “You finish her! It’s that damned war mage!”
“I know who it is, and she’s stunned. You can’t handle this?”
“Right back at you,” the other snarled, just as I managed to throw off the stun, because that sort of thing doesn’t work so well on Weres, and then Changed, slipping out of the snare that didn’t hold my much smaller human leg, spun and flung a curse that took one of the bastards square in the chest.
And I guessed his shields had been compromised after all, because it blew him backward, at the same moment that the curse his friend had loosed flew over my head, missing me only because I was suddenly so much smaller.
I Changed back the next instant and leaped for the last mage, and again, almost made it.
But while his buddy was sizzling on the floor beside him, with a giant hole blown through his chest, this one—
This one was a son of a bitch.
The shield I was throwing myself against was solid glass, a term for perfect protection without a flaw or chink in the armor.
And while I bore him to the ground, he didn’t stay there.
He reversed his shields with enough force to blow me backward and then trap me under them, before bearing down as he’d done in the next room when he’d forced me through the wall.
And that had been mostly him, I realized; the other two weren’t just cannon fodder, but they’d had nothing on this one.
He was nothing special to look at—disheveled brown hair of a mousy hue, dull brown eyes that were more the color of mud than mahogany, and features so nondescript that even I, with extensive training, would have had trouble describing them.
But his magic was distinctive enough. Getting trapped by his shields felt like lying under an unbreakable piece of glass while a gorilla sits on top.
Or maybe an elephant, I amended, as he abruptly increased the pressure.
Okay, make that two elephants.
“Black… Circle?” I guessed, panting while I could still breathe.
“Ruling council,” he affirmed, grinning.
“You want… Sebastian enough… to risk yourself?” Even my wolf voice sounded incredulous, as those bastards didn’t risk anything. They sent their lackeys out to do that for them.
He only laughed and pressed down harder. “I don’t want him at all. I want what you have…” His eyes narrowed. “But don’t know it? Yes, that’s right, isn’t it? I wondered why you hadn’t brought out the big guns.”
“What?”
“Tell your Circle to give it up, or we’ll come in and take it,” it was vicious. “And unlike you, we won’t hold back!”
He was gone, just that fast, between one blink and the next; I didn’t know why. He’d had me pinned and half flattened. In a second, I wouldn’t have been able to breathe at all.
And then I understood, when a whole phalanx of vampires swept through the room, so sudden and so fast that they felt like a dark breeze. I didn’t know if they caught him; I was too busy wheezing and gasping for breath, but I doubted it. And I was in no shape to go help out.
Son of a bitch!
“Lia!” Somebody grabbed me as my body slipped back to human form once more, and a moment later, I found myself being wrapped in somebody’s big, silk shawl.
“M’okay,” I managed, recognizing Sienna’s scent. And then recognizing the woman herself: caramel skin, a long fall of dark hair, and a bright red silk number covered over with orange embroidered feathers, because when the Lupa of the Red Mountain Clan dressed up, she did it right.
“But… I think I killed… your gown,” I confessed.
“Fuck my gown!” she said, pulling me into a fierce hug, and causing me to cry out, because my whole body felt like a giant bruise.
“I’m sorry!” she gasped. “Do you need a healer?”
“Don’t… think so. Sebastian?”
“He’s alright. We got him back, thanks to you! They spelled him with something, but he’s coming around. He’s pretty confused.”
Yeah, I thought, staring at the open window across the room, where the mage had disappeared with a couple of dozen vamps on his tail.
That made two of us.