“I did wonder. Because the Circle’s symbol is silver.”
“Like the moon. Artemis’ emblem, that damn traitor,” he said casually.
The Consul’s beautiful face found an expression, and it wasn’t one I liked. “You’re working with our enemies,” she hissed, and Tami gave a sudden cry as her arm was squeezed tight.
“She gave her priests the spell, didn’t she?” I continued, ignoring it. The Consul hadn’t gotten to be two thousand years old by being stupid. If I gave her enough, she’d figure it out for herself.
“She was always ridiculously sentimental,” he agreed. “She thought we were being too hard on mankind, that your people were in danger of disappearing altogether.”
“Were we?’
“Don’t be ridiculous,” he said carelessly. “You breed like rabbits.”
“Lucky us.” My tired brain was having trouble piecing things together. Since he was in a good mood, I decided to let him help. “So the ouroboros is the spell to block your kind from our world.”
He laughed. He was happy, even jocular. Of course he was. I hadn’t told him no, yet. “It was the symbol for Solomon’s protection spell, the one that trapped me here, the one I undid when I defeated that bitch at Delphi. The Pythoness, they called her—the last of a line of powerful witches who maintained the spell he had cast. I killed one of them and made her home my chief temple and her daughters my servants: Phemonoe and Herophile. I even kept the name: ‘pythia’ means python, you know.”
No, I hadn’t. But I was learning all kinds of things lately. “With her death, the original spell lapsed, because there was no one to maintain it,” I reasoned. “And the paths between worlds were opened again. Until Artemis decided to give the spell back to mankind.” He nodded. “But her priests are dead. Who maintained it after the destruction of her temple?”
“The Silver Circle, of course.” He looked surprised that I hadn’t known that. “But they forgot. I had given the Pythias part of my power. And when my people were barred—”
“The power remained.”
“And allowed me to communicate, albeit with great difficulty, with my priestesses,” he acknowledged. “But the damn Circle corrupted them, turned them against me, blocked the only link I still had with this world. I couldn’t get anywhere with any of them!”
“Until I came along.” I was suddenly feeling really queasy.
“Yes. I thought I had a good candidate in Myra, but she fizzled out.” He dismissed the former heir with a wave. “She was more interested consolidating her own position than in following my lead. I was quite pleased when you disposed of her.”
“I didn’t.”
He shrugged. “You helped. Thus winning you many friends, young Herophile. Artemis never bothered to consider that the spell barring us from earth would close those worlds linked with yours as well. Faerie, for example, which depended on our magic and has been in decline since we left. They will be glad to see our return.”
“That would explain why some of the Fey are so eager to get their hands on the Codex,” I said.
He beamed approval. “They understand that the old ways were best, for your people as well as for us. Think of all we have to teach you.”
“Yeah, you keep promising to tell me what’s going on.”
“As I have done. Give me the Codex, Herophile, and take your rightful place as the chief of my servants.”
“You keep calling me that, when I’ve already told you.” I took a deep breath and moved a little closer to the Consul. “My name is Cassandra.”
Apollo’s face immediately changed. “Yes,” he hissed, “the name your mother gave you. Do you know why, little seer?”
“No.”
“Because she had a vision. Saw that her daughter would be the one to free me. Saw that, if you became Pythia, the spell would be unraveled and I and my kind would return. She knew your destiny, but she couldn’t bring herself to kill you—her only real chance. Instead, she ran, and named you after another rebellious servant of mine, in an act of defiance. It was a decision that cost her her life.” He held out a hand. “Don’t make the same mistake. Give me what is mine!”
I glanced at the Consul. She didn’t nod or blink or anything so obvious, but something shifted behind her eyes. I really hoped I was reading her right, because if not, I was toast.
I pulled the Codex out of my bodice, and Apollo’s eyes immediately focused on it. One last gamble; one last chance. Because I didn’t need it, after all; I knew the author. And he really, really owed me one. “Jesse,” I said briefly, “do your thing.”
