by Karen Chance
But that was too bad, because we were out of time—in more ways than one.
“Go! Go! Go!” the blonde was yelling, while clutching the redhead’s unconscious form. “Get out of here!”
“What?” the brunette staggered up, looking a little disoriented.
I assumed she’d had a shield up, or she’d have been looking a little dead, because Rico hadn’t pulled his punch. But the fog seemed to clear up pretty well when the blonde screamed, “It’s time!” and disappeared.
“Time for what?” one of the mages asked as the brunette winked out.
I kind of thought I knew. I grabbed Rhea and Rico, ripped Billy’s necklace out of the golem’s chest, and pulled my power around me. It didn’t want to come; it really, really didn’t. But if that damned brunette could shift while still half unconscious, so could I. So could I if it killed me, because it was going to kill me if I didn’t—
Like right now.
I had a half second to feel something massive shake the house, to hear an explosion that deafened me the rest of the way, to see light flashes going off in front of my eyes.
And then something grabbed me. Not the gentle, familiar lift and swoop, but like a fist closing around my body, around all our bodies. And not shifting so much as flinging us out of space and into time.
And we were gone.
• • •
“Rico,” I breathed.
“It’s nothing.”
“It’s not nothing.” I stared at his arm, or what had been an arm. It was now . . . God, I didn’t even know. I’d gone to the first aid cabinet as soon as we got back, intending to dress it for him, but he hadn’t wanted to let me. He hadn’t even wanted to let me see it. And now I knew why. It looked like nothing more than a piece of charcoal from above his elbow to . . . to what had been his hand. His beautiful, perfect, long-fingered—
The other hand tilted up my chin, and his face swam in front of my eyes. “It will heal.”
I shook my head. I couldn’t speak.
“It will heal within a day,” he told me quietly. “Two at the most. It is no different from you getting a paper cut.”
And, okay, that stopped the waterworks, because that was bullshit. Just because someone healed faster didn’t mean they didn’t feel the pain to begin with. Didn’t mean they couldn’t be hurt. Didn’t mean—
I looked back down at the arm, which he’d just covered with the sleeve of his leather jacket. He was hurt; he was hurt because of me. Because I hadn’t been fast enough, hadn’t planned well enough. And I hated it.
Suddenly, I didn’t want to go anywhere, ever again. I wanted to do what everyone was always telling me: stay home, study up on my powers, stay safe. And make sure everyone around me stayed the same damn way.
I wanted to lock all the guys in the suite and never let them out. Because I’d once thought that nothing could hurt a master vampire, that they were like fleshy tanks, indestructible and immortal. And I’d liked that thought. I’d lost too many people in my life to ever want it to happen again, and surrounding myself with indestructible people had felt very reassuring.
It was less so now.
Because they weren’t indestructible. They could be hurt; they could even die. And suddenly, nothing felt safe anymore.
“I shouldn’t have taken you with me,” I whispered. “I shouldn’t have taken anyone with me.”
“Then you did not believe what you said to Marco?”
“What?”
“That we are all in this together. That ‘vampire,’ or ‘mage,’ or ‘Pythia’ are not words that matter anymore.”
“Of course I meant it—”
“Then you believe you are the only one with the right to risk, to fight?”
“No, but—”
“And that the rest of us should be content to just sit about, waiting for those putanas to bring back a god? I, for one, would rather go down fighting—or to take them down instead.” He grinned suddenly. “And I wouldn’t have missed you slamming into the room as an eight-foot golem for anything.”
“Seven-foot.”
“It was at least eight, possibly nine. When you started barking orders in that demon voice, I think a few of the mages wet themselves.”
“They did not!”
“Well, that is the story I am going to tell,” Rico informed me. “Are you going to contradict me?”
I let my head rest against his chest for a moment, because it was warm and solid and alive, and I hadn’t managed to get him killed. My fist clenched in his jacket. “No.”
“Good. My drinks should be covered for at least a month.”
I didn’t answer. I also didn’t move. I couldn’t without letting him see my face, and I didn’t want him to see my face. I didn’t know what was wrong with me. I used to be able to hide my feelings better than this. I used to not have so many feelings, not nearly so many, or maybe I just hadn’t had so many people to have them about. And it had been better that way. It had been . . .
I made a sound and tried to pull away, but a hard hand caught me. “You are Pythia,” Rico told me, dark eyes liquid. “Someday, people will die for you.”
“I don’t want people to die for me!”
“And that is why they will do it.”
I stared up at him, wondering if all Mircea’s masters were mind readers. And not even caring right now. Because everything I felt was probably on my face anyway.
“Okay, this is getting heavy,” Fred said, sticking his head in the kitchen, and looking back and forth between the two of us. “Come on out if you want to see the big reveal.”
They had put the safe in the lounge, on a big cleared spot on the floor near the pool table. Or what had been a big cleared spot, since it was now almost covered with people. Everybody was in there: the kids, the vamps, and Marco . . .
Who gave me an inscrutable look as we came in.
I found a spot on the carpet and settled down, because this might be a while.
