Chapter Eight #2
“Goddamnit! Go back to the hotel!” I snapped.
Everybody just looked at me, but no way was I letting a bunch of kids—no matter how magical—follow me into a war zone.
And even less a bunch of Weres when that was what the dark was after!
“Get out of here, or I’m done,” I told them.
“You can get another Lupa, and you can get another teacher—”
“What?”
“You’re crazy!”
“We’re not leaving you—”
“You’ll get yourself killed!”
“Shut up!” I yelled loudly enough for some of the fleeing people to jump and stare at me.
“This isn’t a joke! This is war, and you’re going to listen to me.
Or else we’re done. I can’t be responsible for you if you don’t obey me when it matters.
And that goes for all of you,” I added, because Sophie was looking belligerent.
“Lia, seriously,” Chayton said. “We can’t—”
“What you can do is get to Sebastian. Arnou’s muscle has arrived by now, and these assholes are rounding up Weres. He’s going to have something to say about that, and he’s closer than the Circle—”
“And they’re going to listen to us?”
“You think Arnou will fight for these people?” Noah demanded, incredulous. “They hate them! It’s all vargulfs down here—”
“They’ll fight for them now, or they’ll fight against them later,” I said, checking out Gerald’s stash.
It was half-depleted, even though the guy never went anywhere unless loaded for bear.
Great. “The Black Circle is probably down here recruiting, like they’ve been doing all along.
Only it looks like it’s no longer voluntary. ”
“Recruiting? But they’re focusing on Weres—”
“Yeah, like Jace!”
“But they don’t have the juice,” Noah protested.
He was talking about a potion developed by a traitorous bastard named Jenkins, one of the Circle’s own, who had put the mad in mad scientist. He’d stumbled across a way to release the ancient version of the Were strain from modern Were DNA, creating what he’d called Relics, as in relics of another age.
They were to us what saber-toothed tigers were to housecats, being some of the most powerful, fearsome creatures anybody had ever seen.
Fortunately, his “juice” had been contained, with most of it destroyed and the only remaining vials securely locked away.
And no one else had it, especially not the Black Circle, as Jenkins had been fighting against them in his own, perverse way, trying to give the Corps an advantage in the war.
But maybe the dark had something else, I realized.
“What is it?” Caleb said, seeing my face.
“I fought three guys last night who were a lot stronger than they should have been. The leader was also skilled, but the other two… they were just strong. Abnormally, unbelievably strong, yet they knew almost nothing about magical combat.”
“They could have been hopped up on stolen magic,” Caleb said. “The Black Circle has been known to do that before a battle.”
“For their best fighters, sure. But in a time of war, when they need every bit of magic they can get, they’re gonna waste a precious resource on unskilled hacks?
Because those guys knew jack all. I took one out with a fireball to the chest because he’d dropped shields in the middle of battle, and a vamp got the other—”
“A vamp?”
“One of the waiters. He was loading up the buffet tables.”
Caleb’s lip curled, as if that was what he’d have expected from the Black Circle.
The ones we often fought were shit-tier at combat, so high on stolen magic that they couldn’t see straight, or so focused on getting more to feed their addiction that they often forgot their mission. But those were the cannon fodder.
The organization had far better mages, and the council member I’d met had been one of them.
“The leader was something else,” I told Caleb. “He said he was a council member—”
“And you believed that? Those cowards never fight themselves!”
“I believe something.”
“Meaning?”
“We know the Black Circle has been feeding norms fey wine for a while,” I said, talking about an import from Faerie that could get even a vamp drunk, a mix of potent herbs and flowers from their world that regularly wreaked havoc in ours.
Not least because it had very weird side effects on regular humans.
“They’ve been using it to force any latent magical talent to the surface and taking the strongest people they find into their ranks.
Looks like they’ve progressed to magical bloodlines—”
“Except fey wine makes our kind high and nothing else,” Caleb protested.
“In its original form. But the Black Circle has been experimenting with it, trying to make it better. That was what started Jenkins on his crazy research. He didn’t want us to fall behind.”
“So he experimented on magical creatures,” Caleb said, scowling. “Including sapient ones! That lab of his was a nightmare!”
