by Karen Chance
Rhea gazed back at me, her eyes huge. Take the hint, I thought desperately. Because she could do this. Not fight her way out, no, but shift . . . all acolytes could do that, even untrained. I’d managed it for the first time with less knowledge than she had now—a lot less. Admittedly, my mother’s blood had probably helped, but still. She could do it.
But it looked like Rhea didn’t think so. Maybe she’d skipped those lessons, or never had them to begin with, since she’d just been an initiate until a couple days ago. Because she just stared at me.
“I think if she had that kind of skill,” her captor said lightly, “she would have used it by now.”
“Then she can’t help you, can she?” I pointed out quickly. “She can’t shift Ares here for you. But if you take my offer—”
“I also think,” he said, his voice abruptly rising, “that you’re lying—”
“About what? I don’t—”
“—and stalling—”
“Listen to me—”
“—and that you should give me what I want—”
“I’m willing to discuss—”
“—before I get impatient,” he screamed, the knife bearing down hard enough to dent his captive’s throat, “and wreck this whole goddamn hotel!”
I stopped talking. The Black Circle weren’t the so-called dark mages I’d grown up with, who’d been seminormal guys who got into trouble and couldn’t get legit work anymore. The Black Circle were magic addicts and crazy men, and arguing with crazy doesn’t work.
Not when the crazy is desperate.
And they were. Because Jo, the only acolyte left alive besides Lizzie, hadn’t bet on the potion. Instead, she was off chasing the same weapon I was. And running her own game—without them—because if she found it, she wouldn’t need any help. Supposedly, it was strong enough to punch through Mom’s spell all by itself.
And I guessed Ares wouldn’t have much use for the guys who had twiddled their thumbs while a girl brought him back, now would he?
So yeah, they needed Lizzie, and they needed her bad.
“I have to discuss this with my associates,” I told him.
“No, we do this now!”
“No.” I somehow kept my voice calm. “If you want the girl, I need a minute. And you will give it to me.”
“You do not order me, Pythia. Perhaps what I’ll give you is a corpse!”
“Kill her, then,” I said, my voice harsh. “And I will shift upstairs and kill Lizzie before you can blink. And you will have nothing.”
For maybe half the time I’d asked for, we just stared at each other. I didn’t know what he was thinking, but I was wondering how I’d ever thought those eyes attractive. They were too bright, too wide, too wild. Like maybe he hadn’t had his fix lately.
Or like maybe he’d had too much of it.
The whole crowd behind him was the same way, hopped up on magic and almost desperate for a chance to use it. It hovered over them like a fog, leapt from man to man like static electricity, welled up like a dam ready to burst. I couldn’t negotiate with men like this. They wanted a fight.
I just had to hope they wanted something else more.
“A minute, then,” he finally said. “No longer.”
I turned and strode back across the shop.
It was mostly a blackened, charred mess, with heaps of ruined finery that I had to wend my way through. But at least the fires were out. And the people seemed okay, huddled behind the counter, which must have provided some protection. Because everything behind it looked pretty normal.
Except for the dead bodies sprawled on the floor, all of which looked like me.
It took me a second to realize that they were the mannequins from the shopwindow, and that Augustine had cut open their backs like a disturbed toddler with oversized Barbies, and was stuffing something inside.
Something lethal, by the sound of it.
“Don’ttouchthatareyoucrazy?” the high-strung genius snapped at Carla, who was crouched on the floor assisting him. And who abruptly snatched her hand back.
“Sorry, but you said—”
“Chartreuse! Does that look chartreuse to you?” He pointed at a vial in a rack with a couple dozen others. They were all green.
Carla blinked at them. “Yes?”
“That’s green apple!”
She reached for another vial.
“That’s pear! That’s pear!”
“You couldn’t have made them different colors?”
“They are different colors!”
“Oh, for fuck’s sake!” she said, shoving hair out of her face. “Just point!”
“I’ll do it myself,” he told her, and reached over to grab the rack.
And had me grab his wrist instead.
“What are you doing?” I demanded as Françoise hurried in from the back, carrying another rack of vials.
Outraged blue eyes glared up at me. “Getting us out of this—what does it look like?”
“I’m not sure what it looks like.”
“I’ve been toying with a spell, to avoid the ridiculous fees models charge just to walk down a runway. I haven’t perfected it yet, but it’s good enough for our purposes—”
“Which are?”
“Consider them attractive grenades,” he said, glaring in the direction of the mall.
“Grenades? But grenades are weapons—”
“Brilliant observation.”
“What kind of weapons?”
“What do you mean, what kind? The lethal kind!”
He jerked on his arm, but I didn’t let go. “Like the ones you’ve been working on for the Circle?”
He looked at me in exasperation. “What else do you think I have that could handle something like this?”
“Handle it how?”
“Would you let me go?”
“Handle it how?” I repeated, because I’d seen what one of those weapons could do.
