"Is that one of those, what did you call them, stoneskin things?" Max asked. They both backed away. "How do you fight them?"
"You can't," Gio said, looking around quickly. "At least I can't. But if he's doing this, he's here. Somewhere."
Several more blisters of rock had begun to erupt from the ground around them. They were about to be surrounded.
"You know how I said that I only had flashbang grenades?" Max said as the first stoneskin lurched toward them. She kicked aside the rock covering her cache and leaned down to scoop something up. "I lied. Get down."
She pulled the pin and slung the small round object in an underhand throw.
Her timing was perfect. It rolled between the legs of the lurching stone monstrosity and then exploded. Max threw herself down beside Gio. Gravel showered down around them.
When they pushed themselves up, the grenade had knocked off the stoneskin's legs and split its body in two. The arms were still feebly twitching, but then they, too, went still.
"I take that back," Gio said. "I guess you can fight them." He looked in the direction of the newly arriving stoneskins. There were three of them peeling themselves out of the ground. "How many of those do you have?"
"That's the only one I had in that cache. There are more by the fence."
They retreated, forced back by the oncoming stoneskins. Each was subtly different. One was a quadruped, with its front end much higher than the back, like a gorilla on all fours. One had short and not very functional-looking wings. The other was just a big, lumpy humanoid. They were slow but inexorable.
"You've fought these before, right?" Max said. "What did you do?"
"I had allies who can take them on," Gio said, thinking of his gargoyle friends. Actually, as a stone lion, he might be able to take them too, but he had never tried staying in his lion form for long enough to find out. He couldn't trust that he would be able to control it or even shift back. "We need to find the magician. He's got to be here somewhere."
They both turned toward the cabin, which was really the only option. There was no other cover nearby. Smoke was still wisping from the door.
"Hold on," Gio said. He grasped Max's arm and, without giving himself time to think about it, took them both into the ground.
It was only a short trip, so not as debilitating as the longer ones—really just an eyeblink, and since Gio was traveling in his line of sight, they came up exactly where he had meant to, just outside the cabin on a side with no windows. Max caught him as he staggered. Fighting down the dizziness, he touched his finger to his lips and moved a few steps forward, where they could both peek around the side of the cabin.
The stoneskins were lurching around in confusion, having lost their prey. But Gio suspect it wasn'ttheirconfusion. The magician, Javic, was around here somewhere, and now that his targets had vanished, he was going to have to come out to look for them.
And a moment later, he did. There was a flutter of black robes as he stepped out of the cabin door. The black hood was down, revealing tousled blond hair with the straps of a gas mask around it.
It was actually pretty clever, Gio had to admit. Gas the cabin, then come through with gas protection to either pick up an unconscious Gio, or use the cabin as shelter while his enemies couldn't enter it.
But now the magician was at a disadvantage, his quarry gone, with the gas mask cutting off his peripheral vision. He tore it off, and as he turned his head, Gio saw the familiar sharp profile of the man who had been hunting him for months.
Javic was young, or at least he looked it. He had a handsome, hawklike face and clear gray eyes, which were now sweeping the scenery. The stoneskins had stopped moving, seeming as confused as their master.
Javic raised one hand, palm up, and shoved down the loose sleeve of his robe to display a pale, bare forearm on which his fire-colored tattoos were clearly visible. A soft glow began to gather in his palm.
Max fired a tranq dart at his back.
Her aim was perfect, but something—a movement, perhaps the softpfut!of the air rifle—caught the magician's attention. The speeding dart was not as fast as a bullet, and Javic had just enough time to turn halfway and make a quick motion with his hand. The dart bounced away as if the thin air had turned hard, clattering against the wall of the house.
Javic completed his graceful turn, and they were now facing each other from just a few paces apart.
Javic lashed out a hand as if throwing something. Gio caught a swift gleam in the air. But Max was faster.
As soon as she fired the air rifle, she had dropped her hand to the coil of steel cable at her waist. Gio had noticed that she was carrying it around. What he hadn't noticed was that she had made a lariat out of it. Dropping the spent rifle, she hurled the cable one-handed, looped it around the robed figure, and yanked.
Shocked, the magician stumbled forward, lost his balance, and fell flat to the rocky ground with his arms lassoed to his sides. At the same moment, searing hot bonds wrapped around Gio's wrists, and he lost his grip on the air pistol. The ropes were made of fire burning nearly clear in the bright sun, barely visible to the eye.
For a few moments the three of them thrashed in a bizarre three-way tug of war. Javic's arms were held by Max's lariat just above the elbows, but, in turn, his fingers were tangled in the fiery bond that he had cast on Gio, and he refused to let go. Gio's wrists flared with dazzling pain, although there was no visible damage; his skin, beneath the nearly invisible bonds, was as smooth and undamaged as ever, but it felt as if he had shoved his hands into an open flame.
Max had to use both hands to hang onto the lariat. Gio's hands were immobilized, and Javic, writhing on the dusty ground, managed to hold the fiery ropes and keep them secured to Gio, but couldn't cast any other magic.
Gio was astounded at how strong he was. Max looked surprised, too. Javic was clearly no ordinary human. With the combined strength of two shifters pulling on him, he should have been quickly overwhelmed, but instead he was holding his own against both of them together. Wisps of smoke curled up from his robe as his magic heated him nearly to combustion.
