Embrace the Night

by Karen Chance

  “Rafe said you saw the master a couple days ago. If you got in then, why do you need us now?”

  “Because the wards almost certainly recorded that little visit!” I said impatiently. “They’ll be expecting me to try again. And the last time I removed someone from the Consul’s control, she used a null bomb to trap me.”

  “I heard about that. Didn’t believe it, though.”

  “Oh, null bombs exist,” I assured him. “And the Consul’s got a stash of them.” I’d seen it for myself, and although I doubted that she wanted to use up any more of a very expensive, very scarce resource on me, the fact remained that I’d made her look bad. It hadn’t been intentional, but vamps rarely cared about such trifles. And messing with the reputation of someone who ruled partly through the fear she was able to inspire was a very big deal.

  “I meant I didn’t believe you could pull it off,” Alphonse clarified.

  Neither had I. I decided it wouldn’t be prudent to mention exactly how much luck had been involved. In a world where reputation was all-important, I didn’t have much of one to trade on. Alphonse remembered me as Tony’s tame little clairvoyant, something that was not going to convince him to do a damn thing. Thinking of me as someone gutsy enough or crazy enough to go up against the Consul would be a much better image.

  Fortunately, both Alphonse and Casanova needed me to ensure that Mircea stayed alive and well. Until the geis was lifted, I could trust them. To a point. Probably.

  “I think I know how we can do it,” I said.

  Casanova had been making spluttering sounds in the background. I thought someone had been choking him, but I guess not, because he suddenly piped up. “Okay then. You’re insane. This explains a lot about you.”

  “Insane and the boss’s girlfriend,” I reminded him sweetly.

  It’s probably just as well I don’t speak Spanish.

  Thankfully, by the time Sal received word back from the Consul that she would see us, it was almost dawn. That wouldn’t have bothered the head of the Senate, as she’d long since ceased to be bound by the sun cycle, but Alphonse and company weren’t in that league. So I had a day’s reprieve before I found out if my plan was going to work. And since I’d already screwed up my sleep cycle, I decided to use it for other things.

  Nick was holding the fort when I got to the research room. He had his nose buried in a huge, dusty old tome, but looked glad to take a break. “There’s been no word on your friend, Tami,” he told me before I could say anything. “Not that I have the same level of access anymore, as a fugitive from justice.”

  I squirmed slightly. “Yeah. Sorry about that.” Someone should have warned him that I tend to have that effect on mages.

  “It had to happen sooner or later. The system is antiquated, but the Council refuses to see that.”

  “And here I just thought they were a bunch of power-grubbing asshats.”

  “That, too,” Nick said dryly, shutting the cover of his book. It had a familiar symbol embossed on it, silver scales bright against the worn green leather.

  “The ouroboros,” I said, and was immediately sorry when his face lit up with the delighted air of a fanatic who has found a kindred soul.

  “I didn’t know you were interested in magical history, Cassie.”

  I hadn’t been, before the Codex came along. Now I didn’t have much choice. “Symbol of eternity, right?”

  He nodded enthusiastically. “That’s one interpretation. The snake—or dragon in some depictions—eats its own tail, thus sustaining its life and ensuring an eternal cycle of renewal.” He flipped to the frontispiece, an almost translucent sheet covered with the image from the cover rendered in bright jewel tones. “This one was copied from an Egyptian amulet, dated to 1500 B.C., but it was also known to the Phoenicians and the Greeks, the Chinese and the Norse…really, it’s the ultimate archetype. There’s hardly a culture that didn’t know it in some form!”

  “How interesting.” And it was, sort of. But I didn’t have time for a magical history lesson. “Have you seen Pritkin today?”

  I was too late; Nick was already buried in another book. “It’s also one of the oldest protective symbols in the world, possibly the oldest. Not to mention the most widespread. The Aztecs believed that a giant serpent resided in the heavens as protection for Earth until the end of the age. The Egyptians had a similar myth. Both cultures thought that when the ouroboros’ protection failed, the age of man would come to an end.”

