“You celestial equine,” he spat with the same tone a rich person might use calling someone a cur. The mage held out his book and it flipped to another page, and the glyph formed.
That’s when a gunshot rang out. An ovoid field around the mage shimmered with purple light, forming a few solid magical hexagons where the bullet hit. Everyone turned to see Cassy, with a few alchemical firebombs on a grenade belt she wore.
“No wonder you were taking forever to burn the riff-raff off…” she said, tossing two of the flasks over the side of the building before firing again to stop the mage from doing what he did to Silvia’s bomb.
The tortured screams of several people trying to bash down the door came up from the alleyway as Cassy dropped her gun’s magazines. She fired to clear the chamber and put in two more magazines.
The mage wasted no time and summoned a familiar-looking glyph. “Cassy, watch out, he’s going to launch a poison cloud!” I shouted.
“No, he’s not,” Cassy said in a sing-song tone as she fired another bullet.
This one penetrated the purple field before it even fully formed and hit the mage’s shoulder.
The mage recoiled at the blow, and his spell failed, with the glyph winking out. Cassy threw her guns up, and wolf Cassy caught them again, one of them slightly out of line. That reminded me that Cassy wasn’t a gunmetal fang master, but an enthusiast.
She ran and jumped towards the mage, who deftly dodged. This let the wolf plummet into the pit with the beast. Cassy swung hard, digging her claw into the loose but still roof bound debris and pulling herself up.
“Wait, Cassy! Get us over there! Silvia needs medical attention!” I shouted. The wolf clearly wanted to fight this thing but nodded and ran over to us. I quickly placed Silvia on her, and she jumped us over as the mage prepared a spell.
Lighting crashed from the mage’s hand towards me. The jolt was searing, and I could feel the burning inside my body. I let loose a blood-curdling scream.
I didn’t have time to contemplate the differences between lightning and magical electricity. Cassy jumped back and got me onto the community centre roof, and I rushed to Silvia.
“Silvia? Silvia, stay with me!” I shouted as I ran her inside the building.
Despite being fired on and being in crisis mode for a while, the adrenaline pumped strong. Silvia felt light as a feather despite the age gap being only about five years, and her being most of my size, minus a couple of inches.
“Grr, ahh,” Silvia mumbled.
“Stay with me. You gotta know how to undo that poison, right?” I asked. She nodded slowly, and I got her down to the bar.
I was reminded of my upward journey riding her. This downward one wasn’t as fast, nor as vomit-inducing. I wasn’t sure that was a boon, though, as the girl seemed pale and capable of losing it at any moment.
“What do I need to do!” I asked, nearly panicking.
“Vodka, poison powder, alchemical mediator, reversion paste,” she said, pointing to the various parts.
Giving strong liquor to a minor wasn’t the best of ideas. I’d seen firsthand what this stuff did if not properly disinfected, so…
I poured the shaker full, and got the ingredients into it before shaking it up. I poured a glass and gave it to Silvia, who slowly sipped it. While I was waiting for her to be alright, I wondered if under the drink mixing station was an appropriate place for something called poison powder.
Why I didn’t realize this while labelling them I’ll never know.
“Is it working? Are you going to be okay, sweetie?” I was doing everything in my power to not hyperventilate.
The three boys came over nearly instantly and crowded around us. Gavin wanted to get closer, but the space was only so wide.
She gave me a thumbs up and looked at them. “Go… help… Cassy,” she said quietly. “I’ll be fine… in a bit,” she croaked out.
I looked up to David, whose face was stoic, but also clearly on the brink of rage. He looked to Lorenz, then to Gavin, then to me.
“Hop on.”
Chapter 34
Lorenz, Gavin, and David bolted up the stairs in their wolf forms, smashing the walls, which I figured would probably be magically reinforced to stand this constant beating day in and day out. I held tightly onto David to get up with them. I tried not to close my eyes, but that just made me dizzier than last time.
