Page 10 of Junk Magic

They got back, all except for one. It was Jayden; I could see the nose ring winking at me from the snout of a sleek, dark gray wolf. He was like smoke on the wind, sure footed and lightning fast, and not darting and slashing blindly as the others had been. He emulated Cyrus and went straight for the jugular.

He almost made it.

He was faster than any wolf I’d ever seen—except for the one he was attacking. The giant creature caught him a split second before he completed his leap, snatching him out of the air with those huge jaws. And then snapping them shut, the resulting crunch so loud that it echoed all over the canyon, bouncing off the hills and magnifying in the still, night air.

Along with his brother’s horrified scream.

I heard Jace but I didn’t see him. I didn’t see anything except my target. And Cyrus, leaping out of the dark once more, distracting the beast.

Giving me a chance to strike.

I didn’t bother trying to figure out what might work. I threw it all, the whole damned belt, basically everything I had left. While recalling my gun, which had been levitating around the creature’s head, pumping lead into a cranium that didn’t even seem to notice.

Let’s see if you notice this, I thought, and fired.

The potion belt exploded, practically at point blank range, releasing dozens of spells right on target. Cyrus veered away, the liquid muscle under all that sleek fur rippling in the moonlight. Several newly arrived boys, who had also been leaping for the fray, stopped on a dime, their haunches bunching up almost comically around their faces. For a split second, all of us froze, watching and waiting to see if it would be enough.

And then the beast screamed.

It was a horribly human sound, making my skin crawl even as I started moving again. But I didn’t hesitate. After seeing it throw off a dislocator in seconds, I knew I didn’t have much time. But then, I didn’t need it.

Because war mage coats have a number of functions, including one that very few people know about. It isn’t seen very often because it isn’t needed very often. But in extremis, it can perform one final service for its master.

That one.

I hurled the coat, the final spell I would ever cast over it on my lips, just a whisper in the night. But it was enough. Because I’d had that coat ever since I became a war mage. My father had given it to me when I turned eighteen, just as his father had given it to him, a generation’s old family heirloom dating back centuries, to a many times great grandfather who had layered the first foundation spells onto the leather.

I’d added to them as I grew, until it was a tapestry of everything I knew, of all that I’d learned and become. I loved that coat like a friend, like the constant companion it had always been, like my right arm. And like what it was: a repository of my magic and that of the entire de Croisset family, who had served the Corps for eight hundred years with our strength, our honor, and our cunning.

All of which was woven into every fucking piece.

It hit the thrashing body, but unlike the potions, it didn’t explode. It didn’t hurt the creature at all. Instead, it engulfed him, expanding outward and wrapping him up in what looked like all the leather in the world, a great sheet of it that blocked out the sky.

Until it suddenly contracted.

The monster didn’t scream this time, probably because it could no longer open its jaw. It also couldn’t see, other than a sea of brown leather, or hear with the muffling folds cutting out any outside noise, or move effectively. It couldn’t do anything except thrash about . . .

And slowly suffocate to death.

The thrashing finally stopped, and the coat peeled away from the body. It was no longer a cherished family heirloom, but just a worn old scrap of leather, patched and faded, its magic exhausted. I stared at it in disbelief and grief for a moment, but also in overwhelming gratitude. Dad had always said it might save my life someday. Looked like he’d been right.

But it hadn’t saved someone else’s.

Cyrus had already Changed back, and had run up to where a wolf had been a few moments before, but where only a boy now lay. I knew it was too late even before I joined him, limping up with a twisted ankle and a bruised ribcage, from where my shields hadn’t been strong enough. But the physical pain was easier to bear than what was happening in front of me.

“No! Let me go.” Jace tore away from the two boys holding him and ran up as well, only to stop in disbelief over the body of his brother. But if he was hoping for a moment to say goodbye, he was disappointed.

The body had been all but bisected by that terrible bite.

Jace went to his knees, his eyes huge and disbelieving. I started to say something, I’m not sure what, but Cyrus stopped me with a look. Well-meaning platitudes weren’t going to help, and might easily be resented.

I backed away.

And realized that, while I’d been distracted, the other body had transformed as well. It was still larger than Jayden’s, but was now human-sized. It was also vaguely familiar.

Two of the boys rolled it over, revealing limp limbs, a pale face, and a shock of dark brown hair almost the same color as mine. Like the eyes, open and staring and the steel gray of the clans. Colin, I thought dully, recognizing the angry boy from earlier. And, for a moment, it sounded like the hills were whispering the name back to me.

But it was just the boys, belatedly recognizing who we’d been fighting.

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