Page 93 of Junk Magic

“What are they doing?” the young Were asked.

He had a bad habit of that, like I was supposed to narrate the battle for him when I was busy forcing my way through the remaining mages and out the other side. And across the blown off gate and into the arena. Where I saw—

“Shit!” I said again, as he came up behind me.

I grabbed the mane of fur around the great head. “Get Sebastian. Get him out—”

“He has a right to fight!”

“Not in the arena! Back in the passages we have a chance. We’re going to get slaughtered out here!”

That should have gone without saying, since there were more dark mages than I’d ever seen at one time crowding the great space, what must have been five and six hundred of them. And they weren’t alone. A group of regular people, probably some of those sent to guard the gates, had been taken to the far, left hand side of the space and were being held there—as bait.

And it was working.

I saw the father and son who Sebastian had charmed in the office among them, the former looking terrified as he clutched his little boy. And then I didn’t see anything but Sebastian closing in on them, with Ulmer’s great black and gray hulk right behind him. A dozen more wolves blew past us as well, in a wedge of sleek fur that was in no way going to be enough.

“Sebastian!” I screamed, and the gray wolf tore away from me and pelted after his chieftain. Like that was going to help!

The only reason they were still alive was that they were moving too fast for the mages to hit them. Spells detonated on all sides, throwing up sand in great geysers, along with the harder packed, redder dirt below. One hex hit a corpse that exploded in a fleshy firework almost in my face, coating the shield I’d managed to raise with a sludge of gelatinous blood and yellow fat. And the same thing was going to happen to Sebastian’s group as soon as they slowed down, and I couldn’t do a damned thing but watch!

But someone else could.

“What is that?” A woman with a shotgun asked as I stood there, staring across the arena like an idiot.

Because my old truck, which I’d have bet couldn’t even fit through the corridors outside, had just burst into view. The roof was missing and the remaining supports were smoking, as if it had been sheared off by a spell. And a bunch of insane teens were screaming and Caleb was driving and the whole thing was headed straight for a large clump of mages near the center of the great space.

“No!” I started yelling. “No, go back!”

They did not go back. They plowed straight into the startled group, and then partially over them, with the mages who were trapped underneath the truck forming a small hill as they pushed their shields upward to avoid getting crushed. And then I was running, even knowing that I would be too late, that they were about to get hit with every spell on the planet any second now.

But they didn’t. They were targeted by a barrage, but it mostly failed to reach them because it was coming from the peripheries of the space. The mages that they were literally in the middle of weren’t doing shit, other than looking around in confusion. Even the shields they were using started popping, causing half a dozen to get crushed under the weight of the truck when their protection cut out.

Mine did, too, despite me throwing all I had into it. And thereby fueling someone else, I realized, as I gazed up at Sophie, who was standing on top of the seat backs, straddling the front and back and deliberately making herself a target. And glowing like a star.

“Hit the dirt!” Someone was yelling. “Hit the damned—”

It might have been Caleb. I wasn’t sure, because could barely hear myself think over the sounds of battle. But I dove for the sand on cue, this not being my first rodeo.

And the next second, all hell broke loose in the air above me. Or to be more accurate, all the spells that had just been flung at Sophie. Her power had absorbed them like a sponge, and then abruptly shot them back out in a hurricane of magical force that just skimmed over my head—and took off a lot of others.

Mages were falling on all sides, people were screaming, wolves were howling and so much sand was being thrown around that I couldn’t see a damned thing. I also couldn’t hear with shotguns firing, someone turning loose with a machine gun, and spells bursting everywhere. Because we suddenly had a battle, ladies and gentlemen, we had a goddamned—

Somebody grabbed me.

I looked up, a spell boiling in my fist, and then had to swallow it back down because it was Caleb. He was yelling something I couldn’t hear, but I didn’t really need to when he began hauling my ass off, without even letting me get back to my feet. I fought him to a standstill by the side of the truck, yelling as loudly as I could.

And then a silence spell clicked shut around us, which I was surprised worked, only I didn’t see Sophie anymore. Suddenly, I didn’t see anybody. And I found myself panicking for the tenth time in the last two minutes.

“—fighting me!” Caleb snarled, shaking me. “Get your butt on board—”

“Where are the kids?” I grabbed him by the front of his coat. “Why the hell did you bring them here?”

“I couldn’t have gotten inside without them, and they’re not kids, they’re tanks—”

“They’re kids and what the fuck were you thinking?”

“I was thinking about getting you out, and there are six of them and one of me—”

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