Chapter 9
Pritkin looked as if
he was trying to determine whether I was genuinely crazy, or just
temporarily insane. “Do you remember what that place contains?” he
asked in a savage undertone, gesturing at the dark outline of
MAGIC. “If we had every war mage in the corps, it wouldn’t be
enough!”
Billy was nodding
violently behind Pritkin’s head. “Listen to the mage, Cass. He’s
talking sense.”
I didn’t even try to
persuade Billy to do something for Tomas. He’d never liked him,
even before the betrayal, which because of our arrangement he
viewed as an attack on himself as well as on me. I glanced at Mac
but didn’t see much in the way of encouragement. He seemed like a
fairly sympathetic guy, but he was also Pritkin’s friend, not to
mention that there was no love lost between mages and vamps. They
tolerated each other, but they didn’t risk their necks for each
other.
I sighed. “If none of
you want to help, then wait here. I’ll manage without you.” Tomas
was not dying tonight.
“He tried to kill
you!” Pritkin had apparently decided to reason with
me.
“Actually, he tried
to kill you. He thought he was helping me; he’s just not that
bright sometimes.”
Pritkin moved, but
Mac was suddenly there, a hand on his friend’s chest. “Throwing her
over your shoulder isn’t going to help, John,” he said quietly. “I
don’t know what this vampire is to her, but if we let him die I
think we can kiss the Pythia’s help goodbye.”
“She is not Pythia
yet,” Pritkin said, teeth clenched so tight that I don’t know how
he got the words out. “She’s a foolish child who—”
I started down the
incline, wondering if I really had gone mad, but within seconds a
Pritkin-shaped bulk appeared in front of me, blocking my way. “Why
are you doing this?” he demanded, looking genuinely confused. “Tell
me you’re not in love with him—that you’re not about to risk our
lives because of some vampire’s seduction techniques!”
I paused. I wasn’t
sure what to call the stew of emotions Tomas inspired, but I didn’t
think it was love. “He was my friend,” I said, trying to explain so
Pritkin would understand—which was difficult since I wasn’t sure I
did. “He betrayed me, but in his own warped view of things he
thought he was helping me. He endangered my life, but he also saved
it. I guess we’re sort of even.”
“Then you don’t owe
him anything.”
“This isn’t about
what I owe him.” And it wasn’t. I wanted to rescue Tomas, but, I
realized with sudden clarity, I also wanted something else. “It’s
about making a statement. Someone who is known to be important to
me is being publicly humiliated, tortured and killed. Yet no
one—not the mages, not the Senate, not a single individual in the
supernatural community—ever once thought to ask my
permission!”
“Your permission?”
Pritkin looked dumbfounded. “And precisely why would they need
that?”
I looked at him and
shook my head. Screw this. If I had to deal with all the downsides
of the office, it was about time I had a few of the perks, too.
“Because I’m Pythia,” I said quietly, and shifted.
I had assumed the
Senate would be using its own chamber for this, and I’d been right.
The usual echoing vastness was empty no longer. The huge mahogany
slab that served as the Senate table was still there, although it
had a new purpose now. The chairs that normally lined one side had
been moved, arranged in a semicircle in front of the table. Behind
them were row upon row of benches, crowded with weres, mages and
vamps. The only no-shows were the Fey, unless they looked so much
like the mages that I couldn’t tell them apart. After my experience
at Dante’s, I kind of doubted that.
I had landed right
where I’d planned, directly beside Tomas. I wasn’t interested in
subtlety, although there would have been no way to manage it in any
case; I had to touch him in order to shift us away. Jack had
stepped back a few feet when I flashed in, and to my surprise he
made no move to grab me.
My eyes automatically
scanned the rows, looking for one face in particular. I found him
easily, sitting at the end of the front row of seats in the
position nearest me. Mircea’s stylish black suit was perfect in cut
and fit, and the pale gray banded-collar shirt he wore under it was
silk. Platinum cufflinks that shimmered faintly in the lamplight
constituted his only jewelry. He looked as elegant and in control
as always, but his aura was fluctuating wildly. It spiked when he
saw me, but he made no move forward.
Behind him, many of
the spectators had overturned their chairs in haste to get to their
feet. The Consul stood with one hand up, some sort of signal to
hold them off, I guessed. Each group’s area inside MAGIC was
sacrosanct, the same way an embassy on foreign soil belongs to its
host government. The weres and mages had to behave themselves on
vamp territory or they violated the treaties that protected them
and it was open season.
