Page 107 of Junk Magic

The fight on the corridor floor had turned desperate, with the mages deploying their entire arsenal to lay down a blanket of deadly fire from a swarm of animated weaponry. They were outnumbered now, but the Weres were outgunned. And everywhere I looked I saw terrified faces of both species, lit up by red and orange phosphorescent spells.

Then a blast hit the truck a glancing blow, but it was hard enough to throw us at the wall, and almost cause me to bite my tongue in two. The main force of it took out someone below and it sounded like a human someone, but the mages didn’t seem to care. They were tired of trying to hit a moving target that they could barely see and had decided on a new tactic.

Which was to rain fire until we were dead, and hang the collateral damage.

And it was probably going to work, since our fulminare took that moment to cut out.

I heard Caleb curse, probably because someone had managed to get another tether spell on us from below. Someone else had done the opposite, using his tether as a rope to slide down to us from the rocks above. Only to be met by a savage blow to the head from the butt of the empty shotgun when he arrived.

I was the one wielding the gun, because Caleb was busy picking off the tether-holders beneath us. But there were too many of them and he quickly ran out of ammo. I felt us being jerked ever lower, while my beast clawed at my insides, screaming to be let out, and the cluster of mages overhead took aim, planning to finish us off.

But they didn’t. Because they’d just been thrown aside, as something else took their place. Something huge.

I craned my neck, because whatever it was, was on our side of the hall. But all I could see was a dark outline against the stars. It didn’t look like the bird thing I’d glimpsed earlier; it didn’t look like anything except a shadow, one with a Were’s snout when it turned its head slightly.

But it wasn’t a Were. It was far bigger and strangely misshapen. And was suddenly dropping down on top of us, a jump of maybe fifty feet as if it was nothing.

It didn’t hit us, but landed just alongside, crushing several mages in the process. It was tall enough that it could look me in the eyes, despite the fact that I was maybe fifteen feet off the ground. And now that I could see it clearly, splashed with fire and spell light, I felt a cold hand grip my heart and squeeze like a bastard, because it wasn’t a Were.

It was worse.

“Relic!” I yelled hoarsely, why I didn’t know. Most people here wouldn’t know what that meant, and weren’t likely to have the time to learn. Because three more giants had just leapt down into the crowded corridor, to join the first.

And that, friends, was game over. In a confined space, we couldn’t take one of these creatures, much less four. I frankly doubted that we could have done it anywhere, because I’d somehow managed to forget exactly how terrible they were.

There was none of the elegance of their Were cousins. This wasn’t a predator; it was a monster, and it looked every inch of it. From the hideously elongated arms and horribly hunched back, to the misshapen maw of huge, uneven teeth and matted, ugly coat, it was mind-alteringly awful, like something from another world that had no business in ours.

It was also absolutely the cause of Windward’s demise, as I couldn't get a scent read on the creatures even with them practically in my face. Except for one, the last to arrive, who had landed by the far wall. Yet my nose picked up on something so bizarre in the air around him that it had me wondering if I was losing my mind.

And then I was sure of it, when the four sent up a terrible ululating cry, almost in unison, and fell onto the crowd below.

But not onto us, despite the fact that we were out of both magic and ammo, and my furry blanket had passed the hell out on the seat beside me. And not onto the Weres, who had stopped fighting and were simply staring at the creatures in a cross between shock and horror. No, the monsters went on the attack, alright, but their target . . .

Were our enemies.

In less than a minute, the four relics savaged every mage there. And nothing the dark squad did made a damned bit of difference. Shields or no shields, magic or no magic, guns, potion bombs, snares, and everything else you could imagine was deployed by the mages who lasted long enough, and none of it mattered.

And then, before I quite knew what had happened, it was over.

The Relics bounded up the mostly sheer walls in defiance of gravity, and with no more effort than I would use to walk down the street. They disappeared over the top, leaving behind red splashed walls, a lot of freaked out Weres, and piles of red, oozing meat. And Caleb and I, bobbing slightly in my ruined truck, and staring at each other.

Chapter Thirty

There had been times after a battle when I’d almost wished that I’d been knocked out, as it would have been simpler. This was one of them. But instead, Caleb and I had to clamber down from the ruined truck, which neither of us had the strength to disenchant, after slapping the Were father around enough that he woke up and tried to eat my head.

I didn’t hold it against him; it had been one of those days. I also didn’t mind that I sprained an ankle when I landed wrong, after using one of the mages’ disintegrating tethers as a rope, and had a limp as a result. I didn’t even care that I was bleeding like a stuck pig from the wound in my side, and a bunch more smaller ones peppering my jeans.

But being bottomed out on magic sucked.

Mages need magic to live as much as we do food, to the point that we can literally die without it. Getting too low was as bad as losing too much blood, although lucky me, I’d managed to do both. Which probably explained why I was staggering, cold, and clammy, and my skin felt like it was trying to escape from my flesh.

Of course, there might have been for another reason for that.

The area we were standing in looked like a bomb had gone off with us at the center, one that had selectively left out the Weres. Wherever they’d stood, the walls behind them were clean; everywhere else was a landscape of blood and meat and gore that climbed up a couple of stories or more. It looked like a crazy art installation, with broken rib cages and body parts slammed so forcefully into the walls that many had stuck there, like ships riding a red wave.

“Careful,” Caleb said, grabbing my elbow. Because I was staring around instead of looking where I was going, and slip-sliding on the carnage as a result.

The Weres were surer footed, and far less squeamish. Sebastian had already taken off for the arena while I was trying to get out of the truck, along with those of his people who remained in fighting form. But that left a lot of others, who had started digging through the mountains of the dead looking for loved ones who’d been buried underneath, and slumping to their knees whenever they found one.

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