Even with her anti-bullet ward roaring around her like a furnace thanks to the enormous bank of power she’d siphoned off of Justin, she’d underestimated just how terrifying it would be to have an entire room full of guns pointed at you. But even that might have been tolerable if it wasn’t for the toxic ambient magic of the Pit itself.
Any mage with even a year of formal training had heard of the Pit. It was one of the most famous magical fall-out zones in the world. Everyone studied it whether they were going to be working with magical ecosystems or not. Again, though, academic knowledge was letting her down. Reading about the magical pollution left by so much death was one thing, but actually being in the middle of all that cold, empty, stagnant power was quickly becoming more than she could take. Even loaded up on Justin’s clean, high-grade magic, just standing in the filth made her feel dirty from the inside out. Add in the Bixby situation, and all Marci wanted to do was run away as fast as she could. But while her instincts were in complete agreement that fleeing was the best course of action, she didn’t move, because Julius’s plan was working perfectly.
So far, everything had gone exactly as he’d predicted: Bixby’s over-the-top setup, the army of hired thugs, his demand to inspect the Kosmolabe himself, everything. The only detail he’d gotten wrong was his assumption that Bixby would have a mage. But, unless he was keeping someone in reserve, Marci didn’t even feel the presence of another ward. A suicidally stupid oversight on their enemy’s part, and a very lucky break for her.
With no mage to worry about, all she had to do was hold on until Bixby reached the golden ball on the table, the illusionary Kosmolabe she’d spent twenty minutes putting together in the safe house with all that wonderful dragon magic. When Bixby’s fingers touched the false surface, Marci would backlash the spell right in his face. With so much power behind it, the shock would kill him instantly, at which point Justin and Julius would drop down and grab Katya while Bixby’s men wasted their bullets on Marci’s ward.
She’d been a bit skeptical about that last part, but Julius had reasoned that Bixby’s hired guns would be much more interested in protecting the man who paid them than the thing they’d been paid to protect. His hope was that by the time the goons realized their shots weren’t doing the job, the two Heartstrikers would be out the door with Katya. Once they were clear, Marci would dump the rest of her hoarded magic into her microwave spell for one final heat blast, opening a window for her to GTFO with the real Kosmolabe, which was safely hidden at the bottom of her bag.
That was the detail she’d argued with Julius about the most, actually. She would have felt much safer leaving the actual Kosmolabe in the car with Ghost and Bob where there was no chance if it being damaged in the chaos, but Julius had refused to back down. The Kosmolabe was the highest value target, he’d said, which meant Marci should have it on her to ransom for her own life if something went wrong.
Given her own misgivings about her ability to pull off the operation, she had to admit it was nice to have a backup. But they were nearly halfway through now, and everything was running smoothly. Bixby was almost to the table already, and she hadn’t messed up yet.
She wouldn’t, either. Even though the cut on her neck stung like crazy and the stress was making her sweat so badly she was worried the spellwork she’d painted around her body would start to smudge, Marci just clutched her illusion of perfect calm tighter and waited for her chance. Bixby was almost in position. Six more steps and she would finally be able to pay him back for all he’d done. All she had to do was hold on. Just five more steps and it was done. Four more. Three—
A crash exploded trough the room, followed by an animal roar that turned her blood to ice.
No, she thought frantically. Not yet. It was too soon. But Bixby had stopped in his tracks a good three feet away from the fake Kosmolabe to look for the sound, and he wasn’t alone. Everyone’s heads were jerking toward the roof, and Marci knew with crushing certainty that it was all ruined. There was no way she could draw the room’s fire now. All she could do was look up with the rest as Julius hurtled down from the roof to land on the dusty gym floor…
With an enormous creature right on top of him.
The sight drove all thoughts of ruined plans from Marci’s head, replacing them with pure, frozen panic. Julius had hit the ground so hard, part of her mind couldn’t accept that he was still alive even after he rolled over and started fighting the thing on chest. The thing Marci couldn’t actually put a name to.
Even with the glaring floodlights Bixby’s people had set up, the monster on top of Julius was unrecognizable. The best she could make out was a roughly eight-foot-long mass of black leathery wings, hooked claws, and teeth that seemed to be getting brighter every time they snapped. Whatever it was, Julius didn’t seem to be able to get out from under it, and the fear on his face was what finally broke Marci out of her shock and into action.
In the space of a heartbeat, she dropped every illusion she had, pulling the magic back into her like she was sucking in a breath. The power burned as it returned, a pointed reminder of why you were always supposed to release and redraw magic instead of reusing, but even in her scramble, she wasn’t about to touch the awful stuff in the Pit. She only had to bear the pain for a second, anyway, just long enough to bring up her arm and shove the power through the circle of her bracelet, sending a scorching spear of super-heated air straight at the creature that was currently trying to bite out Julius’s throat.
And that was when things got weird.
Generally speaking, when Marci cast a spell, that was it. She’d been holding Justin’s magic for a long time at this point, though, and her connection to it lingered longer than it should have. As a result, part of her went along with the magic as it slammed into the monster’s side. But just as she felt the heat begin to scorch the creature’s hide, the spell vanished.
The loss was so sudden, she actually stumbled. Her body rebalanced itself instinctively, which was good, because her brain was no help at all. It was too busy trying to comprehend what had just happened.
Any way she approached it, it made no sense. She’d felt the spell work, felt it hit, and then the magic was just gone. But that was impossible. Magic obeyed the same laws as energy. It changed forms and lost quality, but it didn’t vanish. Apparently, though, no one had told the spell that. She’d thrown enough power at that monster to boil it alive from the inside out, but it didn’t even seem to notice her in its frenzy to dig its talons into Julius’s ribs.
After that, Marci forgot about impossibilities. She reached out desperately, swallowing her revulsion as she yanked in the cold, heavy magic of the Pit. Before she could gather enough to start on a movement spell to save him, though, a second shape plummeted through the hole in the ceiling like a shot.
Justin must have done something more than simply jump down, because the gym’s ancient rubberized floor cracked when he hit. The resulting wave of dust and debris sent the men, who until this moment had been standing around like gaping statues, scrambling to cover their faces. Justin ignored them completely, turning instead to Julius, his unsheathed sword flying at the winged creature’s head.
By the time the monster realized it had a new opponent, it was too late. Justin lopped its head off in one clean stroke, sending an arc of blue-black blood flying all the way to the back of the broken bleachers. For a shocked second, the wet splatter was the only sound, then Bixby shouted something unintelligible, and all hell broke loose.