I felt Sheba wake up
and start licking a paw on my left shoulder blade. She was ready to
rumble—too bad there was only one of her and about a thousand of
them.
“Cassandra, you have
returned to us.” As always, the Consul appeared perfectly serene.
The only movement was her outfit, which consisted of bare skin
covered by a lot of writhing snakes. It was little ones this time,
none longer than a finger, who slipped over her like a shimmering
second skin. “We have been concerned for you.”
Something suddenly
rippled across me, an odd, skin-prickling sensation. It didn’t
hurt, but I didn’t know what it was, and under the circumstances
that wasn’t good. I decided not to hang around and find
out.
“I bet. Wish I could
stay and chat, but maybe next time.” I gripped Tomas’ shoulder
tighter and tried to shift, but nothing happened. I didn’t feel the
slightest surge of my power, even though it had been bright and
strong just moments before.
“You cannot shift,
Cassandra,” the Consul said in her habitual even tones. She had a
good voice, well modulated and slightly husky. A guy would have
probably found it sexy; I was having a very different
reaction.
Tomas moved slightly
and I looked down at him. “It’s a trap,” he croaked weakly. “They
said you would come for me. I didn’t believe it—there was no
reason. Why did you come back?” The anguished cry seemed to sap his
strength and he collapsed into unconsciousness. I stared at the
Consul, who looked calmly back, no hint of apology visible on that
beautiful face.
Tomas was alive, but
his wounds were bad—very bad. He was laid out on the dark wood like
some bizarre form of art—something Picasso might have painted if he
was in the habit of putting his nightmares on canvas. This might
have been a trap, but it was obvious that, if I hadn’t shown up,
the Senate would have let Jack kill him. They probably planned to
do so anyway, now that he’d served his purpose.
I narrowed my eyes at
the Consul, but she made no response. I’d seen her kill two ancient
vampires with little more than a look, when they were farther from
her than I currently was. But I felt no sting of desert sand
against my face, no warning rush of power. It suddenly occurred to
me that, in a room full of magical creatures, I felt no magic at
all.
“You used a null bomb
on me, didn’t you?”
The Consul smiled. It
wasn’t a nice expression. “You overlooked a few.”
Considering
everything, I didn’t feel much like apologizing for taking their
stuff. “Well, damn. I’ll try to be more thorough next
time.”
“We don’t have time
for verbal sparring,” an old mage interrupted, glaring at me. “The
effect won’t last much longer, and you know we can’t afford to
explode another—”
One of the Senate
members, a brunette in hoop skirts, picked him up by the throat,
choking off his voice as she hoisted him into the air. She looked
inquiringly at the Consul, but the Senate leader shook her head.
The damage was done. All I needed was to stall long enough for the
spell to break. Then my power could get Tomas and me out of this.
Unfortunately, I had no idea how long that might take.
“Look, all I want is
Tomas,” I told her. “You were about to kill him, so I guess you
won’t miss him.”
My attempt to start a
dialogue fell flat. “I wish this were not necessary, Cassandra,”
the Consul said quietly. She glanced at the vampires around her,
some of the most powerful on the planet. “Take her,” she said
simply.
I didn’t try to run.
There was no point. Under other circumstances, it would almost have
been funny. What did she think I was going to do that would require
half a dozen first-level masters to stop? Without my power and with
my ward acting up, the youngest vamp in the place could make me
into dinner with no problem at all.
Then I realized that
I wasn’t the one she was worried about.
“Remove it!” Mircea
had stopped short of the table, and although his face was
impassive, his fists were clenched at his sides. Not a good sign on
someone who normally controlled himself so well. The other vamps
seemed to agree. They weren’t looking at me—every eye was riveted
on him.
“Mircea.” The Consul
walked up behind him and placed a smooth bronze-skinned hand on his
shoulder. It looked like it was meant as a calming gesture, but he
shrugged it off. The circle of vamps drew in a collective breath,
and the southern belle actually gasped. The Consul’s hand quickly
became an arm around his throat, but it was as if he didn’t even
notice. “I suggest you heed him,” she told me. I noticed that,
despite her grip, Mircea was making slow progress forward, if only
by inches. “What do you hope to gain by allowing this to
continue?”
