And he could. His demon senses were why Jonas had bothered to roust him out of his grief and back into the field, to give the Corps at least an idea of what they were facing. Whatever was in that cave had been having a field day with the local population of sheep and goats, leaving savaged carcasses scattered across the landscape.
That would have been bad enough, but then the magical version of a local constable had gone to investigate. He was one of the auxiliaries the Circle employed who weren’t powerful enough for the Corps, but who were useful for giving wrist slaps to prank playing children and issuing fines for minor infractions of magical law. A steady sort of man with a wife and three little stairsteps, bluff and genial, but sober and reliable at his job. And missing, until his body was found bobbing in the sea near a local beach several days ago.
Or rather, part of it was.
Most of the fleshy bits were suspiciously absent.
The Corps tended to take exception when one of its operatives was butchered for meat. So, the next time, they sent a war mage—a real one. One who knew the area because he’d grown up in these parts, a somewhat garrulous old Cornishman with enough power at his fingertips to be considered the magical equivalent of a tank.
He hadn’t come back, either.
As a result, this time it was a full squad, with a half demon along for the ride because they still didn’t know what they were dealing with. And things that eat humans for breakfast were usually classified as demonic. Or so Jonas had told him over tea, without so much as batting an eyelash.
John really, really wished he’d been able to take offense at the casual comment.
But the plain fact was that Jonas was probably right. And his men were probably going to get eaten, possibly alive, if they went in there with only human magic and human hubris. John had therefore reluctantly allowed himself to be talked into going along.
After all, who better to fight a monster than another monster?
The only problem was that this monster might recognize him, or at least, what he was. And while that could result in an attack, it could result in the opposite, as well. If the murderous beast slithered away somewhere, who knew where it might turn up next, and how many horrors it might commit along the way.
No, this ends here, John thought, concentrating. And slowly, slowly, slowly, he began to get a picture. Of something powerful . . . yet not; of something old . . . yet not; of something familiar yet alien, but not in the way he’d expected. But almost as if . . .
The boy broke his concentration by suddenly grabbing him, which was bad. And by throwing a curse through a gap he’d made in the improvised gag, which was worse. But it was still manageable, because John was, of course, shielded.
Unfortunately, the cliff face wasn’t.
A chunk of it shattered, sending cracks up the already jagged rock, and a large piece above their heads started sloughing off. The falling slab only missed the two idiots who’d been clinging to its surface because they weren’t anymore. John had thrown them backwards at the last second, sliding into the cave mouth on a moving stream of chalk and rock that felt almost as liquid under his feet as the ocean outside—and as slippery.
He also somehow kept hold of the boy, raising a shield around them both and expanding it outward to the size and shape of a large bubble. One tough enough to cushion the mass of blows they took as they bounced and slammed and rolled and jarred, all the way to the bottom of a steep ramp inside the cave. And hit a wall at the far end where the shield burst apart, dumping them onto a floor that was wet and salt encrusted and rough as a cobb.
The amount of bruising he’d taken might have occupied John’s mind more, but at the same instant, a wild, blood-soaked figure lunged at them out of the darkness, arms raised and teeth bared, an unearthly howl emanating from between its lips.
“John!”
“Fuck!” John yelled and jerked around, one hand outstretched in a defensive posture that caused his shields to snap into place. The other was laced with a barely contained fireball that he couldn’t see well enough to throw, because of the migraine blurring his vision.
It felt like someone was striking his head with a mallet.
A very determined someone.
With a damned big mallet.
After a moment, he managed to focus enough to notice his surroundings, which were neither a salt encrusted cave nor a burning hotel room. What slowly came into focus instead was a cavernous space with a general air of dilapidation. There was flaking paint on some exposed piping beside him, industrial tile under his feet, and the whole thing smelled of body odor, magic and . . . mouse droppings?
“John!”
His head snapped up when the voice came again, and agony lanced through his skull. He went down to one knee at the violent, almost shocking pain. Over the sound of his fireball spell sizzling out against the cold tile, he heard the thud of running boots.
“Get back!” someone barked, as several nearby figures converged on his location. He couldn’t see them—the pain was blinding—but he heard them pause whist the runner did not. And the next second, strong hands were gripping his arms.
Or trying to. The hands actually gripped his shield instead, which permitted them through the surface, like plunging into a cold pool. Only to solidify immediately after, trapping them under a watery scrim. And allowing John to spin and slam the offending body against the floor.
It wasn’t easy, even with all the adrenaline pumping through his system, the body being huge and heavy with muscle.
And not fighting back, John realized, after a moment.
“Right on the sciatica,” someone sighed.
For an instant, John saw again the boy he’d dragged over a cliff: a narrow, coffee-colored face, suspicious brown eyes, and a thatch of wild curls. Only to have the face change and age as his eyes managed to focus: the neck broadening into maturity, the hair disappearing, the eyes—the most recognizable feature—acquiring a few obvious crow’s feet. It was still Caleb, but this man was teetering on the cusp of middle age, if a well-preserved and handsome version of it.
John wondered why he’d been dreaming about his old friend, and such a weird dream, too. Jonas had come after him, that much was true, to shake him out of his downward spiral after the death of his wife. But that strange foray into Cornwall wasn’t what had followed.
Was it?
“You gonna kiss me or let me up?” Caleb asked dourly.
John let him up.
And then sat back down abruptly, as the room spun around him.
“You hurt?” Caleb asked, as more people started gathering around. And then dispersed just as quickly, when the cranky war mage commander sent them off with a few well-chosen words.
A bunch of smart “sir, yes, sirs!” echoed through what John was finally recognizing as the Corps’ temporary Vegas HQ. After the previous one was destroyed in the current war, the Corps had taken over an old warehouse complex on the outskirts of the city that had looked like it was about to fall down. And still did, since they’d been more concerned with functionality than appearance. None of which explained—
“What the hell are you doing here?” Caleb demanded, as John pulled himself back to his feet.
Exactly, John thought, memories swirling around him like a hurricane, or like those damned washcloths Jonas had set on him, all those years ago. But he couldn’t grasp them. They slipped through his mental fingers and danced away, and when he pursued them, they turned into demon sprites who laughed and laughed, taunting him from just out of reach—