Ride the Storm

by Karen Chance

  But on that, the card was silent.

  * * *

  I never made it upstairs. By the time I’d gotten myself presentable, I’d also received a text from the guy with my ticket to ride. Or, at least, my ticket to sixth-century Wales.

  That was a good thing, because I obviously wasn’t going anywhere without it. I barely made it to an apartment on the other end of the Strip, less than a mile away. And even then, I didn’t stick the landing.

  “Cassie!” Something clattered into what sounded like a sink, but I couldn’t tell because I’d hit my knee and it was that knee, the I-crawled-on-shrapnel-across-a-blood-streaked-floor knee, and the pain was enough to momentarily blind me.

  “You okay?” a familiar voice asked, closer now, and sounding concerned. Probably because I’d just screamed like a banshee.

  That’s another thing the movies get wrong. Why is the hero always so damn manly? Why is it not okay to scream a little when it feels like you just shattered a kneecap? Why are you supposed to suck it up and soldier on, without even a curse or two? Is that reasonable?

  I must have said part of that out loud, because my companion sighed. “No, it’s not reasonable,” he agreed. And the next thing I knew, I was being hauled over to a black leather sofa that all but screamed bachelor pad.

  That was fair, since the guy who owned it was a confirmed old bachelor.

  Well, okay, not exactly old. When he had hair—which wasn’t often—it was still dark, and the chocolate skin was mostly unlined. The handsome features looked fortyish, although it was hard to say. The war mage profession aged a person almost as much as being Pritkin’s friend, and Caleb was both.

  Lately he’d been mine, too, although he’d probably prefer not to be, considering the stuff I got him into. But there weren’t a lot of war mages I could trust, especially senior ones who might know a thing or two. And who might be willing to keep said things from his boss.

  “Do you have it?” I slurred. I’d planned on a few pleasantries first—hi, how are you, did your day suck as hard as mine—but right now I just really wanted—

  “Thank God.” I grabbed the little triangular bottle Caleb pulled out of his jeans and downed a third of its contents. It tasted utterly, utterly vile, the kind that makes you shiver and shake and have to choke it down through sheer force of will.

  But oh, it was sweet once you did.

  I collapsed back against the sofa, gasping.

  The Tears of Apollo was a potion designed to help the Pythias access their power. It worked by increasing our stamina—always a problem, since the power was virtually endless, but our ability to channel it wasn’t. And channeling stuff meant for a god when you weren’t one was a real bitch.

  But with the Tears, we could not only hold out for longer; we could use more of the power at a time, allowing our spells to have more oomph behind them. That was why I needed it, in order to shift an impossible-sounding fifteen hundred years into the past after Pritkin. It was also why the competition had been after it last night, when they sicced Lizzie on me.

  Agnes’ old acolytes had only been given a narrow stream of the power for training, but access was access. They’d hoped that the Tears would widen the flow enough to rival a Pythia’s power, allowing them to shift Ares past my mother’s barrier. And it might have, except for one small problem.

  They didn’t have any.

  The Tears was only used by one person, so potion stores didn’t carry it and potion brewers didn’t know it. The only people who did were the Circle, who traditionally brewed it for the Pythias, and the Pythias themselves. And the vampire senate, who weren’t supposed to have it or even know about it, but since when had that ever stopped them?

  The senate had three bottles originally, which seemed to be what a batch made. They’d acquired it back when I first got this job, because they’d had a little time errand they wanted me to do and assumed I’d need the help. That had left two bottles up for grabs, and Amelie—the strongest of the rogues—had grabbed them last night.

  And had promptly gotten power drunk as all hell, not being used to that much access all at once. Partly as a result, she’d gone on a tear at the consul’s house, instead of just shifting Ares over immediately. That had allowed me time to catch up with her, and to take the last bottle after our duel.

  And this was it. The last bottle the senate had, and quite possibly the last bottle anywhere. Which was why I’d dropped it off with Caleb before I went after Rosier, hoping that one of his contacts could reproduce it.

  Really hoping.

  “You okay?” Caleb asked. I realized I’d closed my eyes at some point, and opened them to see the patented war mage scowl.

  “Was your friend able to help?” I asked thickly.

  The scowl ramped up a notch, and he sat back on his heels. “Yes and no. The good news is, he can make a pretty good guess at the contents. The bad news, like I warned you last night, is that an ingredient list is useless without the recipe.”

  “But if he knows what’s in it—”

  “It’s not just about what’s in it. It’s about brewing time, temperature, method of combining ingredients—a hundred variables. Combine them one way, you get magic. Combine them another . . . a really expensive sludge.”

  “So he can’t duplicate it?” I asked, to be sure.

  “No.”

  “So how do I get more?”

  “You ask the old man. It’s your potion, Cassie. You’re the Pythia—”

  He broke off when I sat up and put my head in my hands, not sure if I wanted to laugh or cry. I was Pythia when other people wanted something or found it convenient, but when the shoe was on the other foot? Not so much.

  “Do you have any coffee?” I asked, after a minute. “Tea? Something with caffeine?”

  Caleb snorted. “Not what you’d consider coffee. Not if you’ve been drinking that nuclear waste John mainlines all day.”

