Chapter Ten
The change was immediate. A second ago, I had been gleefully laughing even as fire consumed me and a boot ground me into powder. Because I couldn’t be hurt, I couldn’t be killed, and I was already very, very dead.
But Jace wasn’t. And something came over me, seeing him clutched in the arms of a monster with a human face, that had Caleb giving a grunt and releasing me. He’d been holding onto my body while my brain took a flit about the room, but he let go because he thought I was about to Change.
I didn’t outwardly. But something feral was suddenly looking out of my eyes. I could feel it, and the dark mage could see it, because he clutched Jace a little tighter.
“I’m glad we understand each other,” he said. “They say there is nothing in the world more desperate than a mother when her child is threatened. And this one,” he pressed the knife in a little, letting the smell of Jace’s blood flood my senses. “This one is yours, yes?”
“Let him go.” My body hadn’t Changed, but my voice was pure Were.
“I’ll be happy to, but not yet. I saw him the other night, at that meeting of your Clan Council. Saw how you hovered over him, how angry you became when Bleddyn threatened him.
“Saw him again today, and knew—I don’t need Sebastian, do I? I just need this one.”
“Let him go!”
“Oh, I will,” he gripped Jace tightly. “As soon as you bring me what I want.”
“And what’s that?” I was on my feet now, and it felt strange.
As if I were prowling in wolf form, my paws bare on the chilly, debris-strewn ground, although I was holding human shape and wearing boots.
I moved away from the students, who Caleb was holding back almost bodily now that he’d let go of me, because the bastard gripping Jace wasn’t alone.
No, he’d sacrificed the cannon fodder he’d brought to fight zombies, while the good soldiers, the real Black Circle types, hedged him close. Eight, ten, sixteen—plus him made seventeen. The rest were busy dying, being used up as that sort always were.
It was why we could never stamp them out, no matter how many we killed. The Black Circle didn’t care about their puppets any more than a necro did the bodies he used. That’s all they were to them—corpses to die on cue—while the ones who mattered walked away clean.
Not this time.
“Don’t try it,” the mage said softly, seeing something on my face. “My friends here are more powerful than you’re expecting.”
“Like the two last night?” I kept moving, farther away from my knot of students, who Dimas had just shielded behind his formidable wards.
But I didn’t know how long even they would last against whatever souped-up magic these mages could wield.
I didn’t want to risk any stray bolts hitting them, although for some reason I wasn’t worried about myself.
My wolf brain was fully present, even if my body remained human—or mostly. I wasn’t sure about my eyes, as the red and green colors had just faded from view, and the light in the room had significantly improved. Everything was suddenly brighter and clearer, as wolves have excellent night vision.
They have better motion detection than humans, too, to the point that I could see a drop of sweat roll down one of the mage’s faces despite it not being warm in here, could see the flutter of a pulse in another’s neck, could follow the path of each weapon that one of them had just released into the air, to hover around his head protectively.
It wouldn’t be enough.
“Lia!” It was Sophie’s voice, but I barely heard it. The only thing in my ears was Jace’s heartbeat, fast and getting faster. The only thing in my nose was his blood and the mages’ sweat. Because for the first time in ages, they were worried that they’d have to fight, and bleed, and die.
Not their puppets; them.
They were right.
“No! Don’t do anything stupid!” Sophie shrieked.
“Shit,” I heard Caleb say.
“You know damned well what!” the leader said, his voice cutting harshly through the almost trance I’d fallen into. “Maybe not last night; you were hurt, and everything happened so suddenly, but now? When she’s so near the surface, when you can feel her? Let’s not play games, war mage!”
Jace’s heartbeat was so loud in my ears that I could barely hear him, but I heard that. And agreed with it. Let’s not play games.
And I guessed his friends thought the same, as they had decided to stop talking and start attacking, although in typical dark mage fashion, there was no coordination.
It was every mage for himself, which worked well for me.
A couple of dozen weapons came streaming across the space between us, even as the leader yelled at them to desist—
And hit the heavy wooden table I’d flipped over as easily as if it had been made of cardboard and sent slamming back into them, maybe four hundred pounds of oak banded in metal, and now on fire courtesy of one of their spells.
