But we weren’t leaving. Instead, Mircea was doing a Spock impression, with his fingers splayed on the side of the tank and his forehead touching the glass, or whatever it was. I assumed he was trying to communicate with the thing inside, why I had no idea.

I was too busy freaking out.

And I wasn’t the only one. Because the rabbit/goat thing suddenly reappeared, emerging from behind a tank and looking more than a little crazed. I couldn’t read its expression, but then, I didn’t need to. Because not only was it bloody and dirty, with its once nice, if old fashioned, suit in tatters, it was also holding a machine gun.

I blinked at it for a second, because Alice in Wonderland meets Rambo isn’t something you see every day. Then I threw myself at Mircea. He’d been so deep in whatever he was doing, that I guess he hadn’t noticed the new addition.

I think my screaming got the idea across, however.

Or maybe that was the gunfire. It was loud and sustained and accompanied by a lot of angry, high-pitched bleating from the goat. Say hello to my little friend, I thought wildly, as Mircea and I threw ourselves behind the big tank.

That probably wasn’t the wisest move, since the goat appeared to be targeting it, not that the hail of bullets was making much of an impression. Or any at all. They were pinging off to fly wildly around the room, because the surface was a ward, the magical version of a forcefield, instead of glass.

Wards that Pritkin didn’t have right now, I realized, about the time that I spied him over by the door, where Mircea had dumped him when we came in.

And then things got worse.

The mages I’d almost forgotten about had been drawn by the screaming or maybe the gunfire, or perhaps this was a new group. But either way, what had to be a hundred of them were suddenly pouring through several doorways that had been hiding among the rocks. They were behind a quartet who were holding onto the leash of something huge and hairy and wolf-like, if wolves had massive hunch backs and were the size of buffalo.

Mircea’s monster, I thought, as it let out a bellow that made my skin want to turn inside out. It was the same one I’d heard in the tunnels, where the creature had been tracking him down. And had now found him, lunging for us so hard that it dragged its mage handlers right off their feet.

They let go of its leash a second later, whether on purpose or not, and it bounded straight at—

“Pritkin!” I yelled at Mircea, who stopped looking wildly at the fey version of a bloodhound, and started looked wildly at the door, instead.