  “Nick?” I waited until he looked up. He had a smudge of dust on his nose. “Bad-tempered blond, in need of a haircut?”

  “John? Oh, he’s around somewhere.” Nick dismissed him with one hand, while grabbing another book with the other.

  I plucked it out of his hand. “This is what you’ve been researching down here?” There seemed to be an awfully lot of books devoted to Nick’s hobby and none to the geis.

  He saw my expression and hurried to explain. “No, no. Or, rather, yes, but it does tie into our search.”

  “It does.”

  “Yes. You see these?” He pointed out a line of symbols on the frontispiece, rendered in silver gilt and curving around the outside of the snake’s scales. “The Ephesia Grammata,” he announced proudly, as if that explained anything.

  “And that would be?”

  “Sorry. The Ephesian Letters. They gave an added…oomph…to the protection. You often see them on amulets in conjunction with the ouroboros symbol. They were said to have been written by Solomon himself.” He flipped to a line drawing showing the snake surrounding a guy on horseback with a long spear. “That’s him, attacking evil,” he added, pointing to the figure in the middle of the circle. “And there’s the Ephesian letters again.”

  “But what are they?”

  Nick blinked at me owlishly for a moment through his glasses. “You’ve never even heard of them?”

  “Why would I ask you about them if I had?”

  “It’s just…they’re famous. Even to norms.” He looked slightly offended at my level of ignorance. I crossed my arms and stared at him. “They were said to have been inscribed on the statue of Artemis at Ephesus, the center of her cult in the ancient world,” he explained. “She was closely associated with protective magic, and the words were considered some of the most potent voces magicae in existence.”

  “Magic words,” I translated. “And what do they mean?”

  “That’s just it.” Nick looked at me proudly, like I’d finally said something smart. “No one knows.”

  “What do you mean, no one knows? Why use words if you don’t know what they mean?”

  Nick shrugged. “Words have power, some more than others.”

  “And yet no one’s ever figured them out?”

  “Oh, we know what the individual words mean,” he said, sounding vaguely patronizing. “The first one, askion, translates roughly as ‘shadowless ones,’ probably some reference to the gods. The problem is that each word is only a mnemonic aid, a memory prompt for a line of text.”

  “It’s only one word out of a whole line? What happened to the rest?”

  “That’s the point. Together, the complete text forms a spell too important, too powerful, for anyone to risk writing it down in its entirety.” He grinned, a flash of large white teeth in his freckled face. “Except once.”

  “Let me guess. The Codex contains the full spell.”

  “The oldest riddle in all of magic,” Nick said dreamily. “The secret to ultimate power.”

  I was beginning to understand why the Dark Fey king wanted the Codex so badly. “Sounds like something people might have wanted to hold on to.”

  “It’s the same old story,” Nick said, his smile slipping. “A group of power-hungry leaders, probably of the Artemis cult, didn’t want to risk it falling out of their hands. So they only transmitted the full spell orally. But when the temple burned to the ground in 356 B.C., they all died.”

  “And since no one had ever written it down—”

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nbsp; “No one knew what it meant.”

  “Well, that was stupid.”

  “Exactly. It is possible to be too careful. Sometimes you can lose more by being overly cautious than by taking a necessary risk.”

  “Like telling me where Pritkin is?” I asked idly.

  “Yes, I—” Nick stopped, frowning. “You tricked me.” He sounded more surprised than upset.

  “Where is he?”

  “You need to give him some time. He’s—”

  “Had as much as I have, and I was attacked, too. I need to talk to him, Nick.”

  “I really don’t think—”

  I leaned across the table, slamming a hand down on his precious pile of books. Keeping my temper these days was starting to take a lot more concentration than I could spare. “Here’s the thing, Nick. Tonight I have to pay a visit to the Consul, who has a bit of a short fuse and is already less than pleased with me. So I really need to know if a ticked-off demon lord is likely to crash the party. And the only way I can get that information is to talk to your buddy.”

  “I understand, but you have to consider—”

  “And when I need to do that is now.”

