Page 105 of Junk Magic

And then Caleb was grabbing my shoulder and pointed at something behind us.

Chapter Twenty-Nine

Caleb had been yelling at me, but over the Were’s screeches, what might have been a few of my own, and the crackling hell of riding a lightning storm, I hadn’t heard him. I still didn’t, but I could see. And what I could see—

“Ha!” I said, because as bad as we were doing, the dark mage squad was faring even worse.

They’d taken off after us, with the prime target obviously being Sebastian, as I’d assumed all along. But there was no doubt about it now, with a couple hundred mages abandoning the fight to thunder down the hall in our wake. And using magically enhanced speed, which ate through power like nobody's business, to help them keep up with our crazy pace.

Or maybe that wasn’t the only reason.

Because behind the dark bastards, I kept getting glimpses of Weres—a lot of Weres. Whenever we hit a stretch of more or less straight wall, I got a look at the wolves who had attacked the hit squad, and who were obviously not done yet. The unfortunate mages in the back of the group were getting taken down as the Were pack ate at their heels—literally. Which caused the ones in front to pick up the pace even more, to the point that they almost caught us, although they were suddenly less focused on that than on what was chasing them.

And the rest of the squad weren’t doing any better.

The people behind concealed doorways and windows sprawling halfway up the cliffs had realized what was happening, and had started throwing everything they could find at their attackers. We’re not talking modern weapons or even war surplus here, but toasters, irons, more cooking equipment, paint cans, and somebody’s old washing machine. Even a toilet got into the act.

And while you wouldn’t think that those kinds of things would matter to shielded mages, the problem was that the battle had been going on for a while now. Most magical battles don’t do that. Most magical battles can’t do that as the mages would run out of magic.

These had managed to hold on for this long because there were so many of them. Some could shield themselves as well as their buddies on either side, and then switch off later to conserve energy. But not in here.

In here, everybody had to use enhanced speed, all the time, or get eaten alive. Everybody had to shield, all the time, even if their neighbors were helping out, because they were being attacked on multiple sides. That included friendly fire from above, which had taken down more than a handful, and those were just the ones I’d seen.

So, yeah, you could share the load, but you still bore the load for part of that protection. And on top of that, you were also trying to attack the bastards gunning for you. And on top of that, you had somebody hurling their fifty-pound dumbbells at your head with Were strength behind them.

Sure, they might not get through your shields, although that depended on how thin they were getting at this point. But even if they didn’t, impacts drained them—and you. So, the next time the big bad wolf came at you, with shining teeth and jaws that bit down with more force than an alligator, good luck with that.

You expended too much capitol fending off exercise equipment.

Even worse, it wasn’t merely the inanimate objects that the mages needed to worry about. I saw a man dodge a flower pot, only to have a huge wolf’s head stick out of a shadow and snatch him up. He disappeared without a trace, his scream lost in the darkness of some tunnel or other, as if he’d never been there at all. But other attacks were less subtle—like Granny Top-Knot and her group shot-gunning heads from hidden perches as we flew by.

“Gimme the shotgun!” Caleb said, wanting to get in on the act.

I passed it over, before barely avoiding decapitation from a rock ledge. They protruded out in patches all along the wall in this section, like clumps of weird mushrooms, and should have been knocked out ages ago as a safety measure. But they’d been left intact instead, to catch anybody who didn’t know this place well.

Which, unfortunately, included us.

As Caleb demonstrated when he got bonked on the head a second later, making him curse and spurt blood from an ugly wound. And miss his intended target, not that it mattered. The mages were hedged so tightly that the shell hit another guy, right behind the first.

“You okay?” I yelled back, and had Caleb flash me a bloody smile.

“Better than him!”

This was true. The mage had dropped with a yell, holding his leg. And enhanced speed meant that he was left in the dust by his associates as soon as he fell, with nobody going back for him.

Of course, a second later, there was nothing to go back for.

But the wolves were having their own problems. I saw several drop from spells flung at them from above, including a brown Were who was all but incinerated on the spot. More were felled by gunshots and lacerated by exploding rock shelves, which in this section were taking the brunt of the overhead barrage. While another moved just fast enough to avoid a disruptor, the dislocator’s nasty cousin.

Ensuring that it hit the mage to the right of him, instead.

If the unfortunate man had been properly shielded, he might have gotten off lightly. A direct hit would have almost certainly ripped apart his shields, as the charge on those things was no joke. Yet, if he was lucky, he might have gotten them back up before anyone noticed.

But he wasn’t properly shielded.

He’d taken one too many dumbbells to the head, which was why I was suddenly looking at a statue-like figure, dull red and gloopy, as if a child had made him out of runny clay. The features were no longer recognizable, having melted into the amorphous mass of the head. But the mouth was still there and still screaming.

For a moment, until the rock absorbed it, too, filling it up as if he was gargling lava.

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