  “I don’t drink Pritkin’s coffee and he doesn’t eat my doughnuts. We have a deal.”

  “I’d hate to see the doughnut John would eat,” Caleb said, standing up. And circling around the little half wall that separated the open-plan kitchen from the open-plan living room.

  He brewed stuff while I watched the Strip through the semicircle of windows to the left of the couch. And slowly began to feel stronger and more clearheaded. And lighter, like my limbs no longer weighed half a ton each. Even the pain from all those little, and not so little, wounds didn’t seem to matter so much anymore. They still hurt, but I could ignore them.

  For the moment. But experience had proven that one bottle of the Circle’s special brew wasn’t going to last me for long. And without it, in my current state, I wasn’t going to be much use to anybody.

  In a minute, Caleb was back with something that smelled good—genuinely good.

  “You look surprised,” he said.

  I stuck my nose in the mug. “What’s in this?”

  “Amaretto.”

  I looked up hopefully. “Like those little cookies?”

  Caleb sighed and got back to his feet.

  “And maybe a sandwich?” I turned around and put my good knee on the couch so I could see him. The smell of that coffee had me suddenly starving. “Do you have sandwich stuff?”

  “I don’t cook.”

  “Making a sandwich isn’t cooking. And what do you eat?”

  Caleb looked at me over a muscular shoulder. “Takeout. This is Vegas.”

  “But you live here. Doesn’t takeout get old?”

  “No.” He rooted around in the fridge. “Fish tacos?”

  “Sounds good.”

  He stuck a nose in the container and made a face. “It wouldn’t if you smelled them.”

  They hit the garbage can.

  “Don’t you have anyone to cook for you? A girlfriend?”

 
; “War mage,” he reminded me, sniffing a take-out bag. And rearing back, his eyes watering. “I gotta clean out this fridge.”

  “So war mages don’t get the women?” I asked, only half joking. Because Caleb was a damn good catch. Handsome, brave, a world traveler—more than one world now—and judging by the apartment, he wasn’t broke. But if there were any feminine touches around here, I didn’t see them.

  Even the artwork on the walls were line drawings, black on white and black-framed, more architectural than strictly beautiful. Sort of like the man himself: solid, straightforward, but more interesting than you’d expect when you got to know him.

  “Women like security,” he told me. “Safety—”

  “What’s safer than being married to a war mage?”

  “—for their man, as well as for themselves. They don’t like going to bed not knowing if he’s gonna be there when they wake up, or if he’s ever gonna be there again.”

  “Cops have wives,” I pointed out. “And soldiers—”

  “And they face some of the same kind of thing. But it’s worse for us. Some of the stuff we work on . . . they can’t be told what happened to us, when we don’t come back. They may never be told. It’s . . . difficult.”

  “So war mages don’t settle down?”

  “Some do. Some marry other war mages. Some get divorced and drink too much.” He shrugged.

  “Makes me wonder why anybody does the job at all.”

  “I’ve often thought the same thing about Pythias.”

  I made a face.

  And then made a different one when a plate was handed over the counter.

  It was a retrospective of Caleb’s weekly intake. But since he wasn’t as much of a health nut as Pritkin, there was actual food on there: broccoli beef still in its little carton, potato salad, dim sum balls stuffed with barbecued pork, chicken shawarma . . . and some of the requested amaretto cookies.

  I dug in and Caleb watched me over the counter while sipping his own mug of coffee.

  “So why can’t you just ask the old man for the potion?” he finally said.

  I swallowed. “Because I’ve tried trusting Jonas lately, and it hasn’t gone well. I thought we had an understanding, but then he snuck Lizzie away this morning, before I got back, so now I don’t know.”

  “You could ask him. See what he says.”

  “Yeah, I could,” I agreed, around a mouthful of chicken. “Only I already did that a couple days ago, and didn’t get anywhere. He claimed he didn’t have any more, and maybe he doesn’t. Or maybe he does, and he doesn’t want to give it to me. He’s afraid I’m going to go off somewhere and get myself killed, like I can’t do that here!”

  There was silence for another minute while I shoveled food into my face. It finally stretched long enough that I looked up and found Caleb regarding me moodily. “What?”

  “You won’t like it.”

  “Well, there’s a switch.”

  He sighed and ran a hand over his head. It was the cue ball look today, so the recessed lights were shining on a slick dome that looked like it had too much to think about. At least if the wrinkles on the forehead were anything to go by.

  “You look like a good gust of wind would blow you away,” he finally said.

  “Caleb—”

  “And I’ve seen that look, all right? I’ve seen it a lot. I know war mages who would have broken from some of the stuff you’ve been up to, and I strongly suspect I don’t know the half of it. Maybe Jonas sees the same thing, that you need a rest—”

  “Yeah, I’ll take a few days off, hang by the pool.”

  “I’m serious—”

  “So am I,” I said, a little sharper than necessary. Because how did he not get this? “I take a vacation, and Pritkin will be dead and Ares will be back, because I have two rogues still alive and I don’t know where either of them is!”

