Werewolf Mage 3

by Harry Nix

  Werewolf Mage 3

  Harry Nix

  Galactic Royale

  Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  About the Author

  1

  The orange hit Alex in the face at high speed and he went down hard, first slipping off the beam before hitting the one below it and finally landing in the mud pit.

  Most of the werewolves in the pack cringed but a few let out cheers.

  “Gasp,” April yelled.

  Alex felt his lungs shut down as her spell hit. Not that it mattered much—he could barely breathe as it was after that fall off the obstacle course. It was good he was in his hybrid form—human Alex would have snapped his spine.

  He pulled himself out of the mud, quelling the rising panic inside him at the lack of air and focused on pushing back against the spell.

  Know Thyself was up and running and in his resistances, he had Gasp +++. Alex wasn’t quite sure how the spell was measuring things but in real terms it meant if he forced it, he could manage to move his chest and get in a bit of air.

  Alex blinked the mud out of his eyes and attempted to heave a breath. April gritted her teeth, her cheeks turning red from the effort. Gasp wasn’t a one-and-done spell—once cast it required a steady flow of mana to maintain it more than a few seconds.

  Gathered behind April were six children, ranging from two to five years old. One of them, Ruby, was holding her hands over her mouth, looking shocked. The others were absorbed in their game.

  Alex knew April could only hold the spell for a short time, but that wasn’t the point here. He wanted to resist the spell repeatedly and minimize its effect on him. He attempted to heave another breath and got nowhere.

  “C’mon wolfie, you can do better than that!” Juno called out. Alex glanced at her, and she winked back before passing a ripe orange to Jacob. The teenager had an arm on him and scary accuracy.

  “Vertigo,” she then called out, waving a hand in his direction.

  The wave of sickness nearly dropped him back into the mud. Alex had studied the spell countless times now and best he could understand was it screwed with the inner ear somehow, inducing stomach-churning sickness and loss of balance. He managed to keep his feet—at least until Jacob hurled the orange.

  Alex thrust out a palm, the physical movement to trigger Shield, barely getting it up in time for the orange to explode against it. But he lost his balance and went face-first into the soupy mud.

  For a moment, everything was dark and quiet, under the mud. The whole lack-of-air thing was starting to become an issue, Alex feeling tingling in his limbs as his oxygen levels dropped. He couldn’t hear his assorted pack members yelling and aside from his various wounds, it was kind of peaceful down there.

  Just as Alex was preparing to stand up and try for a breath of air one more time, April’s spell vanished, as did Juno’s.

  “Ha!” he roared, leaping out of the mud, covered head to foot. “The mud monster is coming to get you!” he called out to the children.

  “Alex, weredogs are coming!” Nia yelled.

  Alex looked away from the children to where Nia was pointing. Three of his pack were sprinting in wolf form towards them, followed by no less than twenty weredogs of various sizes.

  “Hide the children! Everyone else with me!” Alex roared.

  In the past week, his pack had grown from twenty to thirty-six. There were now six children who’d come with their parents, which left twenty-eight werewolves, a witch, and a half-nymph, half earth elemental to face off against the attacking weredogs.

  Make that twenty-six werewolves Alex thought as he saw Esme and Lydia herding the children away to the nearest cabin to hide them.

  Alex was fast but Jacob wasn’t weighed down by sticky mud and ended up in front of him, leading the pack. The young werewolf launched himself at the largest weredog, narrowly avoiding its teeth and slashing sharp claws across its eyes and down the side of its body. It put him in a bad position though, another weredog clamping down on Jacob’s leg.

  Alex saw Jacob’s shield ring flare as it took the bite and he silently cursed himself for not buying more of them. But he was hitting a severe financial barrier. Just feeding the pack was taking up a lot of money. Alex had done the sums—they needed at least five more profitable trips to Baxter to throw off enough cash to get every werewolf a shield ring. As it was, only eight of the entire pack had them.

  Landing beside Jacob, Alex kicked the weredog that had him by the leg, crushing in its face. Although it couldn’t pierce Jacob’s thigh with the ring still active, it could manage to hold him in place. It was a significant flaw in the rings that Alex had also been studying. They’d stop a bullet but not a cup of water, or a water balloon filled with colloidal silver. There was some level of velocity or pressure that needed to be hit before they’d activate, at least with the rings he’d studied. A slow bite could slip right past them.

  Jacob got free and attacked the biggest weredog again, which was snapping about, blinded.

  Over the sounds of screaming and barks, Alex heard chimes, April casting spells. A weredog to his right suddenly found itself bound by vines crawling up its legs, tightening as they did. Alex dispatched the weredog with the broken face, tearing its head off and flinging it away before plunging his claws into the trapped weredog.

  “C’mon doggie,” Juno yelled out, flicking a fire whip. She had a wild look on her face—one Alex had seen before at the Corvus outpost where she’d been gleefully ripping mages in half, surging with Chaos Magic. She was using the whips to devastating effect, tearing off limbs.

