by Karen Chance
“Mircea is stopping me!” I snapped.
“Cassandra! I cannot hold them forever!” A single drop of sweat ran down Mircea’s cheek to hang suspended on the edge of his jaw. “You must go!”
Before I could reply, one of the mages tore free, a young man with acne and mismatched eyes, one green and one blue. He stumbled away from the others, his clothes smoking, his limp brown hair on fire. But a few whispered words put out the flames and when he turned, his face furious, there was something in his hand. Something warm and pale pink, the color of the webbing between his fingers.
The little ball looked innocuous, but I’d been around mages long enough to know how likely that was. And Mircea couldn’t move, couldn’t defend himself, without freeing the others to do even more damage. Fear, stark and violent, flashed down my spine and my heart started throbbing in my ears, which made no sense because I could feel my skin prickling as the blood drained from my face.
The small ball dropped to the ground and rolled a few feet before coming to rest against a tuft of grass growing up through the concrete. The mage sank to his knees, staring at me with surprise on his face. And then he fell over sideways, still clutching the widening stain on his chest.
“You shot him.” Billy looked almost as surprised as I felt.
“I guess he forgot to get his shields back up,” I said numbly.
I wanted to sit down. My insides felt trembly and my hand was shaking, which considering that I had a mostly full clip in the gun was probably a safety violation. But then the mages did something that sent Mircea smashing back into what remained of the fence, causing him to momentarily lose his concentration. And as soon as he did, the animated corpse came flying across the parking lot and leapt straight at him.
I screamed, knowing what fire of any type did to an unprotected vampire. Then I was shooting at random, an ache blooming in my chest so sharp it felt like a knife. But the remaining mages all had shields up. My bullets just pinged off a couple as if they were made of transparent steel, and were absorbed by others, like rocks falling into water. They’d killed Mircea and I couldn’t even hurt them.
“Cassie!” I turned at Billy’s voice, and found him hovering in front of Mircea, hazy and indistinct, like a double negative.
I stared in disbelief as Mircea slowly raised his head. Then I did a double take, my mouth literally dropping open, because he was hanging in the middle of a fence jumping with blue-white energy and there was no way he’d survived that. Just no way.
“Get him out of there or he’s a goner!”
“What?” I said stupidly, and then someone grabbed me from behind. The gun went flying out of my hand and a fist cracked against my cheekbone, slamming my head back, making my ears ring. I tried desperately to shift, but I was dizzy and the pain was unbelievable and nothing happened.
“I have her!” a man’s voice yelled in my ear, and from the corner of my eye I saw another dark shape advancing on us. But the arms around my waist wouldn’t budge no matter how I fought. Someone was screaming nearby, a horrible, hopeless sound that messed with my concentration as much as the hands that were forcing my wrists together.
I kicked out with my foot, as hard as I could, and felt the impact against something soft. Someone swore and a pale, gaunt man with hard gray eyes appeared in front of me. He pulled a wicked-looking knife from his coat and held it in front of my eyes until I was able to focus on it. As soon as I did, he stabbed it down into my right wrist.
I could feel small bones breaking, then he gave it a twist and it tore against tendons, blood dripping down my arm as he ripped it out and held it in front of my face again. “Still want to fight us?”
For a moment, I couldn’t scream—there wasn’t enough air in my lungs. Then something hard and slick tightened around my wrists, right over the wound. And I gave a shriek that didn’t sound right, didn’t sound like me, but the pain slammed into me all at once and then I couldn’t stop screaming.
“Shut her up!” someone said, and an arm clamped over my windpipe, cutting off the noise and also my air. I desperately tried to shift again, and for a second I thought I had it. Just like in the caves, I could feel time as a syrupy, elastic mass, only it wasn’t quite right, wasn’t enfolding me like I wanted.
Suddenly I hit the ground, stunned and bleary-eyed, and when nobody grabbed me again, I started trying to crawl away. But my hands were bound with a hard plastic tie, I couldn’t put any weight on my broken wrist and my directional sense was shot. I ended up rolling into a puddle of something warm and sticky.