The only way to end the war was to invade Faerie, where the leaders of the group trying to bring back the gods had holed up. But for all its skill, the Silver Circle balked at the idea of fighting a war in another world, partly because they didn’t know enough about it, but mainly because their magic didn’t work there. Augustine’s did.
Being part fey and famously creative had put him on the list to make some of the weapons needed to fight a literal war of the worlds, and he had delivered. I knew this because one of my bodyguards had recently stumbled across a spell that hadn’t made it to the finished stage. Yet it had still been almost enough to kill a master vampire.
And if it could kill one of those, it could kill anything.
“We’re in a hotel full of people,” I reminded him.
“Security has probably evacuated them by now—”
“In a couple of minutes?”
“The drag is clear,” the Oracle guy said, from a chewed-up black wad on the floor, where I guessed Deino had spat it out. “The hotel employees scattered like rats off a sinking ship once they realized what was happening—”
“They’ve had plenty of practice,” Augustine muttered.
“—and security dragged off the few tourists who were up this early. We think it will work, lady.”
“And if any of that gets into the air-conditioning system?” I looked at Augustine, who didn’t look back. “Can you absolutely guarantee me it won’t kill everyone in the hotel?”
“They’re going to kill everyone in the hotel!” he snarled, gesturing at the army outside. “Or hadn’t you noticed?”
“The Circle will be here soon,” Carla said, biting her lip. And looking at her child, who was crouched beside her, watching everything with bright eyes. I would have expected the girl to be sobbing in fear, but it looked like she had her mother’s resiliency.
Which was
ironic, considering that her mother appeared to have lost it.
Carla looked at me. “They will be here,” she said again, as if waiting for me to confirm it. To tell her that I saw us all getting out of this, her and the child she suddenly clutched against her side. “They will!”
“Maybe, but not in a few minutes,” Augustine said. “Twenty, and that’s if we’re lucky—”
“Twenty?”
“That’s what they told Françoise. They have to get across town, and they have to assemble a force first,” he said, glancing up. And noticing the desperate grip she had on the girl. “Although . . . although perhaps they can shave a few minutes off that,” he finished weakly.
“But the Pythia is here! Half the senate is here—”
“Not at the moment. They’re in New York,” I told her, trying to think.
“But they’re supposed to be here! Why is there no security?”
“There’s plenty of security for a hotel,” Augustine said. “Which is what this is supposed to be!”
He was right, and at the moment it was starting to look like insanity that the vampire senate’s West Coast headquarters was situated in a Vegas hotel. But after their old HQ was destroyed in the war, they’d needed a stopgap measure. And this place had been big enough, and the guy who built it had been a paranoid nutjob who used better-than-average wards, and it had recently been inherited by one of their own. . . .
None of which were sounding like such great reasons at the moment.
“And nobody thought to maybe improve the wards?” Carla demanded.
“They did—on the upper floors,” I told her. “The lower couldn’t have the best wards because they’re too sensitive—some crazy tourist could have set them off.”
“Why are we talking about wards?” Augustine demanded in a shrill whisper. “All we need to know is that they’re down. And without them, we’re sitting ducks. Do you have any idea what those people out there can do in twenty minutes?”
“But we have the Pythia,” the reporter repeated, looking between the two of us.
Augustine and I exchanged glances. “I assume you can’t shift back an hour or two and warn us?” he asked, looking like he already knew the answer.
“If I could, I’d have already done it.”
“Then can you shift us out of here?”
“No.”
“Then it’s as I said before—we have to get ourselves out of this.”
“Yes, but not this way.”
“Then I hope you have a damn good idea,” he snapped. “I’m all out!”
I stared at the broken doll bodies of the mannequins. And at my pulled pork sandwich trampled in the debris. And at Deino, pulling on a scarf that was still stuck to her, static cling–style.
“Yeah,” I said. “I have an idea.”
Chapter Seven
“Pythia!” The mage’s spell-enhanced voice boomed through the lobby. “Stop stalling! Will you surrender the girl or not?”
“I will.” I reappeared in the burnt-out hole of a front door. “How do we do this?”
“No!” Rhea shouted. “Lady, please—”
She cut off when the knife at her throat abruptly tightened.
“Have your people send Lizzie down,” the mage told me, nodding at the bank of elevators across from Augustine’s, near the lobby. “When she’s in our hands, you’ll get your acolyte back.”
“Yes, in pieces!”
“You don’t trust me?” He looked stricken. “And I thought we were having such a nice conversation.”
The short break seemed to have improved his temper. He was back to the faux genial crap that was somehow more nerve-racking than the brief glimpse of crazy. He was also smiling again, and just the sight of that was enough to make my blood curdle.
“We’ll meet in the middle,” I said, trying to keep the revulsion out of my tone.
“We will not. Do you think me so foolish as to let you touch her? You’ll shift her away, and as you said, I will have nothing.”
“I won’t shift her, because I won’t be there. Some of my associates will meet you, and see to her safety. When she’s in their hands—”
“No!” That was Rhea again, suddenly going from quiet passivity to thrashing fury. “No, don’t do it! Don’t give them—”
“Rhea—”
“You can’t,” she pleaded. “You know what she’ll do!”
