Page 122 of Junk Magic

And they were.

I moved, hardly at all yet just enough, and the vial rolled against my face, burning a line of cold down my cheek. I ignored that, too, and caught it between my lips, before working the stopper out with my tongue. And then—

Gah!

Gag-inducing bitterness hit my mouth, along with mind-numbing cold. It froze my lips and made my throat want to close in shock, to the point that I had to almost force the solution down. But I barely noticed because this stuff kicked like a mule.

I immediately felt it spreading through my body, a wave of shocking cold followed by intense heat, allowing me to easily trace how far it had reached. Although I would have been able to do that anyway by the feeling of life surging back into my veins. I gasped, my pupils blown wide, and every capillary I had suddenly roaring with blood like a raging river. I still had no magic—that takes time to build up—but I had everything else.

Including the power to pop the heavy restraints like they were made out of paper, to roll off the table onto the floor, and to miss the hail of bullets that peppered the cot a second later.

Igor, I thought, as he came bursting out of the maze. And looked surprised when I sprang at him like a wild animal and brought him down, not with a curse or a weapon, but with my teeth in his throat. His blood spurted everywhere, speckling my face, soaking my gown, and this time, it tasted good—hot and bright and like victory in my mouth.

I felt when he died underneath me, thrashing and panicked one second, and limp and lifeless the next. And then got onto my haunches in a deep crouch, waiting for the wave of backup that should have been behind him. I licked my lips without thinking, my heart hammering in my chest, but nobody came.

It finally dawned on me that the idiot had come alone!

But there was a red light over the door now, and a new siren blaring through the building, so they wouldn’t be long.

A quick search of Igor’s limp form came up with a card key that might help, and a gun that probably wouldn’t, since he’d emptied the clip. I threw it aside with a curse and started for the maze, only to find that my left leg didn’t work. It was still fighting off the effects of the hex Jenkins had hit me with and was dragging behind, threatening to throw me off balance.

It didn’t help that I was barefoot and the glass from shattered cases littered the floor. Or that the room was wobbling at the edges, although the full-blown psychosis I’d experienced last time had yet to show up. Maybe that took a while to kick in; I didn’t know. I just knew that I had to move, now, leg be damned.

And in a strange twist of fate, the gruesome collection saved me, the cases providing useful hand holds as I pulled myself along. Even better, the key worked on the door and there was a gurney just down the hall. I threw my battered body on top of it and started pushing with my good leg, hoping that it was too late or too early for a full complement of guards.

Or any, considering that a raw recruit could probably take me out right now.

Fortunately, I didn’t encounter any.

I did, however, encounter somebody else.

I’d been looking in the windows of the rooms as I passed, hoping for someone—or something—that I could let out to provide a diversion. But the creatures I found inside were just as gruesome as the supposedly dead ones in the lab, and were looking at me like lunch had come early. I couldn’t risk it.

But there was one exception.

“Jack?” I stared through the small, rectangular window in a door half way down the hall, and met a single brown eye looking back at me. Sienna’s son blinked in surprise, his pupil blown wide. And the constant pounding I’d been hearing all this time suddenly cut out.

“Let me out,” he said, although I could barely hear him over the alarm and the warded, four-inch-thick door, even with heightened senses. I mostly lip read, which was tough since I could only see part of his lips. The window was really narrow, I guessed to keep people from putting a fist through it.

I used Igor’s key instead, and the door swung inward.

And then I just stayed there for a second, because the room was trashed. There were huge slashes that had ripped off most of the drywall, all the way down to the reinforced concrete behind it. Some of that was gone, too, with missing chunks and pieces of bent rebar that stuck out in places, twisted almost out of recognition.

“I wanted out,” he told me awkwardly, and tried to pull his hospital gown closer around him.

I didn’t answer. I was staring at the pattern of slash marks on the nearest wall, which did not look like they’d been made by wolf claws. I was about to ask when boots started hitting stairs somewhere above us, and I decided I didn’t care.

“They’re coming,” Jack said, his voice suddenly high. “They’re coming, and they’ll spell me again, like that weird guy did outside of Wolf’s Head! I was hurt in the battle and he found me and brought me here—”

“No one’s going to spell you,” I said. “We’re getting out.”

“How?”

“That depends. How fast can you push me?”

The answer was pretty damned fast. We took off down the corridor like a bat out of hell, racing the sound of the boots to a set of metal stairs at the end of the hall. We hit it first and took refuge in the shadows underneath, while what looked like a whole platoon clanged their way downward, right over our heads.

Jack’s eyes were huge but he didn’t say anything, and they didn’t immediately see us. We’d parked the gurney just beside the stairs and were huddled behind it, with the sheet pulled down to help hide us. But that little trick wasn’t going to work for long.

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