“Chlorophyll?” I was deflecting. Part of me didn't want this information, though I felt compelled to keep asking questions. I needed to understand, but at the same time, whatever self-protection system my subconscious had armed was calling for defensive humor to fire at will.
Kelly looked at me a second, then reached back out. The instant his hand connected with my knee, the sound of klaxons in my brain dampened.
“Easy,” he said. “Sorry. I can tell this’s a little rough.” He sighed, tossing a glare back down the hallway. “Eric should have brought you here sooner, before all this trauma got calcified. I could have worked with you on it. As it is, the best I can do right now is explain. And hit you with some calm when you need it.”
It was weird to feel calm, but I could sense what he was talking about. The facts he’d given me were still rattling around in my head, but without the panic whipping them up into a storm, I was able to organize and examine them a little.
It made sense, that when Gwydian gave me the ability to shapeshift, it meant changing the structure of what I was on more than a metaphysical level. I wasn’t physically human anymore, not completely. That was…well, that would have been scary, only I couldn’t really feel scared right now.
So what was it besides scary? What did it mean? What did it change? I was the same person I’d been five minutes ago. The fundamentals of my own soul hadn’t been altered—I still felt like me. Just…with more added on.
I was literally extra.
I slid my fingers under my glasses and rubbed my eyes. “That’s so weird.”
“Better?” Kelly said. I nodded.
“Okay, so I’m not completely human, and you’re sort of but not really an elf. And you can control my emotions with your weird mud-magic.”
Kelly chuckled. “I don’t control,” he said. “I influence. If you’re not willing to be calmed down, there’s nothing I can do. But yeah, kind of. The magic you’ve seen is metal-based. It’s all iron and steel and spell circles. That’s the strongest form.”
He eased his hand away from my knee and leaned back, watching me for any sign of returning madness. “Magic from the other elements is a lot subtler. You don’t need mandalas to channel it safely because it’s not very powerful. It’s intuitive, sometimes even unconscious.”
“That didn’t feel subtle,” I said. “You Xanaxed me.”
Kelly gave a brilliant grin. “I’m special.”
“Yo, Kel,” Eric said, clomping back into the living room and dumping a duffel bag on the floor. “Stop flirting. Closed marriage.”
I raised my eyebrows at the duffel bag, which had made a sound like there were lots of metallic objects inside.
“Please tell me that’s not full of guns,” I said.
Eric put his hands on Kelly’s shoulders, rubbing them a bit as he eyed me. “It’s not full of guns,” he said. “There’s ammo in there too.”
I stared.
“You ever fired a gun before?” He asked.
“Yeah,” I said. “Uncle’s rifle. And Isaac showed me how to use a pistol.”
Kelly tilted his head back to look up at Eric. They were a slightly incongruous couple. Big, tattooed Eric, whose aesthetic got lost somewhere between bouncer and lumberjack, and Kelly—the elfy, pot-throwing empath, who looked like a post-apocalyptic fashion model. But their familiarity was easy.
Eric looked calmer. More centered. I couldn’t tell if that was because Kelly was Xanaxing him, or because Eric simply found an anchor in the presence of his husband.
“You’re going after them?” Kelly said.
Eric squeezed his shoulders and looked down. “She saved my life, Kel. I don’t care if she used blood-magic to do it. And the Guild owes her for Gwydian.”
Kelly patted his hand. “No, I know. I wasn’t saying you shouldn’t. You know how I love to spoil the Guild’s plans.”
“Anarchist.”
Kelly laughed. “You have no idea how exciting it is for me to hear you talk rule-breaking. Just…” he squeezed Eric’s hand.
“I’ll be careful. Ish.”
“Careful-ish is all I ask,” Kelly said. Then his eyes slid to me and Krista. “You’re not really taking them, are you?”
That startled me into speaking. “I’m coming,” I said. “I’ve got this ability now, and even if I can’t use it well yet, I can learn. Plus, I’m not going to let them sentence her to death. I’ll shoot the guns if I have to.”
