Shatter the Earth (Cassandra Palmer 10)

The recent attack had collapsed some of the main housing areas of HQ, and until they were repaired, everyone was having to make do. That meant rows of cots in the gyms, library and even cafeterias at night, which were doubling as makeshift dorms for new recruits. Even senior staff were having to rough it, which was why Pritkin’s current digs looked like a hobbit hole.

One of the low-rent variety, I thought, dropping my bag and looking for a place to put down the tray I’d borrowed from the café.

I’d bought a sixteen-ounce espresso double shot for Pritkin, whose body metabolized caffeine almost instantly, requiring him to consume mass quantities to even feel it, and a regular cup of joe for me. I’d also gone a little crazy on the display case, having ended up with a couple deli meat sandwiches, a salad, a large soup, a quarter pizza, two eclairs and a cream puff of epic proportions. That last one was mine, a reward for a less-than-fun morning, or it would be if I could find anywhere to set it down!

There weren’t a lot of options. The bed was, of course, unmade, as Pritkin was the least tidy military type I’d ever seen, I guessed because he came to it late. The rough, rounded, stone-and-dirt walls boasted no shelves, probably because they weren’t strong enough to hold anything, and even the door had only a single hook on the back, where a war mage coat was currently residing.

It wasn’t Pritkin’s. His was across the room, flung over a chair, since he didn’t need it inside the formidable wards of HQ. It raised a sleeve in a faint wave at me, which was probably just the layers and layers of spells that had been put on it through the years responding to a presence in the room. But I grinned at it anyway. I liked to think that it was happy to see me.

The other coat must be Caleb’s, I decided. He’d been harping for weeks about the new, properly spelled piece of outerwear that Pritkin owed him, as a replacement for one we’d accidentally destroyed. It looked like he was finally going to get his wish.

Other than that, there was a chest, which I knew contained weapons, and a makeshift potion bench made out of an old dresser, which contained more of the same, only in liquid form. I eyed it worriedly. I didn’t want anything exploding on my cream puff.

The chair it was, then.

“Sorry,” I told the friendly coat. “Gonna have to move you.”

The tray went down onto the messy bed for a moment and I picked up the coat. And turned toward the door, intending to see if two magical items could cohabit for long enough for me to properly arrange the room. I never found out.

I did, however, find out what happens when a spelled blade meets a spelled coat: namely nothing. Except to shock the shit out of the woman holding the coat, because she hadn’t expected a flying sword to suddenly slash at her out of nowhere. Or to have it do it again!

But the coat caught it the second time, too, although I was gonna have another bruise, because the blade had just slammed into the arm that I’d raised to protect my head. But it hadn’t torn through the leather, and I didn’t think it had broken anything. The coat had absorbed the force of the momentum in a way that normal garments just didn’t.

Not that that was going to help me much, because the damned sword was still coming!

Until the coat leapt out of my arms and threw itself on the magical levitating blade, which was a new one for me. But then Pritkin had some interesting spells. And a coat that was smarter than I was, because that wasn’t just a blade.

I blinked, having assumed that I’d done something to trigger one of his weapons, because his arsenal did levitate. All war mages’ did, allowing one guy to perform the job of a platoon, with a bevy of knives, guns and potion bombs all attacking at the same time that he did. But that’s not what this was.

Shit, I thought, as the coat determinedly wrapped itself around the figure of a man.

Or, at least, it tried. But war mage coats only hit about mid-calf, meaning that the coat wasn’t big enough to fully engulf my attacker, who appeared to be tall. Like really tall. Like NBA star or fey warrior tall, and I knew which one was more likely to be attacking me.

Shit!

And then whoever it was tore through the coat, because I guessed the charms weren’t as strong from the inside, the blade hacking it to pieces in less time than it takes to say. But the ruined garment had bought me a few seconds, and had also given me a target. And these days, that was enough.

I sent a time spell shooting ahead of me, which should have aged my attacker into powder, or at least destroyed his invisibility spell. But I must have missed—the guy, at least. His blade, on the other hand, shattered to pieces when he lunged for me again and hit the chair instead, because I’d just added hundreds of years to its age. And had shifted out of the way immediately thereafter, over by Pritkin’s potion table.

I didn’t know what all of the bottles I started throwing at my attacker contained, but Pritkin didn’t make too many benign concoctions. But the fey must have popped out some sort of shield, because nothing got through. What the potions did, do, however, was to splatter all over said shield, giving me an exact location.

And allowing me to hit him with two spells at once: a slowdown and a hamster wheel.

The former was a much easier form of a time stoppage, one that didn’t drain all my strength while reducing even fey speed to a fraction of the norm. The latter I was especially proud of, having just mastered it after being beaten on for a week by my taskmaster of a trainer. It essentially caused a miniature time loop, trapping the subject in place—or to be more accurate, in time. Forcing him to relive a short loop over and over, until the spell gave out or I released him.

Or until he broke free, I thought, because the bastard tore out of it five seconds later, which is all a fuck ton of magic had bought me!

Damn it, I knew I should have thrown a full-on time stoppage! But that kind of thing was debilitating. Meaning that, if it didn’t work—and the fey were resistant to the Pythian power, as this one had just demonstrated—I’d be a sitting duck. Which I basically was now, anyway, because he’d dropped his potion-splashed shields and now I couldn’t see him again!

But I could see the door being wrenched open, and slamming into the wall as someone tore out of the room. For a second, I was grateful, if confused. Until I remembered: this wasn’t my room.

Son of a bitch!

I ran into the corridor, frantically looking both ways. But there was nothing to see—no shit, Cassie! Except for a small, ferret-faced guy in a lab coat hurrying this way, his nose buried in a clip board.

I grabbed him and shook him. “Where is training bay one?”

That was where Pritkin was supposed to be until his class ended. And unless I was a lot luckier than usual, that was where the would-be assassin was headed. But Lab Coat didn’t seem to understand the question.