Shatter the Earth

by Karen Chance

  “Miss!” I realized that I was on my feet, clutching a cat and howling inhuman cries full of pain and rage and utter, impotent fury. The old man was staring at me, a hand up and warding even as I stumbled back.

  “I’m sorry,” I whispered. “I—I have to go.”

  I fled, taking the cat with me. Nobody tried to stop me, which was just as well. I felt like I might still caterwaul at them.

  ~~~

  I found a coffee shop in a nearby side tunnel. It was quieter and narrower than the main crossroads behind me, which served as a hub for this section of the complex. It was busy with hundreds of mages coming and going, and many more lounging around cafes and peering in the windows of shops, or staring upward at the cathedral-like ceiling high above.

  Most of the tunnels were low ceilinged and claustrophobic, but not here. This area had been built in a natural cavern, and felt light and airy, helped by powerful reflectors that brought in the sun from outside and diffused it around the space. Instead of a rabbit warren, this part of the system felt more like a regular town, which had just happened to end up underground.

  I supposed the Corps had had to come up with something, since many of the mages assigned here lived beneath the surface for long periods. But right now, it felt too exposed to me, especially with all the new recruits hanging around. Who had nothing to do in between bouts of their training but people watch.

  Me and the cat, whose name I still didn’t know, because I was not touching that collar again, were more comfortable on a side street. I could still see the hub from here, but it was surprising how few people had made it this far, and most of them looked like salty dogs who were refugeeing from the crazy, too. They didn’t pay me much attention.

  I got a coffee and checked out the other offerings. The cafe didn’t have liver, but Tom—the cat’s name for now—deigned to accept a saucer of milk and a tuna sandwich. Albacore, because fuck it, that’s why. I drank my coffee and tried not to shake too obviously, and waited for the fit to pass.

  It had been a long time since I’d had one that severe, and never from an animal’s perspective. I hadn’t even known that was possible, and maybe it wasn’t entirely. I was pretty sure that my brain had filled in some gaps, and anthropomorphized some thoughts—but not all of them. The gist had felt authentic, not to mention horrible. Tom had been traumatized and so had I.

  I needed a vacation.

  I also needed to remember not to touch items that had been near tragic events. Touch clairvoyance was a bitch, and while I didn’t have it nearly as bad as some, it could catch you like that sometimes. The imprinted memories playing back like a horror record, forcing you to relieve somebody else’s worst nightmare.

  Tom had savaged that sandwich, and was licking the remaining tuna juices off a piece of bread. I got up and got him another, and me a refill. Along with a couple of the local fruit buns, like hot cross buns without the cross, because they were basically the best thing the British had ever invented.

  Tom inhaled the second almost as fast as the first, making me wonder how many scraps, exactly, they’d been feeding him. I drank coffee and ate buns, while wondering what a group of guys in olive jumpsuits were doing to a wall. It was opposite the café and down a little, where the buildings populating the hub erupted out of the surrounding rock. It had been plain brick a minute ago, except where people had stuck up fliers for services or help wanted. But they were being scrubbed off and something else put in their place, only I couldn’t tell what.

  “You want to go see?” I asked Tom, who gave me the uninterested look of the seriously stuffed.

  That was too bad, since we were going anyway. But that presented a problem, since I didn’t want to carry his maybe twenty pounds of fluff around. I solved the problem by unzipping my overnight bag, which was the kind on wheels, and plopping a very full, and very sleepy Tom inside. I left the top open, so he could stare out at the world if he wanted, but he appeared to prefer to sleep in my silky blouse.

  I frowned. How do cats always find the one item that is hardest to clean hair off of? It’s honestly a talent. But the damage was done, so I left him there and started off, rolling over the nicely cobblestoned streets, because this area was paved.

  Only to stop abruptly when a bunch of giant heads exploded out of the wall, right beside me.