“What?” His eyes had hardly left his mother the whole time. I didn’t know how much he had understood, but I didn’t need him to understand. I just needed him to do what he did best.
“Fry it,” I said.
“You cannot circumvent fate, Herophile!” Apollo snarled. “The Circle is weakening, fracturing from within. And when it falls, the spell falls with it! Don’t choose the losing side!”
“I’m not.” I tossed the Codex into the air. Time seemed to slow down as it flipped once, twice—then a plume of fire thicker than my leg caught it before it even approached the top of its arc. When the flames cleared, there wasn’t enough left to make ashes. “And my name is Cassandra.”
“You might have done well to remember your namesake’s fate, Cassandra,” he spit, as two dark mages started toward me.
And the vampires just stood there. I desperately tried to shift out with Jesse, but I was too tired, and nothing happened. At least, nothing normal.
A bubble formed out of nothing and bobbed around just out of reach, heavy and strangely thick, distorting the room in its reflective surface. And then there was another one, smaller than the first, and for a moment the two were bouncing around like helium balloons, colliding and rising and drifting with no particular direction. Until the larger one drifted against the taller mage.
Instead of bouncing off, it clung to his outstretched arm, flowing over the leather of his coat like molasses. And despite my panic, I couldn’t seem to look away. Because the sleeve under the bubble was changing.
The leather grew dark and hard and started to crack, and the mage began to scream as the sleeve dusted away like the cover on one of Pritkin’s old books. It flaked and crumbled until I could see the arm underneath. Only it wasn’t an arm anymore, I realized, as the mage tore away from me. He left behind the tattered remains of the sleeve and the hand clutching my wrist, which was now nothing more than a collection of bones under brown, papery skin.
I flinched and the bones collapsed, hitting the ground with a dry rattle. I looked up to see the mage staring at me, a look of horror on his face as it aged decades in a few short seconds. I gasped, realization slamming into me even before a clear, almost transparent substance peeled away from him. It reformed itself into a bubble that floated off a few feet before popping out of existence. What was left of his body collapsed like a deflated balloon.
I stared at him, remembering the dead mages in the fight with Mircea two weeks ago. I thought they’d been hit by friendly fire, by a spell gone awry. Looked like it hadn’t been so friendly after all.
“I see you have had lessons from someone.” Apollo was seething. “The traitor Agnes must have had more time with you than I thought. No matter—you cannot defeat them all.” And the entire line of mages surged toward me.
I watched them come out of blurry, exhausted eyes. What had that been, anyway, some way of speeding up time within a small area? I didn’t know, but one thing was sure: I couldn’t do it again. If I hadn’t been holding on to Jesse, I’d have been on the floor already.
But the mages didn’t reach me this time. The ones on the front row, six in all, were met by a stinging desert storm that blew up out of nowhere and concentrated only on their bodies. They were shrouded in whirling, dancing sand for maybe twenty seconds, and when it dissipated, the only things left to fall to the floor were bones and metal weapons. The rest of the mages were
met by angry vampires, half of them Senate members, and the fight was on.
I clutched Jesse and stared at the Consul. “You took your time!”
“If we are to be allies, I had to be certain that you are strong enough to be an asset,” she replied serenely. “I assume you have the spell to break the geis memorized?”
“I know who does,” I replied.
“And that would be?”
“The mage Pritkin. I…told it to him.”
She raised an eyebrow, but didn’t call me on the obvious lie. “You had best hurry, then. He was battling another mage in the lobby earlier. I do not think he was winning.”
I started for the stairs but was called back by Jesse’s cry. “What about Mom?”
I looked at the Consul. “If we’re to be allies, I’d think you could trust me.”
She looked at me for a long minute, then released her hold on Tami. “Do not disappoint me, Pythia.”
The tone was menacing, but it was the first time she’d ever used my title. On balance, I decided it was a positive step. I picked up my skirts and ran.
