Magic Rises

children, we will restrain you.”
    “Cool your tits,” Desandra said. “I’m not going to punch myself. I just want these kids to be superachievers and get out of me already. Here. This door.”
    Thank you, Universe.
    I swung the door open. A typical bathroom: three stalls, a long stone vanity with two sinks. Solid floor, solid ceiling, a small ventilation window near the ceiling, six feet long, six inches wide. Steel bars guarded the window.
    I checked the stalls one by one. Empty. I stepped out into the hallway. “Clear.”
    “Oh, good. Can I pee now? Sometime in this century would be nice.”
    Metal clanged against metal behind us. I spun around. A section of the floor to our right slid aside, and a metal grate dropped from the ceiling and sank into the floor, sealing the hallway and us inside it.
    “That never happened before,” Desandra said.
    To the far left, something growled, a rough, ugly sound, like gravel being crushed.
    The hair on the back of my neck rose.
    A creature turned the corner, huge, bright amber. The roar rolled forth, pulsing, threatening.
    I pulled Slayer from the sheath and stepped into the center of the hallway.
    Andrea punched the bathroom door open, grabbed Desandra, shoved her into the bathroom, rushed after her, and slammed the door shut. Working with Andrea was effortless. We didn’t even need to talk. First, it would have to go through me, then through the door, then through Andrea. Desandra would be at the very end of that very long trip.
    The beast took a step toward me. Hello, varmint. And what mythology did you jump out of?
    In the bathroom, metal whined followed by a thud. Andrea was ripping the doors off the stalls and barricading the door.
    The beast took up most of the width of the hallway, standing at least four feet tall at the shoulder. Powerful legs, almost feline and corded with hard ropes of muscle, supported a sleek body with a broad chest that flowed into a thick, long, but mobile neck. Its head was feline too, round, armed with jaguarlike jaws, but strangely wide. Two folds rose behind its shoulders. I couldn’t get a good look at them because it faced me straight on.
    From this angle they looked like wings. Deformed, but still wings.
    What the hell are you? It wasn’t a manticore. I’d seen manticores before, and they were smaller, and the outline of the body was completely different. Manticores were built like giant stocky boxer dogs, square, with every muscle defined under smooth brown hide. This creature was more catlike, built with agility and dexterity in mind.
    As if hearing my words, the beast took another step forward and grinned at me, displaying a forest of eight-inch teeth.
    My, my. Scary.
    I zeroed in on the way it raised its paws. Living with shapeshifters had given me some pointers. In hunting, the chief difference between cats and dogs came down to the length and shape of arm bones. Cats could turn their paws palm up, while dog paws were fixed permanently downward, a fact that shapeshifter instructors drilled into their students when they trained for the warrior form. Rotating the paw gave cats greater capacity to suppress their prey after they rushed it. It meant the difference between an ambush predator and a pack hunter. This beast was an ambush predator. It would claw and swipe, and those teeth and jaws meant it could bite through my skull. I had to treat it like a jaguar.
    Luckily I had practice fighting with jaguars.
    The monster took another step. As its paw touched the ground, the orange fur suddenly turned jagged. Now what?
    Another step.
    It wasn’t fur. The creature was covered with sharp orange scales and it’d just raised them, like a dog raised its hackles. They looked thick too, like mussel shells. So it was big, it had wings, it was catlike, and it was armored. My list of probable targets just shrunk. With my luck it would spit fire next.
    Was it a dragon? Some kind of drake? Somehow it seemed too feline for that. Not that I had come across many dragons. The only one I’d seen was undead and rotting, but it was the size of a large T. rex and its head had the trademark reptilian lines. This was a mammal.
    No power words. No heavy-duty magic. Not with Hugh less than two hundred yards away. He knew I could use a sword, but the extent of my magic was a mystery to him and I had to keep it that way as long as possible. There could come a time when the surprise of my magic could mean the difference between living and