“Allowing what to
continue?” I looked from her to Mircea in mounting confusion, only
to see his calm facade slip a little more. I didn’t need her to
tell me that something was wrong. His face was as white as bone,
but his eyes burned like two candles.
“This has gone on
long enough,” the Consul agreed. “Release him, and we will discuss
matters amicably. Otherwise . . .”
“Otherwise what?” I
might not understand what was happening, but I knew a threat when I
heard one.
“I will let go,” she
said quietly. “Then we will see if you can deal with the results of
your revenge. We have been doing it long enough.” The dark eyes
flashed, and I suddenly understood how she’d dominated an empire
when only a teenager. “I need him, Cassandra! We are at war. I
cannot have him like this, not now.”
“Cassie . . .” Mircea
had somehow managed to lift his right arm, despite the fact that a
Senate member almost as old as the Consul was hanging off it.
Tendrils of sensation radiated outward from his hand like smoke
from a fire. At first I thought he was just leaking power, but then
one wisp brushed against me and I understood. It felt like one of
my old visions, the kind in which I saw flashes of the future. They
had been absent since my run-in with the Pythia, and I had wondered
whether they were gone for good. I’d half hoped so. They had been a
part of me for as long as I could remember, but they’d never shown
me anything good. This was no exception.
A fragment of vision
curled around my arm despite my best attempt to dodge it. It was so
hot that I expected to see a welt rise on my skin. What I got
instead was worse—a mosaic of images, each more cruel than the
last: a blood-covered Mircea battling for his life in a swordfight
almost too fast to see; a triumphant-looking Myra running from the
shadows to throw something at him; an explosion that was more felt
than heard, reverberating through the ground and tearing the air;
and then, where two elegant fighters had been, a sodden mass of
flesh and bone gleaming slick and red in low light, so mixed up
that it was impossible to tell where one body began and the other
ended.
I screamed and jerked
away, causing the scene to shatter. I stumbled backward, too
desperate to get away from the images to worry about dignity. I
stared around frantically, but most of the vamps were still fixated
on Mircea. A few spared me a puzzled glance, but none looked as if
they had seen anything unusual, much less the gory death of one of
their senior members. But there was no doubt in my mind what I’d
witnessed. Somewhere, somewhen, Myra had succeeded.
It felt like someone
had dumped a bucket of ice cubes into my stomach. My visions always
came true—always. I’d tried to change the outcome of things before,
especially when I was younger. I’d gone to Tony numerous times to
report upcoming disasters, believing him when he swore he would do
everything in his power to stop them. But, of course, the only
thing he’d ever done was to figure out how to profit from them.
And, in the end, everything had always happened exactly as I’d
foreseen. The same held true for a vision I’d seen as an adult,
when I tried to warn a friend of his impending assassination. I
didn’t know whether he’d received the message or not, but it hadn’t
mattered. He still died.
But all that was
before I became Pythia, or, at least, her heir. I had changed
things since then, hadn’t I? And, if Myra had won, why was Mircea
still here?
I finally focused on
the Consul. I needed answers and Mircea was in no shape to give
them to me. “What is going on? Is this a trick?” Even as I said it,
I knew it wasn’t. I’d had enough visions to know the real thing
when I felt it.
The Consul’s eyes
narrowed to slits. “Do you play with me?” she demanded, so quietly
that I hardly heard her.
I looked down at
Tomas and drew in a sharp breath. I wasn’t the one playing here. “I
want Tomas,” I said, more unsteadily than I liked. “You obviously
want something, too. Tell me what it is and maybe we can make a
trade.”
“You don’t know.” I
finally saw emotion cross that lovely face. It was
surprise.
Tomas made a small
sound and I lost it. “Just tell me!” The vision had shattered my
nerves, and I didn’t feel like chatting while Tomas slowly bled
out.
The Consul took a
breath, which she didn’t need, and nodded. “Very well. Remove the
geis you placed on Lord Mircea, and I
will give you the traitor.”
I goggled at her.
“What?” Somewhere along the line, I’d missed something. “The only
geis around here is the one he put on
me! It’s been causing me hell.”
“Hell?” Mircea
laughed abruptly, but it was mirthless. “What do you know of hell?”
He tore free of his living restraints and dropped to the floor. Two
vamps dove under the table after him, but I never saw how close
they came. All I know is, it wasn’t close enough. I was suddenly
crushed against a hard chest. “Try mine,” he whispered before
catching my lips in a bruising kiss.
