They had heard, and they were coming.
Not some of them, all of them, hundreds and hundreds of thevargulfsthe Black Circle had thoughtfully gathered in one place, and that Jen had set free.And that, instead of fleeing as they had every right to do, they were sweeping this way like a rising tide, and descending onto the room and the suddenly terrified mass of mages in an ocean of fury.And shielded or not, no one could stand against that.
The Black Circle’s ranks broke almost immediately, immovable objects learning that they weren’t so immovable, after all, when the irresistible force coming at them was composed of claws and fangs and full-on rage.The room quickly turned into a massive battlefield, and I waded into the fray, heedless of the fighting, tearing, and screaming, and the dust and red rain falling all around me.I didn’t care about that, didn’t care about anything except getting to Jace before it was too late, getting himback—
The mage had disappeared using some skill I didn’t know to allow him to run while the others died for him, their blood masking his scent.Only not from me.I couldn’t track; I’d had no way to learn to do that growing up as a human, as an outcast in my own clan.
But Iwasn’thuman, and instinct was a good teacher, I realized, grasping hold of a thin line of something… Not a scent, not even the echo of one, butsomething.Fractured, torn pictures of Jace’s dark eyes, of his rumpled tuxedo, of him ruffling the hair of his lost brother, Jayden, who had batted his hand away, yet looked up at him in love: “Not the hair, man.How many times I hafta tell you?”
And then I was moving, darting through the madhouse and avoiding the obstacles suddenly springing up in my path.Lines that a moment ago had been showing off second-hand clothes were now trying to wrap themselves around my neck or trip up my feet.Piles of merchandise were going up like miniature bonfires, sending the smell of smoking cloth and burning plastic to obscure my senses.Even worse, tables of low-level spells and hexes, which the people here purchased in the thousands, hoping against hope that they would buy them some protection in an uncertain world, all went up at once—
And that almost did it.Almost made me lose focus enough for the bastard dragging Jace to get away.But something—something—something—
There!I grabbed the scent, the memory, the whatever it was, a whisper of a whisper on the air, because I swore this devil was smoke, a magician in every sense of the word.But then, so was I.
And I was something more; I was a Lupa terrified that she was about to lose her cub, just like she’d lost his brother.I could still see Jayden, leaping oh so fast, like lightning against the night, for the throat of the Relic who had been endangering his clan.I could see the broken body lying so still on the ground, when even his liquid speed hadn’t been enough.Could trace the ashes of his funeral pyre, blown ever skyward, glowing silver in the moonlight at the top, even while the coals were blood red down below, as his spirit slipped away from us…
Not.This.Time.
Not Jace.
Not myboy.
And then I leaped, and felt something under my claws.
Something smooth and hard.A ward, and it was the mage’s.I knew that immediately because it was perfect.
Glass shields, without a single imperfection into which to slip a knife.But I didn’t need a knife; I had claws.I felt fur flow down my dominant hand as they came out, huge and curved and strange, not like my usual Change at all, and began carving great gouges out of the fucker’s protection even though I still couldn’t see them.
But I could feel, and those perfect shields were getting thin.
“Mage de Croissets!Where are you?”
The voice was tinny and distant, resonating through some comm spell Gerald must have had on his coat, but I barely heard.Almost, almost, almost.My mind, my very not-human mind, was focused on only one thing, and that picture was painted in blood.
“Mage de Croissets!We’re homing in on your position.Are you hurt?”
No, but someone else was about to be, I thought, as spell after spell slammed into me.And they were strong, oh, so strong, far more so than should have been able to come from any one mage.Like each was a combined spell from a dozen others, and while my coat stopped or deflected some of them, because Gerald had spelled this thing halfway to hell, it didn’t get them all.
It didn’t get most.
I was bleeding, my own blood this time, and snarling, and shredding the mage’s shields like I didn’t feel any of it, because I mostly didn’t.I didn’t know why I didn’t, and didn’t care.Just that the spells he was flinging, which should have had me down, which should have had medead, were more like bees’ stings: hurtful, but not important, not debilitating, notenough.
And somebody, a lot of somebodies, were suddenly pounding down what I vaguely recognized as a corridor behind me.A small one, little more than a crack in the earth that I hadn’t known about, like a lot down here that weren’t on any of the maps, and that I’d entered without even being aware of it.A quiet one, except for the growls coming from me and the harsh breathing from him.
And those booted footsteps, war mage footsteps, were headed this way, and this time, they weren’t his people, were they?
No, they were dead, dead, dead, nature red in tooth and claw tonight.
Which meant they weremine.
“Your friends are dead, and you’re out of time,” I growled.“Give him to me—
“Fuck you!”
“Give him to me, or I’ll rip you to pieces andtakehim!”
And then Jace was in my arms, so suddenly that I went staggering backward, clutching him to me, one arm still human and the other Were, but both hugging him tight.And he was sobbing and hugging me weakly back, and the corridor was dark and empty and echoing… with nothing but footsteps.Not even a thread of a clue anymore to where my prey had gone, because I had been following Jace, not the mage.
