Chapter Forty-Two
I came around to find myself being carried between two men, each having an arm under one of mine, with more mages clustered tight all around me.
My shields must have fallen during the internal struggle I’d been waging, because I’d been hit with something that had left me as limp as a rag doll.
Which explained why my feet were dragging across the rough ground behind me, and all I could see was dirt.
But I could smell. And even through the magical miasma crowding thick and close, there was one scent that was unmistakable: pack.
But not mine. It was enough to rouse my counterpart slightly, and with her added strength, to let me lift my head enough to glimpse what lay ahead through strands of my hair.
For a moment, I thought I might be hallucinating, because despite what my nose was telling me, there was nothing there.
Just the same thing I’d been seeing for hours: hard-packed dirt, small scrub, a huge bowl of pale blue inverted overhead, and columns of towering stone now viewed from up close.
Then the scene shimmered and ripped apart, like the desert opening up to vomit something out, something that looked less like a single man and more like a whole clan.
Any number of them.
I stared at an encampment that must have held thousands, with enough RVs to stock a dealership, a forest of tents, and a few parking lots’ worth of camper vans, converted school buses, trucks with pop-ups, and SUVs with mattresses in the back.
There was even a goddamned yurt! It looked like Burning Man without the big straw effigy.
No wonder Ulmer hadn’t been able to find the wayward clans.
They must have already had this place set up; either that, or they’d been busy all week, because they were well supplied.
Generators were chugging away, a couple of lines of Porta-Potties were standing like sentries on the sidelines, and somebody had brought in a water truck.
They’d even set up a few sailcloths in between the reaching fingers of rock to provide areas of shade.
There was also a dirt road that Bleddyn had missed, perhaps misremembering the turn because he was usually driven about by someone else.
It snaked off to the right, leading across the desert toward the highway, which explained how they’d brought everything in.
And they’d needed it, as it looked like whole clans had moved here.
But no children, at least not that I could see, and probably none at all, as this was an armed camp.
Not so much in a human sort of way, as the clans’ magical allies had wards that precluded the usual defensive needs, so there was a distinct lack of camo netting, sentry points, and sandbag walls.
But in a we’re-about-to-go-cause-some-shit way, with rifles, mortars, and RPGs visible, as well as weapon crates spilling out of the back of several huge trucks, and a lot more trucks with armor plating, weapon mounts, and numerous antennas.
And nobody in all of that was happy to see me.
“What is this?” A huge Were I didn’t know came forward to meet the guys dragging me across the sand. “That’s Cyrus’s bitch! I can smell her!”
“Back up, and give us some space,” the mage on my right said.
The Were did not back up; if anything, he crowded closer, along with some of his friends. “What’s she doing here?” he demanded. “Are the clans coming? Are we about to be attacked?”
“You said we’d get a warning,” one of the others snarled.
“Warning, hell!” the first said. “We were told nobody knew about this place!”
“Get the clans formed up,” a third Were shouted to some others behind him. “Do it now!”
“She’s alone,” the mage holding me on my right said. “And you’re going to step back or—”
“Or what?” The first Were said. “What do you think you’re going to do?”
“Try me and find out.”
“He’s a liar!” the second Were spat. “She isn’t alone! No Were travels alone!”
“Well, this one did.” The mage tried to move forward, but a crowd had gathered, preventing him, and I guessed he was tired of talking. Because he threw a spell that split the ever-growing crowd in half, shoving them back on both sides.
“Try that again,” the first Were breathed, recovering immediately. “And I swear—”
“We will try it again, and worse, if you don’t back up,” the mage told him, with the assurance of someone who was heavily shielded.
I could feel his protection humming against my arm, and then flooding over me, as he pulled me inside.
And just in time, as one of the Weres who hadn’t spoken yet decided to let action do his talking for him.
I abruptly found myself face down in the dirt, as the Weres jumped the mages, the mages sent more repelling spells surging outward, and this time, they weren’t holding back.
Big bodies went flying, some Changing halfway through the movement and landing and skidding on all fours.
