Priceless

to push me up. Alex leapt over me, growling and snarling, his hackles standing on end from the base of his neck all the way down his bushy tail.
    Steps scampered down the stairs, the intruders no longer making any attempt to hide themselves.
    “Alex.” I moaned, grabbing at his collar. “Outside. Now.”
    My fingers tightened on the collar as the werewolf spun and scrambled back down the stairs and out the open front door, dragging me with him. The porch stairs bounced me hard as he ran full tilt out into the closest field.
    Wheat stalks waved above my head as Alex ran, my body flopping limply, hitting every protruding rock that crossed our path. Damn, I was going to be bruised tomorrow. Of course, that was assuming whoever was trying to kill me would give up and go away.
    A flash of blue ripped over our heads. Apparently they, whoever they were, were not going away just yet.
    “Alex stop,” I said. We couldn’t just keep running. He skidded to a panting, shaking stop, his sides trembling with fear more than exhaustion. As a werewolf, he had more than enough strength to drag me around.
    I lay there on the dirt, my mind racing with options. There just weren’t that many. Rolling over to my belly, I began to army crawl deeper into the wheat patch. Alex crouched down and mimicked me, his claws digging into the soft, dry dirt.
    If we could get around to the back of the house, I had weapons there stashed in the cellar. In particular, a water gun of sorts that worked off of a pump action that I could load with salt water—salt water worked wonders on magic users, blocking their ability to spell. I only had my two blades on me; I’d been stupid to try and face whoever was in the house without more.
    Halfway through the wheat, I closed in on the back of the house, when a wisp of smoke curled past my nose. Alex whimpered. A crackle of the fire they’d lit reached my ears, just as I saw the first sign of flames curling toward us.
    “Mother fuckers,” I hissed. No choice now. I jumped to my feet, fought the first wave of vertigo and sprinted across the last hundred feet to the back of the house, Alex tight on my heels.
    A bolt of blue electricity propelling a rock clipped my heel as I dove for cover, spinning me in the air. Hitting the ground hard knocked the wind out of me, but I didn’t slow down; I couldn’t, not if I wanted to make it out of this alive.
    The wind blew hard, fanning the flames right toward the house at a speed I wasn’t sure I could beat. Ripping open the cellar door, I pushed Alex down ahead of me and slammed the door shut, barring it behind us.
    “Damn it all to hell,” I grumbled under my breath, like it was a normal occurrence for me to be attacked in my own home. Because it wasn’t, and the whole thing was freaking the hell out of me. Worse, if I let on how scared I was, I’d have Alex spazzing out in a split second. Let me tell you, having a panicked werewolf in a tight confined space is not a good idea, even if you are Immune.
    I flipped on the light switch and the fluorescent bulb buzzed to life. The cellar door would buy us time—if we were lucky, about ten seconds before they blew it off its hinges.
    I grabbed a flak jacket; it was thin, the lightest one on the market, to make it easy for me to hide it under my clothes. It wouldn’t stop the spells, but it would help protect my body, which right now needed all the help it could get.
    Pulling off my shirt, I slipped into the spelled flak jacket and strapped it on, tightening it so it couldn’t be blown off me, then pulled my shirt back over it. Next came the pump action spray gun—yet another of Milly’s good ideas. Loading it with salt water from a sealed milk jug in the corner, I once more owed my friend. “Thank you Milly,” I said under my breath.
    With a shudder, the cellar door blew open. “Behind me, Alex!” I shouted.
    I grabbed an arm length sword off the wall and faced the open door with both weapons. Nothing moved. Even the sound of the wind seemed to have died down.
    Gliding, as if it were on wheels instead of feet, a cloaked figure moved in front, blocking the light. Alex let out a whimper and scuttled backwards. I kind of wanted to do the same. The person’s face was not covered by the cloak, but was instead distorted with some sort of spell, leaving the face a blur, like when you adjust the T.V. rabbit ears, and everything scatters across the screen. Flashes of eyes, mouth and ears whipped around on the