“Rhea!”
“You can’t let him come back! Please—”
“Who knew your acolyte was such a spitfire?” the mage said, holding on to the struggling girl with difficulty. “You know, I’ll almost regret giving her back to you.”
“Just bring her here!” I snapped. “My people will meet you halfway.”
“Start the elevator, and I start walking.”
I turned my head and nodded at Augustine, who was standing behind the counter with the phone to his ear. The elevator started moving a moment later. And then so did the mage, dragging a still-struggling Rhea this way. At the same time, Françoise walked out of the shop with a newly dignified Carla beside her, a buttoned-up suit coat hiding the irreverent T-shirt, and her hair and makeup freshly done, thanks to the stylish blue beret on her head.
And trailing the duo were three considerably less dignified types, covered in mounds of dusty couture.
“Not them,” the mage said suddenly.
“They’re harmless—”
“Bullshit. I know what they are, and I know who they’re loyal to. They stay away or no deal.”
I glared at him for a second, but the elevator was on its way, and there was no time to argue. I nodded at the two women in the lead, who had stopped to look back at me. And who caught the three lumbering mountains as they passed, fanning them out in a line behind them: one to the left, one at the center, and one to the right of the shop.
Leaving our side as ready as we’d ever be as the elevator hit the halfway mark.
“No,” Rhea whispered, staring at it. “No.”
“When it arrives, make sure it’s her,” the mage instructed his people. “No glamouries.”
“This is my fault,” Rhea said, her voice rising in panic. “I saw him return, and now I’m helping—”
“It’s all right,” I told her.
But she shook her head, violently enough that a thin line of red bloomed against the paleness of her throat. “It’s not all right. It’s my fault, and when he comes back—”
“Rhea—”
“—he’ll kill us all! You, me.” She looked up, toward the tower where my suite was, and her voice dropped to a whisper. “The children.”
“Rhea!” I started toward her, suddenly afraid, but the mage jerked her back.
“Stick to the deal, Pythia.”
“You don’t understand—”
“Stick to the deal!”
“I’m sorry,” Rhea whispered, her eyes finding mine. And in them was everything I needed to know, and nothing that I wanted. Because I’d seen those eyes before.
I’d seen them on her mother, right before—
“Rhea!” I screamed, making the mage jump and tighten his grip on the knife, because he didn’t understand. She wasn’t trying to get away. She was trying—
“No!” I shouted as a gout of blood stained pristine white cotton.
The mage jerked the knife back, but too late. Suddenly, blood was gushing everywhere, the mage was cursing, and the two women who had almost reached him were looking back at me, shock and horror on their faces. And then the elevator hit the lobby, and we were out of time.
“Go!” I yelled, and they didn’t need to be told twice.
Françoise whirled and cursed the mage, who had let go of Rhea to stare at his bloody shirt in disbelief. He was blown onto his back and sent skidding across the highly polished floor while Carla
’s enhanced voice blared, “Now! Now! Now!” and someone cut the lights. Leaving only smears of neon staining the darkness as I ran for my acolyte.
And as three cloth-covered mounds began lurching toward the mages, with the uneven, staggering gait of a trio of couture-clad zombies.
Which somehow made them worse.
Which somehow made them terrifying.
And then the elevator dinged, and the doors opened. And what had to be a thousand black, screeching, flapping nightmares poured out, like every bat out of every hell. The magic microphones flew straight into the already confused crowd of mages, who proved that the Black Circle had something in common with its Silver counterpart, after all.
Because they immediately began cursing everything in sight.
That included the approaching fabric mountains, who were hit by what had to be a dozen spells each. They didn’t fight back. They didn’t even seem to notice. They just kept going, staggering toward the suddenly panicked group of men, who nonetheless got their shit together and flung a series of combined spells at them from all directions.
And, finally, that got a response.
I had reached Françoise, who was guarding the huddled girl with the expression of a woman who thought it was probably futile at this point. And it looked it. God, there was so much blood. I squatted beside Rhea, my heart in my throat—
And was knocked back on my ass by three explosions, at almost the same time, which shattered every window on the drag.
I looked up to see a glass avalanche pouring down the front of the Old West stores, bouncing off the wooden sidewalks and flying into the air. It looked like silver rain, like tiny fireworks reflecting the neon and sparkling against the dark, like a million years of bad luck I didn’t need, since most of the windows had been mirrored. And it was earsplittingly loud, a jumbled cacophony that disoriented me and I was sitting down.
It was no wonder that, for a minute, nobody noticed the thin, watery substance spraying over the crowd, like the sprinkler system had suddenly been switched on.
It was peppering down along with shreds of couture, a few plastic body parts, and half of a blond wig. Because instead of ancient goddesses, the mounds that had just been blown to bits had been powered by Augustine’s mobile mannequins. And had been stuffed with the potion that was now covering the crowd, most of whom hadn’t gotten shields up in time because they were busy slaughtering harmless flying microphones.