by Ann Gimpel
“He might know more than he told you,” Ketha spoke up.
Viktor had come to the same conclusion. “Good job shielding yourself.”
“Thanks. We should follow that Vamp you talked with.”
“Maybe. Glenn is dumb enough to lead us right to Raziel, but we may be reading him wrong, and he might not have any idea where he is.”
Viktor considered the logistics of shadowing the other Vamp, but Glenn would sense he was being tracked. It was a survival instinct. Better to give him a decent head start before following his trail. Meantime, it wouldn’t hurt to keep right on hunting. He started toward the building he, Raphael, and several other Vamps called home.
“You decided not to follow Glenn,” Ketha observed.
“We can’t. Not immediately. He’d sense me behind him. Now if I had your ability to cloak my presence... But I don’t. We’ll see what we can find in Raph’s home.”
Viktor covered the remaining quarter mile and trotted up deep-veined green marble steps and into the building. Another Vamp emerged from the stairwell and raised a hand in greeting. “May as well go up and join the party.”
“What party?”
“Bunch of us are clearing what we want out of Raph’s old digs before Jorge craps all over them.” The Vampire snorted laughter, fangs extending over his lower lip.
Viktor pointed at the Vamp’s empty arms. “Didn’t find anything you liked?”
“Meh. Antique shit never did much for me.”
“Speaking of antiques”—Viktor held a casual posture—“have you seen Raziel lately?”
“What is it with that fellow?”
“What do you mean?” Viktor trotted closer.
“Jorge wanted to know where he was too. Before he lost it with that human. Did you hear about—?”
Viktor rounded one hand into a dismissive motion. “Yup. Ran into Glenn. Damn. Sounds like a new low, even for us.”
The other Vampire shook his head, leaned close, and lowered his voice. “No shit. Blood and gore don’t bother me, but it will be a long time before I walk past that intersection again. Easier to avoid it.”
“Raziel?” Viktor persisted.
“I haven’t seen him in weeks, but last I knew he had an underground lair north of town. If he knows Jorge’s looking for him, I’d bet my last peso he’s on the move.”
“Thanks.” Viktor trotted toward the staircase leading down.
“What are we doing?” Ketha asked. “I thought we were going to Raphael’s apartment.”
“We’re going to mine so we can regroup and you can conserve your magic.”
He led the way into the sub-basement and opened the door to his room. The only one who’d ever visited him here was Raphael. Viktor wasn’t worried about Jorge barging in. The other Vamp was sunk into blood-fury, something that happened to Vampires who lost control after feeding. It would take him a while to recover. Or not. Raphael’s energy driving things added many unknowns to Viktor’s calculations, making accurate predictions damn near impossible.
The door shut behind him, and Ketha shimmered into visibility. Her gaze moved around his room. “Nice,” she said. “Has a homey feel I never would’ve associated with one of you.” Color stained her cheeks. “That didn’t come out right. What I meant is, it’s a nice room. I can picture you here.”
He felt flustered but shoved it aside. He also ignored wanting to draw her into an embrace and lay her on his bed. It only felt safe here. It wasn’t really.
“We can’t stay long. There wasn’t much point in joining the looting fest upstairs.”
“Has enough time elapsed we could follow wherever Glenn went?”
“Probably, but maybe we’d be better served to look for Raziel in the tunnel system where it extends north of the city.”
“All I heard was underground lair, not necessarily tunnels,” Ketha said. She raked her hands through her unbound hair, and it resettled in waves framing her face. “It’s like looking for a needle in a haystack, and we don’t have that kind of time.”
“I’m up for suggestions.” Viktor wrapped his arms around her.
“You won’t like the one I’m kicking around.”
“Try me.” He leaned back enough to see her face.
“I can track Raziel with magic.”
“How? You’ve never met him.”
Ketha winced. “This is the part you won’t like. I can cast a seeking spell linked to the prophecy and follow its magic with my mirror, but I can’t do it while I’m cloaked. When I deploy that level of power, someone may hone right in on me—if they’re paying attention.”