  I shuffled back a few steps, because I’d ended up inside someone’s face, then head, then face, because the wall’s new decorations were rotating. They were big enough that I had to actually cross the street to get a good look at them, and then I wished I hadn’t. Like, really wished.

  Because the formerly blank wall was now covered by the rotating, 3-D heads of criminals.

  According to a scroll at the top of the wall, what I and the rest of the street were now looking at was the Circle’s current most wanted list. I had a vague impression of maybe half men, a quarter of women, and another quarter of creatures whose gender wasn’t immediately apparent because many weren’t in human form. But it was only vague, because there was one image that I couldn’t seem to look away from.

  The hair was pale blond, the face thin and nondescript, the eye color a gray so light that it was practically colorless. It all added up to an entirely ordinary looking individual who would probably never have gotten a second glance by most people. Except that his left eye was now a ruined mess.

  His name was Jonathan, or at least that was the alias he was currently using. No one knew what his real name was, despite him long being one of the Circle’s biggest threats. In fact, recently he might recently have zoomed to the top of the list, having masterminded at least a dozen very creative attacks in the war. And that included an attack on Hong Kong that had almost destroyed the whole city.

  I watched the head rotate back around again and felt sick, although not for the offenses listed underneath. But because I’d just seen him melt an old woman’s face off with acid. It was hard to imagine a city full of people, I discovered. It was easier to envision a woman named Emma, who’d liked pink paisley and had a bomb ass cat.

  “I wished you’d taken both eyes,” I told Tom, and shifted.

  Chapter Six

  I hadn’t bothered to tell Pritkin that I was going home, because as far as he was concerned, I wasn’t. It had been a tough month, with a lot of to-ing and fro-ing of the kind that tended to freak out my bodyguards, not to mention my boyfriend. I’d therefore gotten into the habit of shifting backward in time, an old Pythian trick, to return shortly after I left on any unscheduled trips.

  So that, as far as everyone else was concerned, I hadn’t gone anywhere at all.

  It made for some very long days, but honestly, I didn’t know how else I was supposed to keep up my training—which was taking place in a different era, mind you—fulfill all of my court responsibilities, attend meetings about the war, spend time with my little initiates, and also have a life. There literally weren’t enough hours in a day.

  So, I made some more.

  Last night was typical. I’d shifted to Mircea’s house as soon as I went to bed, trekked around old Romania like a crazy person for most of the night, then met Pritkin at four a.m. my time for “lunch”, which was noon in Stratford. After which I shifted back to Vegas shortly after I left, buying myself seven additional hours, which I now intended to use to get some sleep.

  I set my alarm for 3:30, to make it to Pritkin’s place before I was missed, changed into some shorty PJs, and liberated my new cat. Who looked in disbelief at my bed, which was round and so oversized that they needed a new designation for it. Orgy-sized maybe, because it could have fit ten, maybe twelve in a pinch.

  “I know,” I told Tom. “But I didn’t design this place. It isn’t my fault.”

  He still didn’t look impressed. And promptly crawled back into my suitcase, backing in so far that all I could see were two bright blue eyes, gleaming at me in the dark. He’d chosen his bed, and since my shirt was pretty much ruined already, I left him be.

  I turned off
the light, doubled checked my alarm, and went to sleep.

  Yes, I thought ten minutes later, I was definitely going to sleep now.

  Yepper, I agreed, twenty minutes in. Gonna drop off. Just any moment now.

  You got it, I gritted out, after half a freaking hour. I had been awake for going on a day, under less than ideal conditions. My body ached, my brain was fried, and my eyes actually burned. I was going to sleep right now, damn it!

  Only I didn’t. I tossed and turned and tried every conceivable position. I plumped my pillow, changed it out for a different one, and then pounded that one into submission, too, before giving up and going back to the first one again. I put on a sleep mask. I took off a sleep mask, because I had black out curtains that my vamp bodyguards almost always kept closed even when they weren’t in here. I didn’t need a sleep mask, goddamnit!

