Page 38 of Junk Magic

That wasn’t normal, any more than the rest of whatever was happening to me. But it did allow me to recognize them as the Weres who’d been contracted by the Corps to sniff out dark magic attacks. And now they thought they were protecting us from something else. Because a vargulf wasn’t a traumatized child to them; he was a serious threat.

One they were about to eliminate.

“Touch him and die,” I said, my own voice so rough now as to sound almost transformed.

It shouldn’t have, because the rest of me hadn’t changed. And for some reason I found that surprising, looking down at my human body and barely recognizing it. Spindly arms instead of heavily muscled ones; pale, hairless skin instead of a shiny pelt; a face that felt curiously flat and unremarkable, rather than sleek and purpose built for a predator, with an elegant snout of knife-like fangs.

It threw me, but not as much as the voice. Low, guttural and fierce, it was the audible equivalent of a dead-eyed sheriff waiting for the other guy to go for his gun. And it wasn’t a bluff. I meant every word, and the Were knew it. I saw his hackles rise, his teeth flash as they snapped in the air, his eyes narrow.

I’d just challenged him for the boy’s life, and Weres do not back down from a challenge.

“You would fight for that thing?”

Something leaped in me, a vicious, primal joy, a resounding ‘yes’ springing to my lips so fast that I had to bite them to keep it back. Something in me wanted to fight; something was glad to fight. Something wanted to take on all of them, right here, right now, and savage them for daring to touch what was ours.

The rest of me thought I might be going mad.

“I don’t have to,” I said, my human mind battling down whatever the hell was going on. “I am ordering you to stand down and go back to your stations. This boy is no threat.”

“He’s an outcaste! He’s here to cause trouble!”

“No.” I glanced at the cub, who was staring up at me with a mix of confusion and wonder in his eyes. “He’s here for his brother.”

I didn’t have to ask if I’d guessed right. In the crouched wolf form in front of me I could see the huddled figure of Jace, the remaining twin. The body of his brother, Jayden, was still downstairs, in the morgue along with Colin’s corpse. I hadn’t seen it, but I knew it had been brought here by the Corpsmen who had swarmed the bloody camp after I called them.

And I doubted that Sedgewick had let a nice, juicy corpse get away from him.

A new flood of rage swamped me—no wonder he’d been so uninterested in me; he already had a body waiting for dissection. Assuming that he’d waited. And the curtain of red that fell over my vision at that thought was thick enough to make it difficult to see.

It would have been followed quickly by shame—that I hadn’t even thought to ask about Jayden, that I’d left him in Sedgewick’s filthy hands—but wolves don’t feel shame. And I was in wolf mind now, almost fully, for the first time in my life. And while I didn’t understand it, I understood one thing perfectly.

Someone had to bleed.

* * *

“Lia!”

A voice was talking from somewhere nearby; a familiar voice; a friend.

“Lia, come on. Let him go, okay? We can talk this out.”

I didn’t understand the words. They didn’t make sense. Let who go?

Then I realized: there was a body underneath mine, with a pulse beating heavily in a thick neck—a human neck. My teeth were buried in flesh, and something was dripping down my chin. Rich and meaty, it tasted like pennies.

“Lia, can you hear me?”

I looked up and saw a big, dark figure crouching not too far off. Caleb, my mind finally informed me. Friend.

“You know me,” he said, echoing my thoughts. And crouching down, getting in my line of sight. “We’re friends. Fought side by side.”

Yes. Friend. War friend.

I smiled and somebody screamed.

Caleb ignored it.

“Yes, we’re old friends,” he said, as if reinforcing it. “And as your friend, I can ask a favor. Can’t I?”

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