Page 29 of Junk Magic

“My job.”

“There’s more to life than work,” he said, moving closer.

A wave of wolf musk, mixed with the sour tang of sweat and the reek of clothes that hadn’t been laundered in a week, hit my nose. It was enough to make my eyes water, but my smile didn’t falter. Being polite—AKA respectful—was practically a prerequisite to getting anything out of the clans.

“Yeah, but I’m single minded. I also like to know who I’m talking to. Mr. . . .?”

“You can call me whatever you like, darlin’.”

I was starting to have to work to keep the smile on my face. “I’d like to call you by your name.”

He sighed. Apparently, I was not responding to his charms as well as he’d have liked. “Cloud-Leaper.”

“And who gave you this name?” I asked, unconsciously falling into clan-speak.

But it was a lucky accident, as it pulled the first hint of a smile out of him. “My gran. As a boy, I used to run up the bluffs and jump off. Thought that, if I could only get high enough, I could touch the sky. Then I transformed and found I could leap higher than anybody. It was an easy choice.”

“Sounds like it.”

“And what do they call you, then?”

I didn’t answer, because I didn’t have a clan name. That was given after the first time you transformed, which I could not do. “And your human name?”

“Don’t use it. Don’t need it. We stopped being human a long time ago, only some of us forgot.” He looked at me pointedly.

I didn’t take the bait. I also didn’t keep trying for a name that he didn’t want to give. The clan rolls would have his wolf name recorded, and I could get it that way.

“Mind if I take a look around?” I asked instead, and started toward the Quonset—only to find a well-muscled arm in my way.

Sometimes being polite wasn’t enough.

“Long as you got a warrant,” I was told. “Otherwise, you got no business here, mage.”

I smiled wider. One of the dogs, the more submissive of the two, slunk off as far as its chain would allow, hiding around the side of the nearest, makeshift tent. The other whined and gnawed unhappily at its chain.

“That’s the thing about war,” I said. “Rights often get suspended. Like the one to refuse a search when there’s reason to believe that there’s contraband on the property.”

It was, of course, pure bluff. I was here to get an errand out of the way so that I could concentrate on helping Cyrus. To be precise, I was here because Colin’s family were shit and I wanted to get a look at the other kids. They might be in danger, and an eyewitness account from me could help Sebastian force their removal pending an investigation.

I had not suspected that the crappy clan had anything to do with the current drug problem, as I’d assumed that Colin had gotten his on the streets.

Had assumed until right now, I thought, as the skinny blond shivered all over. It caused me to instinctively stumble back because I knew what that meant. And thereby barely avoided the maw of huge teeth that tore through the air a second later, right where I’d been standing.

I threw a shield up, leaving me looking at a crazed, light tan wolf twice as big as me that was pawing and lunging and snarling, trying to bite through my protection. He didn’t succeed—war mage shields are no joke—but he did make a hell of a ruckus. Enough to call in backup in the form of two more transformed Weres, who bounded out of the wooden house, one of them large enough to get his withers caught in the doorframe—

For about a second, until he tore through the wood, blowing out the sides as if a tank had just rolled through.

Even worse, an old pickup was headed our way down the road, stirring up a dust cloud behind it. It had what looked like a dozen guys on it, sticking out of the cab and hanging onto the back. And while I didn’t know that they were Weres at this point, it seemed a safe bet.

It was the only thing that was safe.

I had not expected a problem, at least not of this magnitude. Less because of the Corps, whose authority many clans did not respect, than because of Sebastian. He was bardric, with the authority of the council behind him, and I was an adopted member of his clan. To attack me, especially without provocation, was to attack him and the whole of Clan Arnou.

Yet I’d been attacked anyway. Which meant that not only did these guys have something major to hide, but that they intended to kill me and hide the body. At this point, they had no other choice.

The truck screeched into the melee, which was already bad enough with three huge Weres hammering on my shields. And I was treated to a rare sight: a nearly simultaneous transformation of what had to be eight or ten more Weres. I couldn’t count them accurately because it looked like a waterfall of fur flying off the truck and straight at me, but it didn’t matter. No shields were going to last long under a barrage like that.

Defense: limited. Offense: doubtful. Retreat?

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