“No.” The word burst from him like a shell shot from a cannon. “Besides, you’re not even certain this particular Raziel has anything to do with the prophecy Aura outlined. He couldn’t possibly be an Archangel any more than Raphael is.”
Her mouth twisted into a grim expression that turned her beauty harsh and foreboding. “We’d find that part out damned fast. I can do that from here. Vampires are sensitive to expended magic, so let’s hope the curiosity seekers at the free-for-all upstairs are totally immersed in rooting through Raphael’s treasures.”
She pulled a mirror from her pocket and blew on its surface, chanting low in Gaelic, the same language she’d used back on Arkady. He began to protest that he hadn’t given her a go-ahead for her plan but bit back the words. She didn’t work for him, didn’t require his approval for her actions. If she could cast magic that hastened their search, he’d be a fool to tell her not to try.
He moved to where he could look over her shoulder at the mirror in her hand. Oblong, it was about eight inches tall and seven across in a tarnished brass frame. Clouds covered its surface. Ketha tapped on the glass, and the timbre of her chant altered, becoming lower, more guttural. It might have been his imagination, but something warm and shimmery enveloped her and the parts of him that leaned against her back.
The clouds parted from the middle outward, revealing a gravel track and a circle of stunted cypress trees. Viktor recognized the place. He watched Raziel creep from within the circle of trees, stopping at its edge. The old Vampire glanced over his shoulder as if he feared someone was following him. Viktor leaned closer, and the mirror cleared still more, almost as if attuned to his need to view additional details.
Raziel twisted, facing Viktor squarely, and drew his upper lip back, displaying long, yellowed fangs. His eyes were deep-blue whirling pools. Sentient thought had deserted those eyes long ago.
Maintaining her chant, Ketha turned and looked at Viktor, silently seeking confirmation that the fair-haired man in her glass was whom they sought.
Viktor nodded. “That’s him, and I know where he is.”
Ketha fell silent. She waved a hand over the glass, and clouds boiled out of nowhere obscuring Raziel and the cypress grove. Resignation pinched the skin around her eyes, and she slipped her scrying tool back inside her robe.
“When you said he was mad, I assumed he’d be like Raphael. Crazy but functional. There’s something primitive and flawed about the Vampire we saw in my glass.”
“And something ancient. Is he part of the prophecy? Or were you able to tell?”
She scrubbed her hands down her cheeks, distorting her features. “Yeah. He’s part of it. And we need him, but I haven’t got clue one how to talk with him, let alone bend him to our cause. Raphael is wrapped up in this too, never mind the slight inconvenience he’s in a different body now. And that he was likely never an Archangel to begin with. Goddess be damned. What I wouldn’t give for a wiser head than mine.”
Viktor wrapped his arms around her from behind. “We can figure this out as we go. I know where Raziel is, but Vamps move fast. Even crazy ones.”
“You’re right. Let’s go. All we can do is see if he’ll even talk with us.” She belted her robe tighter around her and moved out of his embrace. “One second and I’ll be ready.” She vanished in a flash of white light, but the door opening was a dead giveaway of her location.
Viktor followed her, shutting the door behind them. “We’ll take the tunnels. They’re a faster route to our current objective.”
“I’ll stay right behind you. Just like before.”
He ran down tunnels and side tunnels until he hit the northernmost terminus of the underground warren. Stepping aside, he motioned Ketha up the ladder. Not being able to see her was odd, but he’d become more accustomed to the energy seeping from her. It was subtle, not something he expected another Vampire would recognize, at least not immediately. Raphael might have, but being forced to absorb the world through Jorge’s filtering would probably mute his shrewdness.
Viktor pushed the manhole cover Ketha had shoved aside back into place and loped toward the cypress grove. It was close. Less than half a mile distant. He didn’t expect Raziel would still be there, but they’d be able to track him. Viktor flared his nostrils, seeking to scent the other Vamp, but he didn’t smell anything beyond rotting vegetation and a rodent population living in the decaying leaves. It was past midnight. They’d killed half the night and had nothing to show for it.
Shifter magic flashed from behind him, lighting the night in vivid blue-white. Viktor spun on the balls of his feet. Ketha, a visible Ketha, hissed and spat, clawing at Raziel who’d jumped on her back like a monkey. The Vampire was trying to sink his fangs into her neck, but every time he got close, she took a swipe at his eyes with her fingernails.
