Page 116 of Junk Magic

Like, really, really didn’t.

I also didn’t want to see the face on the head a few cases over, which was turned away from me, but which boasted massive, curled horns. I didn’t want to look for the body that went with it, or the huge, barbed tail nearby, which was coiled like a rope but was as thick around as a man’s leg. And I definitely didn’t want to examine the plants in another case stretching up to the ceiling, which had green faces protruding from the stalks with thorn-like fangs.

I stared at them for a moment, because they should have looked absurd, like something out of an old science fiction movie. A prop rejected for being too crazy for any audience to believe and relegated to a corner of a warehouse somewhere. But maybe because of the day I’d had, which would stretch even a war mage’s imagination, they completely freaked me out, not least because the fangs had gnawed through parts of their stalks, like a person chewing on their lips out of anguish.

Or someone desperately trying to commit suicide.

Juice from the wounds had seeped down the stems like blood, thick and viscous, along with hanging pieces of “flesh.” And it had all been preserved by whatever stasis field was at work behind the glass. Leaving the strange massacre frozen in time, unlike my rising panic.

I moved in the direction of the only door I could see, limping a little from my bad ankle, but limping fast. The door was on the other side of the room, which left me floundering through the trophy section, knocking my head on the very hard edges of suspended cases and setting them swinging. Or barking my shins on the floor mounted kind, which were almost transparent except for their gruesome contents, making them hard to see with vision that kept graying out.

I wasn’t sure how much of that was panic and how much was drugs, but I was pretty sure that the latter were in the mix somewhere. Because clumsy I was not, and yet I was quickly turning black and blue after bouncing around like a ping pong ball. And that was before a swinging case that I must have bumped on my way past swung back and almost knocked me off my feet.

And into something else.

I hit a case, palms out and face mushed against the side of the glass. And stayed there for a moment, panting hard. And not just because of the blow.

The case was the floor kind, but taller than me, and held something that would have probably stopped me even without any help. The contents were in the shape of a man, but larger, with areas of stretched out skin as if the musculature of a larger person had been shoved into a too small body. The skin was also discolored, partly by a tat on one arm, the bright colors of which had been smeared out of all recognition as the muscles bulged, and partly by patches of bumpy looking, grayish-black that had eaten up the chest and face. While the lower body . . .

What was left of my brain iced over. Because the creature’s entire bottom half was just . . . missing. Replaced by a mass of gray/black coils, slick and shining under the light, like a spill of oversized intestines. Or like what they were, I realized: a snarl of huge, snaky tentacles, with suckers on the bottom halves, several of which were splayed against the glass like open mouths.

And I finally realized what I found so disturbing about the little shop of horrors somebody was running: it was deliberate. The disruptor had done its thing, but it had been random, like the violence in the arena, like all battles. You were in the wrong pace at the wrong time and you got hit, simple as that.

But this was different. Somebody had deliberately done something to this man, had experimented on him, because that tattoo had not come off some otherworldly monster! This was—this was—

My thoughts cut out, because one of the suckers was moving: slowly, awkwardly, leaving a trail of something slimy behind it. The sucker contracted and relaxed, contracted and relaxed, like a tongue tasting the glass. And then the entire huge tentacle suddenly slammed against it, hard enough to crack the surface and to set an alarm blaring.

I stumbled back as the tentacle tried again, and this time managed to burst through the glass to wrap around my arm. It felt like a python, just a single slab of rippling muscle, unbelievably strong. Which was why, when I tried to jerk away, I went nowhere.

Until fire broke out in the case. Jets of it came from all corners filling the interior with flames, thickly enough to come bursting out of the shattered hole almost as far as me. I could feel the heat on my skin, while inside—

“No,” I whispered in horror, as the body went up like it had been doused with gasoline, thrashing and burning and—

And trying to pull me inside, to take me with it.

I leaned back, putting everything I had into it, which wasn’t much. And then grabbed a jagged piece of glass from the smashed case and stabbed and stabbed and kept on stabbing. Even when the tentacle went limp and the body it was attached to turned to a statue made out of carbon, a blackened, tortured memory of a living being, smoking like a demon out of hell.

My once living bond fell away, and I lurched toward the door. And while I wasn’t any more coordinated than before, I was motivated. I collected a bunch more bruises, but I didn’t care. Didn’t care if I broke something as long as I got the hell out, now, now, right freaking now!

And I did, stumbling out of the remaining maze and into an open area of tile in front of the exit.

Where I noticed a man standing by the doorway, watching me.

A very small man.

And then my tongue curled up on itself and I hit the floor, my body jerking and the cold tile grabbing my naked ass through the back of the hospital gown.

Colors danced across my vision as the hex went on and on, until I was pretty sure that my hair was fried and my insides were medium rare. Then abruptly cut out, as fast as it had come, leaving my tortured body arching upward in a spasm of agony. Until slowly, slowly, I relaxed back against the floor.

I didn’t try to move again, since I wasn’t even sure that I could.

“Get her back on the table,” someone said, and I felt myself being picked up and carried across the room.

I hit the exam table once again, the spell still rattling my bones, and for a moment, all I could see above me was white ceiling tiles. And then a face came into view. One that I didn’t believe, even though I’d seen it just a moment ago.

“Jenkins?” My numb lips somehow managed to form the word.

“You expected someone else?” He pushed his glasses up.

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