“Where?”he demanded.
“Over there!” I pointed to one of the walls, where a couple of war mages had taken refuge behind a shield that was threatening to collapse.“I think he’s hurt!”
Caleb took off immediately, using his own formidable shields to forge a path through the chaos, leaving me unsure whether to follow or stay with the kids.Because, tough though they were, Tartarus hadn’t been on the curriculum.At least not yet.
But then it was decided for me, when several of the boys darted after Caleb, and then we were all going, turtling through the stream of humanity behind Dimas’ shield, at a fast shuffle.Several spells hit our protection just as we reached the beleaguered men, and bounced off as if they were nothing.Just play bolts shot by magical kids testing each other’s boundaries.
But they must have had more power than it looked, because Dimas cursed and stared around.“What the hell was that?”
“Shit,” Caleb said, as a squad of half a dozen men who looked like knock-off war mages appeared at the top of the corridor.
They had long, leather coats, tattered because they hadn’t properly maintained their equipment, scowling faces, and levitating weapons.Some of the latter were targeting fleeing people because the mages didn’t care to keep them on a tight leash or didn’t have the skill in a crowd.But then the group spotted us and started forging a path toward us, scattering people left and right and cursing one poor guy’s shopping cart into the wall, where it stayed like a half-uncovered fossil, buried in dirt.
That sucked for him, but was good for us, as it gave a clear field of fire, which—
“Damn!”Caleb and I said together, after our twin spells dropped the lot of them, and sent burning, screaming men rolling and smoking and—
“What happened?”I said, as some of the locals got into the act, and fell on the wounded men.And while their magic was weak, it wasn’t non-existent.And neither were the weapons that suddenly appeared in dozens of hands.
“I can disrupt shields as well as raise them,” Dimas said, as the locals gleefully went to work.“After my folks threw me out, it was how I survived on the streets, stealing from shops that thought their stuff was protected.”
“Your folks threw you out?”Caleb said.“Why?”
Dimas shrugged.“I was different.In Guadalajara, they thought I was possessed.Some witch woman told them.”
“She wasn’t a witch, or she’d have known better,” I pointed out.
“Yeah, but then the real thing showed up in the form of the Corps; guess someone tipped them off.But I ran their mages all over town before they caught me.If I’d been older, they never would have.”
“Older?”Caleb said.“How old were you?”
“Seven.”
“That’s why… it’s unsanctioned… magic,” the war mage who was still on his feet panted.
He was Gerald de Ferrers, a senior mage who had been paired with his partner Dakarai, better known as Kai, Moyo, for as long as I’d been in Vegas.They were legendary in the force—a vicious street-fighting duo seldom seen apart.That was true today as well, although I hadn’t noticed Kai before since he was lying down, his long leather coat fluttering around him in agitation because its master was injured.
“Black Circle… showed up… about half an hour ago,” Gerald told me, before I asked.“Rounding up… a ton of people…”
“Rounding them up for what?”
He shook his head, his dark hair dripping in sweat, even though these tunnels were always cool.“Don’t know.We were… following up a lead… on another case.Arrived… just in time… for the party…”
Yeah, some party.
And if it had done this to Gerald, it was something.He was the guy people thought of when they heard the term “war mage”: tall, broad-shouldered, and with a jawline you could cut yourself on.Yet he was so winded that he could barely speak, making me wonder if he’d been hit, too.
“Aki, can you get them out?”I asked because I wasn’t sure either could walk, and certainly not in this.
“Where?”
“HQ.You have a right to be there,” I reminded him, because he looked spooked at even the name, maybe because he and my other students had been imprisoned there for a while.“You’re working with me, remember?Just take them to the lobby—”
“Take us how?”Gerald cut in.
“He’s a teleporter, another of my new students.”
“Yeah.Heard you… pissed off… the old man.”