Chapter 28
I woke up in an unfamiliar bed in a posh room painted a soft, muted blue. The curtains were tightly drawn, so I assumed it was daylight outside because a vampire sat beside my bed. “You ran into the wall,” Sal said, looking up from buffing her nails. “It was real embarrassing.”
I sat up and immediately regretted it. Everything hurt. “I did not.”
“Yeah, you really did. Bam! Out like a light. Not that you weren’t pretty close already.”
I felt my head and, sure enough, there was a big, fat bruise. “I feel like shit.”
“You look worse. On the plus side, we won the battle. And what you did with those two mages was pretty cool.”
“So, you’re saying what? I’m breaking even?”
“Just about.” She laid something hard and cold on my chest. “A little girl dropped this off for you. Said to tell you that your necklace is haunted.”
I wrapped my fist around the familiar weight and felt the brief energy sizzle that told me Billy was in residence, soaking up energy. “I know,” I said tearfully. “The kids are all right, then?”
“I guess.” She grimaced. “There seem to be a lot of them around.”
“And Françoise and Radella and—”
“What do I look like? The six o’clock news? Ask the mage if you want to know.”
“Pritkin! How is—”
“He’s fine. After you took a nosedive, the Consul sent Marlowe after him. Turns out, he didn’t need the help. He’d already killed the guy.”
I swallowed and lay back. Nick. She meant Nick. And Pritkin had had to kill him because I’d been stupid enough to hand Nick the answer to all his dreams. Or at least, he’d probably thought so. I remembered his face when he’d told me that the Codex was the key to ultimate power. Too bad he hadn’t understood—the power didn’t go to us.
“I need to see him,” I told Sal.
“Good.” She got up and stretched, and her cat suit told me that I was a pain in the ass in big purple letters. “Because he’s really starting to get on my nerves.”
“He’s here?”
Sal rolled her eyes. “Oh, yeah. And I don’t know how you put up with him.”
“He kinda grows on you.”
“Uh-huh.” She didn’t look convinced. “Oh, and one other thing.” She tapped a black box beside the bed with a long fingernail. “The Consul left this for you. And she’s getting snippy.”
I almost asked what it was, before I remembered: Mircea. Sal was right. I wasn’t done yet. We might have won the battle, but my personal war remained to be fought.
I nodded and Sal left, or tried to. She’d barely opened the door when Pritkin barged past her. He didn’t look like he’d bathed or changed, but his hair was once again an independent entity. “They said you destroyed it!”
“I’m fine,” I said, checking under the covers to see that I actually had clothes on. I did, although it was a T-shirt and sweatpants, not the ruined evening dress. I sat up again. “Thanks for asking.”
Pritkin waved it away. “I spoke with the doctor who attended you earlier. I knew you were well. Did you destroy it?”
“Yes.”
“All of it?”
I sighed. “No, I left out the important bits. Yes, all of it! There wasn’t so much as a cinder left after Jesse torched it. Relax. It’s over.”
“It will never be over. Another Pythia could go back, find it again—”
I burst out laughing, but quit because it hurt. “Yeah, because it was so damn easy.”
“It could happen,” he said stubbornly.
“And all I can say is, good luck to her. She’ll need it.” I looked at him more seriously. “I’d like to ask a question—and get an honest answer. For a change.”
“You want to know why I kept you in the dark.”
“That would be the one. Why not just tell me what was going on?”
He looked at me in disbelief. “What reason did I have to assume that you would choose the Circle’s side over Apollo’s? He could give you everything: security, the knowledge you need about your power, wealth…whereas the Circle—”
“Has been trying its best to kill me.” I took a moment to absorb that. I didn’t like to admit it, but I kind of saw his point. With so much at stake, even if he’d wanted to tell me, he couldn’t have risked it. I wasn’t sure I’d have risked it.
