by Karen Chance
He didn’t bother. Maybe he didn’t like the odds, or perhaps his friends weren’t all that friendly when it came down to giving up their lives for him. Anyway, his spirit corps streamed at me in a shining cloud and got as far as the edge of my ward when my group attacked. “Don’t hurt the girl!” I yelled, as thousands of spirits flashed past me in a flickering wave of color and shade. Greenish white sparks rained down everywhere as the spirits of Carcassonne began cannibalizing their enemies, draining them of every spark of life. I had a feeling there were a lot of vamp bodies that weren’t going to rise after this night.
While the pyrotechnics went off over our heads, I bent to help the dazed figure of the lost sybil. She looked pale and frightened, but at least she was alive. Large gray eyes peered at me out of a small, oval face, framed by limp blond hair. “Don’t worry,” I told her, although it sounded pretty strange under the circumstances. “I won’t let him harm you. We need to get—”
I never finished the sentence because, suddenly, everything froze. I looked around fearfully, wondering what new threat I had to deal with, and noticed that the knife was still in the sybil’s hand. It was also all of about a millimeter away from my chest. I stared at it in disbelief. The bitch had been about to stab me! And, judging by the angle, it would have been a heart blow. Admittedly, it wasn’t my body, but I thought it would be polite to return it without any big holes in it. Besides, I didn’t know what would happen to me if the woman died. Even Billy hadn’t known. Maybe I’d survive, maybe not, but I sure as hell wouldn’t be much help to Radu or Louis-César. Not to mention racking up yet another death on my conscience.
“I see you received my message.” A voice floated across the room, as silvery clear as chiming bells.
I looked up to see a slender, short girl with long, dark hair rippling down her back almost to her knees. She was weaving past the hovering ghosts, some of which had frozen, jaws wide, busily gulping down other phantoms. No one moved, no one breathed. It was like I’d wandered into a photograph, except that two of us continued to be active.
“What?” I eased back from the sybil and her knife, which also allowed me to back away from whoever the newcomer was.
“The one on your computer,” the woman continued. “At your office. That was clever, don’t you think?” She peered at Louis-César but made no move towards him. Her big blue eyes came back to me and her sweet little face took on a somewhat peevish air. “Well? Don’t I at least rate a thank-you for saving your life? The obituary was real, you know. If you hadn’t left your office when you did, Rasputin’s men would have found you. You’d have managed to get away from them, but a couple of streets over you would have encountered the vampires sent by that Antonio person and been shot. I brought the obit forward to warn you. Clever, wasn’t it?”
“Who are you?” I realized the truth the same time I asked the question, but I wanted to hear her say it.
She smiled, and her dimples were almost as big as Louis-César’s. “My name is Agnes, although no one uses it anymore. Sometimes, I don’t think they even remember.”
“You’re the Pythia.”
“Right in one.”
“But…but you look younger than me. They told me you were on your death bed, that you’re really old.”
She gave a small shrug. It caused me to notice what she was wearing—a long, high-necked gown much like those Eugenie used to have made for me. It looked like something out of a tea party circa 1880. “Right again, I’m afraid. In fact, it is quite possible that this little trip will do me in. My power has been fading for a while, and four hundred years is a lot to manage.” She didn’t sound very upset about her impending demise. “Anyway, you’ll learn how to manipulate your spirit to look any way you want after a while. I prefer to remember myself as I was. In fact, in recent years, I’ve spent more time out of that wrinkled old hulk than in it.” She flexed her fingers. “Arthritis, you know.”
I stared at her. I’d somehow expected the Pythia to be more, well, regal. “What are you doing here?”
