Magic to the Bone (12 page)

An advantage I was going to take away from them.

“I’ll keep my shield
up,” I said to Alek, hoping my voice was quiet, since my ears were still hating me from the shots he’d fired. “We’re gonna go take their cover away.”

“Ready,” Alek said. Hesqueezed my shoulder and stepped up just behind me.

I poured more magic into my shield. I had to fight Samir today, but conserving too much magic now might get us all killed. I couldn’t afford to take a bullet or ten. My magic
was much stronger than it had ever been, but I knew the limit was still out there. I compromised, using the shield but not trying to do a second spell. I still wasn’t the world’s strongest at multi-casting.

We walked forward step by step. I braced against the shocks of bullets slamming into the wall of my shields. Purple sparks blossomed and fell away on impact, my magic slipping in to fill any
cracks. The mercenaries were the ones swearing now. I heard the crackle of a radio. Were they calling for help? Not good.

One tried to make a break for the cabin, and Rachel took him out. He sprawled, blood spattering the snow. Two others jumped up behind the giant bear, crouching to fire at us again, still using the poor creature, which I assumed was Mikhail himself, as cover. The bear’s sides
rose and fell and from this close his heavy breathing was audible even to my injured eardrums.

“Go now,” I said in Russian, hoping only Alek would understand me.

We were almost to the trailer; my knees would touch it in another step. I dropped the shield and Alek sprang to the bed, his speed and height allowing him to fire down directly over the bear and into the men.

Ignoring the protest of
my leg muscles, I jumped also, using magic to push myself much farther into the air. From this vantage I saw two more men scrabbling back in the snow, bringing assault rifles to bear on Alek.

“No you don’t,” I yelled. Lightning crackled from my fingers as I zotted them.

Body armor was apparently shit against magical attack. They fell back screaming in the snow.

The remaining man went for the
cab of the truck and made it before Alek could get over the bear and try to stop him. I dropped to the ground and ran to the side, reaching out with magic for the door of the truck.

The engine kicked in and he floored it, running the truck straight at Rachel’s SUV.

Not today, motherfucker
. I didn’t even think, just threw magic in a force wave from my hands, all my mind focused on bricking that
engine beyond usefulness or recognition.

The truck slammed forward and to the right. Metal screamed as the trailer bed went with it, chains snapping. From the corner of my eye I saw Alek running backward in the snow to avoid the flipping trailer. The truck crumpled like a soda can and smashed through a tree and into a bigger tree.

I grabbed at the trailer with my magic, pulling it back toward
me. My muscles screamed in protest and spikes of pain slashed into my head. I hadn’t practiced moving large objects that often. The trailer rolled up on its side and then bounced back down, rolling to a jerking stop. The bear was still strapped to it, unconscious but safe.

Silence reigned for a long moment as I hunched over, breathing in deep, painful breaths of cold air.

“Jade? You okay?” Harper
called out.

“I’m okay,” I said, looking up.

Alek was checking on the downed men, moving guns away from their hands, checking for signs of life. They looked pretty dead to me; even the ones I’d electrocuted were still and silent now. Blood spattered the snow and ice chunks, not all of it fresh. The snow lumped over the picnic tables made them look like white coffins as I scanned the area for
any other threats or signs of life.

“Lee is hit,” Ezee said, loping up to us.

“Shit.” I followed him around the SUV.

Rachel was on the ground but still conscious. She smiled grimly up at me.

“Leg gave out, sorry,” she said, waving at hand at her blood-soaked pant leg.

“Let’s get you inside,” I said, nodding at Levi and Ezee. They could carry her, no problem. Go go shifter superstrength.

“Where are the others?” she asked with a wince as Levi lifted her himself, careful of her leg.

Harper had pulled the duffel bag of medical supplies out and held up a bag of gauze pads.

“Inside,” I said to Harper. To Rachel I said, “I don’t know. Just two bears; I think Mikhail and Vasili. Maybe the others are hiding?”