I shot him a look because I’d been in said lab, all set to be Jenkins’ next guinea pig, before I killed him to prevent it. “Yes, he was an asshole, but he wasn’t wrong about the Black Circle. They’ve been focused on this since the war began, maybe before—”
“And you think they finally came up with something that works?”
“I don’t know. I’m just telling you—those guys were stronger than they had any right to be. They knocked me on my ass in Were form, and didn’t break a sweat. If that wasn’t a potion, I don’t know what it was.”
“And now the dark wants more soldiers to try it out on,” Caleb summed up grimly.
“Which they’re going to get if we don’t have help.” I pushed Noah. “Go!”
The wolves finally went, maybe because most of the ones here had been affected by Jenkins’ brew.
A vargulf with a grudge against the Clan Council, named Danny, had been Jenkins’ contact for finding him Were boys to experiment on, the kind nobody would miss.
But Danny hadn’t given the Corps’ mad scientist the best of them.
Those he’d kept for himself in a little cult of sorts, and stolen some of the potion to make them stronger.
He’d planned to force change in the Were community by killing off the Clan Council and making a bunch of vargulfs into the strongest Weres around.
But Cyrus had thrown a spanner in the works by adopting some of those same boys, forcing Danny to join the new little clan they were forming, so he could stay in touch with his guys.
In the end, they’d chosen Cyrus, and Danny had moved against the council anyway and ended up dead.
But Noah, Lee, and Jason knew just how close it had all been, and how powerful that potion had made them.
They didn’t want to have to fight something like that, either, which was why I didn’t get any more arguments.
Changing and streaming back up the tunnel, they looked like a river of fur among all the cursing, jostling people. But my students… didn’t go anywhere. Sophie set her feet and raised her chin mulishly, and started to speak before I could, all in a rush, as if she’d been holding back before.
“You can send us back to that damned school; I don’t care!
Or I do, but I’m not—we’re not—letting you get killed.
Just no, just no, just fucking no, shut up!
” she said, getting louder when I attempted to get a word in.
“I’m not going, and I don’t care what you do to me, what the Circle does, what anybody does!
It won’t be worse—can’t be worse—than they already have!
But whatever you do, this isn’t freaking happening! ”
“Sophie—”
“Don’t care, don’t care, don’t care! I’M NOT LEAVING AND YOU CAN’T MAKE ME!”
I stared at her because she genuinely looked deranged, panting, wild-eyed, and panicked when she never did. “Sophie, what the hell—”
“You see us,” Jen said, more calmly. “When nobody else does, nobody else ever has. We’re just freaks to them. Did you see that Gerald guy’s face when you told him Aki would get them out? He almost said no. If his buddy hadn’t been practically dead, he would have.
“They’re more scared of us than of the dark.”
“But you’re not, and you don’t die,” Kimmie put in. She had been so quiet, as usual, that I’d almost forgotten she was there. But while she lacked Sophie’s manic energy, there was a glint in her eyes that said she might be even more impossible to move.
“I’m not planning—” I began, only to get cut off again.
“Oh, please! You’re a crazy woman!” Sophie snapped. “With the self-preservation of a puppy in traffic! I saw what you did last night, jumping over that shield and taking on a whole damned clan on your own! You could have been killed—”
“But I wasn’t!”
“And you’re not going to be today, either, so shut up!”
I looked around at the others and got equally stubborn looks back. They weren’t going anywhere. And that was a problem because I had no way to make them and didn’t have time for it, even if I had!
“Lia!” Caleb snapped.
“Stay behind me!” I snarled at them.
“We’ll stay wherever the hell we—” Sophie began, before Jen grabbed her shoulder, hard.
“We’ll stay behind you,” she promised, her eyes steady on mine.
“And if I tell you something, you do it,” I said, getting in Sophie’s face, because it wasn’t Jan I was worried about.
And then, I grabbed her by that abundant red hair when she continued to defy me, causing her eyes to widen slightly, because considering her abilities, I doubt very many people had ever dared anything of the kind.
But she allowed it.
“You don’t die, either,” I told her, all of an inch away from her face. “You do what I tell you, when I tell you, and we all walk out of here. Otherwise, this is the last time you’ll see combat with me, regardless of what happens. Do you get it?”
She held my eyes a moment longer before hers finally dropped. “I get it.”
“Good. Then let’s go get our boy.”