The substance didn’t hurt them.
It did confuse the hell out of them, though.
Including their leader, who struggled back to his feet, a dozen yards away, to stare around in confusion. And then down at his hand, where the fine mist was coagulating into a sticky, gluey mess. And then up at me.
“This is your idea of a fight?” he demanded.
“No,” I rasped, my acolyte’s blood on my hands. “This is.”
And suddenly, I couldn’t see his hateful face anymore, because I was looking at something else: a darkened street, a shadowy hulk, a flash of recognition in firelit eyes. And a gut-wrenching power loss that, while not as bad as a time shift, had me screaming in pain.
Only nobody noticed.
Because something big and black and huge—and God, I’d forgotten how huge—had just joined the party.
For a second, everything stopped, the entire concourse staring at a hellhound the size of a house that stood steaming in the middle of the drag. And if it had been skin-rufflingly awful in its own milieu, it was utterly horrific here: claws that had to be three feet long, huge fangs dripping cascades of hot slime, skin knotty and bumpy and patchy with rank fur I could smell from across the room. And crisscrossed by the scars of a thousand battles with things worse than the Black Circle had ever seen.
And then it proved that Rosier had been right.
Demons really don’t like black magic.
Or its users.
The hound gave a metallic shriek that had a number of mages ducking and covering their ears in pain. And then staying that way, their hands stuck to their heads, their thighs and shanks fused, their weapons useless unless they’d already been in their hands. Because Augustine’s spell had started to solidify.
And, as a number of shoplifters could attest, it wasn’t easy to shake.
Not that the mages had a chance to try.
The hellhound made a leap that covered half the drag, and tore into them, and I looked back down at Rhea, unsure of what to do. The idea had been to distract the mages, grab her, and run like hell. Down the length of the drag, through the emergency exit at the end, and up the back staircase, which would get the fight away from the populated sections of the hotel. And give us the aid of the much more lethal wards on the upper sections of Dante’s.
Of course, this many dark mages might be able to overwhelm those, too, but it would take time. And they’d have a new set every level or so that we went up. And they’d have to banish the hound before they could even start. And by then, hopefully the Circle would have arrived to finish them off.
It had been a good plan.
I’d been proud of that plan.
It wasn’t going to work.
Because the mages farther down the drag were not running to support their buddies, as expected. They also weren’t running at us, because they hadn’t been ordered to, or because they thought I might have another hound up my sleeve. They weren’t doing anything, except standing there, eyes wide, watching the beast.
And blocking our path to the back stairs.
I stared at them blankly, knowing that I needed a new plan. I needed one now. But it was a little hard to think with my head reeling from the power loss, and with nothing left to work with: no weapons we dared use, no power, and no time.
And with Rhea on her knees, holding her throat, choking on her own blood.
I should have tried to shift her, I thought dizzily. But shifting two was exponentially harder than one—any one—and I’d been pretty sure I couldn’t do it. And shifting only one of us would have left a Pythian magic worker in the Black Circle’s hands, and was therefore useless.
But then, so was this.
Carla was kneeling on her other side, one hand on Rhea’s head, the other on her gory throat, blood welling up between her fingers. And her lips were mumbling something that I really hoped was a healing spell. But whatever she was doing, it didn’t look like it was working.
“Rhea . . .” I said pleadingly.
And then the hound gave another bellow, like every piece of metal tearing everywhere in the world, like a knife through the brain, like a physical pain. I jerked my head up to see the creature floundering, sliding on the slick surface of the drag. It took me a second to realize that the mages it had crushed under its claws had stuck there, forming screaming, bleeding pads that had bunched under its feet, causing it to slip whenever it tried to move.
And seriously hampering it.
Like the spells the outlying mages were starting to throw, which sizzled against its horny hide like the strokes of a lash. Or the potion bomb one tossed, which succeeded in blowing a chunk out of its shoulder. Or the mage that had become stuck to its slavering maw, sticking there like glue and blocking its main weapon.
Until it bit the struggling man in two.
And I guessed Augustine’s potion hadn’t gotten everywhere, after all. Because it managed to swallow the middle bit just fine. And to bellow at the room out of its trophy-lined mouth, making even some of the hardened dark mages stop and stare.
Which they were still doing when it crunched their partners under its feet, grinding them into the already gory floor, getting itself some traction. And then leaping for the main group, which was still holding formation, hurtling its massive body right through the middle. And sending a broad swath of men crashing into the far wall of the drag, like a freight train had just derailed and rolled over them.
I had a vague impression thereafter of screaming, panicked mages, some fused to the thing’s hide, others crushed against the wall, including some that stuck there like macabre artwork, writhing in place or slowly sliding down toward the mass of bodies at the bottom.
But it didn’t hold my attention.
Because the leader had grabbed the first of a group of fleeing men and started slinging them into another cluster nearby. “Form up! Form up!”
