Yeah, that was helpful.
Like that particular ward, which hadn’t caught shit, as far as I could tell. But one of the others might. I didn’t know where this damned training bay was, but if we shut down enough segments of the corridor, it wouldn’t matter. The invisible man would be trapped inside one of them.
I grabbed Lab Coat’s arm and shifted us through the barrier. He looked at me in alarm and confusion. “I—how did you do that? And why—”
He broke off, because I’d just picked a little red vial out of my stash and shook it at him. “Run!” I yelled.
He ran.
And, honestly, I couldn’t have asked for a better partner. He kept looking over his shoulder, I guess to see if I was still back there. Which resulted in him running into things—walls, doorways, other secretarial types—because this seemed to be an administrative area—and wards. Lots of wards.
And every time he hit one of the latter, I grabbed him and shifted us through. It took three such shifts before we started hitting serious opposition, in the form of a party of war mages who ran at us out of what looked to be a solid wall. And grabbed Lab Coat, who was shrieking too much to explain anything.
I grabbed him right back. “Fight me!” I told them, because I didn’t have time for anything else.
“What?” One of them said, looking more confused than angry.
“Fight me!” I screamed, and threw a potion bomb, which exploded in a haze of purple smoke.
It didn’t hurt them—Pritkin used that sort of thing for cover in the field—but it didn’t make them happy. I shifted me and Lab Coat to the end of a long corridor, and looked back to see what appeared to be a whole squadron of war mages thundering this way. They had leather covered arms over their faces to act as makeshift gas masks, and a raft of spells streaming out in front of them.
Which hit the ward we’d just shifted through and bounced back, causing them to have to duck or shield.
“It’s hard to get good help these days,” I told my partner, and shook a grenade at him.
He seemed to have gotten the idea, because he took off again, obligingly screaming his head off. Although it was starting to sound a little perfunctory now, and he kept glancing back at me more in puzzlement than terror. Especially at the sight of me throwing potions at basically everything but him.
“I’m out of shape,” he called back, after a moment, sounding winded. “I can’t keep this up much longer.”
“Is that training bay one up there?” I demanded, pointing at a big, oblong opening in the wall at the very end of the corridor.
“Yeah,” he panted. “That’s . . . it.”
“Is there a ward over the door?”
He stopped suddenly, and looked at me. “There can be.”
“Put it up and keep it up. Let nothing in or out and you’re done,” I told him.
He stared at me, a pudgy hand coming up to his throat. “There . . . there really is an assassin in here, isn’t there?”
“Yeah,” I said, and shifted.
The training bay was a large, open area with a gym on the right, a row of lockers on the left, and a bunch of cots stacked in the back. It also had a barrier across the middle, like the ones in the corridor outside. But it wasn’t invisible like them, although not because this one was any different.
But because I was.
VampVision had flicked on when I entered the room, despite the fact that I hadn’t told it to. Even weirder, VampScent had kicked in, or whatever you wanted to call a super sensitive nose. And the room freaking reeked.
I was assaulted by a thousand dirty feet and sweaty bodies, going back what felt like years; by pipe smoke, a lingering hint of spice from perhaps this morning; by soap and hair cream and cologne, because this was a dorm at night; and by spent magic, gun oil and dirt.
And by something else.
It hit me suddenly and surprisingly strong: not an ugly smell this time, but the exact opposite. For a moment, I thought it was me, the perfumed scent so similar to that of the glamourie I was wearing. But it wasn’t me.
It was made from the same stuff, however, as my smelly new face mask: fey flora. For a fey disguise so alien and so perfect that it had fooled the wards—and the eyes. But nothing fooled a vampire’s nose—
Something slashed at me, out of nowhere, but a wave of scent had warned me just in time and I shifted away. Not far, just a few feet. And then whirled and threw a time spell, and shifted again.