She squeezed his arms tighter around herself, savoring his touch for the last time, and then pushed free.
“I’m fine. Thank you.”
She didn’t look at his face. She didn’t know what she would see. Concern? Revulsion? Pity? She couldn’t risk it. Not now.
The scents still clamored for her attention, but she sorted through them with confident ease.
There it was, the familiar warm scent, like a dandelion made of sunshine. The moment her consciousness brushed it, a surge of magic focused on her, insistent, demanding a connection. She forced herself to rebuff it, walked toward the cage on the far left, and stopped before the bars.
Kitty pawed at the bars with her fuzzy, blue murder mittens. “Meeya!”
It wasn’t even a meow. It was a demand that said, “Well? Aren’t you going to get me out? What took you so long?”
A padlock secured the door. She almost panicked for a split second, and then Augustine reached over and unlocked it. She blinked at the keys in his hands.
“It was hanging by the doorway,” he said. “They’re numbered.”
She swung the door open and scooped the cub into her arms. The tiny blue tiger licked her face. They were not bonded, but the cub sensed the magic that connected her and Celeste. She knew that she was with her other mother.
Augustine spun around and fired. A stream of bullets tore through the Menagerie and bit into a construct by the doorway, a large feline shape crafted with metal and magic. Strangely shaped parts rained onto the floor. The construct sank. Blue magic pulsed, and the scattered parts flew back to it, sliding seamlessly into place.
A second construct stalked through the doorway and paused next to the first, its lines sleek.
Panthers. He dared.
The beginning of a growl rumbled in her throat, and she hid it. Some people might have found the metal cats beautiful. Butshe saw them for what they were—tortured imitations of the original, striving to capture the grace and lethal force of the true creature and hopelessly failing.
A dark-haired man stepped through the doorway. He was of average height, with an unremarkable build and a forgettable face, just another man in his early fifties. He had a narrow face, a prominent nose, and dark eyes under low, thick eyebrows. He smelled odd, like a tree scorched by lightning, the hints of familiar human sweat and skin oils mixing with the sharp tinge of ozone.
She had met him only twice, but his face and his scent were branded into her memory, because she had realized that he was a threat the moment he tried to buy Zeus.
“Trespassing. Vandalism.”
His voice had an odd echo as if he were speaking into a hidden microphone. It filled the space around them, and the hairs on the back of her arms rose in response.
“Destruction of property. Breaking and entering, or is it burglary?”
Woodward’s tone sounded calm and methodical, devoid of emotion, but the echoes of his words bounced around her like rocks tossed onto hard concrete. That eerie sound combined with his scent tripped some sort of alarm deep within her. She knew with complete certainty that Death was here and he was staring into her eyes.
“I had expected such foolishness from Prime Harrison. Her magic clouds her judgement, and her thought patterns are primitive and short-sighted. Much like the other creatures here, she doesn’t understand consequences. But you, Prime Montgomery, are a man of logic and reason. You should have realized how futile this venture would be. It couldn’t have been money. Was it hubris? Or was it the promise of sex? I really must know.”
The metal pantherhad finished reassembling itself. Talons the size of steak knives, razor-sharp metal teeth, and advanced response protocols. Augustine lowered his gun. He had been aiming at Woodward. The construct had thrust itself into the path of the bullets, but not before the first few had hit Woodward.
The man had blocked them with his arm.
There was no blood. No obvious shield. No telltale thickening of magic signifying the presence of an aegis, a shielder mage.
How? He had shot enough bullets to amputate his arm at the elbow. A shiver of worry squirmed through Augustine. This was outside the expected parameters of Woodward’s power.
He forced himself to concentrate on the immediate. The known. Two constructs, clearly slaughter class, designed to rapidly murder anything in their way. One animator. Augustine scrutinized the doorway, but nothing else came through.
Woodward himself appeared less of a threat at first glance—lean, wearing black trousers and a thick black turtleneck that had become the uniform for aging tech entrepreneurs. But there was something odd in the way he moved. A heaviness to his steps… He was standing still now, and still, he held himself in an unnatural way. It wasn’t readily apparent. Augustine had to focus, and even then, it kept eluding him.
Time was short. He had seconds to figure this out.
Looking for the source of the wrongness, Augustine replayed Woodward’s entrance in his head, the way he emerged step by step through the doorway.
There.