Gavin crashed through the door, swinging it wide for the others to arrive. I flopped off David as he spun around to face the mage. David’s wounds only seemed to show up in human and hybrid mode. Cassy jumped back and holstered her guns, now in human form.
“She’s not in control, so go easy on her,” Cassy said, her air-headed nature no longer making an appearance.
“W-what?” David said, looking to Cassy, and then to the injured mage. Apparently, she could tell that while the mage sounded male, he was controlling a female body.
“Grab the book if you can, but this is just a fight to demoralize!” Cassy backflipped over the stairwell exit and went back inside.
The mage’s smoke had a bit of a red tinge at the sides, and they were breathing heavily. “Such boundless energy. Not even a demon could muster up so much without magical help. You’ve all been enhanced, haven’t you?” the being demanded.
The three boys smashed their front paws down as they shifted into their hybrid forms. “Like we’d tell you!” David said, pointing a finger at the guy as they all ran for the mage.
An angry growling rose up from the being’s throat as the pages flipped, and another glyph appeared. The demonic voice spoke the strange characters, and a shield of magical energy surrounded the caster.
“Oh, hey, E-lis!” Cassy said, opening the door.
I ran to her, unsure of what else to do. “What?!” I asked.
She had a wide-toothed grin on her face as she held up the sniper rifle we’d snagged from the gunman who tried to shoot us the other night. “Wanna help?” she said.
“Uh, sure, I guess.”
Cassy set it up, putting its tripod legs up on the edge of the roof, pointing at where the boys were fighting. They’d jumped to the building to the left of the community centre from the front side. Cassy handed me a magazine.
“These are enchanted. It goes, fire, electricity, ice, ice, force, for every magazine,” she said, putting it into my hand and guiding me to where it was put inside the gun.
“The first step would be to take the safety off, but I never leave it on so you just need to know where it’s located.” Cassy pointed to a little knob on the side of the gun. “Next, you need to pull this back.” She twisted a knob, pulled it back and slammed it in before untwisting the knob.
“It’s what’s known as a bolt action sniper rifle, so when you shoot, do that, and it’ll eject the casing.”
“Uh, alright. Where’s the scope on this thing?” I asked, trying to keep up with the impromptu gun lesson as my friends were getting magically beat.
“Oh, he’s way too close for a scope. Use the iron sights! That’s probably what buddy was doing before you ki— before you knocked him out,” Cassy explained. “Just make sure both front and back are lined up. We don’t have a handgun to show you how they can be mixed up, but trust me, you could think you’re aiming at the target when you’re aiming at the floor!”
I moved my body and tried to find whatever these iron sights were. There were two metal bumps on the back, and one fin-like thing at the end of the barrel. I assumed those were what she was talking about and lined them up.
“Good, you’re doing great. Now, I really got to go, but I gotta see my babies fire!” she said, moving my arms so the rifle was aimed at the shield, not anyone in the fight, and she put her finger over mine in the trigger guard and pulled.
A stunning jolt went through my arm, and I grunted in pain, turning away from the impact site. My ears rang from the immense sound that came from the thing, and smoke filled my vision.
When I looked, the shield had been
broken, shattered into little magical shards. They scattered before being reduced to nothing.
“That’s it! Now keep at it, but remember, don’t hurt her too much!” Cassy said, referring to the possession victim before she backflipped away from me and went downstairs again.
I lined up the next shot. My shoulder pounded. It felt like a hammer had just smashed it, but I couldn’t stop. This mage was proving difficult, and if we got rid of him, we could focus on the—
“Oh, shit, we forgot about the demon.” I looked over to the pile of wreckage, and more of it had collapsed than before, suggesting the summoned demon had moved.
“Oh, crap, oh crap, oh crap!” I cursed as I switched positions to find out where the beast had gone.
While I’d run over to the backside, the creature reared around the corner of the street side and ran towards its summoner’s side.
“Oh, shit!” David yelled. “We’ve got bigger company!” he said, looking down.
