by Karen Chance
He didn’t know if he’d hit his mark, but he did know that he’d managed to piss somebody off. But it wasn’t the person he’d been firing at, who had given a squeak and stumbled back into the outer room. No, it was his original opponent, who uttered an animal-sounding roar and leapt for him like a speeding bullet.
A speeding bullet with fangs.
Shit!
John felt sharp, pointed teeth slide across his throat, before he had a chance to pop shields or get a weapon up. But he didn’t need a weapon to cast a spell—one of the most powerful repellants he knew. And this time, the creature didn’t end up being thrown at the wall but through it, a brick one judging by the dust suddenly flooding John’s lungs as he followed his prey through the hole its body had made.
And into a light filled room, beyond the reach of the blackout spell, where a small woman was lying in a heap of bricks. John stared at her for a split second, because she looked like she weighed a hundred pounds soaking wet, which she mostly was, having just come in from outside. And then she was back on her feet with a gun in her hand.
Shit!
John barely managed to get shields up in time to absorb the spray of bullets coming at him. He reflexively sent a spell to heat up her gun, forcing her to drop it, which she did. A second before she flipped over his head, landed lightly on his other side, and began clawing great chunks out of his shields.
“Bag!” Somebody yelled, as John spun around inside his rapidly shredding bubble, wondering if he was seeing things. People didn’t just attack a war mage’s shields with their bare hands. It was insane.
But then, so was she, judging by the look on her face. Even more disturbing, one bright, cinnamon colored eye was glaring daggers at him, as the arm on that side of the body slashed great gouges in his protection. Meanwhile, the other eye was busy helping her remaining arm to paw through an old duffle bag.
It looked for all the world as if someone had torn a slender, attractive, dark haired woman in two, then tried to stich her back together again. There were no actual stitch marks, but there may as well have been. The mouth on the actively-trying-to-gut-him side was curled into a snarl, while the other was turned down thoughtfully, as its owner searched for something inside the duffle.
Something she found a moment later, and slapped against the surface of his shield.
What the fu—
A whirlwind of spells assaulted him before he could finish the thought, sending him staggering back under an onslaught worthy of a battlefield. A cluster bomb, he realized, the equivalent of an entire squad of mages all attacking at once. It was a death sentence, pure and simple.
Or it would have been, had John not just imbibed the power of an entire squad himself!
So, instead of dying, he thrust a shielded arm through the maelstrom and grabbed the outer layer of his protection—quickly, before the damned potion bombs studded throughout the attack ate his arm off. And then inverted his armor, doubling it over and creating a warded sack of sorts with the explosions taking place safely inside a thick layer of shielding. Which he then pulled off over his head and tossed aside, allowing the bomb to expend its power uselessly in a corner.
While he popped out a brand-new set of shields.
And then returned the favor, sending every curse he knew at the damned vampire.
One of them caught her sidekick, a short, dark haired creature John didn’t get a good look at before he was wrapped up like a mummy, courtesy of a Shelob spell. Named after the massive arachnid in Tolkien’s saga, it sent a sticky web of magic at a person to immobilize them, after which they could be attached to any available surface.
John chose the ceiling, slinging the smaller creature upward before turning his attention on the main event, who had managed to get a shield up in the few seconds she’d had.
It infuriated him because he recognized it, or rather, what it was. A Corps’ invention, it was commonly called the Shield of Last Resort. It didn’t depend on a war mage’s own power, but was prepped ahead of time and could be attached to a device, in this case a small watch. Then, if one’s magic started to run low in combat, it could be deployed to reinforce buckling shields, to allow for a retreat, or to permit a last stand, depending on the situation.
It was not supposed to be sold to outsiders!
And neither were they, John thought, his eyes blowing wide as one of his spells hit the duffle mid-air, which she’d just thrown at his head.
Along with everything remaining inside it.
John went down under a barrage of next level magic that sizzled and lashed, howled and blustered, and took out a wall and half of the ceiling, much of which fell on him. His shields shattered, his head hit a falling ceiling beam and then the floor, and he grayed out for a second. Before coming around again in time to see a pair of big brown eyes, both now facing the same direction, staring down at him curiously.
As if she didn’t understand what he was, either.
And then came a fist that looked like it belonged to a debutante and hit like a bodybuilder. Holding a barbell. Backed up by a Mack truck.
The fuck? John wondered, finally able to finish his thought.
Right before he passed out.
Chapter Twenty-Four
J ohn slammed back against the wall, his breath a ragged rasp in his throat, the taste of chalk and salt and something darker on his tongue. The very air was thick with it down here, a strange miasma that seemed to pool in his lungs and made it hard to breathe. Or maybe that was something else.
“Shock grenade!” the boy gasped, pulling one off his belt.
And then pausing, hand halfway to the pin, when John grabbed his arm.
The damned fool had followed John down here, despite instructions to the contrary, because “I don’t take orders from you!” Only, right now, he was looking like he wished he had. John was definitely wishing he had, if his plan was to bring the whole cliffside down on top of them!