  The problem was, I didn’t know what I needed.

  Or no, that wasn’t true. I needed a normal schedule, so that my internal clock had some idea what time it was instead of being perpetually confused. Jet lag had nothing on time lag, let me tell you.

  I finally got up, shoved my feet into slippers, and stomped off to the kitchen. Somebody had told me that warm milk helped insomnia. It sounded nasty, but I was willing to give it a try. Right now, I was willing to try anything.

  Of course, that required that I play the fun and exciting game of Hunt the Milk, which was no mean feat. The penthouse’s kitchen had been designed to feed a horde, with three fridges—two regular ones and a shorty under the counter—a standalone freezer, two wine coolers, another wine cooler that was used only for beer, and God knew what else. I didn’t, because I couldn’t find half of it!

  And what I could find, I often didn’t want.

  Tami, my friend and self-appointed life manager, and I had sat around one night shortly after we moved in playing “guess the item” with a couple drawers full of weird, one-use-only gadgets. We’d managed to correctly identify an avocado slicer, a carrot peeler, a pair of herb scissors, a strawberry stem remover (okay, we cheated with Google on that one) and a vertical egg cooker. Plus some stuff that even the search engine of the gods hadn’t been able to help us out with. Tami’s go-to greeting for visitors to the kitchen these days was to drag them over to the mystery item drawer and try to make them identify something.

  But whatever it was that you did want to find? Forget it. Especially milk. With twenty-eight little initiates now, most of them under the age of twelve, milk was like liquid gold. Which probably explained why people kept hiding it.

  I had personally located it in the vegetable drawer, buried under a bag of radishes; in a wine fridge, shoved well to the back of the bottles; in a bar cart—where somebody had been making a White Russian, I guessed; in the refrigerated drawer in the butler’s pantry, which was supposed to be used only for party platters; and in an ice bucket. With no ice.

  It was always a challenge. Which was why the actual designated milk shelf in the actual designated milk fridge was the last place I looked. So, of course, there it was.

  I was staring at it resentfully when I felt the sensation of being watched. I looked around and then down to see four pairs of eyes—three brown and one blue—regarding me hopefully. It seemed that Tom had made the acquaintance of our other feline companions, and bonded over a love of warm milk. That surprised me, as I’d feared some tension.

  But I should have known better. The other three belonged to Annabelle, one of my sweet old lady acolytes, and the three tabbies looked like their mama. I didn’t think they wasted energy on anything but waddling to the nearest food bowl—or saucer, in this case.

  I microwaved a nightcap for them, and then made myself a hot chocolate, because that has milk in it, right? I decided it was close enough and was about to go back to bed when I heard a door open. And a very angry voice yelling in what sounded like the hall.

  “No! I am not doing it again! I said—”

  The voice abruptly cut off.

  I put my head down on the counter and thought about just ignoring it. That was the problem with a household that currently consisted of sixty-one people, an eclectic mix of initiates, bodyguards, acolytes, Tami’s brood of adopted kids, coven witches, and the occasional war mage. It wasn’t just about the food; it was about the drama.

  And I was so not here for the drama.

  But two things stopped me: First, I was pretty sure that the voice had belonged to my chief acolyte and presumptive heir, Rhea, who was kind of my responsibility. And, two, she had been cut off in a way that I really didn’t like.

  So, me and the cat brigade headed down the hall.

  I found a group of eight acolytes encircling Rhea in the middle of the throne room at the end of the hall, so-called because of the hideous chair that dominated the far end. In the daytime, it was the audience chamber of the Pythian Court, with a gorgeous wall of floor to ceiling windows letting in a flood of bright Vegas sunlight. At night, the now star- and neon-studded backdrop became our unofficial gym and training salle. Only, instead of workout equipment and saunas, it was just a big empty space where this sort of thing happened.