“I’ll… try holding it off you three, focus on that guy!” I yelled, running to set up the sniper rifle on the other side.
This target didn’t require a high level of skill to hit, and I didn’t even have to hold back, win-win. I set up, and tried to remember the order. I fired again, and a sparkle of electricity played over the thing’s chest.
“Ow,” I moaned, undoing the bolt and ejecting the shell casing.
This would be bad enough on its own. The prior beating I’d sustained, coupled with my injuries from before, and it made me feel like my body would just simply break.
The beast didn’t even seem fazed by that shot and roared at me. I gulped and fired another shot, aiming for his head. He moved it to the side, and it missed. Yeah, no. Chest shots it was. I fired another one, and an explosion of ice sent him back a step, which was about a car length. He gritted his teeth and leaned down to go into a full sprint at me.
“Oh crap, oh crap, oh crap!” I cursed as I moved the bolt and fired the other shot.
What was it again? Right, force, that might have explained the next part. Its chest tilted backwards, and it flipped over.
It landed with a loud but low thump, and it set off all the nearby cars’ alarms. This sent pulsating waves of light and sound all over the street. The crowd trying to force its way into the community centre stopped clambering for a moment.
I smiled, despite the undeniable pain in my shoulder, and I looked down for more of those magazines.
Cassy had thankfully left a couple where I first started. Three were there now, meaning four in total. I ran over to them and quickly grabbed them before the thing managed to get back up.
“Fire… fire doesn’t work on demons, right?” I asked no one in particular.
Once I had it loaded, I did the bolt twice, to just drop the fire bullet and fired on it with the electricity as it got to its feet. I loaded in the first one, and another splattering of ice dug into the demon’s flesh and caused it actual pain. Since it seemed immobile, I decided to take a shot at its head!
Now, I want to say that I lined the sights up perfectly and that I got him right between his eyes. I was lucky enough that I caught his horn when he flinched in the wrong direction. Sniper elite I am not.0
The ice on its horn squirted it right into the eye, demonic blood poured out, melting the ice and evaporating the water and dry ice. I gaped in awe as the circle it’d crawled out from formed again to bring it back to its plane of existence. I killed it! I let out a whooping cheer before I turned to the battle raging just a rooftop over. The mage’s robe was on fire. The three werewolves panted heavily. Claw marks were all over the mage’s clothes. Not a single one showed flesh, but all leaked blood.
There were a few marks on the werewolves, and one nasty looking gash on Gavin’s side. The mage looked at the sinking demon and called it quits, too. Its cloak folded into the book, and it all turned into a black mist and floated away, leaving a single woman, clutching the hurt around her body in sheer shock and horror.
“Oh, that’s what Cassy meant.”
Chapter 35
The fight had started as it was getting dark and managed to stretch till midnight. That might sound a little off chronologically, but keep in mind I’m a university student, I sleep more than I move. That said, I wasn’t checking the time while it was happening, so it could have been magic making the area dark for all I know.
I was relatively unharmed, shoulder pain and prior bruises notwithstanding. I didn’t want to go into much combat after that, so I decided to help suture wounds. I will never volunteer to suture wounds again.
It’s not the most disgusting of things you could perform on a human being, though it does kind of ruin the wholesome act of sewing something. I’d been given a brief instruction from one of the nurses tending to their people and got to work on the mystery girl. Two mages were standing by her, their grimoires at the ready.
“I’m going to be honest, I don’t know what I’m doing, and I’m pretty sure this would hurt even if I did,” I gave her fair warning as I tackled the biggest claw marks first. She moaned but, ultimately, accepted her fate.
It was clear the mage had been something that could travel easily in gas form. Which might explain how it got past the werewolves in the first place. Only to come back to try and break the siege of the Earth plane.
It apparently needed a humanoid form to utilize its grimoire, which also seemed to be linked to the whole gas thing. I put myself in her shoes, suddenly taken over, possibly without memory of what she was doing until she wakes up, cut to hell, surrounded by three werewolves and a girl with a sniper rifle.