It struck with the force of a bomb going off, hitting hard enough to explode into a dozen fiery pieces, half of which hit a couple of mages who hadn’t yet bothered with shields because they drained their power, and I was only one woman.
One woman who had completely lost her mind, I thought, internally screaming, because I was not soloing sixteen goddamned war mages!
Only, apparently, I was, with my wolf pushing my own consciousness aside as easily as I had done the zombie’s. Which was not supposed to be possible; I was the one in charge here! But tell her that.
Only it was impossible to tell her anything as the fight was on, and the leader hadn’t been lying, goddamn him! There was something very weird about these mages. Or maybe it was the same thing I’d noticed last night, with the difference being that this group knew what the hell they were doing.
These weren’t cannon fodder, as demonstrated when a single spell—not the combined work of a dozen men, but thrown by one freaking mage—came boiling at me like a miniature sun.
Only not that miniature. It was a fireball the size of a Mac truck, too big for me to dodge and far too powerful for my shields to absorb.
But not, it seemed, too tall for me to jump, despite it reaching almost to the room’s expansive ceiling, maybe three stories high.
I leapt over it like an Olympic pole vaulter, close enough to feel the ward keeping the ceiling in place buzz against my cheek—and my hands and my knees.
Because the only way to avoid immolation was to adopt the pole vaulter’s stance, too, with my body stretched almost horizontal.
And then I was falling behind the mages, who had fanned out because my students were attacking now, too, regardless of what Caleb wanted.
Only Caleb was at the forefront, dropping one still unshielded mage, because this whole thing had taken only a few seconds, and sending a spell screaming at another standing in front of me, who had been smart enough to already raise his protection.
Caleb’s spell didn’t make it through the man’s shields, but it did weaken them even as it sent him skidding back into me.
And that was good enough.
I struck him hard enough to crack his defense, not with a spell but with my joined fists, and then took him down like a hungry vamp.
Except I wasn’t feeding. I was tearing and rending and shredding—with my teeth, my good old human teeth—and clawing with human hands that were somehow far, far stronger than they should have been, even with my Were lending me strength.
It was all over in seconds, and I looked up, a blood-covered savage with wolf eyes and a gory mouth, and it was enough to get even a dark mage’s attention.
The nearest one’s eyes widened in terror, and he tried to break and run, which was completely the wrong move.
That activated my wolf’s prey drive, which was already supercharged, and we leaped, taking him down by the neck like a rabbit, and shaking him until I heard a crack that told me whatever this guy was on would no longer help him.
Fortunately, that had sent us back to the floor, because the next second, Sophie, who had been standing in front of the attacking mages, letting her power absorb their spells, got into the fight.
She sent everything she’d taken in, dozens and dozens of hexes, jinxes, and nasty curses, back at them at once, hurling a barrage as fierce as a tornado.
It screamed through the air overhead like a hundred banshees, slicing one mage in two, immolating another, and sending several more flying toward the far wall of the room, where it took out the ward holding up the ceiling in that area.
That caused an avalanche of what looked like a mountain’s worth of dirt, falling from the wall and ceiling both, cascading over tables, burying tents, and spilling across the floor.
It covered a quarter of the entire space, sending dust billowing everywhere.
And knocked down several of the plywood bars that littered the market and provided a lot of the light, plunging that part of the room into gloom when the cheerful, Christmas-light-draped facades winked out.
The mages who hadn’t been obliterated by their own spells hit the floor, looking more than a little freaked out. Apparently, they hadn’t been expecting that. But they didn’t stay there for long, because someone had trained them.
But not well enough.
Self-preservation took over, and rather than regrouping to fight us while Sophie’s reserve was spent, they decided to break and run. Keenly aware, as we all suddenly were, that having a magical battle in what was essentially an unstable cave was not the best plan. But they’d forgotten something.
Or, to be more precise, someone.
Quiet little Kimmie had gotten behind them, too, skirting the battle unobserved in the midst of the chaos, and coming up beside me. And unlike the freaked-out mage, she didn’t seem weirded out by my current state. She didn’t seem worried about much at all as she held out a hand.
“Spell.”