I landed behind the smoking remains of a Winnebago, with my brain feeling fried and my body numb, so much so that I just stayed there for a moment, staring at the battle.I couldn’t even see enough of it to tell if we were winning.But I doubted it.
The sounds coming to my ears, loud enough to carry even over the lightning storm, weren’t encouraging.And neither was the smell of blood and spent magic, so strong that I felt like I was drowning in it.I saw the crazily decorated bus lying on its side a little way off, just a smoking pile of twisted metal with a grinning wolf face graffitied onto what remained of one side, and felt something inside me change.
They’d come to our rescue when they didn’t have to, all those outcasts from Tartarus.Put their lives on the line for people who had what?Given them a few tacos?
It made me sick to my stomach, or it should have, only this form wasn’t obliging.It also wasn’t weeping for the dead or searching for the living.It was getting back on all fours, was sticking its hands in the dirt, was—
What are you doing?I asked my counterpart, my thoughts still sizzling and slow.
But I guessed hers were faster because she was doing something, but all I got back was:Watch.
I watched, although I couldn’t see much past the gloom and the blinding purple death, and the billowing smoke from the bus, and the sand being blown around everywhere.Or hear over the sounds of the blasts and the shrieks of the dying.But I could feel.
And what I felt…
Was tendrils.Like the ones that had wrapped around our fingers earlier, only these seemed to be comingfromus, shooting out from our hands into the soil and then running everywhere, but not like the roots I’d been picturing before.More like miniature versions of the lightning bolts, only ours weren’t designed to hurt, but to…
Do that, I thought, as Were after Were suddenly stopped in their tracks and looked our way, sensing us unerringly through the chaos.And that was true of Cyrus as well, far below our feet in some hidden cell, strapped to the wall, bloody and beaten, but alive.He looked up groggily; I could see him in my mind’s eye, as clearly as I had in the mage’s mirror, and he looked back at me, uncomprehending.
Until his body shivered all over, battling the potion that the mages had shoved down his throat to stop a Change.But it was designed to prevent him from accessing his Were form, and that wasn’t what this was.No, I thought, my excitement rising, not even close.
Instead, the fur that cascaded down his limbs was rough and patchy and showing pieces of knobby hide, the musculature underneath was huge and distorted, and far more massive than any Were could boast, with the back alone rising like a hunched Everest behind his head, and speaking of the head—
Goddamn, I thought.Because yes, I’d seen Cyrus’s Relic form before, but I’d been in Were form myself at the time and had been mainly going on scent, and his scent had been similar.But I could see it now, and felt a shiver tear through me, all the way to my toes.
He lookedevil, with a slavering maw of teeth a crocodile would have envied, moon-bright eyes narrowed in focus, and arms that dragged the ground, tipped with what could have been called talons if they weren’t as long as a ruler.He scaredme,and I was in Relic form, because even Relics didn’t look like that.
I knew how the clan leaders had felt, I thought, remembering the night a month ago when Danny had spiked the punch at the council’s opening ceremonies.And a bunch of chieftains had suddenly found themselves a brand new form.And had immediately knelt in front of Cyrus, pledging their loyalty because who the hell wouldn’t?
And then he jerked his head back in that tiny cell, letting out a sound that was in no way a howl, but something darker, scarier, more primeval, that turned heads all over the battlefield—
Including those of our enemies.
It took me a second to understand, but I got it.I got it, and I still didn’t believe, despite seeing it with my own eyes.Because my counterpart had called forth Cyrus’s Relic form—and Cyrus… had just called theirs.
Relics who had pledged him their lives and honor emerged all over the battlefield and rallied to their Alpha.Human squabbles forgotten, they surged across the sand toward the only chief they knew or cared about; only Cyrus didn’t need the help.He tore off the wall almost as if the spelled chains weren’t even there, with no visible effort at all, and then ripped the heavy door off its hinges and bounded out into a corridor filled with mages.
And then through them, the spells they were firing at him bouncing off, when they lived long enough to throw any.
Most did not.
Shortly after that, he was up and out, into the midst of a very confused battle, as no one seemed to know which side they were on anymore.Until Cyrus rallied the leaders to him—all of them—with another unearthly cry, and they brought their clans.For no one went against his Alpha, especially not when his Alpha looked like that.
Then my counterpart took over, and showed me what being a captain of our people really meant.
We flexed our fingers, and Weres all over the battlefield shivered as one.They were Cyrus’s now, and he was ours.And yes, I thought, still lying there stunned, only from a different cause this time.Because Carales had been right: it was suddenly like there was one creature on the field instead of thousands.
One great wolf turning on the mages all at once, the Weres its claws, the Relics its hideous jaws, and all of it having but one goal in mind: their annihilation.
The lightning still rained, the sands still blew.Nothing had changed, and everything had.It was so easy, like hunting rabbits in a forest.The spears of lightning were the trees, and as easily avoided; the spells were the whipping branches full of leaves, and no more lethal, especially with the Relics in front taking the brunt of them; and their prey, so confident a moment ago, were breaking, were running, were—
Something grabbed me.
But this time, it wasn’t a mage.
Chapter Forty-Five
Ifelt my grip on the army falter at the same time that reinforcements flooded the field from the base below, as if the earth was vomiting up the dregs of the magical world.But these dregs could fight.And so could whatever had grabbed me.