“We can’t take that thing!” one of the men said. “Our best spells barely touch it!”
“You don’t have to take it! Take her!” He flung an arm in my direction. “Who do you think is controlling it?”
And suddenly, our little group was facing a combined spell like the one that had almost destroyed Augustine’s, and that should have incinerated us on the spot.
Except for one small thing.
Or make that three small things.
Because the real Graeae had just joined the party.
There was a loud, ululating cry, and the sister named Enyo somersaulted over our group, transforming in the process into a twelve-foot Amazon with four-inch talons, a mass of cascading gray hair and slitted yellow eyes. And a club, which she used like a baseball bat to send the spell boiling right back at the mages. Who threw themselves to the side, scattering like pins in a bowling alley, trying to get out of the way.
Some even managed it.
For a second, I was staring at the surreal sight of a massive hound, its hide now covered in a carpet of squirming mages, rampaging back and forth down the length of the drag. Of Enyo plowing into the fight with her club, sending more mages literally flying on all sides. Of a mass of magical microphones circling overhead, screaming abuse.
And of Rhea staring at the ceiling, the entire breast of her gown stained bright red, her eyes going glassy.
“I can’t heal this,” Carla told me, her hands red, her voice panicked. “It’s too severe. The best I can do is slow it down, but it’s not going to make a difference in a minute. We have to have a healer. . . .”
She trailed off, because yeah.
I didn’t see any doctors in the room.
“Can you shift her?” she almost begged, for the life of a girl she’d just met. But it probably didn’t feel that way.
Battle does that to you.
“No,” I said, my voice barely recognizable. “I won’t be able to shift again
for . . . a long time.”
“But there must be something you can do!” she insisted, staring at me with innocent faith. Which looked kind of weird on those hard-bitten features. “You’re Pythia.”
I stared back with nothing to say. A Pythia was supposed to be able to do something. A Pythia was supposed to be able to do anything. But it had never seemed to work that way for me.
I looked down at Rhea, lying on the floor in front of me, but I wasn’t seeing her. I was seeing a man, old and withered, his salt-and-pepper hair leaning mostly to salt, holding one age-spotted hand over a terrible stomach wound. The other had clutched mine while he tried to tell me something before he bled out, while I’d worked desperately to save him.
While I’d failed.
Because being able to make someone younger or older doesn’t mean you can heal their wounds. As I’d discovered the hard way, applying power to them merely gave you a younger corpse. I’d only managed to help one person—sort of—because his was a metaphysical disease, a curse, and making him younger had changed him enough that the curse no longer recognized him.
And even there I’d had help, help I didn’t have now.
“But that man did not belong to you,” a voice whispered in my ear, causing me to jump and look around.
The only thing I saw was Augustine, the reporter’s little girl held fast against his chest, staring out at me from behind the distant counter. And the blackened, ruined storefront. And my own bedraggled reflection in smoke-clouded glass.
And a whisper in my other ear. “While this girl is yours, part of your coven.”
I whipped my head back the other way, and stared at the reporter, who stared back at me, her eyes huge. “What is it?” she asked fearfully. “What’s wrong?”
Take your pick, I didn’t say, because she was weirded out enough.
And then so was I, when everything abruptly went dark.
Chapter Eight
I panicked, thinking I’d been hit with some kind of spell. It hadn’t hurt, but it had been just that fast, just that debilitating. Like someone had thrown a switch, only there were no afterimages. There was no anything, just darkness, deep and velvety and absolute, except for a tiny pinpoint of light from somewhere up ahead.
Framing the body of the vampire walking toward me.
He was wearing only a pair of midnight blue sleep pants in a silky fabric that hung low on his hips. His chest and feet were bare and his dark, shoulder-length hair, usually caught back in a clip, was loose on his shoulders. He looked like he’d just gotten up, but the whiskey dark eyes were as sharp as ever.
“But the girl is yours,” Mircea repeated softly, kneeling opposite me. “And you . . . are mine.”
And abruptly, the scene shifted, giving me the weirdest split vision. Half the room remained dark, with the light barely limning Mircea’s head and shoulders. But everything behind me burst into comparative brilliance—and sound and sensation: the spill of neon, the hound’s unearthly bellow, the smell of gunpowder. . . .
“Which is real?” I whispered, confused, and put out a hand to where the dividing line between the two rooms boiled like steam. But when I tried to grasp it, I felt nothing, although the darkness receded faster now, like curtains closing—
Until a hand grasped my wrist. “They both are,” Mircea said, and night bloomed around us.
He seemed to be controlling the division between our two spaces, working to get the distractions down to something I could handle. But it didn’t help all that much. Because this place was plenty distracting all on its own.
I assumed I was seeing his court in Washington State, since that was where I’d left him. He’d been injured in an attack yesterday, and it must have been something to take down a man who, although he might look like a raffish thirty-year-old, hadn’t seen double digits in five centuries. And who’d been storing up power for every single one of them.