The punch of his
emotions came clearly through the geis,
hitting me like a kick to the stomach. The same energy that arced
between us whenever we met thrummed through Mircea, only it had
grown. This was no vague frisson of passion. The craving had lain
smoldering, waiting for the proper fuel, and now it ignited into a
roaring blaze. It was like drowning in a river of molten lava. I
felt it in his veins for an instant, pleasure as sharp as pain,
before it poured into mine in a scalding wash of desire. I felt
myself flounder, falling into heat, falling away from thought to a
place that was all-consuming sensation. Fire. Sweet
fire.
The kiss was hard and
brutal, as if he would eat me alive. There was nothing gentle about
it, nothing romantic. And it was just what I wanted. My hands
closed convulsively on his shoulders, my nails digging into his
coat. His mouth was relentless on mine, fierce and insistent, and a
hard hand slid behind my head to hold me in place. One of his fangs
nicked me and I tasted my own blood. He made a strangled cry and
pulled back, his eyes wild, his face beautifully
feral.
His tongue darted out
to taste my blood on his lips; then his eyes closed and he
shuddered. I ripped open his collar and his head tilted, almost
blindly, towards the ceiling, giving me better access. My hands
tore at his shirt, popping buttons, while my tongue and lips slid
down the cords of his neck. My palms traced the contours of his
chest and trailed along his ribs, reveling in the fact that his
breath quickened under my touch. I kissed a path across the taut
skin and hard muscle to a nipple, and when I bit down, he let out
what was almost a scream. I knew how he felt—the energy between us
sang in time with the throbbing of my pulse and I felt like I could
combust at any moment.
Mircea pushed me
against the sandstone wall of the chamber, but I was held there
more by the physical impact of those fire-lit eyes than by the body
pressing against mine. I looped a leg around one of his and slid a
hand to the nape of his neck, molding myself to him. His hands
dropped below my waist and lifted, and I gasped as his arousal
pressed full against me. He was large and hard and it felt
wonderful, but I wanted more. It seemed that he did, too, because
he gasped my name in between savage, hard kisses, ran a hand
through my hair and over my face, cursed in Romanian and generally
forgot about dignity. I wasn’t doing any better myself, making
inarticulate demands whenever I could catch a breath.
I found myself
straddling one of his legs, my thigh tight against his groin. Even
through our clothes, the sensation was unbelievable: a combination
of raw pleasure and yearning hunger. But then he wrenched away,
abruptly putting inches between us. His expression was desperate
and he looked almost ill, as if racked by the same need that
tormented me. Yet, when I reached for him, uncomprehending, he
flinched away as if my touch was painful.
Immediately the
geis showed both of us what pain really
was, flaring into a white-hot heat. Pain beyond imagination slammed
into me, ripping from my throat scream after scream that all but
shredded my vocal cords. The blood burned under my skin until I
thought I would die from unfulfilled need. Hot tears fell over my
cheeks onto Mircea’s hands as he gripped my face, trying to calm
me. But nothing helped; the pain was literally unbearable. My knees
gave out when the screams stopped spearing me upward, and Mircea
caught me as I sagged against him.
“Mircea! Please . .
.” I didn’t know what I was asking for, only that he make it stop,
make it better. I closed the small distance between us and kissed
him desperately. I had a few seconds to delight in the familiar
warmth of his mouth and the clean scent of his flesh before he
jerked back.
“Cassie, no!” It
sounded tight, like he was forcing the word out. He put both hands
on my upper arms, holding me away from him, but they trembled, and
the strong column of his throat worked in a silent swallow. He was
fighting the geis, I finally realized,
but I couldn’t help him. His hands moved up to cradle my head,
smoothing my hair. The pain and pleasure together were devastating.
My body was wracked by alternating surges of agony and ecstasy, and
my pulse roared so loudly in my ears that I could hardly
hear.
Just when I thought I
would tip over the brink into insanity, the energy flared and
reformed into something completely new—a sparkling brilliance, like
water under a desert sun. It broke over us like a tidal wave, and
the pain was simply gone. In its place was an overwhelming sense of
relief, followed by a rush of pure joy. I saw the astonishment in
Mircea’s eyes as it broke over him, too.