“They were afraid of what an untrained Pythia might do,” he continued, “given what Myra already had done. She was brought up knowing how dangerous that creature was, being warned against him, yet she still fell in line with his plans. As many others have done.”
“It does explain a lot,” I agreed. “I’ve been wondering why Tony, who pretty much defines ‘paranoid,’ would join a risky rebellion. But I guess he didn’t think it would be much of a risk with a god on his side.”
“Which was what the Circle assumed you would think. And once their attempts to remove you failed, they were even more certain that you would side against them as soon as you realized that you had such an ally.” He looked at me curiously. “In truth, I am not entirely sure why you did not.”
I shot him a look. “I’ve read the old legends, part of them anyway. Enough to guess what things would be like with his group here again.”
“Is that all?” Pritkin looked skeptical. “Because you would have been his favorite, a pampered pet, a—”
“Slave,” I finished flatly. “I would have been his slave.” I’d already had one master, and that had been more than enough. “I said that no one would ever control me again like Tony did. I meant it.”
Pritkin’s jaw tightened. “That kind of power would be very attractive to many. Regardless of the price they had to pay for it.”
“I’m sorry about Nick,” I said, knowing what he had to be thinking.
He didn’t flinch, but his eyes were shadowed. “It was necessary,” he said tersely. “He’d seen the spell; he could have told others.”
“He would have told others. He spent half an hour telling me all about what’s wrong with the Circle, how it’s a big bureaucratic mess that just needs a firm hand to straighten out. His hand, I assume.”
“He was feeling you out, trying to discover if you would support his position.”
“Yeah. He didn’t seem too happy when I laughed at him.”
Pritkin regarded me for a long moment. “You are an unusual person…Lady Cassandra.”
I blinked, sure for a moment that I’d heard wrong. “What did you call me?”
“You have chosen a new reign title, I believe.”
“Yeah. But since when do you use it?”
“Since you’ve earned it.”
“Along with a lot of enemies.” My list of problems now included a pissed-off demon lord, the Dark Fey king—who was still waiting impatiently for the Codex—and an angry god. To keep the last of those from turning mankind back i
nto his playthings, I had to protect the Silver Circle from annihilation, even though they were facing a war with his allies and still wanted me dead themselves. And, oh, yeah, I was in the last place I’d wanted to be, allied with the Senate in the thick of the fight.
“A hazard of office.” Pritkin shrugged. “There were many who did not care for Lady Phemonoe.”
Yeah, like the ones who had killed her. “She once told me that I’d be the very best of us, or the very worst,” I admitted. “I didn’t know what that meant for a long time. I think I do now. Either my reign will see the office finally under the control of the Pythia, instead of the Circle or some ancient being, or it will see me, and everyone else, become slaves to that creature.”
“That won’t happen.”
I almost pointed out that it very nearly had happened, but I didn’t feel like getting into a fight. “Which kind of brings us to something else I wanted to ask you,” I said instead. “The Circle maintains the ouroboros spell now, right?”
“Yes. Power is drawn from the Circle collectively, as no one mage could possibly sustain such a thing alone.”
That was what I’d been afraid of. “Okay, so exactly how many ‘blows’ can the Circle take before they can’t keep up the spell anymore?”
“I don’t know.”
“Guess.”
“I can’t. All I can tell you is that when the spell was laid, the Circle was considerably smaller than it is now. Presumably we have some leeway before a crisis point is reached. But as the war heats up, there will be casualties. And every loss will become progressively more dangerous.”
“Because it could be the one that lets the old gods return.”
“They’re not gods! They’re strong, but primarily because their magic is so different from ours that it is difficult to counter. And there is certainly nothing godlike about their attitudes! Petty, arrogant, cruel beings without a shred of—”
“My point,” I said, raising my voice, “is that if the Circle weakens too far, the spell snaps. So how do we keep that from happening? It’s a little hard to save the lives of a bunch of people who are still trying to kill me!”