It would have been easier if we didn’t have to worry about the integrity of a small glass object, or if the mechanism hadn’t gotten screwed up when Rico punched a fist through it, or if the safe hadn’t been quite so high-end. But it was what it was, so I waited. And chewed my lower lip. And watched as a blond vampire nicknamed Teddy, “’cause I’m so cuddly,” worked on the safe.
I wished to God he’d speed up, and then a second later I was wishing he’d slow down. Because right now, it was like Schrödinger’s potion bottle, both there and not there. But once that safe was opened . . .
I felt my palms start to sweat.
“It’s like a whacked-out Christmas morning,” Billy said, oblivious.
Several of the girls nodded, apparently agreeing with him, and a little one even reached out to touch him, giggling.
“What’s so funny?” he asked her.
“Hat,” she told him, looking at his Stetson.
“This hat?” He took it off and put it on her head. It didn’t exactly fit, floating a few inches above her dark curls. But she seemed happy.
“I’m gonna want that back,” he warned her.
She laughed.
“Hey, that’s like giving away your right knee when you’re a ghost! It’s all me.”
She laughed some more.
“This is going to take some getting used to,” he informed me, staring around. And apparently being weirded out by the fact that half the eyes he met were staring back. “Make that a lot of getting used to.”
Yeah, I thought, scanning the crowd of little faces. And suddenly feeling panicked. Because they were my responsibility now, too, all of them.
And how the hell did that happen?
“Remember that Geraldo thing?” Fred asked me suddenly. “With Al Capone’s safe?”
“No.”
“Oh, that’s rig
ht, you’re too young. Well, back in the . . . eighties, maybe? Geraldo did this big special where he was gonna open one of Capone’s safes live on TV.”
I wiped sweaty palms on my jeans. “And did he?”
“Oh yeah. In a big way, too. I mean, they promoted that thing for weeks.” He beamed at me.
“So?”
“So . . . what?”
“So what was in the safe?”
“Oh, well, that’s the thing. It was, like, this forty-hour special or something—at least it felt that way. It just went on and on and on. I mean, I think they interviewed anybody who had ever even looked at a picture of Capone. And they did all these reenactments. And they had all these talking heads come on to speculate about what kind of stuff might be in the safe. I guess they were just stretching it out for more commercial time, but I thought I was going to go crazy.”
“I can relate.”
“Yeah, and then, after hours and hours and hours, like I’m surprised they didn’t have his manicurist on there or some—”
“Fred.”
“So, anyway, I got bored and went out to eat with the guys. Then I stopped off at a place and had a couple drinks. And later decided to shoot some pool. And when I came back, they were still working on the safe. I mean—”
“Fred!”
“Okay, okay. So, anyway—”
“No! No ‘anyways’! No ‘and thens.’ No nothing! What was in the safe?”
“Nothing.”
“What?”
He nodded. “That was the real kicker. Bastard had pranked us all. There wasn’t anything in there.”
I stared at him. “And you’re telling me this why?”
He blinked. “It’s the only story I know about a safe?”
I shut my eyes.
And then opened them again a second later, when Teddy said, “Got it.”
“Got what?” I asked, leaning forward, terribly afraid I was going to see a big old lot of nothing.
But there was definitely something in there.
A lot of something.
“Looks like this was where she kept all her personal stuff,” he told me, pulling out jewel case after jewel case, along with envelopes of what looked like official documents, a passport, a bunch of different kinds of currency from a wide span of time—which, yeah, would be a smart thing to have around, wouldn’t it? And photo albums. Lots and lots of photo albums.
Some looked relatively new; others had to be fifty or more years old, worn and scratched and crumbly around the edges. The photos, the ones leaking out the sides because clusters of them had just been stacked in there, were similar. Some were old enough to have the little crinkly edges they used to put on them; others had that weird, seventies-era color. A few were even Polaroids. But as interesting as they were, I didn’t look at them. Because what I wanted . . .
Wasn’t there.
“No,” I said, searching through the papers on the floor. And then through the envelopes. And then through the thick spines on the albums, in case the little bottle had somehow gotten wedged down in there.
But it hadn’t.
It wasn’t there.
Chapter Forty
“You’re going to eat something,” Tami told me. It was not a question.
She put a tray on the bedside table and left, shutting the door. But somebody slipped in before she did. Somebody huge, but so quick and so quiet, I doubt she even noticed him. Vamps move like shadows when they want to, and Marco was no exception. Of course, he usually didn’t bother, preferring to bellow and bluster and make the puny masses tremble in fear.
But that didn’t mean he couldn’t.
I’d grown up with vamps, learned to sense them in all their moods, even the quiet ones. Especially the quiet ones. That was when you were supposed to watch them the closest, because you never knew what they were up to. But I didn’t watch him now. I stayed where I was, sitting beside the bed.
The curtains were closed, like they usually were in daytime. Masters could handle daylight, but why suffer the power drain when you didn’t have to? But someone had been careless, or maybe one of the girls had been peeking out at the Strip, far below, and left a blackout curtain slightly ajar. Only it wasn’t sunlight that was spilling in.