Agnes laughed. “Solving a problem, what else?” She bent over to look in the distorted face of the woman about to plunge a dagger into me. I’d moved, but the sybil hadn’t; the face was still set in a scowl and the knife was caught halfway through its arc. “I spent twenty years training this one. You wouldn’t think it to look at her, would you? Twenty years and look what I have to show for it.” She shook her head. “I’m here because this mess is partly my fault. I chose your mother as my apprentice. I trained her for almost a decade. I loved her like a daughter. And when she took up with your father, I forbade it, telling myself that I was doing her a favor. He was a member of the vampire mafia, for God’s sake! Hardly a fit match for my beautiful creation.”
“I don’t understand.”
“I could have found her!” Crystalline tears glistened in Agnes’ big blue eyes. “I told myself, if she didn’t care anything about her calling, if she could throw it all away so easily, I didn’t need her. I could start afresh, could choose another apprentice, make another shining star…only, of course, I couldn’t. I was too proud to admit that it hadn’t been my tutelage that made Lizzy what she was, but her own innate talent. I didn’t go after her, and that vampire boss of your father’s had her killed to get to you.” She covered her face and wept.
I just stood there. Did she actually expect me to sympathize? I didn’t feel like kicking her when she was down, especially not if she really was on her deathbed, but I also didn’t feel very comforting. I settled on simply crossing my arms and waiting it out.
“You aren’t the compassionate type, are you?” she asked after a minute, looking at me through her fingers. She lowered her hands and regarded me curiously. I shrugged; considering where I’d grown up, what the hell did she expect? She sighed and gave up the act. “Okay, I was wrong. My bad. But now we have to fix things. I can’t train you properly because I don’t have time, but quite obviously the power can’t be allowed to go to Myra. She’s either in this voluntarily, or she was coerced. If the former, she’s evil; if the latter, she’s weak. Either way, she’s out of the running.”
I looked at the long, sharp knife in the sybil’s hand and at the expression in her eyes. I was betting on voluntary. She looked a little angry to be under some sort of mind control. I was beginning to have a certain sympathy with Mircea’s point of view.
“Okay, fine. She’s a bad sybil. You want to take her back with you and read her the riot act? Be my guest.”
“That isn’t the program.”
I was in no mood to play twenty questions. “Do you have a point? Because I’m kind of busy here.”
She threw up her hands. “Of course; please do forgive me for nattering on. But this is an occasion, you know. I’m merely trying to give it a hint of ceremony.”
I had a bad feeling suddenly. “What occasion?”
She turned a look on me that had none of the previous playfulness. “The power has selected you. You’re it; you’re Pythia.” She grimaced. “Congrats and all that.”
I decided the woman had a few screws loose. “You can’t just dump it on me like that! What if I don’t want it?”
She gave a small shrug. “Your point would be?”
I stared at her. Her gall was unbelievable. “Forget it, lady. Pick another seer.”
Agnes put small fists on her narrow hips and glared at me. “The more I talk with you, the more I’m convinced that you’ll either be the best of us all, or the very worst. If I had another choice, believe me, I would take it. But I don’t. The power wants to come to you. Take some advice and make it an easy transition. The more you fight it, the more trouble it will give you.”
“Like hell.” Thank God I had an ace in the hole. “Your power can’t go to a virgin. And technically, I’m still pure and untouched.”
She looked at me for a second, apparently speechless. Then she collapsed into a fit of giggles. She finally got her breath back and managed to gasp out, “Says who? Don
’t tell me you’ve been listening to the mages! Please!”
“Wait a minute. The vamps believe it, too. Everyone does.”
Agnes shook her head and tried to stifle a grin. It didn’t work and she finally gave up. “God, you’re naive. Who do you think told them that? One of the ancient Pythias got tired of the code that said a priestess had to be ‘pure and untouched,’ to use your phrase. So she told the priests at Delphi that she’d had a vision. The power would be much stronger if it came to an experienced woman. They bought it, and she got her lover. But it doesn’t make a difference. Well, not about obtaining the power, at least.”
“What does that mean?”