  Although the weredogs were vicious and overgrown balls of muscle, they weren’t smart or organized. The werewolves were furious but somewhat methodical. April would tie a weredog down and werewolves would disable it before moving to the next one.

  Weredogs had a regenerative ability, being they were ordinary dogs infused with werewolf blood and transformed by spell. But it wasn’t fast enough to regrow a torn-off leg with any speed.

  Juno ripped off limbs and then werewolves finished the job.

  Half the twenty weredogs were either dead or crippled in under a minute.

  Alex killed another weredog that had latched on to his arm, sinking its teeth in deep after Shield had canceled. He pulled it off him, gritting his teeth against the pain. Although it hurt badly, there was a sweet edge to it, the lure of the pain itself. Alex saw his pain mana bar filling as he almost unconsciously drew magic through the pain. He had to force himself to stop, a conscious act which felt like the equivalent of refusing a drink of cold water on a hot and dry day.

  He found himself behind his fighting pack, in a clear area. They were down to five weredogs left and one of them was already tied down with a vine. He could see a lot of blood and some injuries but overall, their sheer numbers and coordination was working well.

  A weredog went down as Dana, Pearl and Yvonne, three teenage werewolves, jumped on its back and rode it to the ground.

  Jacob turned to Alex, his fur wet with weredog blood and grinned at him, showing his sharp white teeth.

  “Yeah!” he yelled.

  Then his jaw disintegrated, tearing off his face, shards of smashed white tee
th bursting up into the air.

  Alex heard the crack of the bullet a moment later. He turned to see six men emerge from the trees. They were dressed in camouflage and appeared to be professional soldiers. They were firing methodically into the werewolf pack.

  Alex saw and understood in an instant: the weredogs were just a distraction, something to wear them down, to exhaust any protection rings or spells.

  A bullet tore through Alex’s ear, practically ripping it off. He didn’t need his spell screen to tell him it was silver—the hissing burn and searing pain did that. He quickly cast Shield again.

  What had looked to be a swift victory was suddenly a rout—two werewolves went down with clean headshots. Three of the weredogs were still attacking and a few of the disabled ones were doing their best to haul themselves close enough to bite. Someone was dragging Jacob away, the young werewolf holding his face, blood pouring out from his shattered jaw.

  The rage, ever-lurking, quickened, rising like a flood. Alex let it, the fury feeling good, like the pain.

  But then—

  Then Nia kissed him.

  She tasted like blood but also her.

  “Don’t go wild, not now,” she said and pressed her hand to his chest, over his heart.

  Alex nearly threw her off him, such was the power of the fury but somehow managed to get a hold of the wild thing inside him.

  “Back into cover!” he roared.

  The werewolves scattered, dragging their injured with them, and fighting off the last of the weredogs. Alex and Nia took April and Juno with them, running for the nearest cabin. Alex felt something pierce his shield spell and searing pain lit up in his shoulder.

  It only took a moment for the werewolves to get into cover, but the six soldiers had exacted a cost. Many of the werewolves without shield rings had been hit. Some were frantically clawing at themselves, trying to get the silver out. Others were helping them, doing rudimentary battlefield surgery that mostly consisted of slicing the hole wider and pulling the bullet out.

  April, Juno, and Alex immediately started casting Purify on the nearest werewolves. The spell hit and helped push any silver out of their bodies.

  But there was a range there. Alex hadn’t bothered establishing it, but they could only reach the nearest werewolves.

  “I’m running closer,” he said to his mates and cast Shield without waiting for an answer. April and Juno did the same.

  They left Nia behind and bolted between the cabins. Bullets flared off the spells, but none got through.

  One of the werewolves who went down to a headshot was still alive, her forehead caved in slightly. Juno put her hands on her and cast her heal spell. April lent her mana while Alex kept casting Purify on any werewolf he could.

  He looked around for Jacob but couldn’t see him. But he could see the trail of blood. With the weredogs dead or disabled, the only risk was the soldiers. Alex checked his mana—it was running low. He’d been hitting training hard this week and experimenting with the different mana he could use to fuel his spells. As a result, he only had pain mana and what was left of the blue bar he’d now labeled “natural mana”.

  Alex cast Purify on himself and the searing in his shoulder abruptly abated as the silver bullet dropped out on to the ground. He used the last of his natural mana to cast Shield again and leaped in the direction of the blood trail. He overestimated his jump and landed well past the cabin he was aiming for. His shield flared twice as he turned around to find Jacob propped up against the back wall, staring at the sky.

  “No!” Alex roared, diving down beside him. The young werewolf had no heartbeat, but he was still warm.

  Alex didn’t waste any time—he immediately cast his homebrew healing spell and charged it with the only mana he had left, pain.

  Usually the flame that appeared on his finger was small and blue. This flame came out black and cold, like an eternal winter night. Alex touched it to Jacob’s missing jaw and ruined throat. There was a lurch in the magic around them so sharp that Alex winced. The spell regrew Jacob’s jaw and throat in under a second, the black flame playing over his face.