A spear of bloody light rippled over the bed and onto the floor like a crimson stream, the overflow from the big neon Dante’s sign not far away. It normally added a barely discernable tinge to the day, a sultry haze on Vegas’ already dust-reddened landscape. But the darkness of the room and the peculiar angle of the slant left only neon penetrating the gloom.
It glinted off the jewels spread out on the carpet in front of me, making them look like they’d been dipped in blood. I’d had a vague idea about mementos for the girls, some slightly less creepy than the ones from Agnes’ apartment. I hadn’t made much progress, though.
I couldn’t seem to concentrate.
I picked up a necklace made of gold, with tiny seed pearls forming interlocking daisies. A lot of the sets were kind of heavy for young girls, but this one might work. It looked a little antiquated, like something out of the Victorian period, with little emerald-chip leaves and tiny diamond dew drops. Something Gertie might have worn as a girl. It was pretty. . . .
But I didn’t want it. It was nice, but I didn’t need it. I liked it, but I could give it away, because I didn’t get attached to things.
It was one reason I’d never minded living in a hotel room in Vegas, where few of the things surrounding me were actually mine. I suppose it would have bothered most people. It didn’t bother me.
I’d found out early on that if I liked something, Tony would find out and take it away if I displeased him. And I displeased him a lot. After a while, it was easier just to stay detached. That way, he didn’t know what was important and what wasn’t. And eventually, nothing was. I hadn’t had a problem running away and leaving everything behind because I didn’t get attached to things.
I didn’t get attached to people, either. Because they left, too. My parents, who died when I was four, my governess, who Tony had killed—my fault; I’d gotten too fond of her—virtually everyone I’d ever known before the last four months.
Pritkin . . .
Pritkin.
Pritkin.
No.
I was stuck. My head was stuck and it just . . . wouldn’t go there. I should be able to deal with this. I should be able to accept it. I should be able to add him to that list, the same list everybody went on, the same list I’d always known he’d end up on, too, because everybody did, everybody left. The reasons might vary, but that never did. Everybody left. . . .
No.
It was the problem I’d been having for more than a week, the problem I’d avoided even looking at, because I couldn’t deal with it. So I’d handled it the way I did everything I couldn’t deal with, and just ignored it. I’d find him; I’d get him back. It wouldn’t come to this.
And now that it had, I didn’t know what to do.
“She had some nice stuff.”
The massive shadow crouched on its haunches in front of me, each thigh bigger around than my body. He blocked out most of the light. I was oddly grateful for that.
“Yeah. I thought the girls might like . . . something.”
“What about you?” The big head tilted. “You don’t like jewelry?”
“For a long time, I couldn’t afford it, and then . . .” I touched Billy’s necklace. “Not much matches this.”
“No. Don’t suppose so.” A massive finger sorted through the expensive rubble. “Well, you’ve got plenty to choose from now.”
I laid my head on the side of the bed.
Marco observed me for a moment, and then joined me on the floor, settling back against the mattress and taking out one of his awful cigars. For a while, there was just the crinkle of celloph
ane as he rolled it between his hands, loosening the leaves. Marco liked to savor the whole experience, from the rolling to the unwrapping to the trimming to, finally, the drawing of deep, sweet-smelling smoke into a body that would never have to pay for it.
But he wasn’t smoking this one yet.
He was talking.
“Back when I was in the ring,” he said, talking about his time as a gladiator, “I knew this guy. Short. Scrawny. Even kind of clumsy. You’d look at him and think, yeah, hope I get matched with that one. That one’s a gimme. I’ll beat him in two minutes, then go drink wine and watch somebody else bleed.”
I adjusted my position to mirror his, and stared at the ceiling. “And did you?”
“No. Never got paired with him. Went out of my way to make sure I didn’t, after a couple of times watching him fight.”
I rolled my head over to look at him. “So he was good, after all?”
Marco snorted. “No, he was terrible. Terrible form, terrible reflexes, terrible everything. He was just as bad as he looked and then some. But he never gave up. Didn’t seem to understand that he was supposed to. Some other guy, you get him on the sand, he figures it’s over. You can see it in his eyes. He just starts to let go, you know?”
No. I didn’t, actually, and was glad of it. But I nodded anyway.
“But not this crazy bastard,” Marco said, shaking his head. “He’d throw sand in your face, he’d claw at your eyes, he’d bite your nose—bit one guy’s clean off. He’d scratch and gouge and spit. He’d scream in your face to try to throw you off. He’d knee you in the nuts. He’d do all of them at the same time if he got half a chance, to the point that it was like pinning a mad wolverine. None of the guys wanted to fight him ’cause they all thought he was crazy. Me . . . I just thought he wanted to live.”
“Did he?”
“Far as I know. He was still at it when my master got out of the game, anyway. You know, it’s funny. You don’t think of someone for a thousand years, and then suddenly you see him, clear as day. I saw him today, in you.”
I let my head drop onto my knees. In Marco’s mind, I’d somehow gone from weak woman who needed protecting to a bantamweight gladiator with possible brain damage. I wanted to laugh, because it was funny. I wanted to cry, because it was true.