I realized abruptly
that more tears were streaming down my face. It wasn’t from memory
of the pain, but from how good, how safe I felt being near him. It
was every dream I’d ever had rolled up into one—home, family, love,
acceptance—and so exhilarating that it blinded me to everything
else. For an instant, I forgot about Tomas and Myra, about Tony and
my whole laundry list of problems. They didn’t seem to matter
anymore.
I shook in dawning
comprehension. I wasn’t simply attracted to Mircea. Attraction
didn’t feel like this, didn’t destroy my ability to breathe, didn’t
make me ache, didn’t make me feel hopeless and desperate at the
thought of being apart from him. I clung to him, knowing there was
no way he could possibly return my feelings unless a spell
compelled him, and I didn’t care. It didn’t matter if he loved me
back. I craved him like a drug, needed him to feel alive and whole.
Much more of this and I would do anything, anything at all, never
to be parted from him again.
I felt an answering
emotion in the tightness of his grip and finally understood. It
seemed that passion was only one of the tricks in the geis’ repertoire, and not the most devastating. Not
by half.
“When did you place
the spell?” the Consul demanded.
I gazed at her
blankly, having forgotten she was even there. My thoughts were
thick and sluggish, the very air around me heavy, and I had to
fight to understand the question. I considered my options and they
were sobering. “I don’t know” wasn’t likely to go over well, but
pointing out the obvious fact that the Consul was mistaken wasn’t
likely to do any better. I had no idea what answer might satisfy
her, or how long I needed to stall. And Mircea jabbing something
into my rib cage wasn’t helping.
I looked down to see
that the offending object was a pale pink high heel that he must
have been concealing in an inner pocket of his coat. It was oddly
fragile looking, with the delicate satin material starting to flake
off in places and a few darker colored sequins hanging by threads.
It looked like an antique, except for the design. I didn’t think
they made three-inch spiked heels in the good old
days.
After a minute, my
brain caught up. I’d hobbled around Dante’s kitchen that morning
because I’d lost a shoe. It had been bright red, not shell pink,
and had looked brand new, but otherwise it was the twin of this
one. Luckily, Mircea’s body mostly blocked me from view, because I
doubt I managed to keep my face under control. The theatre. I’d
lost that shoe more than a hundred years ago in a London
theatre.
“Cassandra?” The
Consul did not sound pleased at the delay, which was ironic
considering her habit of fading out at inopportune moments. I
didn’t answer, remembering the spark I thought I’d imagined in that
other time. The Mircea of that era had not been under the
geis, but I had. The spell must have
recognized him as the needed element to complete itself, and made
the connection on its own. The implication hit me like a
sledgehammer. I’d inadvertently laid a spell on him that had had
more than a century to grow.
“How long?” the
Consul repeated in the voice of someone not accustomed to having to
say anything twice.
“I’m not sure,” I
finally said. My voice was hoarse, but I couldn’t seem to clear my
throat. “Possibly . . .” I finally managed to swallow. “It may have
been the 1880s.”
Someone uttered a
profanity, but I didn’t see who. It was as much as I could do to
keep even part of my concentration on the Consul. The heat of
Mircea’s body and the horror at what I’d done to him were causing
chaos in my emotions. Passion and guilt struggled for dominance,
but fear was making a strong showing, too. My stomach contracted
viciously.
The Consul did not
look pleased. “The geis went dormant
after you left, unable to complete itself without you,” she mused.
“And when the two of you encountered each other again, you were
only a child—too young for it to manifest. But when you met as
adults, it activated and its power began to build.”
I managed to nod.
Mircea had been caressing my hand to keep contact between us,
stroking the bones in my wrist and sliding down to massage my palm
with his thumb. But now he’d graduated to running his hands up and
down my arm, as if craving more contact. And everywhere he touched
left what felt like liquid pleasure behind. It soaked into my skin,
making me as giddy as if his touch was an intoxicant, and maybe it
was. I didn’t know how the spell worked, only that it was far too
good at what it did.
All I wanted was to
stay there forever, the geis flowing
around us like a dazzling waterfall. I knew it wasn’t real, that it
was just a spell that had had far too long to take hold, but it was
very hard to care. When in my life would I ever feel like this
again? I’d had twenty-four years of reality and never even come
close. Wasn’t a lie this good worth something? My body’s answer was
a resounding yes. Only, some tiny voice whispered, that wasn’t
really the question, was it? Not was it worth something, but was it
worth everything, because that was what the spell
demanded.