“That thing will kill us anyway!” his companion hissed.
John shook his head and pulled a flare off his belt, a bright red one that flashed like fire in the boy’s too wide eyes.
Caleb, John reminded himself. His name was Caleb. He was doing a man’s job; he deserved a man’s name.
He threw the flare into a nearby downward sloping tunnel, and watched it bump and fall and cast wildly leaping shadows on the walls.
A second later, a maelstrom of movement went after it, too fast for human eyes to track. Or even half demon ones. John saw a flurry of shadows leap out of a nearby passage, heard the scrape of claws on stone, and felt the tremors in the wall behind him as something tore after the light.
And then nothing.
Until the most ear-splitting screech he’d ever heard reverberated through the air, like a thousand fingernails shredding the inside of his skull.
“This way!” he gasped, dragging a shell-shocked Caleb into a branching tunnel, one that was level enough for a headlong run.
For a few seconds.
Then the floor gave way and they were falling down an almost perpendicular shaft, rolling and bouncing and screaming—silently. Because sharp as some of the rocks down here were, it was better than being shredded by the massive claws that had cut these tunnels. They had burrowed through the rock like it was nothing, leaving it tattered and torn behind them for the wind and tides to smooth.
Only the forces of nature didn’t reach this far down.
Which is why it took John a moment, after they finally crashed to a stop, to realize that there was something other than furrows underfoot. Something brittle that crunched horribly beneath his boots. Something that he really hoped wasn’t—
“Bones,” the boy breathed. “Guess we know . . . what happened . . . to the local livestock!”
Among other things, John thought, casting a muffling spell. And then pulling a tiny ball of moonlight out of the air, which was all he could get down here. The small orb flickered and gleamed like a single candle, but was bright enough in
the utter darkness to highlight a profusion of carcasses.
They looked old—brown and cracked and broken. They smelled like it, too, with no pungent odor of decay left to cut through the chalky haze. John lifted the orb to see how far they went, and winced as the light splashed off the uneven white walls of a large cavern.
Only no, not a cavern.
“It’s a larder,” his companion said, gazing around in awe.
That was one word for it, John thought grimly.
There were bones heaped higher than his head; bones crunching underfoot; bones hanging down from the ceiling, held together by shriveled, leather like tendons. There had to be thousands of them, mostly from pigs and sheep and goats, judging by the shape of the skulls. But with the occasional cow or horse added in, its stripped rib cage poking up out of the piles and crusted with salt.
And working with motion from a multitude of bats, their black eyes gleaming from inside hundreds of empty eye sockets, as if the dead were watching them.
John heard himself swallow.
“Yeah,” Caleb said hoarsely. “Yeah. We need backup.”
That had been apparent since their initial scuffle with whatever was down here, which thanks to the bad lighting and the ferociousness of its attack, they’d only seen as a massive shadow on a wall. All they knew was that magic sloughed right off it; bullets seemed to pass right through it; and thanks to the fragile nature of the cliffside, using their bigger guns was likely to bring the whole damned thing down on their heads! Assuming their colleagues didn’t do it for them.
That was why John hadn’t already called for help. War mages had a bad habit of escalating violence when they felt threatened, something that could easily bury the lot of them while leaving the creature intact. It didn’t seem to have a problem plowing through a few thousand tons of solid rock, but John doubted his little squad would do as well.
“Not a good idea,” he rasped. “They might end up being slaughtered, too—”
“Too?”
“—since we don’t know what we’re dealing with here. But at least it’s not demonic, as I first thought—”
“What did you mean, too?” Caleb demanded.
“—as they’d be after life energy. A rogue demon might attack a threat that gets too close, but this thing is clearly hunting for meat—”
“Which we are,” Caleb reminded him. “And it looks like it’s hungry!”
John couldn’t argue there.
The massive larder was depleted. And judging by the state of things, it had been so for a while. There were teeth marks on the bones, crossing and crisscrossing each other as if whatever had been gnawing on them had returned multiple times to strip every last scrap of meat away. There were no hides or pelts anywhere, as if those had also been consumed. Even the bones had been cracked, so that the marrow could be sucked out by a desperate . . . something.
And when the last of its stored food had been consumed, it had gone to the surface, and started hunting different prey.
But one thing didn’t make sense.
“There are too many carcasses,” John said.
“What?” Caleb looked at him strangely.
“Nobody reported missing entire flocks. A handful of animals here and there, yes, but not hundreds—”
He cut off when he was suddenly grabbed and shoved against the wall. “Have you lost your wits?”
John broke the young man’s hold. “What is wrong with you?”
“I could ask the same of you! We’re in a labyrinth with a monster, and you want to talk about livestock numbers?”
“It’s a fair question—”
“It is not a fair question!”
“—as it tells us something about the creature,” John insisted. “How did it get all of this down here? Why did nobody notice? And why did it run out of food? It could collect so much at one point, yet suddenly lost the ability? It doesn’t make sense.”
“It doesn’t have to make sense! It’s a bloody monster!”
