The suit had other in-your-face features: a fearsome Chinese dragon roared silently from the middle of the breastplate; matching dragon head pauldrons snarled and bit at the air; and a pair of Chinese swords with red tassels on the hilts hung from a matching sash around the waist. But it was the smaller decorations, if decorations they were, that really caught the eye. And burnt the skin, John thought, as he thoughtlessly put a hand out to touch one, and had to quickly snatch it back.
The tiny plates were sparking with filaments of white light that arced between the trefoils and glowed brighter than the show going on over their heads.
But lighting they weren’t.
“Nice, huh?” Zheng was back to the hail-fellow-well-met routine he used when not threatening to cave in a person’s skull.
“If you had that, why the hell bring me along to protect you?” John asked furiously.
A dark eyebrow went up. “You volunteered.”
John thought about decking him. He thought hard.
“Besides, this only has so much of a charge,” Zheng added. “I didn’t want to waste it.”
“Where did you get it?”
He shrugged. “Duel with a bastard a couple centuries ago. Hardest fight of my life. Took me almost an hour to take it off him.”
“Take it off him? How the hell did you take it off him?” John’s hand still burned like fire and he hadn’t even touched the thing.
Zheng grinned, and for the first time, it looked genuine. “One piece at a time.”
John had a feeling that the vamp was talking about more than just the armor, but he didn’t ask. Unless he was badly mistaken—and considering the throbbing in his hand, he didn’t think so—the armor was interwoven with a powerful force magnifier. Anyone who attacked Zheng would find his strength amplified and sent back at him, many times over.
Such items were deadly in battle, so much so that they were treated like the magical equivalent of bump stocks and outlawed to the public. But they’d never been in the Corps’ standard kit for a reason. A very good reason.
“There are spells that can muffle the effect,” John warned. “Even turn it back on you. Not to mention that taking on an entire tong—”
“I’m not taking on the tong,” Zheng said, sending him a look. “That’s not how it works. Hye-Jin will either challenge or she won’t. If she does, I’ll need all the help I can get. If she doesn’t—well, maybe I’ll last long enough to present your plan.”
“And I’ll find Caleb, and the thing controlling him,” John promised.
Zheng nodded, and then paused for a second. Before grasping John’s arm—forearm to forearm, in an almost knightly gesture. “You’re a bastard, war mage. I like that. Hope you survive.”
He started to move off, but John held on. “If I do, I’m going to need help killing this thing.” He summoned all his strength and put a simple locator spell on the two of them. It left him panting in effort, but it worked. “You’ll feel it when you’re close,” he gasped. “Come find me after!”
Zheng nodded and ran off to face the tong’s group of villains, his armor sparking and throwing spells and men alike out of his way, while John stood there, feeling dizzy from the magic loss. Or maybe that was the blood loss he hadn’t fully recovered from. Or the fact that he was armorless, weaponless, and only had one damned shoe!
He looked around, wiping smoke and rain out of his eyes. Spell bolts were flying thick and fast in the little valley below, but they weren’t much thinner elsewhere. If he was going to track Caleb across the city, he was going to need supplies. Weapons, armor, a damned war mage coat that fit him and could substitute for his . . . non-existent . . . shields . . .
John’s thoughts trailed off, as he noticed something just below the tree line. Something that looked like a tiny old man in a coolie hat, edging around the shadows. He’d arrayed a dozen shielded umbrellas along one side of a large wheeled cart, and was slinking along behind them, pushing a heavy load and trying to stay in the quieter areas.
It took John a second to understand what he was seeing, because it was so bizarre. A battle was raging between the Corps and some of the triad, spells were flying, deadly clouds of smoke were drifting, and great divots of earth were being flung up whenever a spell bounced off of someone’s shields and plowed into the ground. It was chaos.
Yet, defying it all was the old man and his cart of stuff, cutting across the battlefield. For a moment, John thought the man had gotten confused, or tried to find an alternate route out of the battle on the road only to fall into a worse one here. But then he saw him stop by a fallen war mage. And instead of trying to help the man, he began rifling through his pockets and tugging on his coat.
He was stripping the fallen, John realized. Taking anything that might have value, from tong and war mage alike, even from some who were still moving! Leaving the wounded behind, naked and defenseless.
Ensuring that, if they weren’t already dead, they soon would be!
John surged to his feet on a wave of pure fury, only to pause at the sound of someone thrashing up the hill the other side. He spun, caught between fight and flight, but with no real way to do either. His body tensed, hoping for a lost civilian, but expecting something far more deadly.
Only to pause in disbelief a moment later.
“Caleb?”
The familiar dark eyes stared at him out of a blood splattered face, just slightly distorted by the blur of the manlikan standing protectively in front of him. John had no idea what he was doing there, but he’d take a little luck for once! John grinned, joy and relief cascading through his body.
“Caleb!”
And then his old friend punched him straight in the mouth.
Chapter Twenty
A ughhh!” the boy staggered back, looking alarmed, until he hit the wall of the cave. And then seemed to recall that war mages didn’t scream like little girls. Which was probably why he sent a powerful fireball at their bloody attacker, one John barely managed to deflect in time.
The roiling ball of flame went ricocheting farther into the cave system, bouncing off walls and lighting up a very non-natural tunnel nearby. One that looked like a giant worm had gnawed a path through solid rock. John stared down at the reddish flames glinting off the chewed-up stone, and felt somewhat grateful when the light went out.
So much for the element of surprise.
He then had to abort another spell by the damned boy, who he was really starting to regret bringing along. But he’d needed someone to watch his back, and he trusted open hostility more than the cynical, jaded dislike on the faces of the other mages. If this boy decided to hurt him, he’d do it openly, and probably after warning him that it was coming—or at least John hoped so. He’d once thought that he was a decent judge of character, but after what had happened with—
He cut his thoughts off savagely. Focus! He grabbed the boy’s arm and twisted it behind his back, before he could cast another damned spell.
“What the hell are you on about?” the boy panted. “It’s going to kill us both!”
John bit back a curse. Then he let it fly anyway, because it wasn’t like everyone within five miles didn’t already know where they were. “Look at it!”