Caldera was down in the living room behind the dividing wall, crouched low and holding on to Leo tightly. Leo was huddled into a ball, breathing fast. “Where are they?” Caldera said quietly.
“Don’t go out the front,” I said, keeping my voice down. From our position we could barely see the front door, and couldn’t see the back at all, but I knew what would happen if we went there. “There’s someone covering the front door. We step through it, we’re going to eat a spell to the face. Something else too . . .”
“The back?”
“More icecats.” I scanned future after future in which we left the house. In most of them we got shot the instant we came into view. “A mage as well.”
“So we’re surrounded.”
All around us, the house was dark and silent. After the brief flurry of the battle, there had been no sound from outside; only my divination let me know that anything was there. I could hear Leo’s rapid breathing, and the whites of his eyes showed in the gloom. “Don’t let her take me back,” he said, his voice high and scared. “I’ll do whatever you what. Just don’t let her, please—”
“No one’s taking you anywhere,” Caldera said, then looked at me. “Can you tell when our backup’s going to be here?”
I’d been scanning the futures for exactly that. “No.”
“Shit. Where are they?”
“I don’t know, but if you’re expecting the cavalry to come riding to the rescue, you’re going to have to wait.”
“If we break out the back?”
“We’ll go right into a fight,” I said. “Two icecats, the guy controlling them—ice mage, I think—and something else. Something bigger.”
Caldera was silent, and I knew what she was thinking. Caldera might be able to beat that many, but she couldn’t protect Leo at the same time. “All right,” she said at last. “We hold here and wait for backup. I’ll try the com disc—”
“Forget that bloody focus. It’s not helping.”
“You have a better plan?”
“I called for backup too. We just need to hope these guys wait long enough—” The futures shifted and I trailed off. All of a sudden the ones with violence in them were much closer. “Shit.”
“What?”
“We’ve got incoming.” Movement from the back. Had they left the front exposed? No—if we made a break for it that way, we’d still run straight into fire and—
“Verus. Talk to me.”
“Icecats.” I kept my voice low. “They’re going to force an entry at the back. They’ll come through the kitchen and the picture window, then sweep towards us.”
“Can we get them as they come in?”
“No, it’s a trap. They’re going to pause at the entrances—get you to show yourself so they can get a clear line of sight. That ice mage is somewhere in the back garden—”
There was a scraping sound from the kitchen, very loud in the darkness. Leo whimpered and tried to huddle into the corner. Caldera glanced back at the front door. “They going to come from the front as well?”
“Don’t think so.”
Another scraping sound, and I heard the sound of splintering wood. “I’ll take the cats,” Caldera said, and I knew she’d made her decision. She came up to one knee, staring into the dividing wall as though she could see through it. “You stay with the kid.”
“Wait. There’s something else.” I could see confused futures of another path through the combat, something hulking and big. “Another construct, I think . . . but it’s not there yet . . .”
The door broke with a crunch and I fell silent. I could hear the distant sounds of the city drifting in through the now-open back door: traffic, an aircraft overhead, a TV from somewhere. No voices or shouts. There were people in the houses all around us, but no one had raised the alarm. It seemed crazy that we were fighting for our lives and the neighbours hadn’t even noticed, but they couldn’t see the futures that I could. All they’d have seen was the window breaking and the scuffle with the icecat, and that had been over in seconds. They probably hadn’t even heard it over the TV, and by the time they’d gotten to the window to look, it would have been all over.
Footsteps padded through the kitchen on the other side of the divider. I could hear the icecat’s movement, smooth and heavy. No breathing. To my sight the construct’s futures were solid lines in the darkness, easy to predict. Another was about to break in, and I signalled for Caldera to stay where she was.
There was the crash of breaking glass, shockingly loud. Leo jumped, and I covered his mouth before he could yelp; his eyes were wide and I could feel his quick breath against my palm. The dividing wall blocked our view of the icecats, but I knew where they were—one was to the left in the kitchen, the other in the broken remnants of the picture window, a little more than five feet from where Caldera was crouching.
Silence. The icecats were waiting. There was no variation in the lines of their future; they were following a program, not under direct control. They would wait another ten seconds, then close in. I tapped Caldera, then took my hand away from Leo’s mouth and held up ten fingers where Caldera could see. Then I held up nine fingers, then eight.
Caldera nodded, came quietly up to one knee. Seven, six, five. Broken glass crunched from the other side of the dividing wall as the icecats moved. Four, three. Caldera braced herself, ready to lunge. Two. A shadow appeared on the wall, the long shape of the icecat outlined by the ambient light from the garden behind it. One. I took hold of Leo, making sure he wouldn’t run.
Zero.
The icecat came around the corner and Caldera met it in a rush. The blow threw the icecat into the wall with a thud and Caldera moved in, but it was already turning on her, eyes glowing blue in the darkness. Leo made as if to bolt, but I tightened my grip on his arm and he went still. The second icecat lunged for Caldera but she stepped back, using the dividing wall as cover, forcing them to come around the corner one at a time.
Shapes flashed in the darkness, fist meeting claw. The icecats were constructs, immune to pain and unnaturally strong, but Caldera was their match and more. Most battle-mages focus on ranged spells, learning to use their magic to kill safely from a distance, but Caldera is one of the ones who specialise in getting up close and personal. To my eyes her body was outlined in solid brown energy, flowing down her arms and legs and rooting her to the ground, one spell giving her strength and stability, another making her skin as hard as stone. The icecats’ claws trailed cold mist in the shadows, but where they met Caldera’s skin they scraped off harmlessly. Caldera’s blows didn’t scrape off. When she connected, the icecats went flying. Here in these tight quarters she was in her element, and even two on one, the icecats were losing.
I held back as Caldera fought. In one hand I had a silver dart, tapered to a point—a dispelling focus. It could disrupt the spells that powered the icecats, maybe even destroy one with a lucky hit, but it needed to be recharged between attacks and I’d only get one shot. I wasn’t planning to use it unless I had to—this was a heavyweight fight and I was out of my league. Instead I kept searching the futures, trying to look past the chaos of combat to see what was coming. There were flickers of ice magic, but it looked as though our plan was working—the ice mage at the back couldn’t get a straight shot. But there was something else, a construct or gate magic or a combination of the two. Whatever it was, it was bad news, and—
Caldera kicked at one of the icecats and it dodged, sliding away with an odd grace. The movement brought it farther into the living room, and for the first time, it had a clear line of sight to Leo.
Instantly the futures changed. The possibilities in which the icecat attacked Caldera or me vanished—it was locked onto Leo and no one else. Without hesitating it sprang.
“Caldera!” I shouted, but Caldera was already reacting. Her punch caught the icecat in midair, sent it flying into the wall. But she’d had to step back to do it, and the second icecat came around the corner . . . and as soon as it saw Leo it locked onto him, too.