And that it couldn’t
have.
“The person who
initiates the spell controls it,” the Consul was saying. “But you
left it untended for more than a century.”
“Not
intentionally!”
She arched a perfect
eyebrow and repeated the unofficial vampire code. “We are
discussing outcome, not intent.” Vamps are extremely practical
about such things. The results of an action are always more
important than whether or not harm was intended. And the result of
my action was catastrophic.
“What about the
original spell—the one Mircea put on me?” I asked desperately. “If
he removes it, maybe the . . . the effects will lessen.” And buy us
time to find a mage who could lift the duplicate.
“That has already
been tried, Cassandra,” the Consul informed me patiently. “The
spell is proving remarkably . . . resilient.”
“It won’t break?” I
tried to wrap my mind around that, but Mircea was making deep
thought impossible. I tried to step out of his embrace, just long
enough to clear my head, but he gave an inarticulate sound of
protest and pulled me closer.
“It will not,” the
Consul said mildly.
I gave her a look
meant to scald, uncaring for the moment how stupid that was. If she
wanted to help Mircea, she was doing a lousy job of it. According
to Casanova, the spell would grow faster with Mircea and me in
close proximity, and we couldn’t get much closer than we currently
were. Soon, neither of us would care about anything else. And that
meant there would be no one to stop Myra. I was beginning to see
how my vision could easily come true.
For a moment, I
contemplated trying to explain the situation to the Consul, but I
doubted she’d believe me. I had zero proof to offer, and vamps
aren’t exactly known for taking things on faith. I moved slightly
so that I was momentarily hidden from her sharp gaze and met
Mircea’s eyes. He’d thought to bring the shoe, which meant that, at
some point, he must have figured out what had happened. I just
hoped he remained lucid enough to understand what I needed to tell
him.
“Myra,” I mouthed.
The mages were out of earshot, and with no magic they couldn’t use
enhanced hearing. But the vamps would hear any conversation just
fine.
Mircea gazed at me
for a long moment, and I could almost see him putting the pieces
together. How much he understood I didn’t know, but he’d been with
me when Myra and I first met. He knew she’d tried to kill me and
that she’d gotten away. And he’d heard me call her by name in
London, assuming he remembered so minor a detail after so long. I
frankly doubted it. He would probably guess that she was up to the
same tricks, but not that he was her new target. And I had no way
to tell him.
Not that there was
much he could do even if he did know. Mircea might be able to
defend himself in the present if forewarned, but Myra could attack
him in the past. The fact that he was still here was proof she
hadn’t yet succeeded, but if I didn’t remain sane enough to stop
her, that wouldn’t be true for long. History would rewrite itself,
without Mircea in it. And with Myra as Pythia.
After what felt like
a year, Mircea gave a slight nod. “Two minutes,” he said silently.
I stared at him in confusion until I figured out what he meant. He
was telling me when the null bomb would wear off.
He was going to let
me go.
I gazed at him in
disbelief. “What about you?” I mouthed. He shook his head. I didn’t
know whether that meant he couldn’t tell me with such limited
communication or whether he didn’t want me to know. I realized I
was gripping his arms hard enough to bruise, had he been human. But
it was only when I let go that a spasm of pain crossed his face. I
felt an echo of it myself, a physical ache from the lessened
contact, and had to force myself not to reestablish
it.
“You must go,” he
said silently.
I swallowed. The
second geis was new to me, but it had
had a century to take hold of Mircea. If I felt like this, and the
spell had had only a day to get its claws into me, what was he
experiencing? Even if the Consul was right, and it had toned down
after I returned to my own time, it had still been there, slowly
maturing over decades. And judging by his reaction, when it woke
up, it had done so with a vengeance.
The thought of
deliberately putting him back in that hell was excruciating, but
what other choice was there? I had to deal with Myra or we were
both dead, and I couldn’t take him with me and risk continued
exposure. I looked up at him, letting my remorse show on my face.
“I know.”
He closed his eyes
and his arms clenched around me for a long moment. I pulled him to
me, kissed him and immediately the pain receded. The geis was satisfied as long as we were in close
contact, and I knew why. I could almost feel the bond between us
strengthening, the energy humming happily everywhere we touched. It
was contented now, but what would happen when I left? I’d felt the
agony he was in when I arrived and doubted this brief meeting would
relieve the craving for long. In fact, it might make it worse, like
offering a starving man a single bite of bread.