“I’m coming too,” Krista said, startling us all. Her face had lost its dopey expression, and there was a distinct bluish pallor to her skin that made me think she’d finally gotten the picture. I put my hand on her forearm, which was shaking.
A moment later, her hand was in mine, and we were both clinging hard, neither able to say how scared we were, how glad we were to have our best friend beside us.
Part of me knew she might be a liability—Krista wasn’t exactly combat-ready. I mean, neither was I, but I’d at least seen some of what we were up against. I could shoot a gun and turn into a big-ass wolf.
Eric seemed to be thinking the same thing. “Have you ever shot a gun before?”
Krista snorted. “No. But I have tranquilizers and a can-do attitude. Besides,” and she took a deep breath and straightened her back. “I think I’m a wizard.”
None of us reacted. Kelly’s dark eyes were wide, his expression otherwise neutral, as if he were letting no muscle move until he figured out whether Krista was serious. I’m pretty sure Eric short-circuited.
I squeezed Krista’s hand. “You’re not a wizard,” I whispered.
Eric deflated. Kelly grinned up at him. “You’ve got to admit, no one’s going to expect a dart-gun at a magic-fight.”
Chapter 17
helena
I zeroed in on Ritter’s gun. He held it out of the waitress’s sight, close to his thigh.
My brain dropped into fight mode. Four mundanes were in the front of house—the lady at the register, and a trio of trucker-types whose eighteen-wheelers I’d noticed out back. They’d looked up a little at the sight of the newcomers, but clearly hadn’t seen the guns, because they went right back to their meatloaf with an abject lack of curiosity.
Four people who weren’t part of this. Four people who might get hurt if this cracked open into a full-blown firefight.
Ritter’s eyes met mine. His firing arm tensed.
The kitchen door bounced open. Blue-haired, sparkling Zara bopped out with a massive pink milkshake. There were two cherries on top.
De Vries moved fast. Before I could assemble a shout of warning, he was out of his seat. One massive hand slammed into Zara’s stomach and shoved her behind him so hard she tripped through the swinging kitchen door with a high-pitched yelp.
I heard the shatter of milkshake glass and hurled myself down on the bench. A shield mandala flared into my mind and I shot it out toward the woman at the register, whose eyes had just registered Ritter’s gun.
She screamed. Ritter opened fire.
Two shield spells sparkled to life, white over turquoise. I didn’t ask questions. I scrambled out of the booth and ducked behind De Vries, tearing through the swinging kitchen door.
Zara had scrambled away and was trying to get to her feet, white-faced and horrified.
“Stay down!” I yelled at her. A line chef nearby was backing away from the grill, reaching for the nearest knife. “Down!” I shouted at him, skidding past, toward the glowing exit sign.
De Vries was right behind me. He grabbed a steel rack next to the swinging door and heaved it over. It spilled dishes onto the floor with a crash and fell across the entryway, catching into a massive steel fridge.
I threw myself against the back door.
“D’Argent!” De Vries roared.
My body reacted to the shout before my brain. I dropped my weight just as the man guarding the back entrance fired off two shots. I didn’t wait to see if either hit. I sprang into a crouch and launched myself elbow-first into guard-man�
��s gut.
He’d primed his shields for magical attacks. Not physical. Normally, I wouldn’t have tried my luck against a dude over six feet tall, but he was a lightweight son of a bitch, wasted from magic-use. He went down, gun discharging wildly.
I only had a second to react. I thought a mandala into being, targeted narrowly. A second later, his wrist shattered. I heard the crunch, followed by the scream.
The thing about tattooed personal shields? They protect broadly. Gut, torso, head. They take extremities for granted as less common, less deadly targets.
I grabbed the Rogue’s gun just as a powerful arm scooped me roughly around the waist. De Vries hauled me up and heaved me into a run.
We pelted around the building. I wasn’t surprised to see the majority of Ritter’s crew spilling through the front entrance. I launched a spell at the concrete in front of them, turning it into a sizzling circle of acid. Two avoided it, but the third didn’t notice until it was too late. She stepped into it and shrieked, flailing sideways. A second later she was down.
