Page 77 of Junk Magic

“Furious,” I snarled, and strode off in the direction of the stadium.

I was practically blind with anger, so much so that I was surprised I didn’t face plant into another wall. I could almost feel the beast pacing inside, wanting to come out, but trapped and fuming. She wanted to go back and teach Ulmer a lesson. She wanted to see him bleed. She fought me every step that I took away from the arrogant bastard, who would have never dared to speak to our mother that way, but who treated us like dirt beneath his feet. And our cub even worse, as trash, as nothing.

So, yeah, I was lucky that the main entrance was shorter than the tunnels in the fortress surrounding it. Or maybe it was Ulmer who was lucky; I didn’t know anymore. But while the other passages had been designed to trap and confuse an enemy long enough for him to become lunch, this one was abbreviated, a deceptively friendly, come-on-in-and-sit-a-while invitation that anyone with any sense refused.

But I didn’t have much sense, as I was proving in spades tonight. And before I knew it, I was spilling out into a large, brightly lit space. So bright, that I had to put a hand up to give my eyes time to adjust, and even before they did, I knew what I'd see, as a thousand terrible scents hit my nose, all at once, like a belt to the face.

“What the fuck?” It was my own voice that spoke the words this time, and my own thoughts behind them, but I was too shocked to be relieved.

“My question exactly,” Sebastian said, striding over.

My eyes adjusted enough to see him some out of the blur, not in his usual suit, but in a black linen caftan that flapped around his ankles, with black embroidery edging the low-cut neckline and sandals in the same color. He looked like a desert sheik, lean, dark and strangely elegant, although a fashion statement this wasn’t. It was the sort of thing a bardric’s entourage took along in case he burst out of his other clothes, because the leader’s dignity wouldn’t support letting it all hang out like Ulmer.

That meant that something had startled Sebastian enough to force a change, which would normally have shocked me as he was nothing if not controlled. But I didn’t have to ask why tonight. I didn’t have to ask anything.

Because the stadium in front of me . . .

Was full of corpses.

Or, to be more precise, it was full of pieces of corpses. Arms, legs, heads, and the occasional torso littered the sand, and what looked like an ocean’s worth of blood had splashed the long rows of rock cut benches that surrounded the big open space. They were a mottled red-brown anyway, so the slaughter didn’t show up as much there, but that wasn’t true of the sand beneath our feet, which had been brought in to cover the more sophisticated carnage that sometimes happened here.

This was the official place of challenge, where evildoers were made to pay for their crimes, and things often became bloody. But not like this. I’d never seen anything like this.

Except briefly, in a vision out in the desert, I realized. Had that been when this happened? Because it had to have been recent. The blood was still liquid in spots, although it was no longer warm . . .

“Recognize them?” Sebastian said, his voice rough, as he crouched across from me.

I realized that I’d sunk to one knee beside the nearest body. It had a large stain seeping out from underneath, which the cop part of my brain had already started to assess. That was made difficult by the fact that much of the blood had seeped away into the sand, but the wound the victim was lying face down on must have been severe, because there was still plenty pooled around.

I might have been wrong about the timing, I thought. With the fact that much of the blood had already formed a gel like consistency, some had started to coagulate into dark clots, and a black, cracked rim had begun eating at the edges of the puddles . . . my best guess was that this had occurred earlier than my vision. Possibly as long as six to eight hours ago, although the lack of humidity might have fudged that somewhat—

“Lia!”

I looked up to find Sebastian staring at me. He didn’t look angry; more concerned, with a line in between the dark blue eyes that were so different and yet so like his brother’s. They examined my face for a moment as though they barely knew it, and I stared back, seeing two different creatures merging in and out of one another.

The sun bronzed figure in black was crouched in the dirt, but the shadow of his alter ego loomed over him. It was a tawny giant with fire lit eyes, or maybe those were some of the many torches that had been scattered around and were now shining through the illusion, or whatever this was. I still wasn’t sure and didn’t care, just stared up at him in awe, caught in surprise as always by the beauty of our other form.

And then I noticed—he wasn’t alone.

I didn’t mean just the people who had gathered in groups at a couple of the lesser entrances, who were being rousted out by some of Sebastian’s squad. Wolf’s Head was currently occupied by several smaller clans whose territories had been impacted by the war and who had nowhere else to go. So, instead of the passageways beyond the stadium branching off into classrooms, recreational centers, communal kitchens and meeting halls, they now boasted what looked like the beginnings of a small town.

Or so I’d been told. I didn’t make a lot of council sessions. But the people trying to peer in looked normal enough, despite the wolf shadows I could see behind them.

But others didn’t.

Sebastian was trying to talk to me, but I was busy watching shadows flitting around the arena the way the tourists had in Vegas, or the phantom boys in Cyrus’s apartment. Scent people were everywhere, and gathered most strongly in the areas around the bodies. Or what was left of them.

Some of the clouds were smeared, blurred by people passing through in the hours since, but others were strong and bright, with the lack of wind inside the huge walls keeping them intact. So much so that I could see dim recreations of the battle in places: a wolf on his belly, fighting desperately to get away, his fingernails carving long trenches in the sand as he was dragged off. Another had been thrown against a wall, the blood splatter around where he hit still visible on the stone although the body itself was gone. And several teeth had been knocked out of someone in human form by a savage blow, causing them to go flying.

But most of the dead were Changed, which made sense as they’d been fighting for their lives, with blood splattered fur everywhere. There was everything from tawny to russet and from brown to black, with plenty of beautifully mottled coats in between. And while they were ripped up and stained from the battle, they were still there.

So, hunters hadn’t done this. The dark mages who stalked Weres for their skins would never have left a fortune to rot on the desert sand. Nor would any have been bold enough to come here on a hunt to begin with.

I turned my attention back to the teeth.

I’d found them by smell. Someone’s shoe had almost buried them in sand, when its owner staggered back from a blow to the gut. The attack had brought up his dinner—tacos and cola, by the smell of things—and splattered it all over another wolf that had been running by, trying desperately to get away from someone.

I could see the panicked wolf, but not his pursuer. I only knew that he was there because of the scent void around him, just nothingness beyond a splatter of puke, some of which had hit him, too. I could trace it as he moved along, even through the sickly-sweet odor of death that permeated this place. But he and the other attackers were simply . . . missing.

---