Page 31 of Junk Magic

“Are you all right?”

The words were benign, but the sound wasn’t. Oh, God, it so wasn’t. It was unbearably loud, as if the man was shouting in my face with a bullhorn.

I tried retreating, but I was already backed up against a building. I couldn’t go anywhere. And they were all crowding in now, suffocatingly close, these weird people with their loud voices and their grabby hands and their springy giraffe necks—

“She’s not all right,” a woman bellowed. And, suddenly, there she was, with a tiny face, but huge sparkly red lips, and brilliantly white teeth the size and shape of a donkey’s, and an enormously long tongue that snaked out when she spoke again. “Grab her—”

“Auggghhh!” I lashed out, not with anything lethal, because they hadn’t hurt me yet, and training held. But it was a shockwave spell, forceful enough to push them back. And with the bizarre world I’d fallen into, they looked like they literally flew away.

I didn’t waste any time. I ran. Although that caused its own set of problems.

One minute, my feet felt like they were melting into the pavement, making every step a sucking nightmare. The next, it was as if I’d affixed clouds to my soles, causing me to levitate off the concrete. And while it’s not easy to run through melting tar, it’s even harder on air.

Not surprisingly, I wasn’t making great time, something complicated by the approach of two more distorted figures in police uniforms.

That would have been fine; I wasn’t hurting anyone, after all. Only they didn’t seem to think so. I kept trying to get away, sucking footsteps and all, and they kept following and harassing me. Until I finally had enough and stuck them to a wall with a web spell.

I staggered off down an alley, which was a mistake because it led straight into Fremont Street, and the neon extravaganza arching overhead. Viva Vision, as it was called, was usually a tacky, but colorful, addition to the old-time Vegas ambiance. Arching across the home of penny slots and mile long beers, it was a world away from the upscale glitz of the Strip.

But tonight . . . tonight it was hell.

Music boomed from multiple stages, loud enough to deafen me. People crowded in from all asides, jostling me. And neon pink fireworks exploded overhead, dazzlingly bright.

I stared up at them, completely overwhelmed. I knew they were just a light show projected onto a LED covered canopy, but they looked amazingly real. And just like with the giraffe necks, they were telescoping down at me, until it felt like being caught in a war-time barrage. Or as if I’d flown up into the middle of an actual firework display.

Maybe I had. Colorful bursts detonated everywhere, including under my feet, making it impossible to run or even walk. Not that I probably would have been able to anyway, as I couldn’t feel my feet anymore. I didn’t know where to go or what to do, and I couldn’t see anything, except brighter and brighter explosions, bursting in front of my vision, blinding me. While their boom-boom-boom reverberated deafeningly in my head.

I fell, what felt like miles, face planting into the middle of the street screaming and flailing as the sensory overload intensified. Hideous things dove at me, colors shouted at me and the ground convulsed underneath me. All while I tried to concentrate long enough to fling the spells to make it stop, to make it all stop!

But instead, somebody else did.

A spell whispered around me, soft and silent, but powerful enough to have made my hackles rise on another occasion. Not tonight. Tonight, I grabbed hold of it like a child with a favorite teddy bear, dragged it closer, tried to bury myself in it. Because where the spell went, darkness and silence followed.

I felt strong arms lifting me, whose I couldn’t tell, because the spell was making everything hazy. It was as if a black blanket had been thrown over my head, but with a thin weave, allowing me to get glimpses through the fabric. I closed my eyes; I didn’t want glimpses.

And then the spell tightened, and I was gone.

Chapter Nine

I knew where I was before I opened my eyes. “Crap.”

“She’s awake,” a familiar voice said.

I hauled myself the rest of the way back to consciousness and saw the Corps’ leading physician, Arturo Sedgewick, bending over me. The rotund little doctor was scowling, which was par for the course since the war had flooded his clinic with patients. Sedgewick was more into research than healing, which was just as well considering his bedside manner.

Typically, he shoved me back down when I tried to sit up. “Stay there. Or I’ll have you strapped to the bed.”

I would have had something to say about that, but the room was spinning hard enough to make me dizzy. And his nose, already fairly pointy, kept growing and stabbing out at me at random intervals. It made me want to duck and dodge, like sword fighting Pinocchio. I refrained and closed my eyes again.

Only to hear Hargroves clear his throat on the other side of me.

Great.

“Is she lucid?” he demanded.

“As much as she’ll be for a while,” Sedgewick said dourly. “She’s lucky to be alive. That dose would have killed anyone else. Were physiology truly is amazing.”

I sat up abruptly at that, despite the threat, because Sedgewick was known for being a little too interested in Were physiology. He’d gotten into trouble not too long ago for doing a forbidden autopsy on a dead Were, and I didn’t want to be next. Although it felt like I might be, any minute now.

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