The first two sorcerers opened fire, and De Vries answered. He seemed to have figured out my play, because the bespelled bullets struck each sorcerer in the ankle. Two white mandalas flared. Two legs shredded.
Four down. I didn’t think the two De Vries shot were going to get back up any time soon, but the woman who’d stepped in my acid circle was already on her knees again, her gun whipping forward.
I cast a shield right at the end of her barrel. Her next shot exploded against the shield, and a spear of violet magic jolted through her collarbone, pinning her back against the diner.
Spots appeared at the edges of my vision. I staggered to a stop. My body hadn’t had the chance to process much food, certainly not enough for that iron to make a difference. I was tired.
If the dropping temperature in my face and hands were any indication, I was close to passing out.
Adrenaline had served me so far, but it wasn’t enough to keep me going.
Ritter ducked through the door, a sorceress on his heels. Both leapt over the sizzling remains of my spell. There had been one more. I glanced at the windows and found him laid out on the countertop. One of the truckers practically straddled him, a thick forearm pressing down on his windpipe.
I cast a shield, tacking it to myself, and felt the swoop of threatening unconsciousness.
“You grabbed that gun, D’Argent,” De Vries said. His voice was very calm, very close behind me. “Use it.”
His hand caught me between the shoulder blades. Irritation flashed through me, quickly extinguished as a lightheaded sway nearly tipped me sideways. De Vries was only touching me so I’d be steady enough to shoot.
Ritter and the sorceress dashed in opposite directions.
“Preference?” I asked, lifting the unfamiliar gun. My left arm was starting to go numb, but I had no time to think about that.
“Ritter,” he growled. The word sounded bestial, coming from deep in his chest. I’d thought his voice had held contempt talking to me, but it was nothing compared to the way it sounded now. Just that one word conveyed the depth of a thousand-years of betrayal. It was the sound of earth moving and eternal curses being placed.
“Cool,” I said, and opened fire on the sorceress. A series of firecracker-like pops accompanied the mandalas that sprang up ahead of her.
She primed a spell tattoo on the back of her wrist and shot it at the air ahead of her. A mandala appeared on the ground, horizontal. She leapt onto it, then rocketed upward about ten feet, twisting in midair. She caught the lip of the roof and directing her flight onto the flat surface beside the flashing neon Lisa-Anne’s sign.
Okay. I needed to learn that spell.
Ritter was still running to the left, ducking behind cars. His personal shields had deflected one of De Vries’s bullets already, but he seemed cautious of his former partner.
I hadn’t noticed the white shield overlapping my turquoise one until they separated, rolling apart like a Venn diagram as De Vries pivoted to shoot at his own target. Which must have been De Vries’s plan—he was used to fighting as a team in a way I wasn’t.
As the two vigilante sorcerers moved in different directions, he needed my shield protecting him on one side, and I needed his. It was the sorcerer equivalent of standing back to back. That was the reason for the steel-hard arm now clamped around my rib cage. Keeping me from collapsing onto the concrete was just a bonus.
The sorceress had ducked behind the diner’s sign, where I couldn’t see her past the dazzling neon. She was fighting smart, and the bullet that zapped into my shield a second later fanned out with a massive peach mandala. I recognized the elements of it just in time to throw my arm in front of my face and shout, “eyes!”
A dazzling flare went off. I heard De Vries curse beside me and guessed he hadn’t shut his eyes in time.
I opened my eyes and lifted the gun, fired once, twice, and shattered the neon sign. Then I could see her—peachy personal shield glowing behind the darkened skeleton of Lisa-Anne’s neon sign. Her feet were protected by the edge of the roof, and her body by shield and sign. Unless I could somehow get behind her, there was no angle for me to shoot.
Sirens wailed faintly in the distance, probably on the highway. De Vries was blinking rapidly, but seemed to be maintaining a decent bead on Ritter. There wasn’t much I could do there.
And the peach mandala with its trampoline-like spell was still hovering a foot off the ground.
I shoved De Vries’s arm off. “I’m going to need you to cover your own ass, Officer Blue Eyes!”