Mircea slowly opened
his arms and pulled back. I had been expecting it, but the pain
still almost drove me to my knees. I somehow kept my feet, but only
half stifled an agonized noise. Wild shudders of shock radiated
from my center, shaking me violently, and my hands went ice-cold. I
hunched my shoulders against the blaze of longing that shook me,
and wrapped my arms around myself to keep them from dragging him
against me.
Casanova had made it
sound like the bond was a slow progression, growing in stages over
a long period of time. But ours wasn’t acting that way. Maybe
because it wasn’t exactly new, at least on one side, or maybe
because it had accidentally been doubled. All I knew was, it was
vicious.
Mircea was standing
close enough to give the impression that he was still holding me.
The pain had cleared my head like smelling salts, allowing me to
understand why. Although he might be willing to release me, the
Consul most certainly was not. I’d refused to become her puppet,
had stolen valuable merchandise from her and had placed her chief
negotiator under a dangerous spell. The fact that the latter, at
least, had been inadvertent was irrelevant from her perspective. I
wondered what she had planned for me if her mages couldn’t break
the spell. Based on Mircea’s action, I could make a good guess. Few
spells outlive the demise of the caster. And if I wasn’t going to
be her pet Pythia, she had no vested interest in keeping me
alive.
I met Mircea’s gaze.
“I’ll find a way to break this,” I told him. I didn’t bother to
whisper this time. “I promise.”
He smiled slightly,
but his eyes were infinitely sad. “I am sorry, dulceat ţaă.”
The Consul said
something, but I didn’t hear her. One minute, the chamber was quiet
enough to hear a pin drop; the next, a howling arctic wind had
filled the room, whipping my hair in stinging strands against my
face. It paused for an instant, gathering strength near the high
ceiling of the chamber, before exploding into the worst ice storm
I’ve ever seen.
The slashing, brutal
winds ignored me and a small space around me, and for a minute I
thought my ward had finally decided to wake up, but there was no
flood of golden light, no distinctive pentagram shape. Something
else was protecting me, and for the moment I didn’t care what—just
so long as it kept it up. Everywhere outside that small island of
calm, chaos raged.
Mircea stepped away
and I gasped in pain as the geis
realized that something had gone wrong. I would have grabbed him
again, despite the consequences, but I couldn’t see him in the
swirling white void. “Mircea!” I screamed, but my voice was lost in
the deafening winds.
Not knowing what else
to do, I leapt forward and threw myself over Tomas. Thankfully, the
clear spot went with me. It didn’t cover him entirely, and his
wounds were too extreme for me to stretch out on top of him, but
frostbite on his lower legs was the least of my
worries.
I fumbled for his
restraints, but I couldn’t see them, couldn’t see anything next to
the violent, thrashing world of white. Then something bounced on
the table right beside me and I understood what the odd, thumping
noise raining down all around us was. The wind carried hailstones
the size of bowling balls, and since they were trapped between the
four walls of the Senate chamber, they had nowhere to spend their
fury except to ricochet off every available surface. It was like
being caught in Hell’s pinball game. If I didn’t get Tomas loose
soon, they’d crush his feet, and no way could I drag him
anywhere.
I had to get us out
of there and I had to find Myra, although how I was supposed to
deal with her in my current state I had no idea. All I wanted was
to curl into a little ball and wait for Mircea to find me—and if I
stayed, I knew he would. Whatever strength had allowed him to pull
away, the geis was stronger. It
wouldn’t be long now.
Something hit Tomas’
right leg, jarring his whole body. I stretched but couldn’t reach
far enough to shield his lower limbs without leaving his head
unprotected, and I couldn’t pull his legs up because they were
strapped down. I tried to shift, but although I felt something this
time, like a slight tug, I still couldn’t go anywhere. Hurry up, I thought desperately.
I finally figured out
the release on Tomas’ hand restraints and had just clicked them
open when the room suddenly became a lot more crowded. A tattoo
parlor was sitting in the middle of it, so close to the main table
that it was almost on top of us. Mac’s face, half obscured by snow
even though it was only a few yards away, appeared in the main
window under the flashing MAG INK sign. A second later, an arm
covered in wriggling designs reached out the front door and grabbed
Tomas by the leg, clicking off the right ankle restraint with
practiced ease.
