Chapter Twenty-Nine #2
“You know what I meant.”
“Say. It.”
“All right! You’re not clan, you’re not even proper auxiliaries. And pretending you are—”
“Pretending?” Sophie said, her voice low.
“—just makes it worse! You want me to say it? We need respect, all right? If we’re gonna survive as a clan, we need those damned High Borns to take us seriously, and we’re not gonna get that when—”
“You hang out with freaks?” Kimmie finished, her face hard.
“Oh, shit,” Andy said.
“It’s the truth, and you know it,” Lee said, looking at the others.
“Or do you wanna be back on the streets? You want to live your lives fighting for scraps? Waiting for the fight you lose, when a bunch of guys gang up on you, and you find yourself lying in a ditch waiting to bleed out? ‘Cause that’s where we’re all gonna be if we keep this shit up!
“And yeah, you can look at me like that all you want, but you’ve thought it, too. You saw how everyone acted when our clan was announced, how they turned their backs, and what have we done since to prove them wrong? Half of Fireborn are ancient losers their own clans didn’t want! And the rest—”
“Are freaks,” Kimmie said again. “Is that really all you see?”
“It’s what they see!” Lee yelled. “The High Born—”
“Fuck the High Born!” Andy said.
“Ditto,” Jace agreed.
Lee turned on Chayton, the only wolf left. “You gonna to say the same?” he demanded. “Or are you gonna admit that they run our world, and always will? We fit in with them, or we got nothing. Lia and Cyrus can’t protect us if the other clans all turn their backs on us. We need to find a way—”
“Damn, man,” Chayton said. “You say that to me?”
“Why not? Everyone else has gone crazy—”
“No, they just understand.”
“Understand what?”
“What my people figured out a long time ago. You can wear the right clothes, use the right words, go to the right schools, and jump through whatever other hoops you want. But that doesn’t mean you get accepted. You’re Other, and you always will be. Better to own it—”
“I don’t want to own it! I don’t want to be Other! I only took the Relic potion because Danny said we were gonna remake things, be on top for a change! But now he’s gone, and it isn’t even working right anymore, and just makes me—”
“A freak?” Sophie asked archly. “Well, at least you’re in good comp—” she broke off abruptly, and her head jerked around.
“What?” That was Jen, but I didn’t wait to hear the response.
The cat girl’s senses were acute, even down here, which was more than I could say for mine.
But I heard them now, and when I burst out of the narrow crack in the wall, back into the main tunnel, I saw them: a group of mages coming toward me.
I couldn’t tell how many, as they were still distant, and even the feeder tunnel was too narrow to allow them to walk comfortably more than two abreast, but there were enough.
And that was before the stench of dark magic hit my nose so strongly that I almost gagged.
Instead, I turned back around and surged down the crack of a tunnel, into the small cavern of a workshop, and then to the opening I’d found situated behind a ward to look like just another stretch of wall.
It led to a tunnel the children couldn’t see, as it was heavily guarded: the mage’s escape route, one that he had never had a chance to access. But they did—if they left now.
But how to tell them?
“Shit!” Sophie said, as another spirit bounded into the room behind me—her Cat. Which she must have sent to investigate, using it to throw her senses outward—only it didn’t just see the human world, did it? It saw me and stopped so abruptly that it stumbled.
The girl whirled, and for a moment, we just stared at each other, her Cat lending her sight across the divide. “L-Lia?” she said, her eyes huge.
“This way,” I said, and showed her the warded exit. She could see it now through her Cat’s eyes as easily as I could. And to her credit, she didn’t waste time with questions.
“Over here!” she told the others, but the ward shocked her when she touched it, hard enough to make her flinch. “Shit! I’m not a spirit!” she said. “I need the password to get through!”
“What password?” Jen asked, coming up behind her. “What’s happening?”
“Dark mages, a lot of them, headed this way. We can get out of here, but the only exit is warded, and I don’t have the password!”
“Then we fight,” Andy said.
“In this small a space? They’ll immolate us, sure as hell,” Jen snapped.
“Then let’s get out into the tunnel,” Lee said, and started that way, only to have Kimmie block the way. “Move!”
“It’s not much bigger out there,” Kimmie said.
“Then we’ll outrun them!”
“Outrun them where? The tunnel ends just ahead, and the only other way is the one they’re using.”
“How much time?” Jen said, eyeing the ward.
“A minute?” Sophie whispered and looked at me. “Can you break it?”
“Yes, but then enemies can follow.”
“I don’t know,” Jen said. “It depends on what kind of magic he used—”
“Not you!” Sophie snapped.
“Can she make another?” I asked.
“What?” Jen said, confused.
And was even more so when Sophie grabbed her. “Can you erect another ward if this one is taken out? One from your own magic?”
“Yes, but you’d have to first—” I took out the ward, blowing it inward, and using up most of my strength to do so. “How did you do that?” Jen asked, staring, but Sophie wasn’t listening.
“Get in, get in, get in!” she whisper-shouted, and shoved Andy at the body-sized crack in the stone.
“I won’t fit,” he said, stating the obvious.
“Then Change!”
“But… I’ll be naked—” he began before she roared at him, and her leopard swatted him with a paw. He yelped, and a moment later, a pair of pale buttocks were disappearing into the gloom as fast as they could go.
“Me next, don’t look,” Jace said, followed by Chayton. But Lee stayed where he was, scowling.
“Somebody has to fight them off, or none of you will make it,” he said stubbornly. “I’ll handle it.”
“Like hell.” That, of course, was Sophie.
“I said, I’ll handle it! Go!”
Sophie looked at me, but no one else could hear me like this. But perhaps, he did not need to. I reached out through the bond we had, the connection that ran through a Lupa to every member of her clan, the connection that wasn’t just physical but, the legends said, touched the soul.
And jerked, forcing a Change.
A second later, he lay on the ground, back in human form but stunned into immobility.
“Get him inside!” Sophie yelled as the first mages burst into the room.
And met resistance, but not the kind they expected.
The heartless mage was back on his feet, the room showing through the gaping hole in his chest, but he was past caring.
He hit them like a freight train, pushing them back into the crevasse, his vocal cords sounding an unholy screech that seemed to surprise them more than the fact that he was dead.
But they would soon recover, and an already damaged body would not last.
“Go!” I told the girls, who crowded into the crack in the rock, dragging Lee along with them, and a shield harder than the rock surrounding it slammed into place behind them.
But something did not leave. Sophie’s Cat regarded me out of squinted eyes. Unsure what I was, but willing to find out.
“Shall we buy them time?” I asked.
And I swear the Cat smiled.