“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.