  “Two? I thought Lizzie—”

  “Two. Jo Zirimis is the other, and she isn’t even in custody. My power is ignoring her, acting like she doesn’t exist, but she does—”

  “Then why is the Black Circle targeting Lizzie?”

  “Because they don’t know where Jo is, either! Nobody knows where she is—or when,” I added darkly, because one of my now deceased rogues had claimed that she was going after the same godly weapon that I was.

  But if Jo was trying to shift back fifteen hundred years, she was going to be trying awhile. I was assuming that was why my power was ignoring her, that she was shifting in baby steps, ten or fifteen years at a time, whatever an acolyte’s thin stream of access would allow. And not getting anywhere. That or she was dead, too, because time travel was damn dangerous, as I ought to know. But that still left me with Lizzie to worry about, and I was worried.

  “I need to know where Lizzie is, Caleb. I need to know what Jonas did with her, if she’s secure—”

  “I’m sure she is—”

  “Are you?” I swallowed pork. “Because I’m not. Jonas took her away, and didn’t even bother to tell me where—”

  “You just said you weren’t there.”

  “—or to tell anyone else! Or to wait for me to come back—”

  “And do what with her? You don’t have the facilities—”

  “And he does?”

  “He has more than you. And maybe he thought that’s what you’d want—”

  “So he asks me!”

  I glared up at him, and for a minute he glared back. War mages—some war mages—tended to be fanatically loyal, especially to a guy they’d followed for decades. It was why Jonas’ crazy coup of the Silver Circle had worked; a lot of mages had chosen to follow him or to just putz around on the sidelines rather than support his corrupt successor. At the time I’d been grateful for that, since coups tended to be a lot bloodier than ours had been. But now . . .

  It could be really inconvenient now.

  “Jonas is in Britain,” I told him steadily. “That’s all I know. I need to know more than that.”

  Caleb didn’t say anything.

  “Caleb—”

  “We’re getting perilously close to me crossing a line here,” he said quietly.

  “You didn’t cross it when you helped me break Pritkin out of hell?”

  “That was different. I’m supposed to help the Pythia. It’s part of the oath.” He winced slightly. “And the old man never specifically said not to break into a hell zone. . . .”

  “So when I asked you said yes. Okay, I’m asking now.”

  “Yeah, but what you’re asking now is that I give you classified information, which I don’t have, by the way. I don’t know where your acolyte is—”

  “She isn’t my acolyte. She’s Agnes’ acolyte, and she’s about to be the dark mages’ acolyte if I don’t find her!”

  “That’s a leap—”

  “I don’t think so.” I put the plate down, both because I’d finished inhaling the contents and because Caleb was too far away. I wanted to see his eyes. I climbed onto the sofa again and leaned over the counter. He shied back slightly. I inched forward, and his back hit the fridge. It should have been funny, the big, bad war mage running from the skinny little blonde, only neither of us was laughing.

  “This morning, if I hadn’t had help, I would have died,” I said quietly. “I wouldn’t have Ramboed my way out of it; I would have died. And if Rambo had been there, so would he. I can’t fight this war alone.”

  “No one’s asking you to.”

  “Aren’t they?”

  Caleb crossed his arms and shifted position slightly, putting his eyes in shadow again. “Jonas has to work with you. You’re the Pythia. He doesn’t have a choice.”

  “Well, he’s been acting a lot lately like a guy who thinks he does. He’s been acting like a guy who thinks he can run things on his own, can run this war on his
own, and that isn’t going to work. Not for any of us,” I added when he opened his mouth to object. “We work together or we die together, Caleb. This morning showed that if anything ever did. But Jonas can’t or won’t see it, so I’m asking you—”

  “Cassie—”

  “—I’m asking you, as Pythia, for two things: Lizzie’s location and the recipe. Can you get them?”

  “You’re not going to make this easy for me, are you?”

  “I can’t afford to. Can you get them?”

  He closed his eyes and rubbed the bridge of his nose. It didn’t seem to help. “Honestly? I don’t know. I don’t know where your potion is any more than I know where they have the girl.”

  “But you can find out?”

  Dark eyes finally met mine, lit up by a stray beam when he raised his head, but I couldn’t read them. Caleb was usually more emotional than some of his war mage buddies, more human, more willing to think for himself instead of blindly following orders. But tonight he was as stoical as I’d ever seen him. And as closed off.

  “I suppose you’re planning to shift back six months if I do, and find a maker? It takes that long to brew.”

  “I know. That’s not a problem.”

  “But something else might be.”

  He stopped with just that, so I knew this wasn’t going to be good. “Such as?”

  “That potion. I know you think you need it, and I know it doesn’t actually feed you any magic itself.”

  “But?”

  “But it allows you to access an almost unlimited stream, doesn’t it? The Pythian power is about the most potent source of magical power around, and the Tears let you basically mainline the stuff—”

  I blinked at him. “You’re afraid I’ll get addicted?”

  “I’ve seen how fast it gets someone. Half those guys you fought today probably didn’t start out thinking, when I grow up, I want to be a dark mage—”

  “Caleb.”

  “Some of them started with illegal skills from birth, and didn’t like the restrictions we put on them. Some made bad choices when they were young, and just kept falling further and further behind. And some—”