Chapter Eight
I should have taken that bet,” I told Jason, half an hour later.
“The hell is going on?” the redhead yelled, grabbing one of the fleeing people in the underground city known as Tartarus.
It was pretty apt if you knew your mythology.
Hades, AKA the Greek underworld, had had many different areas, some of them pretty nice, depending on whether or not you had managed to please the gods in your lifetime.
Elysium was for the high rollers and heroes, where the wine flowed, and the entertainment was never-ending; Asphodel Meadows was designated for the regular Joes, a mediocre afterlife that mirrored their crappy mortal existence; and Tartarus was for the damned.
The local supernatural community had seen an analogy to Vegas in the old story, and Tartarus hadn’t gotten its name fondly.
But it was useful to the magically down-and-out.
There were flop houses where you could get a bed for cheap, bars where you could grab a drink or a meal, and markets where you could find most of the supplies you needed, including the magical variety, at a lower price than the going rate in the city above.
You also didn’t have to hide who you were, as the denizens of Tartarus were a confused mix of supernatural types, and any norms who accidentally staggered in through a malfunctioning ward were usually too drunk/high to notice the difference.
Of course, having a pool of down-and-out magical types had been a boon to the other side in the war, who had been heavily recruiting down here pretty much from the start.
The Corps had offered safehouses in the desert for those who wanted to get away, and many had.
But a lot of people had pointed out that their livelihoods were in Vegas, and had refused to go, leaving a bunch of vulnerable people trying to ride out a war on their own.
The Corps used to patrol down here, but ever since the war heated up and manpower had become a problem, those patrols had gotten fewer and fewer.
These days, I didn’t think this place had seen a Corpsman—or woman—in months, although I hadn’t heard that it had gotten this bad. Or even knew what the hell this was!
“Let me go! Let me go!” the man Jason had caught was wild-eyed and panicked, and started beating him with human strength that did nothing. And then cursed him with a crap-tier spell that nonetheless shocked him enough to let go.
The guy stumbled back into the crowd that was surging all around us, carrying whatever they could grab in their arms. It was a mad scramble up the tunnel we’d just come down, with hundreds of fleeing, panicked people.
Some of whom were pushing shopping carts full of their possessions, which made them into heavy bludgeons that threatened to mow us down.
Dimas threw up a shield, leaving me looking at a bunch of crazed faces that were suddenly plastered against it, before they realized what had happened and slid off in either direction, parting around us like a river flowing about a rock.
It looked like the whole place was clearing out. And then I spotted somebody I knew.
“Gerald!” I yelled, and Caleb’s bald head jerked around.
“Where?” he demanded.
“Over there!” I pointed to one of the walls, where a couple of war mages had taken refuge behind a shield that was threatening to collapse. “I think he’s hurt!”
Caleb took off immediately, using his own formidable shields to forge a path through the chaos, leaving me unsure whether to follow or stay with the kids. Because, tough though they were, Tartarus hadn’t been on the curriculum. At least not yet.
But then it was decided for me, when several of the boys darted after Caleb, and then we were all going, turtling through the stream of humanity behind Dimas’ shield, at a fast shuffle.
Several spells hit our protection just as we reached the beleaguered men, and bounced off as if they were nothing.
Just play bolts shot by magical kids testing each other’s boundaries.
But they must have had more power than it looked, because Dimas cursed and stared around. “What the hell was that?”
“Shit,” Caleb said, as a squad of half a dozen men who looked like knock-off war mages appeared at the top of the corridor.
They had long, leather coats, tattered because they hadn’t properly maintained their equipment, scowling faces, and levitating weapons.
Some of the latter were targeting fleeing people because the mages didn’t care to keep them on a tight leash or didn’t have the skill in a crowd.
But then the group spotted us and started forging a path toward us, scattering people left and right and cursing one poor guy’s shopping cart into the wall, where it stayed like a half-uncovered fossil, buried in dirt.
That sucked for him, but was good for us, as it gave a clear field of fire, which—
“Damn!” Caleb and I said together, after our twin spells dropped the lot of them, and sent burning, screaming men rolling and smoking and—
“What happened?” I said, as some of the locals got into the act, and fell on the wounded men. And while their magic was weak, it wasn’t non-existent. And neither were the weapons that suddenly appeared in dozens of hands.
