Karen Chance - [Cassandra Palmer 03]

by Embrace the Night (v5. 1) (html)

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16 “I can’t breathe,” I complained. Sal shot me a look in the full-length mirror in front of us. “You don’t need to breathe. You need to look good,” she said, ruthlessly lacing up the back of my bodice. We were in the penthouse suite that she’d appropriated along with a bottle of champagne, half a dozen bellboys and the dress I’d ordered from Augustine. He had not been pleased to be woken up in the middle of the night or to have his workroom invaded, and had loudly declared that feats of genius take time and he wasn’t finished yet, thank you. Then Sal bought two outfits outright and put in an order for an even dozen more and he shut up so fast his mouth made a popping sound. “No, you don’t need to breathe. I’m pretty sure it’s a necessity for me.” “Did you always whine this much?” “I don’t think asking to be allowed to breathe constitutes—” “Because I don’t remember it.” Sal paused to admire the very rude slogan that had just written itself across her chest. One of the outfits

  Chapter 16

  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 fl

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18 “What, I can’t leave you alone for five minutes?” Billy hissed. No matter how many times I body-swap—not that it’s been all that many—I still get a weird tingle hearing my voice saying words my brain didn’t think up. Maybe I’ll get used to it eventually, but I doubt it. I glanced at the darkened window and saw what I’d expected: a swarthy, saturnine type in a too loud suit, with slick black hair and a slight overbite. Not the prettiest face around, but also not one to attract anyone’s attention. I’d have to remember to thank Alphonse for strong-arming his man into this. Possession tends to weird vampires out, mainly because it’s supposed to be impossible. Even low-level vamps are able to evict an unwanted guest with a little effort, and the stronger ones have shields formidable enough to ensure that nothing takes up residence in the first place. But Marcello had preferred allowing a hitchhiker aboard to suffering his master’s punishment. So far, he’d behaved himself, staying

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19 I landed on Dante’s rooftop two weeks in the past, and almost fell off. My feet were on concrete, but the bell of my skirt swung out over thin air. I grabbed the side of a turret hard enough to scrape skin, trembling slightly with the realization that a few inches to the left and I’d have landed on nothing at all. But I hadn’t, I’d made it, and after a moment, I managed to pry my hands loose from the fake rock and look around. Everything was strangely silent this far up: the traffic noise was muffled and there were no discernible sounds of combat. Everything looked normal, too, with the lights of the Strip glittering in the distance, outshining the star-studded canopy overhead. But a sudden rush of wind from the base of a tower pushed at me, hard enough to shove me back a step, and with it came the smell of gunpowder and ozone. It looked like I’d found the right place. Moving cautiously back to the edge of the roof, I saw the parking lot spread out below in a panorama of cha

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20 The guy who answered the door was in his early forties, with thinning hair under the wig that sat askew on his head, and many teeth already rotted away. He didn’t look like somebody who should have been able to defeat a legendary wizard, but maybe he was just the butler. We followed him through a narrow hall and up a staircase to a library. It contained an ornately carved marble fireplace, bookcases lining two walls, mother-of-pearl detailing on dark wood moldings and about three dozen guests. All of whom paused to look at us as the butler or whoever he was made introductions. I hadn’t heard Mircea give his name, but the man knew it anyway, although I was just “and guest.” I needn’t have worried about our appearance: Mircea managed to make losing the coat seem like a fashion statement. I saw several other male guests surreptitiously shuck theirs after a moment, not wanting to miss out on a new trend. But one remained unmoved, muffled head to toe in a thick black cape that sw

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21 The eyelids fluttered and the next moment I was speared by a familiar green gaze. I did my best to look concerned and nonthreatening—which wasn’t hard when I was almost sitting on my gun and I was a slower draw than Pritkin anyway. I hadn’t had time to check for weapons, but with him that was kind of superfluous. He was always armed to the teeth. The green eyes flickered over me in the same objective threat assessment that I remembered from every time we’d encountered an enemy. It had been a while since I was on the receiving end, but I remembered it vividly. Despite the cold, I was sweating in less than ten seconds. Pritkin uncoiled himself, eyes tracking my every breath as he slowly sat up, dizzy but hiding it well enough that if I hadn’t known him, I would’ve missed it. “And to think, I believed the vampire to be the greater threat,” he said, glancing quickly over the rail and back again. “I’m not a threat,” I told him, still feeling numb. Other than the hair, he looked…t

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22 It hadn’t been difficult to snag the line with the orb’s help, especially when I already knew where it was. Getting anywhere, I soon discovered, was a little harder. With Mircea, I’d thought of the lines as rivers of power, but this one was more like the rapids, with bumps and currents and eddies battering me every which way. The bubble of protection provided by the orb kept the energy stream from frying me, but that was about it; there was no steering wheel, no seat belts and, worse, no brakes. I was slammed against first one side and then the other, before the thing flipped totally upside down, dropping me the length of my body before I was caught by the bottom of the sphere. It was the carnival ride from Hell, and I didn’t know how to get off. I gathered my stolen booty into a wad and hastily tied my skirts around it to keep it from getting slung all over the place. Then I set about trying to figure out how this thing worked. Through trial and error, I found that I could