She laughed again and did a little twirl around the room, passing through a couple of mages on the way. They shuddered slightly but didn’t wake up. “It means that I suggest you complete the ritual as soon as possible if you expect to control the gift instead of vice versa.” She grinned. “And I’m not exactly equipped to help you with that.” She took in my crossed arms and stubborn expression and paused. I got the impression from the little frown that appeared on her forehead that she wasn’t used to being questioned. “Fine, have it your way, but if you leave the ritual half done, not only will you have imperfect control, but the mages will consider you only the heir. The Pythia can’t be deposed, but the heir certainly can. Your position is vulnerable until you finish this.” She looked me up and down, then raised a delicate eyebrow. “I find it difficult to believe we need to have this conversation.”
I was pretty damn annoyed, especially when she started dancing again. “Look, how many ways do I have to say this? No, thank you, I don’t want the job.”
“Perfect. Then at least I move on knowing you aren’t insane.” She stopped her little ballerina impression so abruptly that her skirts swirled about her legs. “I didn’t want it, either, you know. I alone among the sybils of my generation would have been very happy not to have been picked. It is a great honor, but it’s a heavy burden, too. Plus, you have to put up with the Silver Circle and, believe me, that’s no one’s idea of fun.”
Her expression was suddenly somber. “For what it’s worth, Cassie, I’m sorry. There hasn’t been a Pythia since the first one that has had to take on the job completely untrained. But then, with your abilities, you’re likely to rewrite the rule book anyway. For example, did you know that you’re currently inhabiting the same time twice? Your spirit is struggling along with that girl you rescued, through the streets outside, while you’re in here talking to me. I can’t do that. Plus, most of our adepts take years to learn what you’ve managed to teach yourself in only a few days. Really, taking another spirit along with you! That’s impressive.”
I felt like screaming. “Will you stop talking and listen to me? I. Am. Not. The. Pythia!”
She crossed to me quickly and kissed my cheek. “You are now,” she said, and disappeared. That same second, I got hit with something that felt like a Mack truck had mowed me down. There’s no way to adequately describe it, so I won’t even try. The closest thing I’d ever felt was when I was in Tomas’ body and his heightened senses proved so distracting. Only the senses that were sharpened this time weren’t smell or sight, but that awareness of other worlds, different but meshing with ours, that I’d always had a little of when I spoke with ghosts. Now I had a lot of it, and the sights and sounds around me were so distracting that I didn’t even notice that time had started back up. Not, that is, until someone stabbed me in the foot.
I looked down to see that the rogue sybil had got me after all, although not in the way she’d planned. It still hurt like a bitch and blood began welling up through the satin of my little high-heeled slipper, turning the material a dark purple. I looked up at the battling forces over my head.
“Okay, I changed my mind. Eat her.”
A group of ghosts broke off from the main cloud and dove for her, but Rasputin moved with vamp quickness and got there first. He grabbed her about the waist and they disappeared, along with the few of his vamps who had escaped the ghostly attack. The mages saw their ally run for it and immediately followed suit. My little knives got overly excited and chased them out the door and up the stairs and I let them go to it. Killing off a few more dark mages might alter the timeline, but at that moment I was too tired and fed up to care.
I sat down and tugged off the slipper. Damn it! The crazy bitch had almost severed a toe. Mircea handed me a handkerchief from the pocket of his robe, and I bound up the wound as best I could. I didn’t think she’d lose it, unless it got infected. But considering the state of the dungeon, that seemed at least possible. Great.
I looked up to see my ghostly army hovering there, an unspoken demand in their eyes. I knew what they wanted, and there was no point trying to talk them out of it. The energy they’d stolen from Rasputin’s vamps might sustain them for years, but who wanted to exist someplace like this? They had only one interest, and I had promised, but there were going to be a few conditions.
“No townspeople and no innocents,” I said, and got a creepy, collective nod in return. I sighed. “Okay, then, the rest are yours.”
