by Karen Chance
He shrugged. "No matter. I still collect the bounty."
"There's a bounty?"
"Half a million euros." His smile grew. "You are about to make me rich."
"Half a million? Are you kidding me? I'm the Pythia. I'm worth way more than that."
He took out a gun, a Sig Sauer P210, which I recognized because of the shooting lessons Pritkin had been giving me. My aim wasn't any better, but I could identify all kinds of guns now. Even the one about to kill me.
"I'm a simple man," Manassier said, "with simple needs. Half a million will do nicely."
It figured that I'd get the nongreedy crook. I swallowed a crazy urge to laugh. "You don't have to shoot me," I gasped. "I can't hold on much longer anyway."
"Yes, but if you slip, the Circle may say you died of natural causes and not pay the bounty. And then all this was for nothing."
"Yeah. That'd be a shame."
He clicked the safety off. "Now hold still and this won't hurt."
"That would be a nice change." My body felt like it weighed a ton, my arms were liquid with fatigue, and my shoulders were aching in their sockets. It would be such a relief to just let go.
So I did.
I heard him yell something in French and felt a bullet whiz by my head, but it was unimportant because I was falling, and there was nothing to hold on to, just sliding dirt and limestone rocks crumbling beneath my hands. My arms flailed wildly, grasping for the one thing I had to find, but for a long second I felt only air. Then my fingers collided with something warm and alive and I grabbed it and we were both falling. There was a dizzying rush of air and my power wouldn't come and all I could think was that I'd killed us both—then my brain whited out and my heart tried to stop and reality twisted and bent around us.
And we tumbled into a casino lobby half a world away.
I hadn't judged things perfectly because of the whole abject terror thing, and we fell from about four feet above the ground. Pritkin hit the floor first, with a pained grunt, with me clinging to his back. And then everything got incredibly still for a minute, as it always did whenever I survived something insanely dangerous and really stupid. The fact that I recognized the phenomenon probably meant it had happened a few too many times. I lay there quivering, hearing an upsurge in the polite babble of the guests and not caring. All I could think was, oh, thank God, I didn't kill us.
After a stunned moment, I coughed hard and rolled off. My face was dusty, my palms were scraped raw and I was panting and limp. Various muscle groups were twitching at random, seizing up with tight bursts of pain and then releasing. I felt like bursting into tears and screaming in triumph all at the same time.
Pritkin finally groaned and sat up. He was pale and sweating profusely, with damp hair plastered to his forehead. He had cuts on his face and hands and burns on his forearm.
I wanted to touch him, to reassure myself that we'd both actually survived, but I didn't dare. A gal could lose a hand that way. So I just stared at him instead, so glad to be alive that my aching back and trembling arms and ferocious headache hardly registered at all. "That was fun," I croaked. "Only, not."
Pritkin hauled me into a sitting position, one dirty, scarred hand cupping the back of my neck. "Are you all right?" His voice was sharp and biting, with a slightly panicked edge.
"I told you to stop asking—"
He shook me, and despite it being one-handed, it made my teeth rattle. "If anything like that ever happens again. You. Leave. Me. Behind. Do you understand?"
I would have argued, but I was feeling a little shocky for some reason. "I'm not good at abandoning people," I finally said.
A front-desk person scurried over, first-aid kit in hand, but Pritkin snarled at the poor guy and he quickly backed up a step. "Then get good at it!"
He stomped off, limping, one shoulder hanging at an odd angle. "You're welcome," I murmured.
Chapter 3
Pritkin and I had landed at Dante's, Vegas' cross between a haunted house and a casino. It was currently what he referred to as our base of operations and I called our hideout. And, as hiding places went, it ranked pretty high. Not only was it a well-warded, vampire-run property, but we'd recently helped to trash a large piece of it. It seemed unlikely that many of our enemies would think to look for us there. At least, that was the plan.
I was sitting in Purgatory, the lobby bar, the next afternoon, trying to scalp a shrunken head, when a vampire walked in. He was swathed in a dark cloak and hood that would have looked theatrical anywhere else, but the prickle at the base of my spine told me what he was. It looked like the plan pretty much sucked.