  “C’mon, c’mon,” Alex said, holding the back of Jacob’s head.

  Despite the pain in his own body, and the sounds around him, Alex felt an odd calmness come over him. This wasn’t just Jacob... but a doorway.

  Letting the pain-charged healing spell run, Alex reached into cold darkness, feeling a thick rope. At the end of it was something tremendously heavy and strong. Letting out a breath, Alex gently pulled on it.

  For an instant he saw Jacob’s surprised face coming out of the black and then reality reasserted itself. The young werewolf coughed, and Alex let his healing spell fall away just as the last of the pain mana was exhausted.

  “Did we get them?” Jacob asked, blinking, and taking deep breaths.

  “Not yet,” Alex growled.

  He left Jacob there to recover, casting Shield again and leaping back to Nia. The soldiers were still in position, just outside the tree line, taking shots of opportunity.

  Alex glanced over to Juno and April who were still working on the werewolf who’d taken the headshot. Her skull was back in place, but she was still unconscious.

  “Something is wrong with those soldiers. They have the advantage and yet they’re just standing there,” Nia said.

  “Why advance when they can just kill us from there?”

  “The weredogs were just a distraction for the soldiers. Maybe they’re one, too,” Nia said. She’d realized what Alex had.

  “Alex, what do we do?” a werewolf yelled out from somewhere.

  “The weredogs are coming back,” another yelled.

  Alex risked a glance. Most of the weredogs had been dismembered to the point of no return but three of them had only lost legs and suffered minor injuries. They’d already partially regrown their missing limbs and were attempting to stand. It wouldn’t be long before they attacked again.

  Although he wanted to leap across the field to the soldiers, Alex knew he’d be blasted multiple times before he even reached them. It was mid-afternoon but it wouldn’t be dark until late as the season slowly moved into Summer. They couldn’t wait for night.

  “Wait for now. Juno, can you fling a spell at them? Something small.”

  Juno nodded back at him. With April still feeding her mana, she summoned a small fireball in her hand, not much larger than a marble. Then she stepped out into the open and flung it. The six soldiers immediately opened fire, but her shield blocked the bullets. The marble of fire transcribed a perfect arc through the sky before bursting on the chest of one of the soldiers.

  He didn’t even move, despite the flames that took hold on his shirt.

  “I don’t think they’re alive,” Nia murmured after peeking out again. The flames burned under the soldier’s face before finally dying out. He stood there impassively the entire time.

  “So, there are necromancers somewhere, too?” Alex said.

  “You hear that?” Nia asked.

  Alex caught the sound—a low buzzing from the direction of the soldiers. It didn’t take long for the source of the sound to reveal itself. Drones, at least ten of them, rising above the trees, each with a small box attached.

  “Everyone under cover!” Alex yelled.

  It was easier said than done. Some of the werewolves could go into cabins but others were on the wrong side of a featureless flat wall.

  Alex stayed where he was, watching the drones fly high up into the air above them. Then there was a crack as the boxes detonated, flinging silvery dust outward. The drones lost power immediately, dropping straight down.

  Werewolves hunched against buildings as pieces of silver rained down. It wasn’t just silver dust, which was taking its time to drift down but also curls of silver, as though they’d been scraped off a bar with a vegetable peeler.

  Alex ducked inside the cabin with Nia as the rain fell upon them. Screams rose up from werewolves trapped with nowhere to go.


  Thankfully, April and Juno were still within range of everyone. They immediately began casting purify, pushing silver out of any wounds. Alex risked a jump between buildings to help too.

  It was then the three weredogs attacked Nia. She screamed in pain and this time the rage swept over Alex before he had time to blink.

  2

  “They made me I’m sorry, they made me, sorry,” Stephen gasped.

  Alex found himself looking into a familiar face—Stephen, the young necromancer they’d captured and then let go.

  Alex was looming over him, a clawed hand stabbing into Stephen’s stomach. The necromancer was pale and gasping like a fish hauled out of the water. Alex spat something out of his mouth and then cringed when he saw it was human flesh and clothing.

  “I’m sorry,” Stephen said again.

  Alex knew pulling his claws out would likely kill Stephen, almost instantly. He took a moment to look around. They were in the forest somewhere. Dead mages lay everywhere. Most of them were about the same age as Stephen or even younger. One of the dead was almost certainly a teenager. There were drone controllers scattered about the place.

  Alex checked his mana and saw he was almost empty on all of them. He’d clearly been injured in the gap and his body was using what he was generating just to keep him alive. He had no store of pain to perform a miracle this time.

  He began actively drawing on the magic around them, but it was being taken as fast as he produced it. Hoping he wasn’t making a huge mistake, he began pulling the magic through his injuries. He had plenty to choose from—his right ear was missing entirely, he had long gashes down both arms and on his torso and there were bullets, at least six of them in his legs. They weren’t silver though, which Alex found strange. Then he spotted a handgun in the grass. The junior necromancers had been armed but with crappy weapons.