The air filled with the pop of gunshots as the entire room full of hired thugs turned and fired on Justin. He grunted when the first shots hit, but though Marci could see the impact of the bullets rippling over Justin’s body, not a drop of blood appeared on his white shirt as he took up a defensive position over Julius, who was still on the floor. It was such an astonishing sight, Marci didn’t realize the thugs were also shooting at her until her ward, which she’d drained nearly dry in her attempt to save Julius, started to buckle.
She shored it up as best she could, pulling in more of the heavy, repulsive power of the Pit and forcing it through the spellwork she’d written in casting marker on her skin under her clothes. But the magic here wasn’t just disgusting to touch, it also wasn’t nearly as concentrated as the power she’d siphoned off Justin, and she simply couldn’t keep up.
A ward that was tuned to only stop bullets shouldn’t have taken so much magic. The general rule was the more specialized the ward, the more efficiently it worked. But there was a practical limit to everything, and there were a lot of people shooting at her. The ground at her feet was already carpeted with crumpled slugs, and the work of canceling all that force had left the protective bubble of magic around her dangerously dim. Another ten seconds and it would go out entirely, which would have been enough time if she’d been running for the door. But she couldn’t run. Not until she got the others out, too.
Swallowing against her fear, Marci glanced back at Julius to see what she could do to help. Not much was the answer. Obnoxious as his arrogant bragging could be, Justin was guarding his downed brother like a wall. There were actually more spent slugs around his feet than hers, but the dragon didn’t even look winded.
That sight did more to calm her panic than anything else, and Marci was finally able to move past Julius’s immediate danger and focus on the next most important thing: salvaging the job.
By this point, her ward was in serious danger. It hadn’t cracked yet, though, so Marci forced herself to ignore the bullets and look for Katya. The man who’d been guarding her earlier must have had other things to do, because when she finally spotted the dragoness, Katya was lying on her side against the gym’s far wall, alone and miraculously untouched by the violence around her.
Target in sight, Marci darted across the gym, dodging the gunmen who tried to grab her. She lunged for Katya the moment she was in range, yanking her out of the black tarp Bixby had wrapped her in. But as the covering came off, Marci saw there was something else hidden beneath it. A dark, padded band had been wrapped around Katya’s waist, almost like a weightlifter’s belt with wires sticking out of it, each one of which was connected to a sewn-in compartment filled with a gray, clay-like substance that reminded her of—
“Enough!”
The enraged shout cut through the racket, making Marci jump. She whirled around as the gunfire died to see a panting Bixby standing by the card table where the illusionary Kosmolabe had rested before Marci had been forced to drop it. His hand was out in front of him, his fist wrapped around something that looked like an old-style joystick. There was even a red button at the top that he was currently mashing down with his white-knuckled thumb as his wild eyes slid over the room to stop on Marci.
“Hands up!” he bellowed. “She’s wrapped in enough C4 to take this whole place out. One false move out of any of you, and I blow us all sky high.”
Marci snatched her hands away from Katya, raising them instantly over her head. All around the room, Bixby’s men were lowering their guns and regrouping, but even though the shooting had stopped, it was hardly quiet. A horrible sound was coming through the broken roof, a mix of flapping wings and shrill, inhuman shrieking. The combination made Marci shake from her toes to her fingers, but while she was desperately trying to get a hold of herself, Bixby began to laugh.
“Well, well, well,” he said, looking from Marci to Justin, who was still crouched protectively over a bleeding Julius. “Life just gets weirder and weirder, doesn’t it? But it all came together just like the seer said. Even them.”
He jerked his head up to the dark shapes fluttering around the hole in the roof, and despite the ridiculousness of her situation, Marci’s curiosity immediately got the better of her. “What are they?”
“Magic eaters,” Bixby said, his face breaking into a wide, slightly unhinged smile. “A little known local specialty. I’m told they don’t usually flock in numbers like this unless there’s wounded prey to be had, but magical predators aren’t so different from the normal variety. All it takes is a little blood in the water to start them circling.”
His looked pointedly at Marci’s feet as he said this, and she looked down to see something red coating the ground where Katya had been lying. It was on her arms, too, staining the dragoness’s white shirt crimson. But while the color suggested blood, the liquid was much too shiny, and there was a rainbow sheen on its surface, almost like gasoline floating on water…
And that was when Marci realized that dragon blood looked very different from human.
“Oh yes, Miss Novalli,” Bixby cackled as her expression turned horrified. “It’s done. Just listen to those wings. It’s only a matter of time before we’re up to our necks in those bastards, especially with all the new blood your little surprise attack there is dumping on the ground.”
Marci supposed he meant Julius, and scared as she was, that just made her mad. “You don’t know what you’re messing with, Bixby!” she yelled. “It never pays to piss off things bigger than you.”
“Save your threats,” Bixby said. “I’m perfectly safe. The magic eaters don’t care about humans—at least, not about ones who aren’t mages. That would normally put you in a lot of trouble, but you’re in luck tonight. There’s better meat to be had.” He jerked his head at Justin and Julius. “Your rescue squad is about to be the main course of a monster-on-monster feeding frenzy, and if you want them to have a prayer of escaping with their lives, you will shut up and do exactly as I say.”
“Don’t do it,” Justin barked, making Marci jump. When she turned to him, though, the dragon wasn’t even paying attention to her. He was glaring at Bixby, growling with a rumble Marci could feel through her shoes. “Don’t do a thing he says. I will not be used as a bargaining chip by a human!”
“You do not want to push me today, buddy!” Bixby snarled, brandishing the C4 remote in his fist. “Now shut up and back off before I turn you into dragon salsa.”
His finger began to lift off the trigger as he said this, and Marci gasped. “Wait!” she cried, pulling the Kosmolabe out of her bag. “Here it is. This is the real one. I’ll roll it to you right now, just don’t be stupid.”
That must have been what he was waiting for, because Bixby’s face lit up in a triumph. “Oh, no,” he said slowly. “You bring it to me, nice and easy.”
Marci swallowed and glanced at Julius. He was always the one with the plan. Surely he’d thought of something. But Julius was still down on the floor, his bloody chest rising and falling in shallow, pained gasps. Overhead, the shrieks were getting louder as the magic eaters grew bolder. A few had already come inside, crawling upside down along the ceiling like spiders.
Now that she knew what to look for, Marci could actually feel their presence sucking the magic out of the air, leaving an emptiness even more awful than the Pit’s creepy death magic. From the set of Justin’s shoulders, she knew he felt it too, and that only made things worse. If Justin was getting nervous, they were really screwed, and it was that more than anything that made Marci’s decision.