I watched him out of the corner of my eye while I finished dissecting the head. The clump of matted black hair finally came off more or less intact. I put down the piece of molded plastic I'd been working on and picked up the real deal, which was perched on an overturned ashtray nearby. It glared at me balefully out of one shriveled, raisinlike eye. "I can't believe it's come to this," it complained. "Somebody kill me now."
"Somebody already did."
"That's cold, blondie."
I put the long ponytail onto its wrinkled skin and adjusted it. The head, rumored to have belonged to a gambler who had welshed on the wrong bet, usually took orders at the zombie bar upstairs. It was currently unemployed, courtesy of a fire that had raged out of control for almost an hour. The head had somehow survived, except for its hair.
I felt kind of responsible—the Circle's war mages had set the blaze while attempting to barbecue me—so I had been trying to replace its singed locks with some taken from one of the fakes sold as souvenirs at the gift shop. Dante's isn't known for the high quality of its merchandise, ensuring that I'd spent an hour sorting through about a hundred heads, trying to find a good match. Not that my help seemed to be appreciated.
"I can't go around looking like this!" it said sourly as I reached for the superglue. "I'm the main attraction here. I'm the star!"
"It's either this or I scalp Barbie," I threatened. "They don't make wigs in your size."
"Sweetheart, they don't make anything in my size. And it's never stopped me before."
"I don't even want to know what that means," I said honestly.
The vampire was now scanning the crowded tables. Maybe he was here for a drink or a quick game of craps, but I doubted it. I'd recently turned down an offer of employment from the Vampire Senate, something that isn't generally considered healthy. The surprise wasn't that they'd sent someone to restate their offer in more emphatic terms, but that it had taken them this long.
I watched a harried-looking waitress, dressed in a few black straps and thigh-high boots, move forward to greet the new arrival. She walked like her arches hurt, which was probably the case. Bondage chic was Purgatory's shtick, chosen to match the name, but it wasn't made for eight-hour shifts on your feet. I could testify to that personally, having spent several days literally in her shoes.
The idea was to hide in plain sight. At least that's what Casanova, the casino's manager, had claimed. I suspected he just wanted the free help.
Casanova's master was Antonio, a Philadelphia crime boss better known as Tony, although his name these days was mud for crossing his own master—who happened to be Mircea. Among other things, Tony'd tried to have me killed, which would have seriously interfered in Mircea's plans. Not being the forgiving type, Mircea had confiscated everything Tony owned, including the casino and its manager. Before being sidelined by the geis, he'd ordered Casanova to assist me, but hadn't given specifics. As a result, Casanova's «assistance» had taken the form of a lot of fill-in jobs for which I'd yet to see a paycheck.
But until Pritkin found us an actual, honest-to-God lead, I didn't have much else to do. Except to stare obsessively at the clock, wondering how many seconds of freedom I had left. Staying busy helped with that. A little. And Casanova had a point about the outfit. My shiny PVC shorts and bustier combo didn't hide much, but with elaborate eye makeup and a long black wig, I barely recognized my str
awberry-blond, blue-eyed self. I fiddled with the head and tried to look nonchalant, hoping the disguise would hold up.
The man sitting beside me started complaining. "A thumbscrew?" He slapped the drinks list down on the bar. "What the hell is that?"
"You're not in Hell," the bartender corrected him. "And no souls eat or drink in Purgatory."
"Then what do they do?" the guy asked sarcastically.
"They suffer." I thought the bartender's dungeon master garb, consisting of a bare chest, hangman's hood and studded cuffs, should have already made that clear. If not, the couple dozen torture devices serving as wall art might have clued the guy in.
"I am suffering—from thirst!" the tourist insisted.
"A thumbscrew is a screwdriver," I explained helpfully.
"Gee, thanks, Elvira. So what I gotta do? Solve a riddle before I can order a drink?"
"It's not that hard," the bartender said patiently, placing a flaming cocktail in front of another guest. "A Lynching is a Lynchburg lemonade, an Iron Maiden is an old-fashioned, a—"
"All I want is a Bloody Mary! You got one of them?"