All that blood and the churned up ice and snow around the drive said they
were long taken, but I figured that speculation could wait until Rachel was inside and safe.

“They are breathing, but will not wake,” Alek said to me as we passed him.

“Any of the bad guys alive enough to talk?” I asked.

Alek shook his head. “I will check truck,” he said, starting toward the truck I’d smashed.

I seriously doubted that guy was even in one piece, but it couldn’t hurt to confirm.
Damnit. Having someone alive to question would have been good. The guy Rachel leg-shot had ended up in the path of the truck and trailer. He was pedestrian pancake now. Everyone else had taken magic to the heart or bullets to the brain. We were a little too efficient.

Searching my heart, I tried to feel something other than relief that these guys were down. We’d just killed a bunch of humans.
Nope. Nothing. Maybe tomorrow I’d feel remorse. Somehow I doubted it. They were capturing my friends, citizens of my damn town, for my evil ex-boyfriend to use in a sacrifice. Choices had consequences. They had made their choice. I was their consequence.

A part of me hated Samir even more for making this my reality.

I walked to the edge of the turnaround. From here the burble of the creek sang
up through the snowy trees. Snow dusted the rocks down the slope like powdered sugar. Looking this direction, it was like the carnage behind me had never happened. Out there in the woods, life went on. Despite men with guns. Despite sorcerers and shifters and vendettas and ambitions.

It was a world I barely remembered and wasn’t sure I’d ever return to.

Harper’s footsteps pulled me back to my
world.

“Nobody inside. Levi’s putting pressure on the wound but the bleeding is already slowing. Normal bullets, I guess,” she said. “What should we do about the bears?”

“Unstrap Mikhail. I don’t know that we can or should move them, but I hate having them in the open like this.” I remembered the man swearing at the radio, the crackle of a reply I hadn’t quite caught. “There are more of them
somewhere, and I think one got a call out.”

“Shitballs.” Harper summed up the situation eloquently.

I looked up at the flat blue sky. The sun was sinking already.

“We’re running out of time,” I murmured.

Alek made his way around the trailer toward us. Then he froze, his gaze on the woods to our left. He had his gun back out before I could blink, but didn’t fire.

Turning, I saw a rangy red-brown
wolf lope out of the trees. It dropped its head and then flopped down, baring its belly. In a blink, it became a man. He was thin and plain in appearance, wearing a grey sweater and tan cargo pants. He was unarmed, his hands up in the air as he lay there in submissive position like a roach that had been flipped over. I called up my magic and searched for signs of a spell or Samir on him. I
sensed nothing, no trace of Samir’s sickly sweet power.

“Goddamnit,” Harper muttered beside me. “Not him again.”

“Him again?” I asked, giving Harper a sideways glance.

“I just came to talk,” the wolf shifter said. “I think we can help each other.”

“I would rather shoot you,” Alek said, though he didn’t. Yet.

“He works for Samir,” Harper explained. “But he did help me escape.”

“You trust
him?” I didn’t take my eyes off the prone man again, but I caught her nod and half shrug in my peripheral vision.

The wolf shifter looked from him to Harper and me, resting his gaze on me. He licked his lips in a quick, nervous flick of his tongue.

“That would be the biggest mistake you’ll ever make,” he said.

He sounded utterly confident for an unarmed guy lying in the snow.

“Let’s hear him
out,” I said. At the least he was someone alive to question. Best case? He was going to be the key to unlocking Samir’s doom.

The office had a front desk area that was just a standing case full of candy and other snacks. Beyond that was a good-size room with a rustic carved wood coffee table and a random assortment of chairs and cushioned benches that looked as though they’d been collected from the side of the road at various times in history, which they probably had. Rachel was sprawled on the floor, propped against
one of the benches, holding a thick gauze pad to her leg. Ezee was standing over her, and Levi came down a set of steps at the back of the waiting room as we entered.

“Nobody here,” Levi said. He sent a curious look at our guest. “Who’s he?”

