by Linsey Hall
“Good place to hide out,” Del said. “It’s freaking huge.”
“Looks like the road ends at the amphitheater,” I said. “And my dragon sense is pulling me the other way, up the road. Let’s follow it. And stick to the side.”
There wasn’t a lot of cover, but as long as we kept our ears pricked, we should be able to hear what was coming. Thank fates there was enough moonlight that I didn’t need to use my lightstone ring. Del, Nix, and I edged nearer to the columns on the left side of the street and set off down the hill.
Del drew her sword. Nix flexed her hands, ready to conjure whatever weapon the circumstance called for. I focused on having my magic at the ready, hoping this wouldn’t turn into a fight. The goal was recon, not battle.
“You feel that?” Del asked.
“Yeah. Strong magic,” I said. The place was enchanted, but it wasn’t clear what kinds of spells were lurking.
“I bet it comes alive at night,” Nix said. “Keeps the tourists away, that kind of thing.”
“Maybe.” Unless the bad guys we were hunting had managed to enlist the enchantments to protect themselves. That would be bad.
A grinding noise sounded to my left. The hair on my arms stood up. I stilled and turned my head. Two elaborate columns rose tall along the side of the road. Part of an old gate. Each one had a figure carved on it, though the one of a warrior with an animal skin around his shoulder was in far better condition.
“Shit,” Nix whispered.
The statue came to life a second later, hopping down from the pedestal. He was enormous, all massive muscle piled onto a tall frame. His white marble skin turned flesh-colored, his hair turned brown, and his clothing white and red.
“Who goes there?” he demanded in a low voice as he drew a sword from the sheath at his side.
“No one,” Del said. “Who’s asking?”
“Del! Let’s just back away,” Nix hissed. “No need to fight, they might hear us.”
“Hercules,” the man rumbled.
“Maybe we can work something out, Hercules.” Del’s tone was suggestive, and her gaze traveled up and down Hercules’s very human-looking form.
“Are you seriously suggesting you’ll get busy with a statue?” I whispered.
“That’s freaking Hercules, dude,” Del said. “And he looks human enough for me.”
“Does a slattern dare enter my fair city? No one shall pass,” Hercules’s voice rumbled.
“Slattern?” Del’s brows rose. “Oh hell no, marble boy.”
Del drew her sword. The only magic I had to call on was lightning, which would be way too loud. I’d let Del handle this with her sword—silently—and step in if needed.
Nix groaned and held out her hands. The taste of vanilla indicated that she was using her magic. When things grew oddly silent, I realized she was conjuring a sound barrier around us. Good. The last thing we needed to do was alert the bad guys.
Hercules lunged, fast as a snake, swinging his blade toward Del. She parried, their steel clanging in the night.
When Del’s sword lopped off Hercules’s sword arm, I gave a soft shout of triumph. But Hercules didn’t bleed. Instead, he bent to grab the limb, which still clutched the sword. He picked it up and held it back in place. Magic swirled and melded arm and torso back together.
Oh, hell.
He smiled and laughed low in his throat, then lunged at Del again.
“Shit!” Del said.
“This is no normal dude,” I said as I drew my knives. Nix’s sound barrier was good, but I wouldn’t risk lightning.
Del’s and Hercules’s swords flashed in the moonlight. Hercules was damn good with his blade, and every blow landed with a thud. But Del was ridiculously fast, and each time his blows came close, she turned into her phantom self, her flesh disappearing until she looked like a blue apparition. But her blade couldn’t connect in that form, since it too became phantom.
Hercules landed a swipe across Del’s arm. She hissed. Blood dripped to the ground. I flung Righty at Hercules. It thudded into his chest right where his heart should be. He didn’t even grimace.
I nicked my finger with Lefty, my blood igniting the spell that would draw Righty back to me. The dagger pulled itself from his flesh and flew toward me as I flung Lefty. I caught Righty as Lefty plunged into Hercules’s chest, a centimeter from the wound that was already closing.
Again, he didn’t flinch.
“Damn it!” I hissed.
Del delivered a blow that took off Hercules’s arm again, but quick as lighting, he snatched it up and reattached it.
Del panted and clutched her still-bleeding arm. “This isn’t working.”
“Nope,” Nix said. “Hang on, got an idea.”
The eerie silence broke as Nix dropped her sound barrier and conjured an enormous length of chain. She tossed it to me, then flung up the sound barrier once again.
Awesome. I grabbed the heavy chain out of the air and swung it at Hercules. It wrapped around his middle twice, trapping his arms against his sides. He stumbled to the ground. An open lock was looped around one end of the chain.
Hercules bellowed.
“Lock him and gag him,” Nix said as she held the barrier. “If we get away from him, the spell that made him turn to flesh might fade. He’ll revert back to stone.”
“Nice,” I said as I ran to Hercules. I snapped the lock in place, binding him. Del tugged off her thin cotton scarf and handed it to me. I shoved it between his jaws.
He thrashed, his gaze enraged.
“Guess he’s not used to losing.” I stood.
“He hasn’t lost yet.” Nix dropped the sound barrier. “Come on.”
We ran down the street. I did my damnedest to keep my footfalls silent.
