by Karen Chance
They didn’t like it at all.
The colors strobing the tunnel changed from blue to yellow to orange, and finally, to red. And, as soon as the red light hit, the little man stopped, having run straight into something by the look of him. There was nothing to see there, either, but when I caught up with him and put out a hand, a powerful ward zapped the shit out of me.
“Is this what you meant by shutting things down?” I demanded.
“Augghhh!” he said. “Augghhh!”
Yeah, that was helpful.
Like that particular ward, which hadn’t caught shit, as far as I could tell. But one of the others might. I didn’t know where this damned training bay was, but if we shut down enough segments of the corridor, it wouldn’t matter. The invisible man would be trapped inside one of them.
I grabbed Lab Coat’s arm and shifted us through the barrier. He looked at me in alarm and confusion. “I—how did you do that? And why—”
He broke off, because I’d just picked a little red vial out of my stash and shook it at him. “Run!” I yelled.
He ran.
And, honestly, I couldn’t have asked for a better partner. He kept looking over his shoulder, I guess to see if I was still back there. Which resulted in him running into things—walls, doorways, other secretarial types—because this seemed to be an administrative area—and wards. Lots of wards.
And every time he hit one of the latter, I grabbed him and shifted us through. It took three such shifts before we started hitting serious opposition, in the form of a party of war mages who ran at us out of what looked to be a solid wall. And grabbed Lab Coat, who was shrieking too much to explain anything.
I grabbed him right back. “Fight me!” I told them, because I didn’t have time for anything else.
“What?” One of them said, looking more confused than angry.
“Fight me!” I screamed, and threw a potion bomb, which exploded in a haze of purple smoke.
It didn’t hurt them—Pritkin used that sort of thing for cover in the field—but it didn’t make them happy. I shifted me and Lab Coat to the end of a long corridor, and looked back to see what appeared to be a whole squadron of war mages thundering this way. They had leather covered arms over their faces to act as makeshift gas masks, and a raft of spells streaming out in front of them.
Which hit the ward we’d just shifted through and bounced back, causing them to have to duck or shield.
“It’s hard to get good help these days,” I told my partner, and shook a grenade at him.
He seemed to have gotten the idea, because he took off again, obligingly screaming his head off. Although it was starting to sound a little perfunctory now, and he kept glancing back at me more in puzzlement than terror. Especially at the sight of me throwing potions at basically everything but him.
“I’m out of shape,” he called back, after a moment, sounding winded. “I can’t keep this up much longer.”
“Is that training bay one up there?” I demanded, pointing at a big, oblong opening in the wall at the very end of the corridor.
“Yeah,” he panted. “That’s . . . it.”
“Is there a ward over the door?”
He stopped suddenly, and looked at me. “There can be.”
“Put it up and keep it up. Let nothing in or out and you’re done,” I told him.
He stared at me, a pudgy hand coming up to his throat. “There . . . there really is an assassin in here, isn’t there?”
“Yeah,” I said, and shifted.
The training bay was a large, open area with a gym on the right, a row of lockers on the left, and a bunch of cots stacked in the back. It also had a barrier across the middle, like the ones in the corridor outside. But it wasn’t invisible like them, although not because this one was any different.
But because I was.
VampVision had flicked on when I entered the room, despite the fact that I hadn’t told it to. Even weirder, VampScent had kicked in, or whatever you wanted to call a super sensitive nose. And the room freaking reeked.
I was assaulted by a thousand dirty feet and sweaty bodies, going back what felt like years; by pipe smoke, a lingering hint of spice from perhaps this morning; by soap and hair cream and cologne, because this was a dorm at night; and by spent magic, gun oil and dirt.
And by something else.
It hit me suddenly and surprisingly strong: not an ugly smell this time, but the exact opposite. For a moment, I thought it was me, the perfumed scent so similar to that of the glamourie I was wearing. But it wasn’t me.
It was made from the same stuff, however, as my smelly new face mask: fey flora. For a fey disguise so alien and so perfect that it had fooled the wards—and the eyes. But nothing fooled a vampire’s nose—
Something slashed at me, out of nowhere, but a wave of scent had warned me just in time and I shifted away. Not far, just a few feet. And then whirled and threw a time spell, and shifted again.
I rematerialized in time to see a row of lockers collapse in on themselves, the metal eaten away by age, the contents now dust. And nothing else. I couldn’t tell if I’d destroyed the assassin, but I doubted it. If I’d hit him, the illusion should have aged out of existence, too, and there should be a body on the ground.
But there wasn’t.
I scanned the room, but despite my best efforts, not even a vampire could see through this illusion. Nothing rippled; nothing moved. Damn, he was good!
But so was Mircea.
And I discovered something that I’d never truly understood before: vampires didn’t need eyes. In fact, right now, they were just a distraction. I kept straining to see when what I needed was to trust my other senses.
I closed my eyes, and dimly noticed somebody beating on something nearby. Pritkin. I’d seen him and a large group of what I guessed were his students, trapped behind the ward when I came in. But I hadn’t noticed until now that he was angry—no, he was furious—and shouting at somebody to get the damned ward down. Get it down now! But somebody else was telling him that it would be a minute, maybe two, and that was enough.
