Wade lined himself up and accounted for the cars, structures, and bystanders, wishing he could just dive and slash with Walker. But all three needed to be preserved..

  Jasque was going to kill him if he heard about this.

  The bane abandoned the limits of his cover and pulled in a frightening amount of magic: much more than even he could hold in his body's natural reserves. To manage that much power, he had to draw on his Marked territory from a distance that no one would ever believe possible.

  A better were mage would have needed maybe one-fiftieth of the raw power he poured into Enhancing his body. But Wade was not a better Were mage, not when it came to enhancing and negating. No, he was a specialist, and he was an idiot.

  So Specialist Idiot Raslow blasted himself forward. He leaped like Superman, flying low over the ground. The acceleration was so great that the wind slapped him with terrifying force. If he had been operating under a plan, then that was when it would have fallen apart. Luckily, this was pure impulse aided by idiocy, so there was no plan to spoil.

  He flipped and spun like an amateur skydiver unable to stay flat, all the while hurtling towards the three monsters. With uncanny luck, he spun just enough to curl up, point his boots at the nearest limb stealer, and prepared to lash out with both feet.

  Too bad his uncanny luck was not matched by uncanny reflexes. He lined up for a single perfect moment… while still more than three yards away.

  The bane continued to tumble, lost alignment, and over-spun. His feet went from pointing at the nearest limb stealer to pointing down. His face moved towards the green leafy blob, and he experienced one of those moments where time froze in the middle of combat.

  Frame by frame, he approached, imagining an operatic, solemn version of Ave Maria playing as his eyes opened in shock. His slowed perception of time gave him just enough time to mentally sigh and hope no one was watching.

  Then, he magically enhanced the fortitude of his body, especially the head, neck, spine, face, nose, and brain. The rotation continued, and he ended his ill-advised leap by delivering a headbutt backed by a building-busting bomb's worth of arcane might.

  He hit so hard that he lost a few seconds of memory.

  It was just a moment, a lot like what happened the one time he tried out for football in high school and tackled someone wrong. This time, he remembered closing his mouth to avoid biting off his own tongue, and then he was on the ground, tumbling in an uncontrolled shoulder roll.

  The creature he hit had rocketed forward and entangled itself with its companions, somehow avoiding cars by sheer luck. But, fucking idiot he was, the angle was wrong, and the third was still free to fire.

  He watched as Shilloh dove to the asphalt with supernatural timing. And he meant supernatural. She hadn't even looked backward; she just moved like she knew exactly where and when the attack would arrive. The spears went over her head, and she clawed at the ground with all four limbs, desperately scrambling back into a run.

  Indigo lightning arced from behind him and crashed into the un-entangled Crypto; the other Banes were entering the fray.

  He let the borrowed magic disperse to preserve his cover, making it hard for Wade to get to his feet. His limbs were a bit too loose, but he leaned on pure mule-headed stubbornness to pull it off. A glance showed him Jasque, sprinting forward with a face twisted in the sort of disgusted fury that meant Wade had disappointed him so much, and he needed a crypto to vent his rage on.

  Looked like there had been a witness to his idiocy after all.

  Behind the lean, dark-eyed man was a rag-tag group of other Blightbanes. That posse included a small woman with bobbed hair who had launched the magical lightning from two knitting needles she held like short swords. The fact that she was nearly sixty, comfortably plump, and had a better kill record than him would probably make the assist one big joke at his expense as soon as this was over.

  But that was a distant thought as he forced himself back into a sprint. Shilloh was out of range of the whips. The beast didn't thrash its tentacles like usual, and all the mammalian limbs on the creature shuddered and writhed from the lightning. Occasionally, an arm retreated and remerged somewhere else on the monster's body or came out with a foot instead of a hand.

  He was past it in a heartbeat, already using his abilities to close the distance.

  A car horn blared, and a ratty truck zoomed over from the other side of the building, deftly avoiding the civilians fleeing from the West End Market.

  It hopped the curb, and Wade saw a familiar woman halfway out of the cab's back window. She was short, with brown hair, brown eyes, a healthy complexion, and a soul so full of insanity that a blind man could see it in her eyes.

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  Something clicked, and he recognized that the drunk woman Wade had seen egging on Shilloh and Kora.

  Birch had shoved her upper body through the back window of the truck's cab so she could look over the bed and aim an old squirrel hunting rifle. A large bald man in the passenger seat had wrapped his entire body around her legs to keep her from falling out.

