“Let him go.”My body hadn’t Changed, but my voice was pure Were.
“I’ll be happy to, but not yet.I saw him the other night, at that meeting of your Clan Council.Saw how you hovered over him, how angry you became when Bleddyn threatened him.
“Saw him again today, and knew—I don’t need Sebastian, do I?I just need this one.”
“Let him go!”
“Oh, I will,” he gripped Jace tightly.“As soon as you bring me what I want.”
“And what’s that?”I was on my feet now, and it felt strange.As if I were prowling in wolf form, my paws bare on the chilly, debris-strewn ground, although I was holding human shape and wearing boots.I moved away from the students, who Caleb was holding back almost bodily now that he’d let go of me, because the bastard gripping Jace wasn’t alone.
No, he’d sacrificed the cannon fodder he’d brought to fight zombies, while the good soldiers, the real Black Circle types, hedged him close.Eight, ten, sixteen—plus him made seventeen.The rest were busy dying, being used up as that sort always were.
It was why we could never stamp them out, no matter how many we killed.The Black Circle didn’t care about their puppets any more than a necro did the bodies he used.That’s all they were to them—corpses to die on cue—while the ones who mattered walked away clean.
Not this time.
“Don’t try it,” the mage said softly, seeing something on my face.“My friends here are more powerful than you’re expecting.”
“Like the two last night?”I kept moving, farther away from my knot of students, who Dimas had just shielded behind his formidable wards.But I didn’t know how long even they would last against whatever souped-up magic these mages could wield.I didn’t want to risk any stray bolts hitting them, although for some reason I wasn’t worried about myself.
My wolf brain was fully present, even if my body remained human—or mostly.I wasn’t sure about my eyes, as the red and green colors had just faded from view, and the light in the room had significantly improved.Everything was suddenly brighter and clearer, as wolves have excellent night vision.
They have better motion detection than humans, too, to the point that I could see a drop of sweat roll down one of the mage’s faces despite it not being warm in here, could see the flutter of a pulse in another’s neck, could follow the path of each weapon that one of them had just released into the air, to hover around his head protectively.
It wouldn’t be enough.
“Lia!”It was Sophie’s voice, but I barely heard it.The only thing in my ears was Jace’s heartbeat, fast and getting faster.The only thing in my nose was his blood and the mages’ sweat.Because for the first time in ages, they were worried that they’d have to fight, and bleed, and die.
Not their puppets;them.
They were right.
“No!Don’t do anything stupid!”Sophie shrieked.
“Shit,” I heard Caleb say.
“You know damned well what!”the leader said, his voice cutting harshly through the almost trance I’d fallen into.“Maybe not last night; you were hurt, and everything happened so suddenly, but now?When she’s so near the surface, when you canfeelher?Let’s not play games, war mage!”
Jace’s heartbeat was so loud in my ears that I could barely hear him, but I heard that.And agreed with it.Let’s not play games.
And I guessed his friends thought the same, as they had decided to stop talking and start attacking, although in typical dark mage fashion, there was no coordination.It was every mage for himself, which worked well for me.A couple of dozen weapons came streaming across the space between us, even as the leader yelled at them to desist—
And hit the heavy wooden table I’d flipped over as easily as if it had been made of cardboard and sent slamming back into them, maybe four hundred pounds of oak banded in metal, and now on fire courtesy of one of their spells.It struck with the force of a bomb going off, hitting hard enough to explode into a dozen fiery pieces, half of which hit a couple of mages who hadn’t yet bothered with shields because they drained their power, and I was only one woman.
One woman who had completely lost her mind, I thought, internally screaming, because I was not soloing sixteen goddamned war mages!
Only, apparently, I was, with my wolf pushing my own consciousness aside as easily as I had done the zombie’s.Which was not supposed to be possible; I was the one in charge here!But tell her that.
Only it was impossible to tell her anything as the fight was on, and the leader hadn’t been lying, goddamn him!There was something very weird about these mages.Or maybe it was the same thing I’d noticed last night, with the difference being that this group knew what the hell they were doing.
These weren’t cannon fodder, as demonstrated when a single spell—not the combined work of a dozen men, but thrown by one freaking mage—came boiling at me like a miniature sun.Only not that miniature.It was a fireball the size of a Mac truck, too big for me to dodge and far too powerful for my shields to absorb.
But not, it seemed, too tall for me to jump, despite it reaching almost to the room’s expansive ceiling, maybe three stories high.I leapt over it like an Olympic pole vaulter, close enough to feel the ward keeping the ceiling in place buzz against my cheek—and my hands and my knees.Because the only way to avoid immolation was to adopt the pole vaulter’s stance, too, with my body stretched almost horizontal.
And then I was falling behind the mages, who had fanned out because my students were attacking now, too, regardless of what Caleb wanted.Only Caleb was at the forefront, dropping one still unshielded mage, because this whole thing had taken only a few seconds, and sending a spell screaming at another standing in front of me, who had been smart enough to already raise his protection.Caleb’s spell didn’t make it through the man’s shields, but it did weaken them even as it sent him skidding back into me.
And that was good enough.