I looked down to see a diamond pattern burnt into the asphalt. All around it were shreds of fabric, which I finally recognized as crisped blue jeans and the singed remains of a cotton shirt. There were hard white bits sticking up here and there, marring the pattern, and something that looked like hair. It finally hit me. The fencing. Mircea had wrapped it around the mage, and it had burnt through his shields and then it had—
I scrambled to my feet and staggered away, bile rising in my throat, my breath coming hard and fast enough to actually hurt my lungs. My head was reeling, and when I tried to steady myself, the space around me shook instead. I would have run straight into the fence if Billy hadn’t shouted at me.
“Your shoes! They’re rubber-soled, Cass!”
For a moment I didn’t know what he was talking about, but then blue-white fire flashed in front of my eyes and I got it. The power line had come loose from its human delivery device and attached itself directly to the fence, slithering back and forth over the asphalt like a huge electric eel. My head kept swimming and my eyesight was trying to black out and my fingers didn’t seem to want to do what I told them, even on the hand that didn’t feel like it was on fire. Getting the sneaker off was a nightmare, and even holding on to it was a challenge—how was I supposed to use it for anything? And why was nobody trying to stop me all of a sudden?
I didn’t want to risk touching the line directly, rubber soles or no. I tried throwing the sneaker, but my aim was even worse than usual and I finally ended up kicking it instead. It took four tries, but I managed to jar the downed line until it lost contact with the fence.
As soon as it did, I had a vague sense of Mircea jumping away and attacking the remaining mages. I heard what sounded like a neck snap and a body hit the asphalt nearby, but I couldn’t seem to concentrate on it. It was all I could do to fight the urge to relax and sink into the welcoming darkness that hovered at the edges of my vision.
I stumbled backwards, and my heel hit something that crunched under the light pressure. When I looked down, I saw two bodies on the ground. The nearest was a woman, so elderly as to be cadaverous, her skin papery and mottled with age spots, her hair wispy and bone white. The other was a man, at least I assumed so, based on his clothes. The slight breeze sent tiny pieces of a disintegrating mustard-colored shirt blowing away, like pollen on the air. The body underneath looked like a recently unwrapped mummy, all crinkled brown skin stretched over visible ribs. I stared at them, stunned and uncomprehending.
“Cass! Cass!” Billy was talking to me, and something pale rolled against my remaining sneaker. “Throw it!”
My eyes finally managed to focus on the small item, which I identified as the ball the mage had been holding earlier. Billy must have retrieved it, but I couldn’t understand why until I looked up and saw five more mages rushing towards us from the far side of the building. It looked like the cavalry had arrived, but with my usual luck, they were for the other side.
I shook my head, trying to clear it, and that jolted my arm, and oh, God, that hadn’t been a good idea. Luckily the mages weren’t paying any attention to me, either because they hadn’t seen me yet or because, compared to Mircea, I didn’t look like much of a threat. He was providing a hell of a distraction, stepping on one mage’s neck while wrenching another’s head almost completely off his body. It looked impressive, but if he had resorted to old-fashioned hand-to-hand, he was pretty damn drained. I didn’t know if he
could survive another attack and I didn’t intend to find out.
I tried to grab the sphere, but my hands were slick with blood and I couldn’t seem to keep hold. Every time I thought I had it, it slipped away, my fingers just not able to hold on. I accidentally kicked it and held my breath, waiting for it to detonate and kill us all, but it only rolled off a few yards until stopped by a ridge in the concrete.
“Cass!”
I looked up to see that I was out of time. The mages had paused a cautious distance from Mircea, but that was only because any master vampire deserved a certain respect, even a wounded one. Maybe especially a wounded one. But the attack would come any second now. And I couldn’t stop it.
Chapter 12
“Billy! I can’t get it!” I looked at him desperately. “You have to do it.”
He shook his head. “I’m too drained. It took everything I had just to roll it over to you!”
I made another grab and trapped the ball under my hands, but it was too slippery. I had the impression that its surface wouldn’t provide much in the way of traction even if I wasn’t bleeding all over it. “Damn it! If I had more time—”
Billy looked at me like I was crazy. “You’re Pythia! You have all the time you want!”