Immediately, a swirling maelstrom of spirits rose up, like a multihued blizzard around my head. It was so thick that it blotted out the room for an instant and so full of pent-up rage that their collective wails sounded like a freight train. Then, in the blink of an eye, they were gone. I didn’t try to follow them with my senses; that was one party I preferred not to see.
I took my hands away from my ears to find Mircea watching me, a cautious look in his eyes. I sighed. I did not want to have this conversation, wanted it less, in fact, than facing Rasputin again. But there was no way out. “I think we did it,” I told him. “Did you explain things to Radu?”
He nodded slowly. “Yes. He has agreed to bring Louis-César over and to leave him to develop alone as happened before. Radu will escape but avoid contact with anyone for a century, until the time I rescued him from the Bastille. And even after that, he will keep a low profile, as you would say. Will that do?”
I thought about it for a minute. It wasn’t perfect, but barring locking him in a room for three and a half centuries, I didn’t see an alternative. And I somehow doubted that Mircea would go along with that. “Yeah, it ought to, as long as he doesn’t make any vamps until our time. Somehow Rasputin is already making unregistered vamps, and we don’t need two people doing it. Oh, and tell Radu about Françoise. I get this feeling that some of the mages might try to recoup some of their losses with her tonight.”
It was a measure of just how close to the edge Mircea was that he didn’t question what I meant. “As you like.”
I gestured around. “How much of that could you see?”
“Very little, but I received the impression from our being alive that we won.”
“Not exactly.” I explained the situation in brief, including my promotion. When he got back and found out Agnes was dead, he’d figure it out anyway. “You’ll need to tell the Senate that Rasputin got away, and that the sybil went with him. I don’t know if she’ll keep the power she borrowed now, but she may.” Considering that Myra had flashed out right after my talk with the Pythia, it seemed a good bet. Maybe that would fade in time, but there was no way to know for sure. Which left me with a major problem. When she recovered from my little knife attack, she could do to me what she’d been trying to do to Louis-César. The possibilities were endless, including killing me as a child or attacking my parents before I was even conceived, making sure I wasn’t born at all. The only good thing for me was that, for most of my life, I was either in Tony’s fortress of a house, warded like the vamp equivalent of Fort Knox, or in hiding. So I wouldn’t be an easy target. But something told me that Rasputin liked a challenge.
Mircea was quiet for a long moment. When he finally spoke, he sounded as tired as I felt. “You could tell them yourself.”
I smiled. “No, I don’t think I can.” He started to say something, but I put a finger over his lips. A
bout one thing, at least, I was sure. “I won’t go back to that, Mircea. It was bad enough before, but now everyone will be fighting over me—the Senate, the two circles, maybe Tomas…no. What kind of a life would that be?”
He took my hand in his and kissed the fingers carefully. His eyes were tired, but still beautiful as they met mine. The glowing, cinnamon amber completely overwrote Louis-César’s blue. I had a feeling that I’d never see another pair so stunning, or so sad. “You cannot run forever, Cassie.”
“I hid before. I can do it again.”
“You were found before.” He clutched my hand as tightly as he could and, for the moment, I let him. It might be a long time before I knew the touch of another person, much less one I cared about.
“Only by you and Marlowe,” I told him gently. “Tell him to take a vacation. He’ll need one to recover from the attack. Take one yourself.”
Mircea shook his head, as I’d known he would. He wouldn’t lie to me even now. For a vamp, he was a hell of a catch. I reached out and ran a hand through his hair, wishing it was his own dark, straight strands under my fingers instead of the Frenchman’s bronze curls. It was somehow hard to imagine never touching him again, never holding him. But the price was too high. There were simply too many strings attached.
“I will find you, Cassie. I only pray it will be before the circles do. Both of them will come after you, you can be sure of it. Do not underestimate them.”
“I won’t.” I started to rise, but he held on to my hand.
“Cassie, stay with me! I will keep you safe; I swear it!”
I asked him the same question I had put to Tomas. This time I got an answer. “Would you want me, even if I wasn’t Pythia?”