As soon as Mac hauled
Tomas in the door, I scrambled across the table after them. The
shop had landed on the impressive row of steps leading up to the
dais on which the table sat, and was therefore tilted towards me.
If I made it another few feet, my momentum should do the
rest.
I had just managed to
clasp the hand Pritkin held out when someone grabbed my ankle. My
ward—damn it—didn’t flare, but Sheba suddenly got busy. She had
ignored Mircea, either because of the null effect or because she
didn’t view him as a threat. But whoever had grabbed me was another
matter. I felt her flow down my body, then there was the sound of a
snarling great cat and a surprised yelp from a dignified Senate
leader. Sheba launched herself off my foot, and a second later the
Consul let go of my leg.
“Come on!” Pritkin
gave a heave and I almost flew the rest of the way across the slick
tabletop. We tumbled in the door of the shop and suddenly I could
see again. Neither Mac nor Tomas was in the front, but I didn’t
have time to worry about it. At Pritkin’s yell of “We’re clear!”
the whole building started to shake.
The next minute we
were barreling through pure stone, on a crazy zigzag course into
the middle of MAGIC’s foundations. We were making pretty good time,
it seemed to me, although I was so busy holding on to Pritkin, who
had a death grip on the counter, that it was hard to tell. I did
see a dark blur, however, coming down the newly carved tunnel, and
the next minute Kit Marlowe tumbled into the wildly lurching
room.
He looked grim and
determined, and there was an air of danger about him that I didn’t
remember from our brief childhood meeting. Of course, that night
he’d been enjoying Tony’s best hospitality, not bleeding from half
a dozen wounds. “Oh, bugger it!” I heard Pritkin mutter. He pulled
me off his back, pressed my hands around the edges of the desk and
yelled, “Hold on,” loudly enough to threaten to rupture my eardrum.
Then he let go and went flying across the room at
Marlowe.
They grappled, but
without magic it was down to old-fashioned dirty fighting and pure
muscle, and they seemed about evenly matched. Marlowe was yelling
something at me, but I couldn’t hear him over the racket our
tunneling efforts were making. And I was too consumed by the waves
of pain coursing through me from the geis to care.
The farther I got
from Mircea, the worse they became, to the point that I was barely
aware of what was happening. Tears blinded me, spasms clenched my
stomach and it was becoming increasingly hard to breathe. I
remembered Casanova saying that people under the geis had committed suicide rather than endure the
pain of separation and I finally understood why.
Marlowe got Pritkin
in a headlock and the two stumbled into the desk, almost causing me
to lose my already tenuous grip. Then Pritkin stabbed a knife into
the vamp’s chest and they broke apart. But the mage, looking dazed
from the loss of air, didn’t follow up his advantage and for some
reason neither did Marlowe. He was grimly pulling out the knife
when, with no warning, the shop shuddered to a halt.
My knees knocked
painfully against the side of the desk and I barely kept from
sailing over it. But I couldn’t have cared less. The geis was suddenly gone, cut off like a stereo when
someone turns a switch. I gasped for air and found that I could
breathe deeply again. My head swam with the influx of oxygen and
with relief. But almost immediately I noticed another sensation:
hunger.
It was only in the
magnitude of its absence that I could tell the true strength of the
bond. I wanted to laugh and cry at the same time. Relief from the
pain had also brought an end to the addictive, all-consuming
pleasure. And the craving started immediately.
I staggered around
the desk, feeling strangely hollow and empty inside. Then I looked
out the front window and did a stunned double take. What I saw was
enough to take my mind off even the geis. In front of us wasn’t another sandstone
corridor or even an empty stretch of desert. Instead, I saw a large
meadow filled with long grasses that bent to the left in a gentle
breeze. By the sun’s height I guessed it was midday, although the
diffused light made it hard to tell for sure. In the distance lay a
ridge of sharp blue mountains capped with snow, but the breeze that
swept in through the shop’s front door was warm and smelled faintly
of wildflowers. It was beautiful.
Mac stuck his head
out from behind the curtain warily, then gave a whoop of pure joy.
“All right! And they said it couldn’t be done! Bloody hell!” I
noticed that his wards had stopped moving, frozen in place like
normal tattoos, and light dawned. Mac, that crazy son of a bitch,
had driven the tattoo parlor straight through the portal and into
Faerie itself.