Others ducked and avoided the spells, coming in low, with clawed hands scrabbling at the shield over top of me, which did nothing except to piss off the mage.
He threw something at a Were that made it howl, then yelled into his lapel. “Send backup! We have a situation!”
Which I thought was a pretty mild way of describing it, as Weres were now spilling out of RVs, trailers, and trucks, and deluging us in a snarling, snapping, furious cloud of fur.
None of which was getting through the mages’ shields, which had just joined up to form a little shell over top of us, one I couldn’t even see out of anymore.
Only writhing furry bodies, straining muscles, and fangs.
I just wanted to talk to Sienna, I thought dizzily. I wasn’t armed, wasn’t prepared, didn’t even fully understand what was going on. And I wasn’t at full strength or anything close to it—and neither are you! I added to the woman who had gotten us into this.
And who, as usual, wasn’t listening to me.
She was staring at the crowd, looking for something. Or someone, because she was nothing if not single-minded. But I didn’t see Rand’s chieftain anywhere.
“Give her to us!” the first Were snarled, his face pressed close against the ward, to the point that it must have been shocking him. But he didn’t look like he cared. “We’ll deal with Sebastian’s bitch ourselves!”
“The master wants her as a hostage—”
“Fuck your master! Give us the woman!”
I stared at them, feeling off kilter, because a bunch of my own people were attacking me while a group of my enemies were protecting, and I was pretty sure I knew why.
And it had nothing to do with my value as a hostage.
And then more mages appeared, spewing out of a door in one of the towering columns of stone and forcing a wedge into the fury, providing a shielded corridor for us to walk down.
Or to be dragged down, in my case. The mage on my right, who appeared to be leading this squad, grabbed me by one arm and pulled me after him. And took all of the care of a guy towing a suitcase with a wonky wheel through an airport, trying to make a flight.
I didn’t complain. I was too busy staring at the shield behind me, which the new mages had added to, forming a tunnel entirely covered by writhing fur of different shades. That was even true on top, where some Weres had jumped up to see if it was thinner there.
It wasn’t, or I would have been torn apart already, by my own people who wanted to kill me for reasons I didn’t fully understand.
Why were a bunch of Weres aligning themselves with dark magic users who had nothing but contempt for them?
Who had kidnapped and experimented on their people, who were happy to use them as fodder in their war, and who couldn’t care less if they lived or died?
Yet it was me whose blood they wanted, and were baying for like a bunch of psychos!
But at least the mages weren’t taking any chances.
I was dragged through the door in the stalagmite-looking formation and up an inner staircase.
And onto a platform under one of the sails, where someone who, if not a friend, almost looked like one at the moment, was sitting at a small cafe-type table.
The dark mage I’d fought twice now rose when he saw me. He pulled my head up and brushed the hair out of my face to check that it was really me. And looked like Christmas had come early when he decided it was, because he wanted something, and he wanted it badly.
Too bad it didn’t exist anymore.
“Close the wards,” he told the man who’d dragged me in. “Do it now!”
“Sir, there’s no one else out there, and she didn’t have any communication devices—”
“Are you arguing with me?”
“No, sir.” The mage turned and left, and the other one who had been helping to carry me earlier spoke up. “We gave her a paralytic, but it’s starting to wear off. Do you want—”
“Get out.”
“Sir?”
“I said, get out! All of you!”
And I guessed he really was a council member, because they got out. Leaving me alone with a guy whose neck I could have snapped in an instant, if not for the fact that I could barely move. And for the baying mob below, who’d have me in shreds the moment I stepped foot out of this tower.
The mage picked me up and dumped me in a chair, just as the sun winked out overhead.
Gloom descended like night falling, as the dome of the Black Circle’s protection closed out the light, except for strange, purple electricity swirling across the ward and jumping from rock peak to rock peak like something out of an old horror movie.
I half-expected to hear someone yell, “It’s alive!
” at any second, only the opposite was far more likely.
The opposite was certain if I didn’t think of something right goddamned now.