by P. N. Elrod
We crouched near the floor, blind except for a two-inch gap at the bottom. It allowed me to see bullets pelting down like metal raindrops, a cloud of flour sifting into the air, and punctured cans oozing their contents everywhere. So much for the pantry.
I considered our options, and they weren’t promising. Going out the back way was to walk into a death trap, but the guy in the dining room had us cut off from the front. I hadn’t heard anything more from the mage in the laundry room, but even if he was out of commission—a big if—there was no exit that way.
“I’m open to suggestions,” Cyrus said, a little strain creeping into his voice.
I realized why when I brushed against the side of the tub and almost burned myself. The spell had heated the metal like a huge soup pot. “Hold on,” I said, resigning myself to trashing yet another portion of my new house. And cast a spell that dissolved the floorboards beneath us.
We landed hard on the concrete floor of my basement. Cyrus threw off the tub and we rolled to either side barely in time to avoid the spell that crashed down, melting the kitchen tiles we’d brought with us into a gooey puddle. “I need to get to my weapons,” I said as he pumped bullets back up the hole.
“And they would be where?”
“In the upstairs bathroom.”
“Then why are we down here?!”
“Because levitation isn’t in my skill set!” I snapped, running to the tiny basement window set high in one wall. I fumbled with it while Cyrus barricaded the door with an old couch abandoned by the previous homeowner.
“It won’t hold,” he told me, reloading both guns.
“It won’t have to.” The rusty lock wouldn’t budge, so I borrowed Cyrus’s Glock and shot it off. It wasn’t like everyone didn’t already know where we were.
My shoulders popped out of the window, and I did a quick recon before following them. All I could see from this vantage point was a view of mountains and brush and clear desert sky in one direction, and the sun glinting off a mirror and a curve of chrome in the other. Cyrus’s bike, parked in the driveway, just visible around the side of the house. No one was in sight, not that that meant much, but it did beat the alternative.
Then the hushed noise of running feet on gravel sounded for a breath, and unseen hands jerked me the rest of the way out the window. I changed my mind. I much preferred an enemy I could see.
Only I could, a little. There are no true invisibility spells, just ones that redirect the eye or provide camouflage. And neither work at point-blank range. As if to underline my thought, the air flickered around the shape of a fist for an instant, right before it socked me in the jaw.
I reached for a weapon even as my head snapped back, but I’d returned Cyrus’s gun, and my clip was empty. So I balled my hand into a fist and managed to get a satisfying punch to what might have been a head or possibly a shoulder. It was hard to tell because, even this close, my attacker was only a vague, indistinct contour—a column of man-shaped water that reflected the scenery around it.
I got another crack to the jaw and a sharp jab to the solar plexus in return. My bum leg gave out, and I fell to my hands and knees, gasping and trying not to throw up. I saw a glimmer of what looked like boots, right before a vicious kick in my ribs sent me stumbling into the house. I hit with a bone-numbing crunch, unable to get my hands up in time to cushion the impact, and bounced off to sprawl on my back. Through the haze of pain and the sound of my own ragged breathing, I heard the scuff of approaching footsteps.
Somehow, I rolled to my knees, lashing out with my good leg as I did so. But I was dizzy and my aim was off, and it failed to connect with anything. And then a numbing spell hit me, reducing my motor skills to zero, and I fell back, hard.
I lay there, aching and jittering, trying to breathe through the pain, and for a moment, I think I grayed out. But it didn’t last long, because I noticed when a mage suddenly flickered into view over me. He pointed a gun at my head and our eyes met.
“Jason?” I blinked familiar sandy blond hair, clear green eyes, and a pug, freckled nose into view. “What do you think you’re doing?”
“Breaking the curve,” he informed me with an incongruous ear-to-ear grin.
He dropped his shields in order to fire, only to have Cyrus’s fist turn one cheekbone into mush and send him sailing back several yards. I scrambled drunkenly after him, only half-believing my eyes. “You know this guy?” Cyrus demanded as I knelt beside the limp form.
