by Karen Chance
Most vampires would have moved away or at least flinched. Mircea just looked up at me, eyes bright, but no longer with amusement. There was something dark in those depths, something fierce and possessive that made my breath come faster and my hand tighten over the pulse that beat strong and steady under my fingertips.
His heart didn’t need to beat, of course, but he knew I liked it, so he rarely forgot. Like he always remembered to breathe when I was around, to blink, to do all the things that made him seem human, even though he hadn’t technically held that title for five hundred years. But he was human to me.
He would always be human to me.
“You shouldn’t look at me like that when we are in public, dulceață,” he murmured, stroking his hand up and down my leg. “It makes me wish to cut the evening short.”
“How short?”
Those fingers suddenly tightened. “Very.”
And for a moment, that sounded like a really good idea. Really, really good. But if I left with Mircea now, I knew how the rest of the evening would go. And it wouldn’t involve a lot of talking.
I licked my lips and stepped away a few paces. “You were telling me about your mother?”
Mircea didn’t say anything for a moment, but when I looked back, he didn’t appear annoyed. If anything, his body seemed to have relaxed, and he was smiling. “Princess Cneajna of Moldavia,” he said easily. “Tall, with raven hair and green eyes. Radu took after her, not in coloring but in a certain delicacy of feature.”
“What about you?”
“They said I resembled her more in temperament, although I never saw it. She was more . . . fiery. More highly strung. I remember her as beautiful and passionate, proud and ambitious.”
I bit my lip. I thought that described Mircea perfectly.
“I always thought I was more like my father,” he told me.
“How so?”
Mircea’s head tilted. “He was a . . . prudent sort of man, a diplomat, for King Sigismund of Hungary. He was around your age when he was sent as a special envoy to Constantinople to discuss a possible merger between the Roman Catholic faith and the Orthodox. It never happened, of course, but he impressed the Holy Roman Emperor with his tact and judgment.” Mircea smiled. “Although probably not for his piety.”
“He wasn’t religious?”
“No more so than was politically expedient. My mother was the devout one in the family. Forced her poor sons into the care of the Dominicans for part of our education.” He shuddered.
I smiled. “You don’t like monks?”
“I always have suspicions of any man who can willingly turn his back on the finest of God’s creations.”
Brown velvet eyes met mine, and a shot of something warm and electric shot right through me, making my pulse pound harder in my throat—and other places. I decided I really wanted that drink now. Luckily, another of the ubiquitous floating trays was headed my way.
I moved forward and reached for a glass, at the same time as a man on the other side. My hand brushed the flute, toppling it and sending a splash of golden liquid onto his pristine white shirt. He looked down and I looked up, an apology on my lips. And that was where it stayed, as both of us froze in stunned recognition.
Because we knew each other, and neither one of us was supposed to be there.
Chapter Nine
I stared at the thin, vaguely horsey features and pale blue eyes of the mage in front of me, and hoped I was imagining things. He looked a little different in a well-fitted tux instead of seventeenth-century slops, his sandy blond hair slicked back instead of falling messily around his face. But it was him. The guy I’d once helped Agnes apprehend before he could blow history to kingdom come.
If I’d had any doubts, they were erased when he suddenly gave a screech, knocked the tray of drinks at me and bolted. A choking mass of thick, blue-black smoke boiled through the room as I stumbled back. Someone fired a gun and someone screamed. And then everything slowed down—literally.
The whole room suddenly looked like it was on slowmotion replay. I fell back into Mircea, my gown fluttering lazily around me, as the serving tray arced high in the air above. Glasses scattered, golden liquid sloshed and the silver surface flashed in the candlelight for a long moment....
And then sped back up and hit the floorboards with a crash. But it was barely audible over the sound of rapid-fire gunshots, breaking glass and the collective panic of a crowd unused to danger. Not that I was having much of a different reaction, and I was plenty used to it. I hit the ground instinctively, only to have Mircea grab me around the waist and jerk me back.