"Yes."
"What's it called?"
"A Bloody Mary."
The vampire had paused beside me. "It won't work," I told him. No way was I changing my mind. Vampires in general aren't to be trusted, but the Senate makes the average vamp look like a paragon of virtue.
"That's what I've been trying to tell you," the head spat. "This is an outrage!"
I set the ungrateful thing back on its ashtray and swiveled to face my unwanted visitor. "And why bother with a disguise? It's not like I wouldn't know what you are."
"It wasn't meant for you," the vampire said, throwing back the hood.
A pair of rich brown eyes met mine, the color as soft and familiar as well-worn suede. Only their agonized expression was new. I started in shock. "Rafe?"
He collapsed against the bar, holding his stomach as if he'd been punched. I slid off my stool and helped him onto it, feeling him shiver despite the thick, fuzzy wool cloak he clutched around himself. The streets outside were shimmering in the late June heat, yet he was bundled up like we were scheduled for a blizzard. I'd known him all my life, and I'd never seen him look this bad.
We'd met at the court of the vampire who turned him, the aforementioned Tony, who had ordered Rafe to paint my bedroom when I was a child. I doubt that Tony had done it to please his resident clairvoyant. It just fit his warped sense of humor to give the greatest artist of the Renaissance the most menial jobs he could find. But Raphael had actually enjoyed it, and in the months it took to litter my ceiling with angels, stars and clouds, we'd become fast friends. He'd been one of the few things that had made growing up at Tony's bearable.
Rafe's lips were cold when he kissed me briefly, and his hands were like ice. I warmed them in mine, worry gnawing at my insides. He wasn't supposed to be cold. Vampires are as warm as humans unless they're famished, but that couldn't be it. Like all masters, Rafe could feed from blood molecules drawn at a distance. If he felt like it, he could drain half the bar without anyone noticing until the bodies started hitting the floor.
"I'm all right, Cassie." Rafe squeezed my hands and I immediately felt more centered. He always had that effect on me, maybe because he comforted me so often as a child. I'd grown up believing that, if he said something was okay, it must be true, and old habits die hard.
"Then what is it? Something's wrong." He swallowed, but instead of answering, he just looked at me pleadingly, his face dancing with neon shadows from the glass «flames» that surrounded the bar. My short-lived calm fled right out the window. "Rafe! You're scaring me!"
"That wasn't my intention, mia stella." His voice, usually a lightly accented tenor, was a harsh croak. He swallowed, but when he tried to speak again, he only strangled. He let go of my hands to claw at his throat, his face contorted in a rictus, and I stumbled back a step, colliding with the cool column of mist that was Billy Joe.
Some people have spirit guides, wise, serene types who give them help from the great beyond. I have a smart-aleck ex—card shark who spends more time rigging the casino games than he does advising me. Of course, considering that his mortal existence ended with him taking a header into the Mississippi, courtesy of a couple of cowboys he'd been cheating, that might not be such a bad thing.
"He's fighting a command," Billy said unnecessarily.
I shot him an impatient glance. Billy's status as the life-challenged segment of our partnership often means he knows more about the supernatural world than I do, but of the two of us, I know more about vamps. Growing up at Tony's had seen to that.
Even vampires who become masters are still bound by their own master's control—unless they reach first-level status, which most never do. But older vamps have more flexibility in interpreting commands than a newborn. A lot more, if they're smart and willing to risk punishment. And Rafe had stretched a point for me before, informing Mircea of Tony's plan to kill me even at great risk to himself. If he hadn't helped me, I'd have never lived long enough to become the Pythia.
"Tony isn't around to give any orders," I said slowly, and some of the terrible tension left Rafe's face. The bane of both our existences was literally out of this world, hiding somewhere in Faerie. "He couldn't have forbidden you to see me—unless it's an old command."