Jason’s cheek had split, showing one pale molar through the red meat of his face, but it was undoubtedly him. He was out cold, but at least he had a pulse, possibly because Cyrus had had a bad angle. “He’s one of my students.”
Cyrus looked down at the gun still grasped in Jason’s fingers. “How bad a teacher are you?” he asked incredulously.
“Not this bad!” I said grimly, as two more indistinct shapes ran for us from the front of the house. I hoped it was the two who had been in the backyard earlier, because otherwise the odds were just getting ridiculous. “Dammit!”
My pulse sped, pumping adrenaline through me as I tried and failed to get my shields back up. Cyrus turned and fired, emptying both his guns to slow them down. The sound of gunfire was deafening, and through the tingling, almost-silence afterwards, I watched his hands jerk the clip out of the Glock, grab another from a pocket, and shove it in. “My last,” he told me tersely.
I nodded, having looted Jason for a couple of guns, one of which I handed to Cyrus. Jason wasn’t wearing much of a potion collection, and what he did have was standard-issue crap that wouldn’t help with industrial-strength shields. But he was carrying half a dozen knives, all of which I sent flying at the approaching figures.
Normally, I wouldn’t have been able to control another mage’s weapons. They are spelled to respond only to the caster to prevent exactly this sort of thing. But Jason had had problems with the spell to animate them and had asked for my help. We’d had fun layering on the charms, spelling his daggers to find and target enemies on their own and to slice through most shields. Yet the dark-haired girl who rippled into view a moment later batted them away with a gesture.
Amelie had always been good with counterspells, I thought numbly, and sent the garden hose coiling through the air toward her, wrapping her up and throwing her to the ground. “They’re all my students,” I told Cyrus. “Don’t kill them!”
“No problem,” he said sarcastically, firing the borrowed gun uselessly into the other mage’s shields. It was Colin—a redhead with a talent for finding trouble. Only this time, he seemed to be more intent on causing it. “Think they’ll do us the same favor?”
A knife sliced by my ear and embedded itself in the side of the house. “Doubt it,” I said. “Run!”
We skirted the house, my head pounding with every beat of my heart, just as Amelie expanded her shields. They snapped the hose like a weak rubber band, and she jumped back to her feet. Colin launched the rest of his arsenal at us and I heard several knives bite into stucco, but most took the corner just fine. I concentrated and finally got a shield of sorts back up before we were impaled by anything, but it wouldn’t hold. Especially not when stretched to cover two.
Colin and Amelie followed us into the backyard, silently ordering their weapons to continue the beating. My shields shuddered with every punch. I could measure how long they would last in seconds, and I really doubted I’d get them back up a third time. And when they were gone, so were my options.
Cyrus glanced at me. “Can’t you do something?”
“I’m thinking!” It didn’t help that Jason’s spell was still stuttering along my nerves like a per sis tent toothache, pounding in my skull, drumming on my bones.
“You’re the teacher,” he said impatiently. “Surely you have a few surprises you haven’t shared with them yet!”
“Yeah. But they’re all deadly.”
“And that’s a problem because?”
“I don’t want to kill my students!”
“Too bad they don’t share that sentiment. And I’m not dying to keep your graduating class intact! Either deal with this, or I will.”
“There has to be an explanation,” I said desperately.
“Maybe, but we won’t live long enough to hear it if we don’t do something!”
He had a point. We’d cleared the backyard, avoiding the kitchen door, where flames and black smoke were now billowing skyward, and started up the living room side of the house. Only to find yet another of my students—a lanky African American named Kyle—waiting for us. He added his weapons to the melee, and my shields gave up the ghost. We were officially out of time.
Damn. My insurance agent was going to have a heart attack.
I used the last of my energy to cast a spell that took a chunk out of the living room wall. We stumbled through the opening, and Cyrus pushed the TV cabinet across the breach. We ran for the dining room, and I scrambled onto the table. A ceiling joist had partially come loose, with one end resting on the table while the other remained attached to the second floor. It was as wide as a balance beam and sloped upward at a fairly gentle angle. It wasn’t stairs, but it would do. And if anyone was above, they wouldn’t be watching a hole in the floor.