That was lucky, because the crowd took that moment to decide on the better part of valor, and there was a stampede. Ladies in fine gowns and men in tuxes forgot about elegance, threw away decorum and fought to be the first out the door. The place where I’d been kneeling a second ago was suddenly a mass of swirling hems and pounding feet.
“What happened?” Mircea asked, pushing me behind him.
“Agnes,” I gasped. The smoke burned at the back of my throat, making it hard to talk, hard to breathe. “She can manipulate time for short periods, stop it . . . slow it down . . . and she must have recognized him—”
“Recognized who?”
“The guy from the Guild,” I said, desperately trying to spot him in the crowd. But the smoke made it difficult to see anything, and most of the guests were taller than I was. I hiked up my skirts and scrambled onto a nearby table.
“What guild?” Mircea asked, but I didn’t answer. I could see over the crowd now, but not through the smoke. But there was something going on near the back of the room—spell fire lit up the haze in spots, like strobes on a dance floor. And most of the colors were in the red and orange range—offensive magic, war spells; not the soothing blues and greens of the protective end of the spectrum.
I hopped off the table and ran.
Mircea grabbed me before I’d gone a yard—and then flung us to the floor as a stray curse blistered the air overhead. It crashed into the window behind us, shattering the glass and sending fire running up the brocade curtains. More smoke, thick and smothering, added to the mix, threatening what little air was left in the room.
“Let me go!” I choked. “He’ll kill her!”
“Kill who?”
“My mother!”
“Who will?”
“The asshole from the Guild!”
“Listen to me.” Warm hands framed my face and dark eyes met mine. I felt the usual reassurance Mircea’s presence caused ramp up a few notches, soothing my fears, calming my mind—and depriving me of my edge. “Whatever is going on, it doesn’t succeed,” he assured me. “Nothing of importance happened tonight. My men were told specifically—”
“Nothing did happen,” I said, furious because I no longer was. “But something is happening. And if you don’t listen—”
But Mircea wasn’t. He’d pulled me to my feet as we argued and slipped an arm around my waist. And now he started to push his way through the crowd toward the nearest exit.
And then, just as suddenly, started to back up again.
I found myself walking backward, too, unable to control my body’s movements despite the fact that they were the exact opposite of what I wanted to do. I tried to talk but I couldn’t do that, either, except for some garbled sounds that didn’t make sense. For a moment, I panicked, sure I was possessed again—until I caught sight of the drapes.
A minute before, the dark red damask had been a border of flame around the window, embroidered designs standing out harshly against the rapidly darkening fabric, fat tassels writhing as they were quickly consumed. Now the opposite was true. Clean, whole cloth blossomed out of flames that were shrinking, falling back, forming into a ball that flew through the air back to whoever had cast it.
The fleeing crowd was also moving the wrong way, panicked faces streaming away from me as I jumped on the table, jumped off, hit the floor and then was back on my feet, staring at a
wide-eyed mage with champagne on his shirt. And then I was in Mircea’s arms, facing the window as if nothing had ever happened. Because it hadn’t yet.
Time juddered and shook, trembling around me for a long second before reversing again. And this time, I didn’t hesitate. I threw off Mircea’s hold and tackled the mage.
We went down in a thrashing heap, my arms around his waist and then his leg when he tried to shake me off. Smoke bloomed around us, harsh and stinging, as he threw something to the ground. But I held on—until a shiny, booted foot caught me upside the face, sending me reeling. But by then Mircea had him by the collar and jerked him up—
And was blasted through the air as if shot out of a cannon.
I didn’t see Mircea hit the wall, recover and launch himself back at our attacker, because it all happened faster than I could blink. But I did see him freeze in the air, midleap, as time shuddered to a halt. At least it did for me, Mircea and everybody else—except the goddamned mage, who shrugged it off like an old coat and bolted into the crowd.