  His frown deepened. “Are you trying to intimidate me? Because I think you should know—”

  “I thought all war mages were sworn to the Pythia’s service.” Not that they recognized me as holding the office legitimately, or had so far shown any loyalty whatsoever. But supposedly Nick felt otherwise. Or else I had to wonder what he was doing here.

  “Well, yes, technically, but—”

  “I’m Pythia,” I reminded him. “And you’re a war mage. I don’t have to intimidate you for information you are duty bound to provide.”

  Nick blinked at me a couple of times, then sighed and rubbed his eyes. He looked like he was getting a headache. “He’s in the training salle.”

  “Where you should have been half an hour ago,” Pritkin said crisply, from behind me. I jumped and a hand reached out to steady me. “If you kept your appointments, you wouldn’t have to browbeat information out of my colleague.”

  Nick looked as surprised to see Pritkin as I was despite the fact that he’d been facing the door. I had this weird picture flash across my mind of Pritkin simply materializing out of thin air, like his father, before I squashed it. He was corporeal, all right, just damn sneaky.

  “She didn’t browbeat me,” Nick said, offended.

  Pritkin shot him a look. “Of course not.” He was wearing gray sweats that looked like he’d already run a marathon in them. He gave my outfit a long look, but didn’t comment. “Get changed and come with me.”

  “Why?” I asked, my stomach already sinking. Because it was that time of morning, only being up half the night I hadn’t noticed.

  “We’re going jogging.”

  “I don’t run for recreation. I run when someone’s after me with a weapon.”

  “That can be arranged,” he muttered, pulling me out the door.

  Chapter 17

  After I changed into a pair of old sweatpants and a ratty tank top, we made six circuits of the underground hallways and then ran up and down the stairs until I couldn’t see straight. Pritkin swore it was only about two miles, which he counted as a warm-up, but I was pretty sure he was lying. Either that, or I was even more out of shape than I’d thought.

  We stopped in what had served as the gym for a now defunct acrobatic act before Pritkin appropriated it for training purposes. A few practice mats were still rolled against one wall, looking incongruous considering the rest of the decor. The room was pretty, more like a ballroom than a gym, probably originally designed for smaller conferences that wouldn’t need the larger room downstairs. It had thick paneled walls running up to a spandreled ceiling, with huge mirrors on three sides and tall stained-glass windows on the other. The light they let into the room rippled like water, splashing a mosaic of color over the wooden floor.

  I leaned casually against the door, trying not to look like it was holding me up, while Pritkin dug around in a large canvas bag. He kept one eye on me, as if he thought I was about to bolt. Which was totally unfair, as that had happened only once and he’d been pulling out the jump rope of doom at the time. Not to mention that the only way I could make a break for it at the moment was if someone carried me.

  I expected some fiendish new exercise equipment, or another gun that he thought I might actually be able to aim. The guy lived in hope. So I blinked uncertainly at what emerged instead. “What is that for?”

  “Guns jam and misfire with the application of the right spell,” Pritkin said curtly, “and occasionally without it. They also aren’t effective against every enemy. Spells, likewise, can be countered by shields, stronger spells, or by incapacitating the caster. Neither method is adequate on its own, particularly when, as in your case, the potential enemies come in so many varieties.”

  I narrowed my eyes. “Meaning what?”

  He slapped the flat of an old-fashioned training sword against his leg. Its blade was wood, but it still made a loud thwacking sound. “Meaning here we have it. Swords and sorcery.”

  “No, there you have it. I’m not a war mage.” I’d agreed that I needed to get in better shape and to learn how to occasionally hit what I aimed at, but I hadn’t signed up to be sorcerer’s apprentice.

  “No. You’re not. Which is why you almost died yesterday.”

  “Um, no. I almost died because your father decided he didn’t like me talking to Saleh. Something we should discuss sometime.”

  “I knew you were up to something at that flat.”

  “Yes, thanks. Not the point.”

  “What did he tell you?” Pritkin demanded, giving me a weird and very creepy sense of déjà vu.