“Come on!” I said.
Cyrus pulled my stolen gun from my jeans, keeping a wary eye on the door to the living room. “You first.”
I somehow hauled myself to the second floor—or what was left of it—with one leg constantly threatening to buckle under me. “Get up here!” I whispered as he picked up the dining table and wedged it into the door behind him.
“You’ll need a distraction or you’ll never bunch them up. I’ll stay here.” I started to argue, but weapons rattled against the other side of the table, shaking the heavy wood, and I decided we didn’t have the time. I turned and limped as fast as possible for the bathroom.
It was a mess, with gaping holes in the walls, ceiling and floor. Luckily, my coat hadn’t slipped through any of them. It was still lying where I’d dropped it, now water-spotted as well as stiff with dirt, over by the commode.
I edged cautiously around the shallow ridge of cracked tile that was all that remained of the floor. Adrenaline prickled on the surface of my skin, urging me to go faster, faster, while my heart hammered in my rib cage and my mouth was metallic with panic. It took every bit of training I had to proceed carefully, to stop my hands from trembling, to focus. Since my mother’s death, there were a total of two people in the world I really gave a damn about. And one of them was currently facing a group of soon-to-be war mages with an empty gun.
I’d almost made it when a row of tile slithered out from under my feet, cascading down into the mess below. I made a wild grab for the toilet to keep from following and my coat slid toward the edge of the hole. I thought I’d lost it, but it hung on a pipe and I was able to snag it with my toe. I grabbed it just as a rainbow of spells exploded below.
A glance through the missing floor showed me only the wrecked kitchen until Cyrus burst in, his hair on fire from a spell that hadn’t missed by much. He barricaded the door with the fridge then looked up when I hissed his name. “Go around—get behind them!” he mouthed, gesturing furiously.
His hands were bleeding for some reason, but he was alive. I nodded and dropped him a gun, then started back as fast as possible. I rooted around in my coat as I ran, grabbing things out of the potion belt I usually wore draped low on my hips. It was weighed down with vials, each in a little leather sheath like bullets in a bandolier. Ironically, I’d been lecturing on potions to this very class just last week.
I really hoped they hadn’t been listening.
Most new war mages are all about the flash and glitter of a well-flung spell, with respect for deadly human weapons coming in a close second. They deride potions as old-fashioned and bulky, and half carry them only because they’re required to do so. But they are a mainstay of a mage’s arsenal precisely for times like this.
The ingredients are chosen not, as norms seem to believe, for their own magical properties, but because they are particularly good at catching and holding magical energy. A potion belt is a sort of extra battery pack for a mage: when we’re almost exhausted, the spells we’ve painstakingly captured in these little vials become a priceless commodity. One that younger mages almost never use to its full potential.
Not that I was ancient at twenty-five, but my father had also been a war mage, and potions were a particular hobby of his. I’d been told a hundred times that a well-made potion might one day save my life. It looked like today was that day.
The hall was an obstacle course of tumbled boards and burnt-edged holes, but I somehow made it back and threw myself at the fallen ceiling beam. I hit with a bone-shattering thump, half-sliding, half-falling into the room—only to have three pairs of eyes swivel toward me. But Cyrus sent a barrage of bullets over the top of the fridge that divided their attention for an instant, buying me time to throw a tiny glass cylinder.
It burst against their shields, starting a firestorm along the edges, popping them one after the other. They hit the floor to avoid the bullets Cyrus was letting fly, making them perfect targets for a second potion—one designed to induce unconsciousness. It shattered against the wall directly in front of them, spreading a soothing purple smoke across their huddled bodies. I nearly fell over in relief when they folded like card tables in a hurricane.
I sagged back against the floor, exhausted and shaking. I couldn’t even begin to guess what the hell had just happened. They’d been fine two days ago. What could have gone so wrong in forty-eight hours?
“Hey.” I looked up to see Cyrus staring at me over the fridge. “Is that all of them?”