The world slowed until Viktor felt like he watched time-lapse photography. He hurtled onto the other Vampire, pulling him off Ketha. The two rolled on the ground, grappling with one another as they punched and raked open flesh with their nails. Raziel got his hands around Viktor’s throat and closed them like a vise. Viktor pulled hard but couldn’t dislodge them. Twisting savagely—while he still had air to fight back—he sank his fangs into Raziel’s wrist.
Cursing in an unfamiliar Slavic language, Raziel let go, cradling the gash on his wrist where bone showed through.
Jolts of white light streaked with violet flew from Ketha’s upraised hands right into Raziel’s back. He tumbled off Viktor and lay panting in the dirt.
“Get up,” Ketha urged Viktor. “What I did won’t hold him long.”
Viktor spat blood and scrambled to his feet. The inside of his lips puckered and burned from Raziel’s blood. “What the fuck are you?” he screeched, kicking the downed Vampire in the ribs with a booted foot.
“That’s an odd question. What do you mean?” Ketha never moved her gaze—or the power still pouring from her—away from Raziel.
“He’s no Vampire. His blood is wrong. Really wrong.” Viktor swiped the back of his hand across his mouth and spat again, wishing for water to rinse the horrible taste away.
“Answer me!” Viktor bellowed.
Raziel rolled to a sit and bared his fangs but made no move to rise. His midnight-blue eyes weren’t even close to human. Dark, whirling pools, they held green-gold centers. “I’m your future,” he snarled in accented English. “I’ve been waiting for the Shifter for a long time.”
“If that’s true,” Ketha said. “Why’d you try to kill me?”
“It’s a future I want no part of.”
Chapter Sixteen: Prophecy Be Damned
“Why not?” Ketha demanded. This was becoming stranger and stranger. A Vampire had seen through her invisibility illusion as if it weren’t there, but Viktor just confirmed the creature on the ground wasn’t exactly a Vampire. She stared at his fangs. What manner of being besides Vamps had them? And then she stared harder.
“Damn! They’re illusion.” She focused a beam of power at the protruding canine teeth, and they disappeared.
“Stop that.” Raziel sounded aggrieved. “Do you want to get me killed before you’ve wrung me dry? Only reason the other ones leave me alone is they’re convinced I’m one of them.” The fangs returned.
Ketha sent an exploratory beam of seeking magic in Raziel’s direction to figure out what he was, but it bounced back hard, cuffing her. “Fine.” She snarled, wishing her wolf was in ascendency so she’d have fangs of her own. “You can divert my magic, and it doesn’t cost you anything. Hell, you don’t even have to be on your feet to deflect my spell.”
“Would defeat taste sweeter if I were standing?” Brilliant light flared around him. When it cleared, he was indeed upright but keeping distance between them.
“Yes. No. Goddamn you anyway.” A frustrated growl rumbled from her throat.
“Let’s backtrack.” Viktor had moved to her side, facing the Vampire who wasn’t one. “Raziel, or whatever your real name is, which part of the future are you trying to derail? Seems to me the Cataclysm’s done a damn good job of fucking things from here to infinity.”
Raziel looked from one to the other of them, his eyes a changing collage of color. Long moments dripped past before he shook his head. “I’m tired. I could disappear from this spot, but I can’t escape the Cataclysm any more than you can, which means you’d track me down eventually. It was bad enough staying in the shadows so Raphael wouldn’t set his minions on me—”
“You didn’t answer Viktor.” Ketha spoke over him. “You have a role to play in defeating the Cataclysm. I’ve seen it in my glass. If we’re successful, it means we’ll at least have a future.” She pushed her tongue against her teeth, thinking. “What do you know that I don’t?”
“Probably nothing, Shifter.”
The way he said Shifter sounded like a curse, and she zeroed in on it. “You don’t like Shifters, but that can’t be what this is about.”