That was plenty.
This time, when the wave of scent rushed at me, I was ready. And I didn’t bother disintegrating any lockers. I waited until the fey was almost on top of me, until my nerves were screaming for me to go, go, go, until I could almost feel the edge of another blade biting into my skin—
And then I proved that my trainer’s time and energy hadn’t been wasted.
“Astara,” I whispered, and immediately heard a scream, high pitched and terrible, and a blade clattering against the hard-packed earth.
I just stood there with my eyes closed for another moment, knowing what had just happened. And not wanting to see a pentagram of light opening up inside a body, one that I doubted a glamourie, however potent, could hide. Not when said body was getting ripped apart, with the arms, legs, and torso each being sent, not to a different place, but to a different time.
Very different.
The screaming abruptly stopped and the spell closed down. I risked a peek, and saw nothing but a pool of blood on the ground and a shocked looking bunch of war mages peering in the door. And Pritkin, his arms still lifted from where he’d been hammering on the shield, halfway across the room, his eyes huge, but his face blank.
Chapter Eleven
“Here it is,” Jonas said, hefting a large book off a shelf. “It should be in here somewhere.”
He paused, probably from seeing my face, which glamouried or not was likely green. The adrenaline of the chase had kept me going long enough to reach his office, but it was starting to wear off now. What the hell had I been thinking?
“What the hell were you thinking?” Pritkin demanded. He’d been pacing around like a caged lion, but now he whirled on me.
“Now, now,” Jonas said. “Let’s give her a moment, shall we?”
“She’s Pythia! She has all the moments she wants!” He glared at me. “Which is the bloody point! You could have
shifted back in time and warned us about what was waiting in my room. You didn’t have to chase it through half the facility and almost get yourself killed!”
That was exactly what I’d been telling myself, but having it thrown at me like that pissed me off.
“Then let’s go back right now,” I challenged. “We can capture him—"
He rounded on me. “And if he had help? Help that guts you as soon as we show up?”
“I didn’t see any help—”
“You didn’t see anything! And you aren’t going anywhere near that room!”
I felt a retort jump to my lips, but forced myself to swallow it. Having been trapped behind a ward while I hunted a fey warrior right in front of him didn’t appear to have done his blood pressure any good. And I didn’t want to contribute to my boyfriend’s aneurysm.
“You could have shifted out of the training salle,” Pritkin went on, his voice cold as ice. “The wards had that creature trapped; he was effectively immobilized as soon as he went in that room. He could have been dealt with easily and swiftly by men trained to do so, but what do you do instead? You shift in there with him!”
Okay, point, I thought.
“I didn’t intend to put myself in jeopardy,” I said. “But it’s a little hard to think straight when an invisible man is trying to gut you.”
But Pritkin wasn’t having it. Pritkin wasn’t having anything. “Bollocks! I’ve trained you better than that! You know how to think under pressure, how to make the right call—”
“I thought I did—”
“If you almost died, it was not the right call!”
“Well, maybe I’m not as good of a student as you think,” I said, feeling myself tearing up. Which only made me angrier, because this wasn’t the time, damn it!
“Now, now,” Jonas said again, and this time, he patted my hand.
He looked truly concerned, which meant exactly nothing since Jonas Marsden was the best actor I knew. He ought to be. He’d been perfecting the role of doddering old man for decades, which was a hard sell considering that he also happened to be the current leader of the Silver Circle.
The pantomime was helped by the fact that he didn’t look remotely dangerous. Especially wearing an item that I guessed was supposed to be a flight suit, but on his Santa Claus body looked more like an olive-green onesie. All he was missing was a bippy and blankie to be ready for bed.
But instead, he had a massive book in one hand and a pair of half-moon spectacles in the other, the latter of which he settled on his nose. They increased the Santa vibe, especially when paired with his wild mane of white hair. It was extra wavy today, wafting about his head as if he was standing under an air conditioner vent. But I’d been around magic users long enough to know that what it was wafting on wasn’t air.
The five mages crowding the doorway were also having an extra bad hair day. Their power was surging, but with no one to pummel, it was bleeding out into the air like static electricity. But none of them could hold a candle to Pritkin.
He looked like he’d stuck a finger in a light socket, or maybe in a lightning bolt, because his hair actually crackled when he moved. If I hadn’t been so freaked out, I’d have found it fascinating: crackle, stomp, crackle, stomp, as he paced around the room. But there wasn’t the space to move much, because war mages had a fetish for austerity, so even Jonas didn’t get a palatial office.
And that fact was seemingly feeding Pritkin’s rage—or fear, or, more likely, a combination of both—so instead of coming down off the adrenaline high, he kept ramping up.
“You’re going to give yourself a heart attack,” I told him, afraid that it was true.
“You’re going to give me a heart attack!” he snarled, before suddenly kneeling at my feet, only it was more like a lunge. He’d acquired a war mage coat from somewhere; I didn’t know where because we hadn’t been back to his room. But it was there, nonetheless, and even stranger, it looked like his.
