We passed through another metal door, which Kyle again bolted behind us, and out into a wider room. Fluorescent lights shone down from above, metal tables held papers and weapons and a wooden stairway led up into what looked like an attic. A heavily built man in body armour glanced up from where he was working on a gun and scowled at me. ‘What the fuck are you doing here?’
Where Kyle is lean and tough, Cinder is big and tough. He’s a Dark fire mage and an old enemy, now sometime ally. We don’t exactly drop around for tea, but the fact that neither Cinder nor Kyle had attacked me indicated that they were still willing to treat me as more or less on their side. ‘Looking for you,’ I said. ‘What’s with the goons?’
‘Pyre,’ Cinder said briefly and looked at Kyle. ‘How long?’
‘Maybe five minutes,’ Kyle said.
Cinder gave me a scowl. ‘Long as you’re going to stick your head in, you might as well make yourself useful. What’s the count?’
‘At least six humans,’ I said. ‘Seven counting the one I knocked out at your back door; he’ll be up by now. And four constructs. They looked like the same anthroform ones that Deleo makes.’
Cinder grunted. ‘In-built spells?’
‘Didn’t get close enough to check,’ I said. ‘Is there a reason you’re not going out there to fry them?’
‘This isn’t the first time Pyre’s come calling,’ Kyle said. ‘His new constructs are fire-resistant.’
‘Ah,’ I said. That was not such good news. Constructs are dumb as rocks, but hard to kill. The only really reliable way to get rid of them is with massive firepower, and I don’t carry that sort of thing around. Cinder does, but if his spells weren’t going to affect the things …
The sound of shattering glass echoed faintly through the warehouse. ‘Here they come,’ Kyle said.
Cinder nodded and moved to the room’s main doors. Kyle turned and walked back to the one we’d entered by. Their movements looked practised, as though they didn’t need to talk to know where the other was. ‘Hey,’ I called to Cinder.
‘We’re busy,’ Cinder said without looking.
I sighed. Screw it. ‘You want some help?’
‘Kyle,’ Cinder ordered.
I turned to see Kyle pull a gun out of thin air with a flicker of light. Kyle is a space magic adept and his particular trick is dimensional storage, pulling items into or out of a small spatial pocket that only he can reach. From what I’ve seen, the main thing he uses it for is weapons. ‘That dinky little pistol isn’t going to do shit,’ Kyle told me as he set the gun down on the table.
‘It’s not mine,’ I said, walking over. The weapon on the table looked … strange. The curving magazine and stubby shape made me think of a sub-machine-gun, but the magazine was huge – thicker than the gun itself – and the barrel was short and wide. A folding stock completed the weird design. ‘What is it?’
‘Saiga-12,’ Kyle said. ‘Ever used a shotgun?’
‘The double-barrelled kind.’
‘This is semi-auto. Safety is here, lever is here. Ten-round magazine, double-ought buckshot.’ Kyle pulled out two more magazines and set them down next to the gun. ‘You keep pulling the trigger, it’ll keep firing, but the recoil is a bitch so aim after each shot.’
‘The guy out there was wearing body armour.’
‘Doesn’t matter. You hit someone centre mass with this, he’s not getting up any time soon.’
‘And the constructs?’
‘Yeah, that’s the tricky bit, isn’t it?’ Kyle said. ‘Try not to let them grab you.’
I felt a flash of fire magic from somewhere off to the left, and a fraction of a second later a hollow boom echoed through the building. ‘Front door’s gone,’ Kyle called.
Cinder gave me an irritated look. ‘Stop standing in the open.’
That sounded like good advice, so I grabbed my stolen pistol and my borrowed shotgun and moved into the cover of the stairway. As I did, I looked into the futures where I ran past Cinder. Through the double doors, into another wide open room, around a corner and— ouch. ‘Three of them coming in,’ I told Cinder quietly. ‘Construct in the lead, two guys behind. They’re shooting on sight.’
‘So are we,’ Cinder said.
The warehouse fell silent. I crouched behind the stairs, listening. Kyle was somewhere behind watching the back door, but I was focused on the futures of the people ahead of us. They were coming closer, moving more cautiously now as they spread out into the warehouse interior.
There was the quiet scuffle of a footstep from one room over. I glanced at Cinder to see that the big man wasn’t moving. He was standing just behind the wall, out of sight of anyone looking in, and he was staring at the wall as though he could see through it. From looking through the futures I could tell that more were coming.
It struck me suddenly that both of the men in this room were ones I’d met while they were in the process of either threatening to kill me or actually trying to kill me. Now I was crouched down behind them holding a semi-auto shotgun, and both of them seemed okay with that. My life is weird.
I suppose the fact that I can make deals with enemies is a big reason why I’m still alive in the first place. Still, you have to wonder why these two trust me. What are those guys waiting for, anyway? They have to know we’re—
There was a shout from the direction of the other room, and Cinder’s hand made a quick snapping motion. Something small and glowing shot through the door and disappeared, and there was a dull red flash and a whoom. Warm air rolled over me, and I heard a scream.
Shouts and gunfire sounded from the next room over. A bullet ricocheted off metal with a clang and went whickering somewhere over my head. I heard the bang bang bang of pistol fire, then it stopped.
The room was still once more. ‘Give us the fucking gauntlet!’ someone yelled from around the corner.
Cinder didn’t move.
Heavy footsteps sounded from the next room. Cinder leaned around the corner again; I felt another spell go off, and there was a whuff sound. Smoke started to seep in through the doors, and I heard coughing and choking.
There was the echoing crump of an explosive from the other side of the room, and I looked around to see Kyle drop something and pull out a gun that looked like a king-size version of my shotgun with a drum magazine. He slid open a hidden gun port in the door and started firing through it with a chunk-chunk-chunk.
I couldn’t see anything to shoot at, and I was less than confident of accomplishing much if I could, so I looked ahead. It’s hard to see far in combat, but I did my best, skipping over the details of the fighting to the pale, threadlike futures beyond. Cinder and Kyle looked all right – probably – but I caught a ghostly image of someone attacking me. How? If they’re not getting past … oh shit. ‘Cinder!’ I called. ‘They’re coming in from upstairs!’
‘You’ve got a gun, haven’t you?’ Cinder said without turning.
‘I knew you’d say that,’ I muttered, and ran up the stairs.
The sounds of battle echoed from behind me, the booms of Cinder’s fire spells overlaid by the heavy report of Kyle’s shotgun. The stairs came up into a narrow corridor; there were doors on either side, but my divination told me that the one on the end was the one I wanted and I darted through.
The room looked like someone had tried to convert an old office into a bedroom but hadn’t done much other than throw a mattress on the floor and call it a day. Faded carpet lined the floor, and clothes were piled half in and half out of a suitcase. The only furniture was a tiny table with a handgun and a small framed picture, but all my attention was on the window at the far end. It was open, and a figure was just in the process of climbing through. It was man-shaped, wearing ill-fitting clothes, and its head came up to stare at me with blank eyes as I lifted my newly acquired weapon and fired.