I had no idea if I was even stable enough to do this, but I was about to find out.
“Officer what?” he shouted. Then, as I took off running. “Dammit.”
A white shield slammed up beside me just in time to catch a bullet from Ritter.
Oh yeah. I’d almost forgotten they were after me, not us. Well, De Vries had covered my ass so far. Insane as it felt to trust the guy, I really had little choice.
I picked up speed, definitely woozy, but determined. Two feet from the mandala, I jumped, landing hard on top of it with my feet tight together.
I shot into the air. Way higher than the sorceress had gone, high enough to see her shocked face looking up at me.
I didn’t aim. I just shot. I missed her with all three bullets, but it didn’t matter. The bright orange mandalas flared out and, all at once, exploded.
The edge of the roof vanished like a giant had taken a bite out of it, exposing aged framing and wires and insulation. Unfortunately, it was the only roofing I’d have been able to grab onto. And it was gone.
I spread my arms, as if I could suddenly take flight, or reach the streetlight flickering unhelpfully a few feet away.
A white shield flared out beneath me. I had just an instant to realize it was facing me before my Chucks hit it. I went down on one knee, the white magic sizzling like an electric fence. I yelped in pain, but grabbed the edge to steady myself.
That was when I noticed my left hand was slick with blood. Rivulets of it trickled down my arm. The sleeve of my tee shirt was sopping.
Had I been shot?
Well. That kind of explained the wooziness. I felt a little irritated that De Vries hadn’t pointed this out to me, but then again, most people noticed being shot. Why hadn’t I? It must not have been bad.
But when?
From my vantage, I saw the back of the store, and the sorcerer whose arm I had broken, dragging himself away from the line chef now aiming a shotgun at his face.
His gun had gone off when he hit the ground. The bullet must have grazed me.
Gunshots were still going off, and I finally turned my gaze back to De Vries and Ritter.
They’d moved the fight to what I expected were the rogue sorcerers’ cars. De Vries knelt behind a dark blue Hyundai, while Ritter leaned over the back of a massive black pickup with floodlights. Two huge mufflers stuck out the back. From this angle, I could just barely see over
Ritter’s shield.
I aimed, but couldn’t keep my arm still. It was shaking too badly to get a good angle on him. That truck, though. Big mufflers meant big engine. Big engine meant big gas tank.
And my sorcerer friend clearly had a thing for fire spells.
I wasn’t sure how many shots I had left, but it didn’t really matter. I found the gas tank cover and unloaded the rest of the magazine into it.
It wasn’t a movie-level explosion, exactly, but where there had been no flame a moment before, suddenly there was flame, roaring hot and high into the air.
Ritter had been unlucky enough to catch literal heat. With a howl of pain, he scrambled back from the burning truck, slapping at his chest and arm.
De Vries had initially shrunk from the blast, but seemed to get a handle on the situation quickly enough. He straightened. Then, rigid and grim and cold, he strode purposefully around the front of the cars, and raised his gun right at Ritter.
“Bast!” Ritter shouted, half plea, half curse.
De Vries shot Ritter’s shield. Then again, and again, walking inexorably forward with each shot. Ritter staggered backward, wavering on his feet. He’d lost his gun—dropped it somewhere in the flames. I could see smoke curling off him, and guessed there were second and third degree burns on his arm and chest.
His shield cracked. On De Vries’s next shot, it shattered.
Ritter stared at De Vries, and his look of horror was followed by one of grim resignation. A man, facing death.
De Vries shot him in the knee.
Ritter went down, howling, grabbing the knee that was, very suddenly, not a knee anymore. It was a stump, where a knee had been.
Then, De Vries knelt, touched something near his collarbone, and sent a mandala at the mangled leg. The mandala whirled, seeming to roll into Ritter’s thigh and expand around it, widening its center circle until it was the same size as Ritter’s leg. Then the wheels of glyphs contracted, and settled into a slowly-spinning tourniquet.
“Stay put,” De Vries growled. “Or I’ll shoot you in the heart.”
Then he turned toward me.
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