“So,” I said, trying to start an idle conversation with her.
She whimpered a bit as I performed my duties. “S-so?” she said, her voice trembling.
“How are you?” I felt like an idiot.
“Pain,” she said, going along with this conversation for some unknown reason.
“That’s… normal,” I said. “Do you remember anything?” I asked, finally being sensible.
“I-it’s rather hazy. I was walking along, and then I felt something envelop me, then it’s just flashes and the odd word. He mentioned the name Ye-ho a lot.”
“He?” I asked.
“The person who took over my body. I only got some words here and there, nothing I could make sense of.” The poor girl seemed to be taking the magical world in stride.
“Does he have a name? Or something else we could use to defeat him?”
She looked around. Being in a hospital, filled with bleeding people, and werewolves and wolves, she probably got a different impression of what we were all about.
“Uh, well, he really liked that book.” She shrugged before realizing how painful shrugging could be.
I’d gotten through an entire claw scratch and moved on to another. “Shouldn’t you take the glass out of my side?” she asked, reaching to poke it.
“No, no, no! It’s the only thing stopping you from bleeding out, and you don’t need to be losing more blood,” I said, stitching up the next biggest set I found.
“Oh, right, that’s bad,” she said in a much softer voice than normal.
There was a long silence after that. I wasn’t sure how things were going to go so, just in case I got attached, I didn’t ask her name. That felt a bit rude, sure, but she was taken over by that mage guy, and I had no idea whether or not he could take her body over at any time and just be here inside her again.
The area settled down as cries of pain were turned into the soft breathing of several wolves, and the actual combat nurses started to tend mystery girl’s wounds. There were three of them, and with me also working on her, she was pretty much surrounded.
Some of the nurses had a little device, which they pressed to the wounds I’d done. It seemed to seal the wound much better than I was doing. No, it cauterized the wound, I realized. It was a medical tool for stopping unintentional bleeding.
I was a little annoyed that the person dealing with someone wh
o’s bleeding the most wasn’t given it. Then again, I’d probably just burn the poor girl and not know how to use it properly. That, and there were only two.
“Anything of interest in your little conversations?” one of the nurses asked me.
“From what she says, she wasn’t in control when that book gas took over and only heard a few slivers of information.”
“The book gas?” The woman gave me a rude glare.
“Yeah, there was gas that took her over, and it had a book… book gas,” I shrugged.
Not my fault she wasn’t well-versed enough in the magical world to not know of book gases. The girl we were treating let out a soft chuckle before she winced in pain. I got through the last claw mark on the right leg, and then sat back, nearly exhausted from the fight.
“I should go see how my clothes are doing,” I said, which caused Gavin to bolt up and rush out of the room.
“Or maybe I’ll go check on Silvia,” I said.
I limped over to the stairs and went up a flight and turned into the bar area. There was another nurse, with another wound cauterizer, working on the people who weren’t as damaged. I made my way, taking a lot of long unneeded turns around various sleeping people. I didn’t feel confident I wouldn’t just land on them if I lifted my legs.
We’d left Silvia behind the bar, and I was wondering if she’d just remained there or was moved to the cots upstairs, or perhaps was a wolf somewhere in this room. Not being able to tell one black wolf form from another was a bit annoying.
Silvia was still lying behind the bar. She’d curled up onto her side and seemed cold. I sat down beside her and hugged her to warm her up. Her head slowly turned to look at me.
“How’re you doing?” I asked, adjusting myself to try and be comfortable in the position I found myself in.
“A-alright. Should be good fairly soon. The antidote seemed to work well, but there’s still a bit of poison in my system.”
“Do you need another dose of the antidote?” I said, bolting right up out of the comfy position I’d just gotten into.
The Stray Human: A college age urban fantasy with werewolves, werewolf community center book 1 Page 15