“I can disrupt shields as well as raise them,” Dimas said, as the locals gleefully went to work. “After my folks threw me out, it was how I survived on the streets, stealing from shops that thought their stuff was protected.”
“Your folks threw you out?” Caleb said. “Why?”
Dimas shrugged. “I was different. In Guadalajara, they thought I was possessed. Some witch woman told them.”
“She wasn’t a witch, or she’d have known better,” I pointed out.
“Yeah, but then the real thing showed up in the form of the Corps; guess someone tipped them off. But I ran their mages all over town before they caught me. If I’d been older, they never would have.”
“Older?” Caleb said. “How old were you?”
“Seven.”
“That’s why… it’s unsanctioned… magic,” the war mage who was still on his feet panted.
He was Gerald de Ferrers, a senior mage who had been paired with his partner Dakarai, better known as Kai, Moyo, for as long as I’d been in Vegas.
They were legendary in the force—a vicious street-fighting duo seldom seen apart.
That was true today as well, although I hadn’t noticed Kai before since he was lying down, his long leather coat fluttering around him in agitation because its master was injured.
“Black Circle… showed up… about half an hour ago,” Gerald told me, before I asked. “Rounding up… a ton of people…”
“Rounding them up for what?”
He shook his head, his dark hair dripping in sweat, even though these tunnels were always cool. “Don’t know. We were… following up a lead… on another case. Arrived… just in time… for the party…”
Yeah, some party.
And if it had done this to Gerald, it was something. He was the guy people thought of when they heard the term “war mage”: tall, broad-shouldered, and with a jawline you could cut yourself on. Yet he was so winded that he could barely speak, making me wonder if he’d been hit, too.
“Aki, can you get them out?” I asked because I wasn’t sure either could walk, and certainly not in this.
“Where?”
“HQ. You have a right to be there,” I reminded him, because he looked spooked at even the name, maybe because he and my other students had been imprisoned there for a while. “You’re working with me, remember? Just take them to the lobby—”
“Take us how?” Gerald cut in.
“He’s a teleporter, another of my new students.”
“Yeah. Heard you… pissed off… the old man.”
“Pissed off?” Dimas bristled.
“You need… to clear out,” Gerald told me, ignoring him. “All of you. The Black Circle… is here in force.”
“Can’t. One of my boys is in there.”
“Student?”
“Were.”
“Shit. They’re focusing… on Weres—”
“Where?” Caleb demanded.
“Main market… just down there.” Gerald hiked a thumb over his shoulder, back to where the dark mages had come from. “Corralling them… along with anyone else they can find… with any power.”
I felt myself start to panic at the thought of Jace in the hands of the Black Circle, then got a grip.
“Aki, take them out!” I said. “Hurry!” Because Kai hadn’t said a word, nor had his eyes opened, reinforcing how bad this was likely to be. Kai was shorter, slimmer, and much less muscled than his partner, almost delicate-looking. But he was one of the best fighters in the Corps.
This was going to get ugly.
“My partner first,” Gerald said, and Aki rolled his eyes and grabbed them both. “Wait!” Gerald shrugged out of his coat and handed it to me. “You’re going to need this.”
“What? Why? Why would she need that?” Sophie demanded. She had been staring wide-eyed at the crowd carving up the dark mages, but that had gotten her attention.
“I want this back—in one piece,” Gerald told me, before muttering a spell over the coat to transfer ownership temporarily.
“See what I can do,” I said grimly.
“Keep your head down. We’ll send backup,” he promised, before Aki pulled him down to his partner, and all three disappeared.
“Lia?” Caleb said, glancing at our entourage. And yeah.
“Get back to the hotel,” I told the others, while shrugging into the coat, only to have everybody explode at me at once.
“Fuck that!” Noah snarled.
“You’re hurt!” Jason said.
“If you think we’re gonna tell Cyrus we left his mate down here alone—” Lee began.
“I’m a war mage,” I snapped.
“—in the middle of this? You trippin’.”
“Yeah!” Sophie said, immediately hopping mad. “Yeah! You tell her!”
“Calm down,” Jen said to her. “She knows we’re not going anywhere.”
“I do?” I cocked an eyebrow. “I was under the impression that I was in charge here.”
“Yes. It was easier to let you think that,” was the serene reply.
“Lia!” Caleb said, because we couldn’t just stand here.