“Probably.” If anyone else had been around, they’d missed a perfect opportunity to take me out while I was doing my acrobatic routine in the bathroom.
“Let’s make sure,” he said dryly, and his head disappeared.
I didn’t bother trying to move the fridge, just picked my way back through the remains of the living room—total loss—out the missing chunk of wall and around the house. My leg was killing me, and I stopped to rip open my pj’s and check it out. The wound had bled profusely, but the splinter missed any major arteries. Some pieces of it were still in the wound, but I opted against trying to pull them out before a doctor could look at it. Instead, I went to find Jason.
He was still out cold, lying where he’d fallen by the side of the house. I stripped his coat off and hog-tied him with his own belt because I was all out of knockout potions. I gagged him so he couldn’t spell anything if he woke up, and hobbled around to the missing kitchen door.
Cyrus had gotten the fire out, although the blackened walls, singed cabinets, and ruined floor were going to require gutting anyway. He stood by the laundry room, but he didn’t so much as twitch as I came up behind him. He turned his head slightly toward me when I put a hand on his shoulder, but he didn’t move out of the doorway. “What is it?”
He hesitated, blinking a couple of times. At some point, he’d gotten doused. His lashes were clumped into dark spikes and his T-shirt was wet down the back. Physically, he looked better than me, but the skin under the stubble-darkened throat was pale.
“Cyrus?”
He swallowed. “It wasn’t your fault,” he told me, upping the sick feeling in my stomach by at least a factor of ten.
“Move.” I started pushing at him, but budging a full-grown werewolf who doesn’t want to go is nothing more than a good workout. “Cyrus! I mean it, let me by!”
He finally stepped aside to reveal a far less chaotic scene than the kitchen. The sun was streaming through the small laundry room window, and dust motes were slowly turning in the air. Maybe it was the poststress endorphins running through me, but all the colors seemed extra sharp: the yellow on the walls that the paint store guy had called butter cream, the blue-and-white Laura Ashley curtains at the window, and the bright white appliances that were still in one piece. It looked cheerful a
nd almost normal.
Except for the young blond man sprawled against the far wall, his blue eyes wide and gaping, his hands outstretched against the blood-spattered paint.
The lack of sleep, the pain, and the destruction of my house had crippled my brain, because it took me a full three seconds to process what I was seeing. It was Adam, one of the youngest recruits, whose ability with magic far exceeded his seventeen years. He’d just started training, and wasn’t set to take the trials for another year.
My hand had dropped to my belt, but it fell away as understanding finally hit. Adam was still on his feet, but only because a section of the laundry room door had embedded itself in the wall through his abdomen, holding him in place like a bug on a pin. The sickeningly sweet smell in the air was blood, which had poured down his body in wide streams to puddle on the floor beneath him.
I felt the muscles in my legs liquefying, my fingers knotting in Cyrus’s sleeve to keep from falling. Past the rushing in my ears, I could hear him saying, “Things happen in battle, Lia. You know that.”
Things, I thought blankly. Like a random, meaningless death. Like a spell that sent a door flying off its hinges, practically bisecting a young man.
My spell.
MY NEW SUPERVISOR had wavy silver hair, a skeletally thin frame that he hid inside old-fashioned three-piece suits, and a pinched, displeased mouth. He was doing something strange with the last. It took me a minute to realize that he was trying to smile and it wasn’t working.
God, I must really look bad if Hargrove was trying to be nice to me.
I was currently in the new Vegas HQ, where the Corps had set up camp after the old headquarters was obliterated in the war. It was a thirteen-thousand-square-foot warehouse on a couple of acres in the vicinity of Nellis Air Force base. The upper level was mainly taken up by administrative offices, training areas, and housing for new recruits. The newly created subterranean sections hid the harder-to-explain stuff, like the interspecies medical facilities, the weapons storage, and the labs.
I’d spent the day there, getting patched up by the doctors and grilled by a series of progressively more senior detectives. It was now 11 P.M., and I was in yet another meeting, this time with my very unhappy boss. “Mage de Croissets!”
