Magic Claims by Ilona Andrews

If I knew my wife, by the time I got there she’d be over the wall and giving our visitors a warm welcome.

Buildings flew by. The North Gate loomed in front of me.

Magic slapped me. Like someone had struck a gigantic drum, except it wasn’t a sound, it was a feeling that raised the hair on the backs of my arms. Kate had used a power word.

I charged up the stairs and landed on the wall, next to a terrified kid running back and forth by the guard tower.

The grassy killing ground spread in front of me with us on one side and a group of ten invaders on the other. Between us and them, Kate was riding a bison, charging at full speed toward a monstrous rhino-like creature armored with spiked bone plates and shedding coils of black vapor. A flock of big-ass birds shot away from them, fleeing in panic.

Okay. That’s what we’re doing today.

The bison had to be Owen, and he was barreling toward the rhino at full speed.

Kate screamed something. I focused.

“Turn! Owen, turn!”

Owen would not be turning. He was a bull werebison who had spotted a larger challenger in his territory. I knew exactly what was going through his bovine brain right now.

Hit that guy. Hit him real hard. Show him who’s the strongest.

Through his brain fog and tunnel vision he had probably forgotten that Kate was still on his back. He’d ram into the rhino, right into those spikes.

Jump. Baby, jump off.

The rhino bellowed, exhaling fury.

Now! For fuck’s sake, Kate!

She jumped. I held my breath.

She flew through the air, landed hard in a clump, rolled, and bounced to her feet. She seemed alright. Nothing looked broken.

I exhaled.

Owen slammed into the much larger beast. He avoided the horn and shoulder-checked the rhino’s front leg.

The collision was colossal. The armored beast collapsed on his side. The impact shook the wall.

Owen galloped off, roaring like the fool he was, made a tight circle, and went in for seconds.

Kate was running toward the magic users with the staffs.

The rhino was down, kicking, and Owen was doing his best to disembowel it with its horns, except its armor and spikes were in his way.

And he got his horns stuck. Damn it.

Owen tugged his horns free, backed up, and charged again. Still on its side, the beast kicked out. His huge three-toed foot connected with Owen’s chest. The bison flew back twenty feet and crashed into the grass.

Damn, that had to hurt.

The rhino struggled. The dark smoke around it thickened.

“Think it’ll get up?” Keelan said.

“It shouldn’t.” That was a hard fall, and the armor added a lot of weight.

The smoke solidified at the rhino’s side and seemed to be pushing it to its feet.

“It’s getting up,” Keelan reported because I was clearly blind.

“Thank you. I can see that.”

The rhino would get up. And when it did, it would go after Owen or the gate. If we were really unlucky, it would go after Kate.

This wasn’t a natural animal. It wasn’t an animal god—I’d seen enough of them to recognize them on sight—but it wasn’t a normal rhino either. That bone armor sat on it as if it were welded to its hide, and the magic boiling around it was thick enough to cut with claws.

Everyone who had been in the house was already on the wall beside me.

“Elk Hunt One,” I ordered. “Keelan, Da-Eun, and I are the takers, the rest of you are drivers. Spin it around. Any direction except for the gate.”

“Yes, Alpha,” they answered in unison.

I leaped off the wall. By the time I hit the ground, I was in half form and roaring. The wall rained shapeshifters in warrior forms. We sprinted forward in a tight formation, howling and snarling.

The smoke picked the rhino up and set it back on its feet. It shook its head and roared. It was a sound filled with rage and hate.

“You owe me a dollar, my lord!” Keelan snarled on my right.

“I never bet you anything.”

“Being stingy is unbecoming of an alpha!” Da-Eun laughed on my left.

Keelan howled, a long triumphant battle cry, calling for blood.

The rhino started forward and was picking up speed, moving from a walk into a sort of trot. The ground started to shake.

Gods, he was massive. This was going to suck.

The drivers shot in front of the rhino, snarling and snapping.

I veered right, while Keelan and Da-Eun darted left. We circled the rhino. Those plates had to be held in place by something—chains, a harness—and I would find it and break it.

There was no harness. The rhino wasn’t wearing the bone plates. They hadn’t been placed on him. They’d been placed in him, embedded in the creature’s flesh and fused together by the same golden metal we saw on the collars. The hide in the narrow gaps between the plates was inflamed and bleeding. Pus wet the metal and bone. This beast had to be in tremendous pain.

The stench was the worst. It smelled like acid, burned flesh, and blood. And a hint of decay, just setting in. The rhino was dying.

I would kill it. I would make it as fast and as painless as I could. And then I would find the person who did that atrocity to it and kill them slowly.

I circled behind the beast, passing Keelan and Da-Eun running in the opposite direction. They hadn’t found a weakness either.

At the front end of the rhino, the shapeshifters baited the beast, leaping in and out before it could gore them, clawing, snapping, and snarling. The huge beast tried to press forward, but the chaos was too much. It couldn’t ignore the shapeshifters harassing it. Too many bodies, too much noise.