Page 101 of Junk Magic

I twisted my neck around, staring back in the direction he was pointing, and saw that he was right. Not about some supernatural foe, or whatever that had been, but about a much more mundane threat. And one just as deadly.

The mages who had been up top were scaling down the walls now, and it seemed that I wasn’t the only one fighting off panic. Because their tethers were breaking as their concentration wobbled, sending some of them plunging to their deaths; while others took the run down the perpendicular cliffs way too fast for safety, even with magical harnesses. It was more of a retreat from whatever they’d been fighting than an attack, but the result was the same for us.

We were suddenly swamped.

I again tried to speed up, but the infrared eyesight that worked a treat on bodies was useless against cold stone. I couldn’t see the path ahead and couldn’t risk barreling into a wall and snapping Caleb’s paper-thin shield. And then it gave up the fight anyway, after absorbing another half dozen spells, leaving us seconds away from death if I didn’t do something completely crazy, right freaking now.

So, I did.

Chapter Twenty-Eight

“What the hell?” Caleb yelled, grabbing my shoulder from behind and ensuring that I skidded us into a wall.

Sparks flew, highlighting our location, and I suddenly didn’t need to complain about a lack of light. Spells flashed everywhere, from behind us, from above—where it looked like a few of the mages had remained behind—and ricocheted off the walls ahead to come speeding back this way. But instead of us going up in flames, it was something else.

Make that a lot of somethings.

Because I’d just done a blanket levitation spell on the corridor, causing everything in sight to forget about gravity and float up into space, giving us a buffer zone in the form of anything that wasn’t nailed down.

So, instead of being the only target in town, we were suddenly surrounded by an asteroid field made up of slowly rotating sacks of garbage; half a forest’s worth of wooden pallets; rocks of various sizes, including some that counted as boulders; a number of woven baskets; a line of laundry, all of which was now drifting aimlessly on its clips; and a bicycle, the latter of which was immediately turned into metallic confetti when impacted by a spell.

The remains of somebody’s ride sparkled and spun overhead as I righted the steering wheel and took off, not knowing how long our protection was going to last. Or if I could navigate while not running us into something, because infrared vision is not a help when everything is on fire! And then my own eyesight returned, but it didn’t help much.

The burning debris cast ominous shadows onto the ground, making it look like we were driving through hell’s hallway. It also highlighted the terrified faces of the father and son, who I smiled at as reassuringly as I could manage. “It’s okay. We got this!”

But neither of them looked very convinced, maybe because—

“You’ve got this?” the father yelled, as our front tires started to leave the road. “What, exactly, do you have?”

A problem, I thought, cursing inwardly. Levitation spells were notoriously unreliable if not bound to an item, and the damned thing hadn’t excluded us even though I had told it to. I knew I had!

“Change back!” I yelled at Sebastian.

“What?”

“Go furry! We’re sailing right into their line of sight!”

But I guessed he didn’t hear me over the gunfire now strafing the corridor. And pinging off rock and metal alike as our already panicked enemies tried to shoot the spell that had caught them by surprise. And we weren’t much better off, with our last few tires breaking contact with the earth, leaving us completely airborne.

And sitting ducks.

As soon as we floated above the fiery garbage, we were dead. But I couldn’t stop us without reversing the spell, which I couldn’t do because it wasn’t bound to anything! And even if I could have cancelled it, we’d be right back in the same mess as before.

Caleb had started raining fire on the mages behind us, using a magical tether like a whip to grab flaming junk and sending it flying at their heads, which appeared to be making some of them regret following us down here. But the fact that he was resorting to that meant his ammo was getting low. And instead of listening to me and helping out, Sebastian was working on slipping the last tether I’d put on him, since the others had lost their grip when he Changed.

But I’d forgotten—the stubborn bardric wasn’t the only wolf in residence. And a moment later, the front seat was crowded once more, courtesy of a now fluffy father and son, the latter of whom must have been wolf born since he’d changed, too. Even combined, they weren’t as heavy as Sebastian, but an extra six hundred pounds did help.

That wouldn’t have been true in real zero gravity, but levitation charms only give you actual weightlessness if properly bound to an item. Splashed around like this there were pockets of zero grav, and pockets where it was merely lowered, as if we were on the moon. We hit one of those and sank back down again, staying in the gloom, staying hidden. But we still weren’t moving, unless you counted an occasional bounce, because wheels don’t work too well when they almost never encounter the road. Leaving us vulnerable to any mage with a tat like mine who could see in the dark.

Like that one, I thought, as bullets suddenly strafed the car from above.

Everybody ducked except for Caleb, who one-shotted the sniper off the rocky roof. The body fell into the corridor and then just stayed there, floating about and adding to the confusion, because it couldn’t fall. But there’d be a replacement soon enough, and he might have better aim.

We had to get out of here.

“How far does this damned spell extend?” Caleb demanded, reading my mind.

“I don’t know. I was just trying to—wait, grab her!” I said, as Kimmie’s limp form started to drift away.

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