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23 A short ley-line trip later and we stood before a thick oak plank with a brass doorknocker in the shape of a dragon consuming its own tail. I blinked at it blearily. Was the thing following me? Mircea let it thud against the door a few times, but no one answered. “Most of my servants are at my country estate,” he told me, knocking again, louder this time. “But there should be a caretaker here. He doesn’t like to travel.” I stared at the house, which looked completely deserted, and wondered if he was sure about that. With the master away, maybe the caretaker had left for parts where there weren’t daily decapitations. “I don’t think anyone’s home,” I ventured, peering in the window. I couldn’t tell much about the inside since there were sheets thrown over all the furniture, but it felt as empty as the cathedral. Mircea only smiled. “He’s a little slow.” “So when you said you lived in Paris—” “I meant here.” Mircea paused to pound on the door, actually shaking the heavy wood. “

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24 I realized that the dress was being undone, but then nails scratched lightly down the length of my back and I forgot why that was a problem. The double heat from Mircea’s body and the fire had caused sweat to pool between my shoulder blades, hovering on the verge of trickling down my spine. As each ribbon pulled loose, his tongue was there, licking up the salt drop
s, tracing patterns on my skin. His lips brushed lightly over me, closing briefly on the individual knobs along my spine, sucking gently. “You don’t understand. The geis—” I stopped because a particularly hard shiver had caught me. I had the definite sensation of being on a train with no brakes heading straight off a cliff. Mircea chuckled, which wasn’t anything like reassuring, and it was also a little alarming how fast the clothing was coming off. But then he was murmuring low, musical Romanian against my shoulder, and I understood every word down to my bones. I felt the silk slip and start to fall as the materia

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25 Dante’s was as quiet as it ever got when I returned to my time after dropping Mircea at his. So nobody saw me collapse against a wall. Goddamn, I really needed to stop shifting for a while. It felt like my head was about to explode. The throbbing affected even my vision: for a few moments, the whole corridor looked like the inside of a heart—red and pulsating. But I’d ended up where I needed to be, in the hallway leading to the research room. And Nick was there, his nose stuck in a book as usual, looking as scholarly as I really hoped he was. “Cassie!” He stood up abruptly, looking alarmed, and it occurred to me that maybe I should have gone for a quick shower first. But that could wait; the Codex couldn’t. Limestone dust sifted out of my hair onto the table as I spread out the parchment sheets, pushing books off everywhere in the process. “Can you read this?” I demanded, ignoring Nick’s squawks. “It’s important!” He settled down after a moment, scholarly curiosity taking ov

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26 And then the lights went out. I sat there in the dark and seriously thought about putting my head down and going to sleep. It was nice and quiet down here, and maybe no one would find me until morning. If there was a morning. I groaned and got up. As I’d always suspected, being in charge sucked. Especially when no one even realized you were. I felt around until I was sure I had the entire Codex, rolled it all, including the translation of the spell I didn’t need, into a tube and wrapped a rubber band around it. Then I shoved the whole thing down my bodice. Mircea hadn’t laced it as tightly as Sal, but it still fit snugly, and with the tube down there taking up what little room there was, breathing once more became an issue. But at least no one was budging that thing. Now if I didn’t pass out from lack of air, everything would be fine. I eased out into the corridor and tried to remember how far it was to the fire stairs. But it’s not the sort of thing you really notice when t

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27 I screamed, too exhausted to even pretend I wasn’t terrified. The damn knights remained inert, incapable of detecting the creatures who were about to kill me. But a plume of fire, the strength of maybe a couple dozen flamethrowers, shot out of the other end of the corridor. Maybe Casanova had installed some new security measure; I didn’t know. But whatever it was, it was effective. The cloud screamed with the sound of a hundred voices, and writhed madly in the air, a twisting, burning black mass that reminded me of the maggots working on Saleh’s headless body. The glare of the flames glinting off the armor shed more light on the scene, although I might have been happier in the dark. Rosier dropped from the ceiling to land in the middle of the corridor with a faint plopping sound. Then something jumped me from behind, sinking what felt like a rack of small knives into my back. I shrieked and staggered back, hitting the wall and driving the claws in that much farther. I lurche

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28 I woke up in an unfamiliar bed in a posh room painted a soft, muted blue. The curtains were tightly drawn, so I assumed it was daylight outside because a vampire sat beside my bed. “You ran into the wall,” Sal said, looking up from buffing her nails. “It was real embarrassing.” I sat up and immediately regretted it. Everything hurt. “I did not.” “Yeah, you really did. Bam! Out like a light. Not that you weren’t pretty close already.” I felt my head and, sure enough, there was a big, fat bruise. “I feel like shit.” “You look worse. On the plus side, we won the battle. And what you did with those two mages was pretty cool.” “So, you’re saying what? I’m breaking even?” “Just about.” She laid something hard and cold on my chest. “A little girl dropped this off for you. Said to tell you that your necklace is haunted.” I wrapped my fist around the familiar weight and felt the brief energy sizzle that told me Billy was in residence, soaking up energy. “I know,” I said tearfully. “T

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29 “That’s impossible! You said—” “I said your theory seemed plausible if the spell had not morphed into something new. Obviously it has. In the hundred years since you placed it on the vampire, it has had more than enough time to grow, to change, to become a new spell. As a result, the counterspell won’t work. Because the spell it was designed to offset no longer exists!” “You’re telling me we went through all that for nothing? That we’ll just die anyway?” “Not for nothing. In the process, we discovered—” He glanced at Mircea and hesitated. “Much of interest.” And, yeah, that might be true, but knowing what was really behind the war wouldn’t do me much good if I wasn’t alive to fight it. “That doesn’t help!” “I told you all along that I doubted the counterspell would work,” he informed me, in the tone that made me want to hit him even more than usual. I was about to return a scathing reply, when I suddenly remembered. He had said that, but he’d said something else, too. Someth

  Chapter 29