Luckily, Lizzie had spilled the beans about her side’s plans to finish the job, and I’d gotten to him before they had. I’d thought about bringing him here, but I didn’t know anything about treating injured vampires, and doubted that my small human staff did, either. And anyway, they already had enough of those to worry about.
So I’d taken him home, where I guessed he still was.
Although it was hard to tell, when everything around him looked like I was trying to view it through somebody else’s glasses. The warm wooden floor was just a smudge of brown, except for a small patch right around his knees. The tall windows, heavily draped against the day, were just darker smears. And the designs on the intricately carved wardrobe and the expensive carpets had all been smudged away.
I concentrated on a modernist painting on the opposite wall, and it slowly came into focus. It should have looked out of place, a bright splash of color in an old-world room, like it should have felt odd having a hand grip mine from across a continent. But it didn’t.
He held my hand firmly but gently, careful not to let vampire strength bruise human flesh. He pulled it forward and the light came with it, like sunrise falling over a landscape. Leaving the room bisected between neon bright and dark, like the body of the girl lying on the floor between us.
“What do you want me to do?” I asked nervously, because I didn’t know how to heal someone.
“You’re already doing it,” Mircea murmured, dark eyes sliding shut.
“I’m not doing anything,” I said, trying to stamp down the panic clogging my throat. “I don’t have the power to do anything!”
“Neither does a bridge, yet it serves.”
I waited, but nothing else was forthcoming. I knew I should just shut up and let him concentrate. Healing was one of Mircea’s gifts, and it worked equally well on humans as on vamps.
But it worked on humans who were in front of him. I didn’t know how well it worked from a thousand miles away, but it had to be harder. And that was assuming he could do it at all, so shut up, shut up, shut up, and give him some time.
But I didn’t seem to be able to. Because Rhea didn’t have any time. And just sitting there while she bled out was—
I didn’t seem to be able to.
“I don’t understand,” I blurted, and then bit my lip, practically vibrating with the need to do something, but not having a lot of options left.
“You have a metaphysical link to your acolyte,” Mircea murmured, neon light from my part of the world flickering impossibly over his features. “And I have one to you. I am attempting to use you as a conduit to send her energy, as I would one of my masters who needed help.”
“But I’m not one of your masters,” I said, because I didn’t feel like a conduit. I didn’t feel anything, except for my fingers, blood slick and desperate, gripping his.
It was probably uncomfortable. If he was a human, I might have broken a bone by now. But he wasn’t, and I didn’t let go.
“No,” he said softly. “Which is why I don’t know that this will work. And she is very weak.”
I gripped him tighter. “But you can try—”
“Someone already tried. I feel the spell . . . sluggish, slow, impeding the blood flow.”
“A witch. She isn’t a healer, but she wanted to help. . . .”
“She succeeded. Your servant would have faded by now, otherwise.” But his expression didn’t look happy. “What is her name?”
“Rhea.”
“Rhea.” He rolled it over his tongue. It sounded different in Mircea’s voice, darker, sweeter, more exotic. And sent a shiver up my spine just from the power behind it.
Yet it had no obvious effect.
“Rhea.” The second call was stronger, more compelling, but still sweet. Not a command, but an enticing murmur worthy of a siren. It would have had me running to him, fighting for him, struggling through an army to reach him.
The body between us didn’t even appear t
o notice.
I swallowed, because Mircea wasn’t just a vampire; he was a first-level master, one of only a few hundred in existence. They ruled the vampire world through the six senates, governing bodies of immense power. And Mircea wasn’t just any old senator; he was second-in-command to the North American consul, and therefore one of the strongest vampires on earth.
And I felt every bit of that power when he tried again. “Rhea!”
It wasn’t a request now; it was an order, fierce and demanding. I felt it like thunder in the air around me, like an earthquake in the floor underneath me, like an electric shock radiating through my body, making me gasp. And tighten my grip enough that I thought I might break my own fingers.
That damn call would have brought me out of the grave.
It didn’t seem to be doing anything for her.
And we were running out of time—even I could see that. Rhea’s usually pale skin was alabaster, her dark lashes closed, her chest barely rising. Only her blood moved, slow but determined, seeping out of the terrible wound to stain her neck, like someone’s fingers had already done to her cheek.
She looked like a beautiful corpse.
“Maybe . . . maybe we need to try the other way,” I said desperately.
Mircea didn’t open his eyes. “What other way?”
“Seidr.” It was a spell my mother had cast on me during a trip back in time, and which I’d inadvertently passed to him. I didn’t fully understand it, which was why I hadn’t been able to remove it. And it hadn’t seemed like a priority, since it was just a communication spell.
But it was a powerful one.
More powerful than this, I thought, staring at the hazy dividing line still boiling between us.
But Mircea shook his head. “Cassie, this is Seidr. I tried reaching you the other way, the vampire way—”
“I’m sorry! I didn’t hear—”