“I can’t shift! I’ve tried.” It was probably the pain, but I couldn’t see past it. Maybe that was one of the things training taught, how to concentrate when your brain was fuzzy from blood loss and your hand felt like it was going to fall off and you had absolutely no time to get it wrong. I would have really, really liked to have had that lesson.
But I hadn’t, so I had to go with what I knew. I stopped plucking uselessly at the sphere and looked at Billy. “Take a draw.”
“Now?!”
“Damn it, Billy. Yes, now! Get your strength back and throw this thing!”
Billy didn’t waste any time. He slipped inside my skin before I’d finished talking, and I felt the energy drain immediately. Unlike normal, it hurt. Maybe because I didn’t have much left to give, maybe because Billy had to speed up the process, maybe because everything already hurt anyway. But whatever the reason, within seconds my heart was hammering, my hands were shaking and I could actually sense my life flowing out of me. My brain was stuck on a hamster wheel, bad idea bad idea bad idea bad idea, but there was nothing I could do; I didn’t have the strength to stop it. I heard someone sigh, a long whistling release of breath, and then I was falling a very long way.
I landed on the asphalt in time to see Billy scoop up the ball. He almost lost it once, it almost slipped right through his still mostly transparent hand, but he caught it at the last second. The throw looked a lot like something I’d have done, a wobbly underhand that didn’t land even close to dead center. It exploded a yard or so in front of the mages with a barely audible poof and a small cloud of hazy pink, as if a powder-filled balloon had been dropped onto concrete. The air seemed to ripple slightly, but the mages showed no discernible effects.
“It’s a damn dud!” Billy cursed just as the first of the newcomers reached Mircea. He turned, his elbow connecting with the mage’s face, and I had time to wonder why the man’s shields weren’t up, why they hadn’t stopped the attack. Then it was as if his head just exploded, like instead of a man, Mircea had hit a face made of nothing more than colored sand.
“Lot’s Wife,” Billy said, sounding impressed. “Bad stuff, dark magic.” I wondered if I should worry that his tone was approving.
The other mages had stopped, frozen in various stages of movement. One had been running, caught with a single leg raised, and his own momentum toppled him over. He exploded against the asphalt and Mircea gave a purely vicious smile. He walked to the next human statue, a young man with sandy blond hair, and gave him the barest push with the flat of his hand. The mage toppled backwards into another, and they both hit the ground with a bang, dissolving into a cloud of multicolored dust. It so mixed them up that it was impossible to tell where one body started and the other ended.
Mircea went on to the last while I stared at the flesh-colored sand pouring out of a scuffed leather tennis shoe. A gust of wind blew across the lot, pushing little grains of the substance against the cheek I couldn’t seem to lift off the asphalt. They didn’t feel like sand; they didn’t feel like much of anything at all.
I heard the thud as another body hit the ground, felt the billow of wind as it broke into crumbly pieces, but I couldn’t focus on it. Shock, I thought vaguely. I knew what I technically should be feeling, but I wasn’t sure I was actually feeling it. My whole body hurt, but the pain seemed to reach me only through a buzzing, staticky distance.
I stared at the pile of human remains and wondered what the spell did. Billy was saying something. Maybe he was trying to tell me, only I couldn’t understand him. Maybe it sucked all the water out, I thought vaguely. Was that what was left of a person with the moisture mostly gone? A pile of crumbly, chemical-smelling stuff that looked like a human, but couldn’t be because people didn’t turn into powder when you touched them? That was just wrong, not possible.
Like me shooting a man through the heart.
Someone knelt beside me and cut off the plastic bracelet. I could see flashes of white through the bloody meat of my wrist, but it didn’t look like a vein had been hit. It felt bad, though. I was hauled into someone’s arms, my back against a warm chest that was breathing too quickly, or maybe that was me. I tried to slow it down but nothing happened, so I decided it wasn’t me after all.
Strong hands stroked through my hair, gently separating the tangled strands for a moment. Then a whisper of breath was at my ear. “Dulceata?, I can heal this, but it would be better if we went to MAGIC. There are healers there with more skill than I possess.”