  She was aiming the small .22 caliber rifle, face contorted in a demon's snarl, and screamed even as she emptied round after round at the (general direction of) the limb stealers.

  "Fuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuck youuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuu," she shouted in a way that should have been hilarious, especially since the gun's clacking slide was almost as loud as the bullets. Still, it just came across as demented considering the situation.

  The car zipped past him, swerved around a fire hydrant, and drifted with professional accuracy to stop directly in front of the fleeing Shilloh.

  Behind the wheel, a woman with cartoon-unicorn pink highlights in her hair unlocked the doors, an expression of mercenary calm hiding all emotion. On the other side of the cab, the beefy bald man still held his eyes shut and screamed. The way he kept hugging the small, crazy woman's legs made Wade wonder if he was anchoring her or if she was supporting him.

  For her part, Birch kept shooting, emptied the rifle, then raised it over her head and threw it ineffectively towards the closest limb stealer before lifting both middle fingers and spitting at them.

  Shilloh didn't pause. She tossed his knife into the bed of the truck and vaulted in, her small friend looking like a wrathful and obscene figurehead that was facing the wrong direction.

  Wade had seen a lot of frantic retreats and daring rescues, but this was something else. A distant part of him made sure to take a mental picture so he could describe the scene the next time he was exchanging stories around a campfire.

  He didn't linger, though. The two tangled limb stealers had made their way free. With eerie precision, all three tracked their reeds to the same point and switched to murderously powerful mosquade limbs. After so many changes, many looked malnourished or unable to fully extend.

  He was—somehow—unsurprised to trace their reed cannons and find them all triangulated on Shilloh. They continued to track her even as the truck with her and her three friends accelerated away.

  In theory, there was a strong argument that he should have turned to engage the threats.

  Jasque was behind him bellowing. More magical lightning cracked and slammed into one of the creatures. But Wade stepped forward feeling utter certainty in his gut: these things were after Shilloh, and they would follow her.

  That was enough to send him sprinting on magically enhanced legs. He didn't even pause to think about whether the amount of power he threw around would harm his cover.

  In that moment, he just knew they were going after her. His body moved to protect his friend, and it was so right that he never considered for a millisecond what Jasque or his superiors would think. He would think up excuses about how this was the optimal path later.

  But, magic or not, there was a reason that weres still bought cars. The vehicle was getting further away. Farther than he could hope to catch up to without another impossible-to-control tumble through the air.

  Just as the bane began losing hope of catching up and started scanning for a choke point to hold off the monsters at, Shilloh slapped her hand against the truck's roof and pointed at him.

  But what really made the difference was when he noticed a roundabout just ahead of them. A small one with a fountain in the middle that marked the entrance into the wealthier areas around the West End Market.

  He poured on speed, body leaning forward to pierce the wind resistance trying to hold him back. The car made a jarring turn, one hard enough that the crazy lady leaning out the back window had to release her two-finger salute.

  The car's tail twisted, and a wheel thumped over a curb in a frantic attempt to take the roundabout at speed. The jolt almost launched Shilloh from the bed of the truck. The vehicle began making an arc around the fountain like a drifting race car.

  Wade pushed even harder, racing for where he thought their paths would cross.

  But the car was not slowing down. The driver refused to make them an easy target for the cryptos that were building up speed even now.

  He pushed himself, legs like pistons. Walker's empty sheathe rattled against him as he sprinted with everything he had, the sword held tip down as he sprinted. With a final surge of magic, Wade leaped.

  Calloused and scarred hands clamped down on the back of the truck. But his enhancement was sloppy. His fingers crumpled the soft metal of the truck's back, and some mechanism crunched. The tailgate fell open. He felt a moment of weightlessness and knew that the second it fell to full extension, he would be snapped like a whipped towel and thrown into the asphalt.

  Strong fingers closed around his wrists. The tailgate went flat with a huge thump, and his left hand lost its grip. If Shilloh hadn't bodily hauled him into the truck's bed, he would have ended up smeared across the road.

  With a single hand, Shilloh heaved them both flat onto the truck bed.

  He slid next to her, immediately sneezing as sawdust got up his nose and smeared the side of his face.

  "Wade!" Shilloh yelled, one hand still holding a small hook on the side of the bed meant for tying down loads, "What do we do!"

  He coughed and shook his head but didn't answer because his eyes were locked on her hand.

  The small, nearly dainty, hand that had pulled his full weight into an accelerating vehicle with supernatural strength that Shilloh Methulselah should not have possessed.

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