He jerked back inside, spun and reached for Caleb’s sidearm—
And missed, because his friend was no longer behind the desk. Like Jackson and his recruit, who had been swept up by the advancing throng, Caleb was suddenly on the move. Passing John, flinging open the door, and heading outside—
All with the same blank eyed stare that everyone else was wearing.
Everyone.
A steady stream of mages, trainees, and support staff—even one guy with a mop still in hand—flowed silently by the office and down the hall. After a moment, John went with them. Because either he really was mad or something was very, very wrong. And considering that the supernatural community was currently at war . . .
Well, he hoped that he was simply mad.
The crowd surged down the hall to a door near the far end, which gave out onto the main salle, where Caleb had found John half an hour before. He’d have had a hard time locating him now, because people were spilling in from all sides, hundreds of them. But the place wasn’t filling up.
Probably because of the huge, black portal on the far wall, thrumming with power, that was swallowing them like water down a drain.
John stared at it for a second. Darkness boiled at the center and flickers of green fire licked the sides, the latter a tell-tale sign of destabilization. Not the kind that preceded a collapse; it would be far worse in that case. But the kind that indicated that an enormous amount of energy was being channeled through that thing.
A long-distance portal, then, the rational part of his brain commented, while the emotional part was busy screaming. Because nobody was supposed to be able to open a portal in here. This was the Corps’ West Coast headquarters. They had bloody shields!
Only they didn’t. The usual tell-tale buzz against John’s skin was missing, which around here was more like a bunch of electric eels snapping at his arse, because the Corps’ wards had never played well with his magic. But, suddenly, there was nothing.
Of course, there wasn’t.
Anyone who could enthrall this many war mages could also order them to turn off the damned shields, couldn’t they?
And then John spied Caleb, calmly walking ahead, and started pushing and shoving toward him. He doubted he would reach his friend in time, but that wasn’t the only point. If a group with this kind of power wanted them dead, they could have simply ordered them to kill each other.
No, they wanted them somewhere else.
And John was deathly afraid that he knew where that was.
Ever since the war started, there had been attacks on the Silver Circle’s main base of operations in Stratford. As the parent organization of the War Mage Corps, it was an obvious target, but the age-old fortress wasn’t so easily assailed. First begun during a time of war, it had been designed specifically with attack in mind, which was why it wasn’t in a castle or even a modern skyscraper. Instead, it occupied a sprawling rabbit warren of tunnels under the English countryside, protected by acres of spells, some dating back to Tudor times. They had been laid and re-laid and fortified by centuries of the best magical talent the Circle could boast.
No one was getting in there.
Or so everyone had thought.
John had missed the recent assault due to being involved in his own bit of drama. But he’d heard stories, in those few periods of lucidity since his return. How the base had been attacked from multiple directions at once, how literally thousands of dark mages had crashed through the outer defenses, how the Corps had been battered by vicious black spells, some of which no one had ever seen before.
To the point that the best the knights had been able to do was to slow them down.
Until Jonas Marsden, aged though he was, with arthritic hands that only worked because of the spells he constantly kept applied to them, his eyesight shot, his hearing questionable, his back bent, nonetheless rallied the Corps and led a charge through the tunnels. To which he’d applied an almost forgotten spell to morph them into whatever shape would allow the knights to take the invaders from behind. And above. And below.
Suddenly, the dark mage army had found itself trapped in an ever-changing labyrinth of steadily narrowing corridors that closed in so much that they couldn’t even move. Or cut them off from their allies into small groups that were then dropped a story or two, into the midst of a circle of murderous faces. Or crushed them under ceilings that abruptly collapsed, sandwiching them between tons of rock and earth.
And all the while, the Corps was slowly, methodically, and with utter savagery, clearing their base of every last one.
Yet it had been a vicious fight all the same, from what John had heard, one that had required ripping experimental weapons from the labs to test them in actual combat. One that had forced young recruits, many with peach fuzz still on their cheeks, out of bed to protect key areas, because every fully trained mage was needed for the fight. One that had caused a group of civilian adjuncts—secretaries and janitors—to arm themselves, and to defend their areas with deadlier force than anyone had expected.
Yet many of them had died nonetheless.
John had heard that Jonas, his face thunderous but his voice silent, had picked his way through the dead in the Corps’ library after a battle there. He’d been bleeding from a head wound, but had ignored the nurses vainly attempting to bandage him up. Instead, he’d personally seen to it that every deceased staff member had been gently and carefully put on stretchers and evacuated.
Before immolating the dark mage bodies himself, including several which had still been alive.
Burning them to powder.
It had been a chilling sign that the war had entered a new phase, and that the old rules no longer applied. So what do you do, John thought now, when your all-out assault just failed, and you realize that your best efforts may never take out your opponents? Why, you let them do it for you.
Although how the hell the other side had gained control of a whole army of war mages, he couldn’t imagine. Enthrallment spells only worked on the weak minded, which war mages damned well weren’t! And the knights had received training in how to detect and throw them off in any case. The only thing that attempting to enthrall a war mage should get you was a pissed off war mage.
Yet here was not one, but hundreds of examples to the contrary, many of whom John had known for years and could vouch for their competency. No one should have been able to enthrall these men! Not without a fight, and not without the bespelled mage lurching about, screaming a warning and giving everyone time to react.
Just like no one should have been able to enthrall him.
But someone had. Why else would he be here, with his feet cut from stumbling barefoot around Vegas like a drunken tourist? Why else would he have shown up in his underwear? And why else would he be plagued by strange memories, if not to distract him from the job and fog his mind, while someone else took control of his body?
John felt his lip curl and power flood his system. Someone was going to pay for this. Someone who had been in too much of a hurry to designate specific war mages for their army, and instead had sent out a general call to everyone assigned to this base—and had netted more than they bargained for.
A lot more, he thought, anger surging to the surface. He stopped fighting to get ahead and instead cut through the now shoulder to shoulder throng to the nearest line of sandbags, pulled himself up and ran along the top, bypassing the strangely silent crowd. Only to see the portal swallow Caleb, just ahead.