Mircea, I thought. He was the one smelling like smoke and blood and sweat. That seemed odd; I always associated him with expensive cologne. I looked down and there were black smears and fingerprints on my skin where he had touched me. That seemed odd, too, although I couldn’t think why.
“Cass, we gotta get out of here. He can’t take you back to MAGIC.” Billy hovered in front of my face, and that was all right. Because he looked the same as always.
“I can’t go back to MAGIC,” I said, parroting Billy’s words, and my voice sounded almost normal. Weird.
“It is a bad break, dulceata?, and there are many bones in the wrist. I may not be able to repair all of them perfectly.”
I looked up into his face. It was dirty and sweat-soaked, and there was a fading pattern of diamond shapes all over his left cheek. But new skin was already pushing the crisped away as I watched, leaving it to blow off like so much ash in the wind. And his eyes were the same, bright with intelligence, soft with concern, full of understanding, beautiful. He was okay. Mircea was going to be okay. Relief was so sharp that, for a second, it hurt more than my wrist.
I wanted to say something, but there was too much raw emotion burning too close to the surface. I didn’t think you were supposed to say what I was thinking, anyway: that, even if my endgame was short, I liked the idea that his wasn’t. It was sort of a future by proxy, and while it wasn’t quite what I’d hoped for, it was good enough. It felt good enough. So I just looked at him instead, unblinking, until I couldn’t see more than a blur of pallor and darkness, the colors all bleeding into each other for some reason.
“I will heal it here,” Mircea said harshly, cradling my wrist in one large hand.
He looked strange, feral and too tightly controlled, with something brimming right under the surface, rage or frustration or both. The others could see it too, because the vamps were all trying to act submissive and the pixie was gazing at him with big worried eyes. Françoise was sitting on the ground next to us, but she looked hesitant, like she had no idea what to say. It occurred to me to wonder what they were all doing here, but then Mircea did something that made warmth spread up my arm, and the sudden lack of pain made me catch my breath in wonder.
I looked down to see my wound
closing and odd little shiftings taking place under the skin. Bones realigning, I thought vaguely, and that part wasn’t so pleasant, but it still didn’t hurt and suddenly I could even think a little better. I could feel my blood shoving roughly through my veins, and my skin felt tight and flushed, but there was no lethargy, no pain.
Mircea was biting his lip as he followed the lines of tendon and muscle in my hand, reshaping them with his finger as if it were a scalpel. It was a light sensation. He barely brushed my hand, but I shuddered. A touch that simple shouldn’t be so powerful.
Mircea didn’t notice. His eyes were wide open and brighter than I’d ever seen them, the rush from combat still humming behind them like electricity. He was utterly concentrated and strangely young-looking, and when he finally raised his head to tell me he was through, I grabbed him by the shirt and kissed him, hard.
It wasn’t a great effort. I got the angle a little off and our teeth clicked together and we both tasted like adrenaline. I didn’t care. My fists clenched in his shirt, crushing the heavy silk, and I couldn’t seem to make them let go. And I needed them to because I couldn’t hit him until they did and I really, really wanted to hit him. I was furious suddenly, completely livid. Because he’d almost died, damn it, and I hadn’t been able to do anything, and he’d almost died.
Mircea didn’t object, didn’t try to pull away; instead he drew me closer, close enough to hear his heart beat, close enough to feel him breathe. He took charge of the kiss, slowing it down, until it was all warmth and sweetness and inevitability. His hands glided up my back and into my hair, combing through my curls and making me shiver. I’d never known that anyone could kiss in English, kiss in apologies, but apparently he could. I wasn’t sure what he was apologizing for, but it felt right. Like he should be sorry for scaring me like that.
He didn’t kiss fair, and he didn’t kiss all at once; he kept giving it up and taking it away until I thought I’d die of frustration. I felt like screaming, but didn’t have the breath to waste, and when I thought I would go completely insane he finally made a quiet, hungry sound and met me in the middle. And it was suddenly all panting, groaning need rising between us like steam.