  I just stared at him until he cursed and twisted, hiking up the corner of his sweatshirt. The bright colors of the tattoo reassured me slightly, although I assumed they could be faked. “Maybe we need a code word,” I said doubtfully.

  Pritkin muttered one that I decided to ignore and shoved a sword at me. I immediately dropped it because, despite being wood, it was roughly half my body weight. It hit the floor pommel-first with a dull, ringing thud. “You can’t be serious.”

  “It’s the smallest I have. We’ll get you something more appropriate later. And you evaded the question.”

  “No, I didn’t. Saleh didn’t say much. He was too preoccupied by the fact that your father killed him.” I wondered how many more times I was going to have to bring up the family connection before Pritkin took the hint. Not that under normal circumstances it would have been any of my business, but almost getting the life sucked out of me wasn’t normal. Not entirely unknown, but not normal.

  “There are some creatures who cannot be killed,” Pritkin said, ignoring me as usual. “You encountered one yesterday. Your instincts were good, but throwing potions at that one normally does nothing more than annoy him.”

  “He looked a little more than just annoyed to me.”

  “Because you somehow managed to hit him with perhaps two dozen spells, half of them corrosive to demonkind, all at the same time. I doubt if anyone else has managed as much.” He shot me a look. “I would like to know how you did it.”

  “I stopped time. By accident,” I said, as his eyebrows rose. “Agnes showed me once that it was possible, but she never had time to teach me how.”

  “Can you duplicate it?”

  I shook my head. “I doubt it. Not without knowing what I did in the first place.” And not without spending a day in bed, paying for it afterward.

  “You were lucky, then,” Pritkin said grimly. “Next time you may not be.”

  “What do you want me to do? Freak out?”

  “No, I want you to learn what you can do to banish him or any demons who might take an interest in you!”

  “And why would they do that?” I asked, suddenly wondering if freaking out didn’t make sense after all.

  “Why does anyone? You attract trouble like a magnet.�
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  I scowled. “Don’t even try it. This wasn’t my normal bad luck calling and you know it. That demon was your father and you didn’t even warn me about him!”

  “I’m warning you now. A decapitation won’t kill him, but it will force him back into the demon realm for a short time, perhaps a few days. Anything that causes catastrophic failure of the body he has assumed will do as much, but his shields can stop most attacks, including gunshots. And unlike most demons, he is not affected by direct sunlight. He has to drop his protection to feed, however, which gives you a moment of—”

  I kicked my sword against the wall. “Pritkin!”

  “You need to pay attention to this! I can’t be everywhere, and even when I am”—he took a breath, as if the admission pained him—“there are some things from which I may not be able to protect you.”

  “I don’t expect you to. But I do expect to be told the truth.”

  “We didn’t come here to talk.” He picked up my sword and shoved it back in my hands.

  Maybe he hadn’t, but it had definitely been on my agenda. I couldn’t force the truth out of him, though. And in his case, I didn’t think reminding him of my office was going to do much good. I raised the sword, getting two hands on the pommel and wishing for something less likely to result in back strain. It was about the only body part that didn’t already ache.

  “You want to fight, fine,” I told him. “But if I prove I’m halfway competent at this, you have to answer my questions for a change.”

  Pritkin didn’t even bother to respond, except by attacking. I twisted out of the way before the blow could land, a crotchety voice echoing in my ear, its scathing comments familiar, almost soothing: You don’t have strength, girl, and you never will. Don’t depend on it! If you don’t need to block, don’t. Your opponent may be stronger than you, but he can’t hurt you if you’re not there. A second later, my sword was aimed at Pritkin’s jugular, putting him back on point.

  I found myself staring at cool green eyes that were suddenly assessing. The tension seemed to crank up a notch without him moving a muscle. I kept a proper distance back, which, since our swords were the same length, was close enough to be able to strike but far enough away to need only one large step forward to attack. He slowly circled me, footwork perfect, never crossing his feet or giving me any chance to unbalance him. I hadn’t seen him fight with a sword before, but it looked like he’d also had a few lessons.