It also swirled out impressively when he did the kneeling maneuver that wasn’t a kneel, because it was designed to get in my face.
Like, right in it. Pritkin was suddenly close enough that I could feel his breath on my lips, which was normally a good thing, but . . . not right now. “Why do you look like that?” he demanded.
“Like what?”
Green eyes searched my face, and they didn’t miss much, making me have to work not to squirm. “Like you’re perfectly calm and serene. You aren’t even flushed!”
“Maybe I’m . . . pale . . . with, uh—”
“You weren’t even flushed in there!” he threw out an arm, I assume in the direction of training bay one, although who could tell? We’d gone through so many twists and turns on the way here that I was totally lost. All I knew was that we were aboveground again, in a small office with a pretty, old-fashioned window fitted with diamond panes of glass, and some roses blooming outside.
Their heads were a little too heavy for their stems, causing them to bob drunkenly in a breeze. It made them disappear below the window whenever it blew too hard, and then suddenly pop up again, as if they were floral peeping toms. The wind was giving some fat bumblebees, who were trying to get a drink, a hard time, too. They were dipping and rising along with the flowers, and wiggling their little bee butts as they adjusted course, as if doing some weird sort of dance . . .
“Lady Cassandra,” Pritkin said, gritting his teeth but using my title, because we had company. “You’re wearing a glamourie.”
“So?”
“Why?” It was stark. It was also infuriating.
“Because I feel like it?”
“Take it off!”
“Stop doing that!”
“Doing what?”
“Treating me like a child. Eat your vegetables, wait in my room, show me your face—”
“Don’t rip fey assassins to pieces before we can question them?” Jonas added mildly, without looking up from his book.
I narrowed my eyes at him. “I didn’t have a lot of choice—”
Pritkin said a bad word. Then he looked at his fellow mages. “Get out.”
“Go fuck yourself,” one suggested, because they were all jonesing for a fight. An enemy had invaded their base, attacked a woman they were bound to protect, and—probably worst of all from their perspective—said woman had managed to save herself while making them look . . . not very competent. Which was unfair.
They’d dodged those spells in the corridor like a boss.
“Here it is!” Jonas adjusted his spectacles. “From an entry dated the 4th of September, 1761: ‘The torso of a male fey was discovered in training salle number seven today’.” He looked at us from over his glasses. “What we call number one was actually the seventh to be dug out, you see, but the other six were taken over by the new medical facility completed in 1883—”
“Jonas.” If Pritkin’s teeth got any tighter, he was going to break one.
“Yes, of course. Where were we? ‘The torso was naked, with no insignia to specify clan affiliation, and the body was badly decayed. However, it was determined to be of the light fey subrace, and the proper authorities were notified—’”
“Why was it naked?” The same mage who’d spoken before suddenly asked. He sounded American.
“He, and time disintegrated his clothing,” I said, pointing out the obvious.
“You hit it with a time spell, and it kept on moving?”
I blinked at him. “He. And, no. He died.”
“Then why was the torso only decayed, but the clothes were gone?” he asked, like Sherlock Holmes making some kind of major deduction. “Flesh rots faster than cloth!”
“Jonas said ‘badly decayed’,” I reminded him, wondering if they had IQ tests for war mages, and thinking it might be a useful idea. “And maybe he had shitty clothes. I don’t know—”
“No, you don’t. Which is why you should have let us do our jobs!”
“You couldn’t even see him,” I said angrily.
“And you could?”
“That is a point,” Jonas said, looking up from his book. “How did you detect him, Cassandra?”
“Lady Cassandra,” Pritkin snapped, from over his shoulder, having gone back to pacing.
“Yes, of course.” Jonas smiled genially at me.
“Pythia stuff,” I said, grateful that Pritkin’s remark had given me a second.
“Really? Of what kind, may I ask?”
“Later,” Pritkin said, coming to my aid again without even realizing it. Or maybe he did. He might be angry, but that didn’t mean that he didn’t have my back.
“Of course,” Jonas said, dropping it too easily, but right then, I didn’t care.
“The body has been turned over to the fey representative,” he continued. “Along with what appeared to be a much older shin bone, also determined by our doctors to be fey in origin. Dr. Campbell has speculated that this area might once have been a cemetery for exiled fey who could not be buried on their own soil—”
“Then where’s the rest of him?” Mouthy Mage demanded.
I was getting really tired of this guy.
And so, it seemed, was Pritkin. “What the hell difference does it make? He’s dead—”
“Yeah, I got that.”
“—our job is to find out how he got in, what he wanted, and if there’s any more of the damned things!”
“Well, you’re the fey expert,” Mouthy said. “Or was that demon? I forget.”
“Simpson,” Jonas said, still reading. “Do be a dear boy, won’t you, and close the door on your way out?”
Simpson left, after shooting Pritkin another “anywhere, anytime” look, and thankfully took the others with him. I immediately missed him. Mouthy had been irritating, but also a good distraction, and now I was suddenly the sole focus of two very intelligent sets of eyes.
“You seem to be learning a great deal more about your position,” Jonas said. “That was quite an advanced technique you used.”