For a long moment Rafe held himself unnaturally still, the flickering lights of the bar the only movement on his face. Then, slowly, almost imperceptibly, his head moved side to side. I glanced at Billy Joe, who had drifted off a few feet. The flames filtered through him eerily, gold and red and translucent umber. He pushed his Stetson up with an insubstantial finger. "Well, that sorta narrows it down."
I nodded. With Tony gone, there was only one person left whose commands could make Rafe choke at the mere thought of contradicting them: Tony's master.
The bar was hot and humid with too many bodies, but chills shivered down my arms anyway. Unfulfilled longing swept through me, blood and bone and skin stretched paper thin as part of me yearned, reaching out for someone who wasn't there. I glanced up at the sign over the bar: LEAD ME NOT INTO TEMPTATION; THAT WOULD MEAN BACKING UP. No freaking kidding.
Rafe was looking at me with big, concerned eyes. I could only think of one reason for him to be here: to ask me to see Mircea. And wasn't that just all I needed. I bit back the urge to scream. My nerves had a perpetually scraped-raw feeling these days, but it wasn't Rafe's fault. "You may as well go back," I told him unsteadily. "There's nothing I can do."
Rafe shook his head in a wild, negative motion, causing his dark curls to dance madly about his face. He looked around the room, eyes shifting in sudden darts as if he thought someone might be sneaking up on him. His nerves were showing, something he'd never been able to completely control, even at court. It had cost him more than once.
His gaze returned to my face, and there was desperation in it, but also determination. "I am not well," he said, and paused, as if waiting for something.
I blinked, fairly sure I was missing the point. Vampires don't get sick. Shot, burned, staked, yeah; the flu, not so much.
"I can summon a healer," I offered. Dante's was more than familiar with little accidents. A couple of hungry gargoyles had decided to snack on some of the animal acts the night before, only to discover that the trained wolves weren't wolves at all. The result had been a near apocalyptic battle in the lower levels that had given the on-site medical staff something to do for the rest of the night. And that sort of thing wasn't exactly unusual.
"I do not think a healer would be able to help," Rafe said slowly, his eyes brightening as no visible retribution was taken. I realized what he was up to as he looked at me eagerly. If he pretended he was talking about himself instead of Mircea, he could get around the prohibition. The thought drifted through my mind that Mircea must not be up to his usual standard, to have left such an obvious loophole.
"It doesn't matter," I said, hoping to fores
tall a painful explanation. "If I could do anything, don't you think I would have?" The geis that was putting me through hell was doing even worse things to Mircea. It strengthened depending on how long it had been in place, and due to a little accident with the timeline, he'd been dealing with it longer than I had. By about a century.
My former rival for the position of Pythia, a lunatic named Myra, had decided to remove the competition by a little creative homicide. She couldn't kill me, because there was a rule prohibiting the murderer of the Pythia or her designated heir from inheriting. But being savvy about all things time-related, Myra had worked out an alternative. If Mircea died before Tony and I had our little blowup, it would remove his protection from me, allowing Tony to do the dirty work for her.
The only problem with her plan was that it required fiddling with the time line, and my power didn't like that. It kept sending me back in time to prevent the assassination attempts. And during one of those trips, I met Mircea in a period before the geis was placed. The spell immediately recognized him as the other component needed to complete itself and jumped from me to him. That not only gave him the geis a century early, but it ensured that when he had the original spell cast on us, he ended up with two strands of it, not one. And, as I could attest, one was bad enough.
"But…there is no one else!" Rafe looked almost frantic at my refusal. He also looked surprised. I had a sudden rush of guilt, which was monumentally unfair. Mircea had started this, not me.
"If I knew the counterspell, I'd have cast it already," I repeated, with a little more bite to my tone than I usually used with Rafe. What did he think I'd been doing for the past week, anyway?
The book containing the only known counterspell was the Codex Merlini, a compilation of ancient magical lore that had been lost long ago—assuming it had ever existed. Most of the people Pritkin and I had contacted had been of the opinion that the Codex was nothing more than a myth. It was like the rest of the Arthurian legend, we'd been assured by one supercilious mage after another. There'd never been a Camelot, except in the imagination of a medieval French poet. And there was no Codex.
