Page 102 of Junk Magic

“Don’t you have a plan?” the father demanded, as Caleb buckled her in.

“Yes, I have a plan!” I really wished people would stop asking me that.

“You do?” Caleb sounded doubtful.

“That depends. Do you have any fulminare?”

He stared at me for a moment, and then he started cursing.

The Were father grabbed me. “Does this plan involve us floating out of here like a balloon?”

“No—”

“Then why have we started back up again?”

And, yes, we had. But before I could decide what to do about it, the sound of pounding boots came echoing down the passageway. A lot of boots.

“What’s that?” Aki asked, looking around wildly.

“You have to be kidding me,” Caleb said, pushing the boy’s head down and opening fire on a mass of pursuing mages.

“Where are they coming from?” the father shrieked.

“The arena.” I guessed they’d decided to chance it, after all.

And they were coming full bore, with a barrage that would have pulverized us except that we weren’t where they were aiming anymore. We had wafted about a story above that, and were heading into a lazy backwards somersault until I threw myself on the dashboard to balance us out. And a moment later, I heard the very unhappy sounds of a bunch of mages who had just run headlong into the same problem that we were having.

I also learned a new thing: spells don’t function properly in zero grav. Bullets seemed to work just fine, and there were plenty of them zipping around. But the hexes that had accompanied them were drifting randomly in the air, as seemingly confused as the rest of us.

That might explain why the previous group of mages had been having such trouble hitting us, as their spells drifted off course and immolated somebody’s garbage. And it meant that the new arrivals were having to desperately flap about, trying to avoid their own battle hexes. It would have been funny if we weren’t rising toward their comrades again, who now had a bunch of suspended spell light to see by.

But suddenly, that was no longer a problem.

“Auggghhhh!” I shrieked, which would have been embarrassing, except that everyone else was doing it, too. And if you’ve never heard a transformed Were scream in terror, you’re missing absolutely nothing, because it’s horrible.

But not as much as plummeting from a height with no warning.

We hit down hard enough to blow out all four tires. Leaving us bouncing along on the rims over rocks and hard packed earth, because my spell had just given out. And being pelted by fiery debris as everything else fell down, too, including the dead body.

Which I drove over while trying to control our wildly careening ride.

Caleb was yelling something, but I couldn’t hear him over the formerly suspended spells hitting the ground, sending geysers of dirt skyward, and a bunch of howling wolves. Because the Were father’s desperate cry had been taken up by hundreds of voices. And, yeah, that had kind of sounded like a signal, hadn’t it?

The mages, who had just crashed down like everything else, didn’t even get a chance to draw a breath before they were hit again. But not by gravity this time, or bullets, or even spells. Instead, a hail of cast-iron pots and pans, large rocks, and nets were thrown from the shadows on all sides.

The nets looked pretty moth eaten, because they were presumably from the last war. But they worked to keep the enemy flailing around on the ground as a wave of Weres jumped them. And all hell broke loose.

Which was probably why Caleb was yelling a steady chorus of “Go! Go! Go!” into my ear. And I was trying. Hell, I’d been trying, but the truck was not handling well; something was definitely wrong under the hood.

And people were howling and yelling and screeching, and bullets were ricocheting and spells were raining down from the bastards up top. Including one that took out our windshield and sprayed glass in my face. And would have eaten through the dashboard if I hadn’t shielded my hand and thrown it off.

And then Sebastian was leaping out of the truck and running back into the fray.

“Son of a bitch!” Caleb said and started after him, but I grabbed his coat because that wasn’t going to work. We’d never find him in the churning ocean of fur and blood that the corridor had become, but there was an alternative.

“There’s an alternative!” I yelled.

“Like what?”

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