“Is it?” John broke a salt encrusted thigh bone out of the wall. “An animal doesn’t use salt to preserve its food. It doesn’t create a larder, not of this size. And it doesn’t—”
“Would you shut up?” Caleb shook him, his eyes wild. “Just tell me how to kill it!”
“I can’t know how to kill it if I don’t know what it is,” John said, trying for calm. His nerves weren’t much better than his companion’s, but he’d been in more battles. He knew that panicking gets you killed.
As does ignorance.
“I need to get a good look at it, or we’re fighting blind,” he said flatly.
“If you get that close, you’ll end up like Masterson, with half your face eaten off! I say we get the hell out of here, tell the Corps that there’s a fucking monster down here, and bomb the damned tunnels!”
“And how do we explain to the local residents, when half the cliff face suddenly sloughs off?”
“Who the hell cares?” The shaking resumed.
And then stopped abruptly.
“Caleb?” John said, when the man suddenly went glassy eyed.
There was no response. Unless you counted a facial twitch accompanied by a single line of drool leaking out of the side of his mouth. John reflexively looked down at the man’s stomach, because the last time he’d seen a look like that, it had been after someone he was talking to was unexpectedly run through.
But there was no sword or knife blade sticking out of Caleb’s midsection. There was no wound at all. But when John looked up again—
His face met a fist as hard as steel.
He went down onto a pile of bones, which promptly collapsed underneath him. Which was the only reason a second blow didn’t knock him out and leave him at the mercy of his suddenly rabid partner. Whose fist hit the wall above his head instead, with a crunching sound that had even John wincing.
But Caleb’s blank expression never changed.
John rolled off and scrabbled further back into the cave, to give himself room to maneuver. Which he was clearly going to need, because Caleb . . . was not himself. It could be possession, John thought, but the possessed didn’t have that sort of look on their faces.
Quite the contrary, as the creature controlling them usually lent them its expressions, which could be murderous, amused, or—considering the type of demons who used possession as a weapon—horrifyingly strange on human features.
This was none of the above. Just a blank, glassy-eyed stare that was somehow even worse, especially considering what had probably caused it. And what was behind it.
Enthrallment, John thought. So much for the idea that they were after some kind of animal. It took intelligence to take over a human mind.
And a lack of it to be speculating like an idiot when something was trying to kill him!
John dodged to the side, just before the pile of bones he’d been lying on went up in flames. He stayed on the move, throwing a shield out in front of him and trying for what appeared to be the cave’s only entrance. But Caleb—or rather, the thing controlling Caleb—knew that, too, and was using his body to block it.
He remained there even when John lobbed a fireball right beside his head, its boiling tendrils coming close enough to singe his hair.
Caleb never even flinched, because of course he didn’t. Any mage—any normal one—would have dodged to the side and thrown up a shield of his own, giving John a chance to dive for the door. But Caleb didn’t move because the thing controlling him didn’t care if he died—would probably prefer it.
Because that was the idea, wasn’t it? That they kill each other down in this pit, affording it an easy meal. Only that wasn’t going to happen.
Not even close, John thought savagely, and sent out an enthrallment of his own.
But not at his fellow war mage. Enthralling humans was touch and go, and John did not intend to risk breaking the man’s mind by wrestling some unknown entity for it. Not when there was another candidate.
In fact, th
ere were thousands.
His spell permeated the air, not as a bolt but as a mist too fine to see. Unlike its results. All of a sudden, a storm of bats ascended into the air, or dropped from the ceiling, or sent skulls toppling off piles of bones as they fought to get out, to get airborne, to fly—
Straight at Caleb.
John’s companion went down, suffused in a whirling, beating, screeching cloud, and John sprinted for the entrance. Burning bat bodies flew everywhere, as Caleb launched a barrage of spells into the air. But he was on his back and they mostly flew upward, and John was shielded anyway.
Meaty thuds hit his protection, dark splatters of sizzling blood obscured his vision, and the acrid stench of frying fur assailed his nostrils. But he made it to the door. And then through it and outside, using fey magic to push ice cleats out of the bottom of his shoes, to give him traction on the steep ascent.
It was hard going, nonetheless, but from the sounds coming from behind him, Caleb wasn’t yet following.
Good.
John didn’t want him in the way when he found this thing. Because his young companion had been right: fuck what it was. Right now, all John cared about was how to kill it.
Chapter Twenty-Five
J ohn came slowly back to something like awareness, albeit with a swimming head, a throbbing jaw, and a brain wondering why everyone seemed to feel the need to belt him in the face.
Or why he kept having all these confusing visions. He could see it all so perfectly: the rock cut corridors splashed with moonlight; the fiery, flying bats, their eyes glowing orange from reflected flames; his own labored breaths smoking in the cold air in front of him, while white hot terror clawed at his insides. But none of it made sense, because none of it was real.
The memories of Cassie he’d been having were vivid, picture perfect recollections of past events. The ones with Caleb, on the other hand, were strange fever dreams he didn’t understand at all. And, frankly, didn’t want to understand.