I started after him, pushing hard against the power freezing me in place, but it felt like trying to swim in a river of cold molasses. Time swirled sluggishly all around me, weighing my limbs, slowing my breathing, keeping me back. Away from him. Away from her.
Until I pushed, breaking free in a rush that sent me sprawling into the statuelike crowd, disoriented and breathing hard. A woman toppled over, stiff as a board, her red, red lipstick smearing across the shirt of the man beside her. Another woman teetered back and forth on her high heels, but was unable to fall because of the people pressing her hard on all sides.
They were pressing me, too, but that was a good thing, because they were also slowing down the mage. I could see his blond head bobbing through the crowd, shining under the lights. He was easy to spot, being a good three inches taller than most of the guests and the only one moving. But even if I caught him, I couldn’t take down a crazy dark mage on my own.
And Agnes couldn’t help me. I didn’t know what kind of weird shit was going on with time, but I knew this maneuver. Stopping time was the biggest weapon in the Pythia’s arsenal, a trump card. But it was also a one-shot deal. The only time I’d done it—by accident—it had completely wiped me out for the rest of the day.
And I was a lot younger than Agnes.
It frightened the hell out of me, because she knew the cost better than I did. She wouldn’t have used it if the danger to her or her heir wasn’t acute. But it wouldn’t work this time, and might even backfire. Because if the mage could throw it off, he could hunt them while they thought they were safest, and while she was weakened with her power diverted elsewhere.
I had to follow him, and I had to have help.
And there was only one place to get it.
I looked up to where Mircea was still suspended in the air, amber eyes slitted, staring at the place where the mage no longer was. I grabbed the front of his shirt, the only thing I could reach, and gave a pull. And like a big, Mirceashaped balloon, he floated a little closer to the ground. But he was still frozen, still useless.
It hadn’t worked.
I stood there with tears of pure fury burning in my eyes. I hated the fact that I didn’t know how to use my power, that no matter how much I studied, how much I practiced, what I needed was always something I didn’t know how to do. But if I’d done it once, goddamnit, I could do it again. No stupid mage from some squirrelly little cult was going to beat me at my own damn game.
I fisted my hand in Mircea’s shirt, and fisted my power in the current swirling thickly between us. And pulled.
For a long moment, nothing happened. He didn’t even move toward me this time, not an inch. But while he wasn’t moving in space, he was moving through something. Because I could feel the resistance dragging on him, tugging him back, wanting to fix him in place while I was doing my best to yank him out of it.
It was unbelievably difficult, far harder than it had been in my own case. I started to shake, and sweat broke out on my face, and for a second, I almost lost him. It was like time was slippery and he was oiled, and along with the sheer physical strain was the stress of keeping my wobbly grip. But I could feel time peeling away from him, layer after layer, as if he were shedding some kind of strange skin.
And then suddenly I was hitting the floor, with a hundred and eighty pounds of freaked-out vampire on top of me.
Mircea jumped back to his feet and then ducked into a crouch as I lay there, panting and half-sick. God damn, that had sucked. He seemed to think so, too, because he was staring around, minus his usual sangfroid. Mahogany silk whipped around his face as he took in the motionless crowd, the frozen clouds of smoke and a glass that had been caught midfall a few feet away, the contents spilling out like a champagne waterfall.
He put out a tenuous hand and touched it, and then jerked back when it wet his fingers. He looked at me, dark eyes wide. “What did you do?” he asked in wonder.
“Never mind that.” I staggered back to my feet, wondering why I felt like throwing up. “We’ve got to get to him before he finds her.”
“The man who attacked you?”
“Yes.”
“He’s trying to harm the Pythia?”
“Yes!”
“Why?”
“Because Agnes and I stopped him on his last mission. And because that’s what the Guild does—they disrupt time!” And killing a Pythia and her heir would definitely do that.