“Damn.” Del grabbed my arm and we stopped. “Check out Herc.”
I glanced back. Hercules lay on his back, wrapped in chain with the scarf in his mouth. He’d turned back to stone. “Oh, hell. That definitely doesn’t qualify as leaving things as we found them.”
“We’ll have to come back later, figure out how to put him back the way he was,” Nix said.
“What are you gonna do?” Del asked “Convince him to stand nicely so he’ll turn back into a proper statue?”
“We’ll figure it out.” I glanced around at the darkened street. “Come on. I don’t think that’s the last bad thing we’re going to find.”
Silently, we walked a bit farther down the street. I followed my dragon sense, which was pulling harder now that we were close. The magic that hovered over the ancient city grew, like we were reaching the center. It felt alternately malevolent or benign, but I had no idea why.
The sound of stone grinding against stone sounded again, all too familiar. My head whipped left. A statue with a head covered in snakes was shifting.
Oh shit. “Medusa!”
Nix conjured a large mirror and ducked behind it. Del and I lunged to join her.
“Fast thinking,” I said. “I don’t want to tangle with Medusa.”
Stone grinded against stone on the other side of the mirror, then silence.
“Think it worked?” Nix asked.
“Yeah, but I don’t want to look,” Del said. “How about we just walk away and hope for the best?”
“Yeah.”
We crept out from behind the mirror, then darted to a column, using it for cover.
“Seems clear,” Nix said.
“Let’s go,” I said.
We crept down the street. Nothing followed that I could tell, but no way in hell was I about to look back. I’d never heard of any healer who could turn you back to human once you were stone, and I didn’t want to spend the rest of my days in a museum in this tumbled down school fieldtrip.
We made our way silently along the empty street until a carving in the marble slab at my feet caught my eye.
“Hold up!” I whispered.
Del and Nix stopped, stooping over to peer at the carving.
An outline
of a foot was positioned next to a woman’s head and a heart.
“The woman and the heart indicate there’s a brothel nearby,” I said. “Not sure about the foot.”
“Yeah, I think I’ve read about that kind of symbolism,” Del said.
“This place is big. We need to be smart about this. My dragon sense is telling me they’re somewhere near, but not exactly where.”
“Same,” Nix said. “What are you thinking?”
“This place comes alive if you trigger the magic. So the brothel might come alive.”
“The main bad guys are women, though,” Nix said. “And ancient Roman brothels were rarely full of dudes. At least, not dudes on that side of the transaction.”
“Yeah, yeah. But these women probably have a bunch of guys working for them.”
“True. Henchmen are usually dudes.” Del’s tone was disparaging.
“So they might be sniffing around the brothel.”
Del nodded. “Yeah, that’s possible. Let’s check it out. That foot is the left foot. I think that means it’s on the left side of the road, which agrees with my dragon sense.”
We made our way a little farther along the left side of the road.
“Check it out,” Del whispered, pointing left.
A marble courtyard spread out, leading away from the street. Columns rose and broken walls tumbled. But a glow came from the other side, illuminating the marble.
“Bet that’s it,” I said. “Come on.”
We kept our footsteps silent and our backs pressed to a wall as we approached the lights. Torches. I squinted. But not real torches. They were partially transparent.
“Might I ask why you are skulking about?” a queenly voice asked.
I stiffened.
A figure appeared in front of us, a semi-transparent form draped in ancient Roman robes. Her intricately styled hair was piled high on top of her head, highlighting her beautiful features.
For a terrible second, I thought it might be a phantom, the awful apparitions that fed on fear and misery, forcing it out of their prey. Fortunately, Del was only half-phantom and didn’t have a taste for misery, but that didn’t make me any less afraid of the real thing.
“Are you a ghost?” Del asked.
“Indeed. Are you a Magica?”
The three of us nodded.
“Why are you trespassing upon our property?”
“Your property?” I asked.
“The brothel, of course.”
Ooh, of course. She was a prostitute. A lady of the night. What was the polite term? I didn’t want to offend the woman who could help us.
“We’re sorry. We were just looking for something.” I wracked my brain for something that wasn’t exactly what we were looking for, just in case the ghost liked the bad guys.
“Not those dreadful demons or the two wolf women? Why would you fraternize with rabble like that?”
So she didn’t like them. Perfect.
“Yes, actually,” Nix said. “But we don’t want to fraternize with them. They’re threatening our sister.”
I waved. “That’s me.”
The ghost’s brows rose. “Well, that’s dreadful. I presume you want to get rid of that threat? Kill them perhaps?”
Her bloodthirsty tone made me smile. “Yeah, that’s pretty much what we’re after. Not tonight though. Tonight is just reconnaissance.”
“Perfect!” The ghost clapped her hands. “If you are trying to kill the cretins who have infiltrated our lovely abode, we can help you with that. I am Augusta. Come with me.”
I glanced at Del and Nix, who both shrugged. We followed her transparent, elegant form, making our way through the torches that lined the walkway. Welcoming ghostly men to the brothel?
