They were about to be a lot more displeased, John thought, and redoubled his efforts to get the damned door open. But then a miracle happened: his call finally went through. “Mage Pritkin?”
He glanced at the mirror to see the 3-D face of Jonas’s long-time secretary, old Betty Armitage, poking out of the surface and looking disapproving. This was not a surprise; she’d never liked him. Of course, from what he’d been able to tell, she’d never liked anyone, so John had somehow developed a soft spot for her. It was rather refreshing to be hated in exactly the same amount as everyone else, for a change.
“Betty—”
“Mage Pritkin!”
Oh, bloody hell.
The elderly—she had to be pushing two hundred—woman’s face scrunched up, leaving only the prominent nose and chin clearly visible. If anybody had ever looked like the stereotypical version of a witch, it was Betty, except for the grandmotherly white curls and English rose complexion. The attitude, however, was spot on.
“If I have told you once, Mage Pritkin, I have told you a hundred times, my name—”
“Yes, of course. Special Agent Armitage—”
“—is Special Agent Armitage! I have been at this organization longer than you, and indeed, longer than most people, and you will address me by my proper title—”
“Yes! Yes, I will, I merely—”
“—or else we shan’t have anything to talk about! Is that clearly understood?”
“Yes.” John said again, and attempted to look chastened, because arguing with Betty never got anyone anywhere and he needed to talk to Jonas, damn it! “Yes, it’s understood. My apologies. Could you please connect me with—”
All hell broke loose, silencing his request in a massive ball of sound and light and magic. And unlike the previous burst, this wasn’t simply the passive power of a large number of magic users in a small area. This was a spell, one that tore down the alley toward the vampires like ball lighting, if ball lighting was the size of a house, burning the sides of the brick buildings as it went, and crumbling the stone into ash in a long line on either side. It was so hot, John was sure it had burnt his face from here, and so bright that he knew he shouldn’t look directly at it.
He did anyway.
That wasn’t the sort of thing you saw every day.
He’d seen mages try to throw collective spells before, but it rarely worked. War mages tended to be lone wolves, making it unusual for a group to be assigned together long enough to learn to time their magic perfectly. What normally resulted instead was a bunch of individual spells that never really linked up.
Not this time. The boiling mass of power, the combined spell of the maybe fifty or so mages still on the street, roared down the alley, loud as a banshee and bright as the sun, and John could only be glad that it wasn’t headed in his direction. Until it hit a shimmering blue shield that the vampire squad had somehow erected, and bounced off—
Straight back the way it had come.
John cursed, dropped and shielded, like the rest of the street was doing, with bright blue, green and white bubbles popping up everywhere.
He didn’t see if they worked.
He didn’t see anything.
Except for the phone booth melting around him, its bright red paint turning black and sliding off, the metal underneath dissolving and dripping down the sides of his shield like liquid mercury.
John stared at it, and then at his shields, which were somehow withstanding that along with the fury causing it, how he didn’t know. But they were holding. Even while the monstrous spell lashed the small alley like the whips of every demon in hell.
It finally stopped, what felt like a lifetime later, because that amount of magic doesn’t just melt away. Leaving John under a solid looking sphere of silver metal when he cautiously lowered his shields. He stared at it. It gleamed back at him. He thumped it—cautiously.
It rang like a bell.
John stared at it some more. Because that . . . wasn’t supposed to happen. His shields had somehow not only protected him, but had cooled the molten metal, all in the space of perhaps a couple of minutes. John thumped it again, just to be sure he wasn’t dreaming, something that . . .
Turned out to be a very bad idea.
The second chime no sooner rang through the street than there was yelling in Cantonese. And the next moment, his metal bubble was being assaulted by something that dented it all over, like the pitted surface of a golf ball. Until one of the somethings broke through, and a spear stabbed down, only missing turning John into shish-kebob by a fraction of an inch.
Anger flooded through him, the way it always did in battle, the way they taught young recruits to avoid because it clouded the brain. But this time, it cleared it, allowing John to be in perfect control of his faculties as he re-engaged his shields and exploded them outward, shattering the metal bubble into a thousand pieces. And sending an explosion of sharp-edged steel flying directly into his attackers.
Chapter Six
T he four men and one woman were vampires, he noticed, when he bounced back to his feet. But not even the undead recover immediately from a shower of lead slamming through their bodies. John used the few seconds he had before they retaliated to assess the situation.
It wasn’t good.
There were still-shielded figures everywhere, many of which were being assaulted as he had been. There were war mages—startlingly few of them—on their feet and defending themselves from a motley crew of vampires, weres and mages who were attacking from all sides. And there were smoking rings where other shields had been, but which had failed under the onslaught of that terrible, combined spell.
John stared at them, and at the things inside them, the huddled, smoking piles of bones or ash that marked where a war mage had fallen.
An icy hand gripped his heart and squeezed, hard enough to make it skip a beat. And then he spotted one of the nearest burning pyres, and it felt like it stopped altogether. A large figure, still mostly intact because his shields must have lasted almost long enough, was crouched inside a spelled coat. It had partly survived, too, with pieces of burnt leather curled up on the once strong back, but the general shape was intact. It had provided additional protection to the mage, once his shield dome collapsed, but not enough.
Not nearly enough.
John couldn’t seem to tear his gaze away from the burnt face, which was no longer recognizable. Yet the body itself, seared in place with one knee bent, like a knight on an ancient tomb, was the correct size and what was left of his skin was the right color. Caleb, John tried to say, but no words came out.
Until a vampire leapt for another huddled figure, one whose shield had just failed, leaving the badly injured man attempting to crawl away over smoking hot streets.
John literally saw red. He wasn’t sure if the tide of fury slamming through him had just burst half of the blood vessels in his eyes, or if it was the spell that tore out of him that distorted his vision, but it didn’t matter. A tongue of fire leapt from the whip he’d materialized in one shielded hand, slashed across the street and wrapped itself around the vampire’s head.
And ripped it off.
The now fiery head went bouncing down the street, and half the attackers—the vampire half—turned to stare at him. But only for a split second. Then they were coming, all of them, including the five with metal shards sticking out of their bodies who were trying to jump him from behind.