It would also do something else, I realized. My mother was still the Pythia’s chosen successor, still the good little Initiate preserving her virginity until the all-important transfer ceremony. She had yet to meet my disreputable father, yet to run away with him.
Yet to have me.
Suddenly, my skin was too cold, too tight, and my lungs couldn’t seem to pull in any air. “Mircea—” I grabbed his sleeve.
But I didn’t need to explain. I saw when he got it, and I’d never been more grateful for that whip-fire intellect, which rarely missed little details. Like the fact that if the maniac succeeded, he wouldn’t take out two Pythias tonight.
He’d eliminate three.
Mircea didn’t ask any more questions. He caught me by the waist and surged ahead, cutting a swath through the motionless crowd faster than I’d have thought possible. But the mage had a sizable lead, and in the few moments it had taken to get Mircea on board, I’d lost sight of him.
It didn’t help that smoke hung heavy in the air like a thick, dark fog. I thought it would get better as we moved farther from the source, but the opposite seemed to be true. The far end of the room was a sea of clouds, darker in some areas and lighter in others where lines of spell fire crisscrossed in the gloom.
The clouds were annoying, but it was the spells that had me worried. They were frozen in place like neon tubes at a bad ’80s disco, but there were a lot of them. And while they wouldn’t slam into us with time the way it was, if we hit them—
I didn’t know what would happen if we hit them. But I didn’t think it would be fun.
“Can you shift us across?” Mircea asked grimly.
“Not without seeing where I’m going.” And the smoke pretty much excluded that.
“Then we’ll go around.”
“There’s no time! He’s already—”
“Then I’ll go,” he said, putting a heavy hand on my arm as I dropped to the floor, preparing to crawl under the nearest beam.
“You can’t manipulate time, and he can! He can freeze you and kill you before you know what’s happening.”
“I’ll take that chance.”
“Well, I won’t!”
His jaw clenched stubbornly, and I felt like screaming. “Mircea, you’re going to protect me to death!”
He stared at me a moment longer, and then cursed inventively and dropped beside me. I took that as assent and started forward. But it wasn’t nearly as easy as it sounds.
A bright beam sparkled in the air above our heads like a frozen column
of raspberry ice. Frost spell, cold enough to burn, cold enough to freeze any skin it touched. Cold enough to kill. I made very sure to hug the floor as I slithered below.
It was marginally safer down here, because most of the spells were higher up, forming a brilliant lattice above our heads. But even though the smoke was thinner down here, visibility was actually worse, with gowns caught in midswirl everywhere and a forest of men’s trouser legs. I scurried forward anyway, careful not to topple any of the living statues in my path.
“I thought only Pythias could manipulate time,” Mircea said, from behind me.
“So did I.”
“Then how is he doing it?”
“I don’t know,” I said, aggrieved. “Agnes didn’t say anything about the Guild being able to do something like this. They’re supposed to be time travelers, but she said that most of them are losers who manage to blow themselves up attempting dangerous spells they can’t control.”
“And yet this one is different.”
“He didn’t seem that way,” I complained. “At least not when Agnes and I were after him. He was kind of an idiot. He couldn’t shoot worth a damn, and he kept running around screaming, and running into—”
I stopped because I’d slammed into something, hard enough to hurt. It turned out to be the faint green bubble of a protection spell, so dim against the glowing colors that I hadn’t seen it. An older man was underneath, his hand up, projecting the shield over himself and the woman lying beside him. Her gray chiffon evening gown, silver hair and colorless pearls blended perfectly with the frightened pallor of her face.
“Let me,” Mircea said, taking the lead. I didn’t argue, because his sight was about ten times keener than mine. “And tell me about this Guild.”
“I don’t know much,” I said, hugging his heels. “Just what Agnes told me. She said they’re some kind of freaky cult. They think they can make history better, solve humanity’s problems, if they can identify where we screwed up and then go back in time and change it. Only they’re the ones who get to decide what was a mistake and what wasn’t.”