  Rhea was turning around in a defensive posture, trying to keep everyone in view all at once. That looked a little weird since she wasn’t in workout gear, but rather a long, flowing white nightgown and blue robe, which made her look vaguely like the Virgin Mary. The image was heightened by the long, dark hair that rippled down her back, the clear, teenaged complexion, and the sweet face, although the latter was screwed up in anger at the moment. She also had a wand in her hand, which was where the comparison with the mother of Christ kind of broke down.

  “Rhea,” I said, starting forward, but I doubt she heard.

  My voice had been eclipsed by that of Rico, one of my bodyguards, who I’d just noticed off to the side, being restrained by two and then three of his buddies. Because a pissed off vampire could drag a freight train—without a track. And Rico was clearly pissed.

  “Let her go” he snarled. “Let her go or I’ll—”

  “Calm the hell down,” Fred snapped. My smallest bodyguard was practically hanging off of Rico’s right arm. “Or Marco will figure out something’s going on up here. You wanna deal with Marco?”

  But it was like Rico hadn’t even heard. That wasn’t too surprising since he had a Latin temperament and thought Rhea hung the stars. And because one of the acolytes had just zapped her with some sort of spell, causing her to cry out.

  I didn’t know what they were doing, since they didn’t have wands, but then, they didn’t need them. Each was an adept Pythian acolyte who could have taken on a war mage squadron and had a serious chance of winning. Much less eight against one young girl, whose skills with the Pythian power were, uh, developing.

  Just any day now.

  But not enough to keep from getting zapped again, apparently. Rhea yelped, Rico cursed, and the trio of senior level vamps trying to restrain him started getting dragged across the freaking floor. I started to intervene again, but was eclipsed once again, this time by a woman who looked far more like a Pythia than I ever would.

  That was fair, since she could have been one if she hadn’t given it up to go make babies, somewhere around the turn of the century—and I don’t mean the last one. Her name was Hilde, and when you looked up “formidable” in the dictionary, it was her grimly pleasant face you saw staring back at you. What you didn’t see was the jutting bosom, the booming voice, and the cap of pure white curls on her head, the latter because she was somewhere around two hundred years old. Nobody knew exactly where because everyone was too afraid to ask, Hilde being . . . well, Hilde.

  Only Rhea seemed to have forgotten that. Her eyes flashed and focused on the newest threat, something which would have worried most people. Because Rhea could be pretty formidable herself. She was not only a coven-trained witch, she was also the daughter of the last Pythia and Jonas Marsden, the current leader of the Silver Circle, the most powerful magical organization on ear
th. She was young, being only nineteen, but there were times that you could clearly see the impressive witch she would become.

  This, of course, had no effect whatsoever on Hilde, who was already an impressive witch and one who had clearly lost patience with the woman who was supposed to be her pupil.

  “Defend yourself!” Hilde commanded.

  “Attack me once more and I will!”

  “As you like,” Hilde said, and zapped the shit out of her.

  Several more bodyguards ran in to restrain Rico, who was now almost invisible under a mountain of vamps, although he continued to inch forward. He needn’t have bothered; Rhea could defend herself. At least, she could until she made the mistake of pointing that wand at Hilde, at which point it was aged into powder.

  “Defend yourself!” Hilde commanded.

  “Give me back my wand and I will!”

  “You are a Pythian acolyte. You do not need a wand.”

  “That’s not your decision!”

  “You’re right,” Hilde agreed. “It is yours. If you want your weapon back, de-age it.”

  And something about that simple comment looked like it hurt Rhea more than whatever taser-like spell they’d been using. “You know I can’t!” she said, her face crumpling.

  “I know you won’t,” Hilde snapped back. “You have the ability; use it!”

  “I can’t!”

  “Then you are about to have a very uncomfortable night,” she said, and the circle abruptly closed in.

  Rhea screamed as five or six of them zapped her at once; Rico roared and tore loose from his restraints, fangs fully extended; and I decided that I needed a little time to process all this and put everything on slow-down.