Augusta led us beneath a beautifully carved arch into a main entry hall. Colors and textures burst, so different than the white marble that made up everything else. Women lounged on padded benches, eating snacks and drinking wine. They were dressed in every color imaginable, chatting and reading, occasionally looking up to check us out.
I blinked, trying to take it all in, and realized that the scene was partially an apparition, like Augusta. The marble structure was real, but all the details and the people were ghostly.
“There are no men,” Del said.
“Well of course there are,” Augusta said. “But only the ones we want. And they’re currently occupied.”
Currently occupied? I caught sight of a ghostly woman leading a man into a hallway. The woman grinned at him over her shoulder.
Oh. Currently occupied that way.
“So you no longer run this as a brothel,” I said.
“No. We’re ghosts, so we have no need for coin. Now, we do whatever we like. Sometimes that includes inviting gentlemen, but not because we must.” She glanced around the room. “Speaking of, Hercules is late.”
Shit. Should we say something?
“Oh oh, what is that look for?” Augusta asked.
I frowned. “Um, we’re sorry. We left Hercules, uh, tied up.”
“Literally,” Del said. “He was going to chop me up, so we restrained him.”
“Would he not have chopped her up?” I asked. Had he just been waking up for his visit with the ghosts?
“Oh, he would have chopped you to little bits,” Augusta said. “He’s the guardian of that side. Tying him up saved your life. We’ll take care of it later.”
“Thank you,” I said. That was a load off my mind. Figuring out how to put him back to normal without him chopping my head off would have been tough.
“Come,” Augusta said. “Have a seat.”
We joined her on a cushioned bench, but cold stone greeted my butt. Apparently the ghostly accessories only worked for ghosts. And possibly their statue lovers.
“So the Shifters and their henchmen are here?” I asked.
“Yes,” Augusta said. “The two Shifter women have six miserable demons in their employ. They have been giving us trouble ever since they arrived.”
“So they can see you.”
“Yes. At night, any Supernatural who visits can see us. The demons have come sniffing around, though the women have not. We’ve run them off, but they’re a nuisance. We want them gone.”
“Where are they?” Del asked.
“The latrines, for the gods’ sake.”
Ew.
“There aren’t many roofed structures left,” Augusta said. “The latrines are essentially large benches a person could recline on, so they’ve been loitering there, playing cards and smoking and being generally obnoxious.”
“What about the Shifter women?”
“They don’t mingle with their staff. They have been seen around the old library and the houses nearby. Usually, one of the women is gone. Off hunting for something, it sounds like.”
“Hunting?”
“Yes. We occasionally get a bit bored here, as you can imagine. So while we don’t like the demons, we find the women to be quite entertaining. They seem clever. We have a sentry posted who lets us know what is going on. They are trying to find something. Or someone. But we don’t know.”
“Have they?”
“Not yet.”
“The enchantments that are on this place—like Hercules and Medusa—are there many more meant to repel night visitors?” Del asked.
“Yes. Quite a lot.”
“If we wanted to go spy on the Shifter women, what is the best way to get there without igniting the enchantments?” I asked.
“None, if you go alone. It’s too complex to say. But I can lead you to them.” Her voice was sincere, her gaze alight with excitement. No surprise. It was probably boring here after two thousand years, even if you had the run of the place and could invite Hercules over for parties.”
“Thank you.”
She stood. “Come on, then. Let’s get started. We have a party starting in an hour, and I need to be back.”
We stood and followed her, winding our way through the ruins. She led us on a
circuitous path that involved edging up against a wall, threading through columns, and hopping over a tumbled stone wall. It was like a maze.
“Normally I wouldn’t have to do this,” Augusta said. “If the statues woke, they would leave me alone. But they wouldn’t like you.”
I frowned.
“Oh, I didn’t intend to give offense! They wouldn’t like anyone.” Her voice had dropped to a whisper, and she pointed forward. “We are near the area where the Shifters linger. It was the old library. There’s a small area to the right of it that is covered. That has been their base.”
“Thank you,” I whispered.
She led us to a broken wall that we could hide behind.
“If you peek around this wall, you’ll see them just ahead, to the left a bit,” she said. Her voice was so quiet it was nearly soundless. “You’ll be able to get yourself out of here when you’re done?”
I nodded.
“Then fair fortune. I must return to the party.”
Along with Nix and Del, I waved a quick goodbye as she drifted away. The three of us glanced at each other and nodded, then crept to the vertical edge of the wall. We fell into position easily, each poking our head a tiny bit out. Del at the bottom because she was the shortest, me in the middle, and the taller Nix at the top. We’d done a lot of spying in our early days, trying to determine if places were safe enough to crash. This positioning was muscle memory by now, and we were silent as the grave.
A courtyard opened up in front of us. Directly across from our hiding spot, a set of stairs led up to a soaring stone edifice. Two stories tall, with intricate carving and many columns. The library. The rest had long since fallen away. Tumbled stones and columns littered the ground around us. To the right was a series of archways with a roof, just where Augusta had said the Shifters would be.
The two Shifter women stalked beneath it, clearly agitated. I could barely make out their voices if I strained.
“You mean you haven’t told him we’re late?” the Shifter on the left asked.
Him. Fear struck me like lightning.
