Page 62 of Hijack the Seas: Tsunami

And there were a lot of them, presumably from Stratford, judging by their appearance, where the chaos had allowed his boys to kidnap some enemies.The portal spewed forth more mud-covered prisoners as we watched, who got a hose turned on them, I guessed to uncover any weapons they’d been carrying under all that dirt.They were subsequently relieved of the hardware, had gags shoved into their mouths, and their hands bound behind their backs before being pushed into pens.

Plenty of people were already in the two makeshift holding cells, one on each side of the room, staring around as if wondering what the hell.Which was a damned good question!But other prisoners were taking up prominent positions in the middle of the cavern.

They looked like the better-dressed mages I’d seen in the crowd at the old HQ.Their finery gleamed in the dim spell light studding the walls, which also highlighted the magical bonds that had been used to strap them down to the tabletops.And which shone through the mass of ghosts circling in the air overhead.

The spirits weren’t doing much other than forming incongruous halos above their former masters’ heads.My one-time ghost companion, Billy Joe, would have been moving heaven and earth to get me out had I been stuck down there.But these ghosts seemed a little more...ambivalent.

They were literally just hanging around, doing bupkis, despite the necros on the slabs mentally yelling at them.I could tell that was what they were doing because the men’s eyes were glowing, and they were thrashing around furiously, trying to break their bonds.And the ghosts weren’t helping, possibly sensing an opportunity.

After all, spells, including those binding spirits, don’t long outlast the death of the caster, do they?

“What is this?”Æsubrand asked, crawling up on Pritkin’s side to my right.“What the devil is the Circle doing?”

“Preparing dinner,” I said, looking for a distraction.

“What?Whose dinner?”

“Mine.”

And that was undoubtedly what was happening.Jonas was hedging his bets about how much energy I would need and getting me every scrap he could while the opportunity was there.And thoughtfully tying them down so that, when the moment came to split them open and allow me to feast on the tasty soul energy inside, there wouldn’t be any embarrassments like my appetizers trying to run away.

I don’t know what was on my face, but Pritkin’s hand came down gently on my back.He didn’t say anything, but a muscle jumped in his jawline, and he looked as if he’d like to leap off the little catwalk and spring down there, ready to take on his former allies.‘Cause, yeah.

The witches’ cloaks weren’t looking so bad suddenly, were they?

“Times have changed since you were away,” Zara told him, watching a raft of fleeting expressions pass over his face.

“Apparently.”It was clipped the way his voice only was when he was either frightened or so furious that he was having to leash himself to stay in place.I was pretty sure I knew which this was.

Æsubrand’s eyes suddenly got big as he finally caught on.“Thatis what he...but that is—” he said a fey word that I guessed meant monstrous or infamous or fucked based on his expression.It looked like he was reconsidering his enthusiasm for the Corps.

I was reconsidering my own brilliant plan, which had been to cause a distraction and then run like hell for the portal.Bodil could telescope it out to meet us partway, as she’d done back at Zara’s, assuming she could figure out this new magic and had enough juice left.And if we came anywhere near it, we’d be gone in a heartbeat.

But the operative word wasif.And in usual Silver Circle fashion, it wasn’t utter chaos down there as might have been expected.It wasorganized.

The pens holding the regular Joes were warded; I could tell that much by the fact that they weren’t going anywhere, despite being squashed up together, and from the reaction of the guys inside every time one got too close and was zapped for his trouble.Those tied down in the center of the space, who I guessed were the stronger variety, were staying there despite every effort they could make to the contrary.And the zombies that some of them had brought along were being slaughtered as soon as they stepped through the portal.

Like that, I thought, spotting the sadhu from earlier, who burst out of the swirling vortex, trailed by a couple of his crew.Only for them to be speared through the heads by some floating knives waiting on either side of the entrance before they’d fully cleared the field.They fell into piles of others, the sadhu was hauled off to a waiting slab, and I was left wondering what the hell we were supposed to do now.

“There are at least a hundred mages down there,” Alphonse said, from where he’d somehow inserted his huge body between Zara and Bodil.“We ain’t carving our way through all that.”

“If we don’t, we’re going to end up on one of those slabs!”Æsubrand said because he appeared to be firmly on the mages-be-crazy train suddenly.

I could relate.

“We need a distraction,” I pointed out and then waited for more words to follow, inspired ones that would shine a light on the problem and make our path clear.

And waited and waited because, apparently, that was as far as my brain got.It would have made me feel worse, except nobody else was volunteering anything, either.Not even Pritkin, who looked like that agile mind of his was considering a couple dozen ideas in quick succession and rejecting them just as fast.

“I liked it better with the dark mages,” Enid said, sounding shocked.She was clustered behind us with the rest of the witches, but apparently, she could see enough.

“They’re all the same,” Topknot told her.“Always have been, always will be.Never trust a mage!”

“You sound like a vamp,” Alphonse commented.

“Am I wrong?”

“Hell, no.”

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