“Observant of you. Not overly fond of Vampires, either. Or any of the other host of magical creatures like Faeries, Mages, Furies, Griffons... Eh, Dragons weren’t so bad. At least they kept their nests clean and didn’t kill for sport, but it’s a moot point. They had the decency to die out before your meddling broke the world.”
Ketha bristled. “I had nothing to do with that. Neither did Viktor.”
“Ja.” Raziel’s Slavic accent became more pronounced. “But it was your kin. And now we have Vampires who can’t predictably drain and resurrect new recruits and Shifters who have a hell of a time shifting.” He spat onto the ground next to him. “You deserve death. All of you. Your actions fashioned asymmetrical synergy. The Cataclysm was exactly what you deserved. Unfortunately, the rest of us got stuck with it too.”
Anger threaded from her belly outward. Ketha welcomed its energy and rounded on him, stalking close.
“Ketha. Stay back,” Viktor warned.
“I’m not worried. He took his shot and missed.” She folded her arms beneath her breasts.
“Save your breath, Shifter.” The air around Raziel took on a shimmery quality.
Ketha barked a few words in Gaelic, doing her damnedest to hold Raziel in place. Now that she had the feel of him, she could find him easily, but it was a ridiculous waste of both magic and time to have to locate him—again. Not when he stood front and center right now.
His energy tugged and jerked against her efforts.
“Stop that.” She made her voice sharp with command. “Hear me out. I can’t force you to join us or be a part of my casting. If you don’t come willingly, your negativity will ruin the spell, and we’ll all be risking our necks for nothing.”
Her words must have registered because what had felt like an anchor chain dragging her under snapped free. “Thank you.” She inclined her head.
“Never could resist a supplicant.” He tossed his head, making his long, fair hair dance around him.
Ketha tried to see into his mind. Not surprisingly, it remained closed to her. Because she couldn’t locate an angle to leverage, she went on a truth-gathering mission. Maybe if she understood more, she’d be able to convince him to help.
“I’m guessing you really are Raziel. How’d you end up here on Earth?” she asked.
His mouth twisted crookedly. “Wrong place. Wrong time. Once I understood what was happening, I pulled out every trick at my disposal to return t
o my rightful place, but the Cataclysm threw me back. After the third time, I realized I was stuck.”
“But you were here for years before the Cataclysm,” Viktor pointed out. “According to Raphael, you were here when he relocated from Buenos Aires.”
“Your point?” Raziel looked askance at Viktor.
“Not sure I had one,” Viktor muttered. “What the hell were you doing in Ushuaia of all places that took years to accomplish?”
“Time is different for me than you, and that’s the best answer you’ll get.” Raziel shifted his unsettling eyes, pale-ocean blue this time, on Ketha. “I’ll be taking my leave.” He turned his hands palms up. “You’ll hunt me down again and find me far more easily now that you’ve had a taste of what I feel like. I’ll give you the slip, and the game will begin anew. Not a bad way to amuse ourselves as we wait for Armageddon.”
The anger that had kindled earlier erupted. “This is not a game,” Ketha shouted. “I get it that you’ve spent the last ten years—or maybe longer than that—feeling misused and sorry for yourself. I also get it that your tolerance for anything that’s not purely human runs pretty thin.”
Ketha balled her hands into fists. “While we’re on that topic—”
“Which one would that be? You’re skipping around.”
“Humans.” She spat out the word. “If they’re such pets of yours, why didn’t you do more to help them? Only reason any of them are left in Ushuaia is because we”—she tapped her chest—“helped them. The Shifters you profess to despise did everything in our power to keep humans safe from Vampires and see they had the ability to grow food.”
“They’d be better off if you’d ignored them.” Raziel looked away. “At least then they’d be dead.”
“That’s not your decision.” Viktor moved closer to him. “If I remember biblical myths correctly, even God said He wasn’t going to engage in mass destruction of humankind after Sodom and Gomorrah.”
“You hit the nail squarely on its head when you called it myth.” Raziel sneered, displaying his fangs.
“This is scarcely the time or place to argue theology,” Ketha muttered. “I have no idea what happened to you. Maybe you had a falling out with God or some of the other Archangels. For all I know, you were banished here and working on finding a way around your punishment when Shifters and Vamps broke the world.”
