Magic Claims by Ilona Andrews

“Nice skull.” Troy’s face was a harsh mask.

“I feel like he’s trying to tell us something,” I said. “Not sure what it is. He’s so subtle about it.”

Owen chuckled.

The skull mage raised his staff and tapped it on the ground. Two hunters stepped forward and unfolded another tapestry between them. Twenty red figures.

“They doubled their ask,” Troy said.

“Punishment,” I told them.

The skull mage pointed his staff at me and then at the tapestry.

Ah. It was my doing so I had to atone by being one of the twenty.

I crossed my arms on my chest. That should be clear enough.

The fringe mage stepped forward and spun, twirling her staff. She did it in complete silence. The creep factor was high.

The mage turned and twisted. There was a definite pattern to her dance. I couldn’t feel her magic from this distance, but she was cooking something nasty.

“Troy,” I said, “Go get my husband, please.”

Troy turned and took off down the stairs at top speed.

The skull mage stepped aside and spun as well. His staff work was less fluid, more abrupt, as if he was trying to rip through the air. The two mages whirled, but not in unison. Their movements weren’t coordinated. Whatever they were doing was similar but separate.

“You can ring the bell now,” I told the guard.

The kid grabbed the rope attached to the clapper and shook it hard. The bell rang out in a hysterical frenzy.

The fringe mage thrust her staff up and plunged it into the ground. Thunder clapped. A huge creature landed in the grass in front of her, swirling with dark smoke. Massive and shaggy with brown fur, it stood eight and a half feet tall on four thick, sturdy legs. A big hump protruded between its shoulders. Its head was pure rhino, bearing a single enormous horn, five feet long and at least a foot thick. It curved like the blade of a scythe, jabbing upward.

Every bit of the rhino’s bulk bore thick bone plates with foot-long spikes: its back, its sides, even its head. Gold-colored veins crisscrossed the plates, fusing them together. A broad bone carapace protected its forehead, and a segmented metal and bone collar shielded its neck.

The bone wasn’t a natural part of the creature but armor added to it.

I couldn’t see any belts or harness straps. The armor seemed stuck to the rhino, as if glued onto the animal’s hide. Magic rolled off it, like hot air from asphalt, a shimmering, transparent corona that turned into coils of dark vapor and melted into the air.

That was a hell of a summon. And there was a second one coming as soon as the skull mage finished his dance.

The beast sighted our gate with its mean black eyes.

“Owen, how much do you think it weighs?”

“I’d say he’s about five of me. Without armor.”

An adult bison weighed about two thousand pounds. If that thing hit the gates at full speed, it would rip right through them and probably take a chunk of the wall with it. Shit.

The monster rhino dug into the ground with his foreleg like a bull.

It was a summon. Summons had a simple remedy. Kill the summoner and they went away.

I’d have to cover five hundred yards, and those spears looked a lot like javelins.

“We have to get to the summoners.” I looked at the guard. “I need a horse. Do you have a horse?”

The kid shook his head, his eyes opened wide.

“Where is the closest stable?”

“Eight blocks to the south.”

Too far.

The fringe mage pointed at the gate with her staff and let out a short, high-pitched shout. The rhino grunted and started forward, aiming for the gate, accelerating into what would become a crushing charge.

The skull mage shoved his staff into the ground. Thunder cracked again, and a pack of six gray birds burst into existence. They stood on two legs, the tallest almost seven feet. They looked like some kind of mutated ostriches, except their necks were shorter and much thicker, their wings were tiny and useless, and their heads, two feet long, were mostly eyes and a huge, nightmarish beak, flat and heavy like an axe head.

What the hell…

“Since a horse isn’t handy, how about a bison?” Owen offered.

“Sold!”

Owen grabbed me by the waist and jumped off the wall. He landed with a thud, let go of me, and planted himself. He raised his arms, stretched his chest, flexed his back, took a deep breath, and blew the air out of his nose. A deep, furious red drowned his eyes.

The monster rhino picked up speed. He was almost running now. The skull mage screamed out a command, and the birds took off toward us at ridiculous speeds.

Owen’s body tore in a whirlwind of flesh and bone, and a big bull bison hit the grass, his horns the size of my forearms. I jumped onto his back.

Owen bellowed. It was so deep and rumbling, it was almost a roar.

The birds overtook the rhino.

Owen charged. I grabbed his mane and held on for dear life.

The rhino barreled toward us, the birds in a tight flock in front of him. The ground shook, and I couldn’t tell which stomps came from the rhino and which came from Owen. Every strike of his feet nearly sent me flying. Bisons weren’t meant for riding.

We hurtled at each other.

One hundred feet to the birds.

Eighty.

Sixty. I pulled the magic to myself.

Thirty.

Ten.

“Ahissa!” Flee.