“You got a name?” I asked the wolf shifter as we arrayed ourselves in an uncomfortable semicircle among the chairs. Alek kept his gun in his hand and stayed
between the wolf and the door. Nobody sat.

“Cal,” the wolf shifter said. “Those guys took the other shifters who were here. You missed them by half an hour. These were staying to try to load the bears up.”

“Who are you?” Rachel said through gritted teeth. “Why weren’t you helping?”

“’Cause he’s one of Samir’s,” Harper said. She folded her arms over her chest and pressed her lips together.

“I helped you escape the sorcerer,” Cal said.

“He did?” Ezee and I said at the same time.

“Nominally. We’re even for that now. I got a feeling you were using me to clean up someone you didn’t like anyway.” Harper glared at him.

“Clean up?” I looked between them. Clearly I had missed something in her explanation of how she escaped Samir.

“She killed one of the other mercs. Crushed his throat
with a toilet lid.” Cal raised an eyebrow at her as if to say “good luck explaining that.”

“Badass,” Levi said, drawing out the vowels in the word to form a half whistle.

Harper shifted her weight from foot to foot, betraying her nervousness. Her eyes flicked to mine and I made sure to smile. None of us were clear of blood on our hands. I wasn’t going to judge.

“You were part of the group capturing
shifters?” Rachel said. Her lip curled in disgust.

I felt the same disgust. Shifters capturing shifters for sacrifice was shitty as hell. Doing it for a sorcerer must have been the worst kind of sacrilege in Rachel’s, and probably everyone else’s, minds.

“No,” Cal said. “Our group is guarding the sorc. We’re not dealing with the shifter stuff or town. I overheard them on the radios doing a last-minute
grab at Samir’s request, so I came to see what was up. I couldn’t stick around where I was. I got a horrible feeling we’re not going make it through this one.”

“You are not,” Alek said. His voice was winter ice and bitter winds. It was the voice a rabbit hears in its mind just before the eagle drops from the sky.

I glanced at him, but his beautiful face was unreadable.

“Radios? I saw some on
the guys out there. Can we use them to track what they are doing?” Levi started toward the door.

“No good,” Cal said with a swift shake of his head. “One of these guys squawked for help. They’ll have changed the channel to an alt now they haven’t heard back. They might monitor this channel for communications, but they won’t use it.”

“It doesn’t matter,” I said. “You know where Samir is and where
the shifters are being kept. So spill it and I’ll keep the tiger from killing you.”

Cal gave me a bitter, tight smile. “No,” he said. “I need to know things first.”

“Like hell you do,” Harper said, starting toward him with her murderface on.

“We should try the diplomatic chat option before hitting the kill button.” I put out my arm, stopping her. “What do you want, Cal?”

He looked me over
with an obvious up-and-down sweep of his eyes, assessing. He was a predator, through and through. In some ways, he reminded me of a shorter, brown-haired, less-dramatic-looking Alek.

“You’re a gamer, too,” he said after he finished his assessment.

“Talk,” Alek said with a soft growl.

“I want you to save my boss,” Cal said. “I think he’s under some kind of spell.”

“The big white bear?” I guessed,
thinking back to the fight that happened in the alternate timeline.

“Vollan,” Cal said with a nod. “Been running with him a long time. He’s a damn good boss. Keeps us safe, gets us paid. This job, well, it ain’t usual. We’ve taken people before, held ’em for ransom, that kind of thing. Taking other shifters? We don’t usually do that.”

“You took my brother,” Harper said, her voice barely above
a whisper.

“The kid? Yeah. Nobody was supposed to die. After that, couple of us tried to talk to the boss. Tried to say how the job wasn’t what we’d expected. Arenson had point on that; he’d always been good with the boss, had his ear. Vollan shut him down. Then he left him on patrol after we all pulled out. When we asked where he was, boss just said he wasn’t coming back.”

“The two wolves?”
Levi asked. “That whole camp was rigged to blow with magic, you know.”