Elianna held Red back as she tried to rise. “This is her fight.”
Red tussled with the supe, pushing her away to run after her friend.
A vampire dropped from the ceiling to block her way. Blood coated his chest, and he staggered face-first in the dirt.
She bent to retrieve the gun from his hand, the barrel still hot in her hand.
“This is madness!” Elianna said, peeping from her cover.
“Sure is.” Red leaned against the mouth of the archway where the sniper had been. Shielding herself, she scanned the battlefield. Where was Basil?
Vampires forced the Gendarme to the far edge of the octagon chamber. Extinguished bulbs of captured sunshine hung uselessly overhead. The beleaguered alchemists fired from behind a barricade of golf carts blocking the advance. Once charmed with perfect aim, the rifles now missed the crucial heart too often.
How much ammo did they have left?
She grimaced at what she found next.
A pile of dead alchemists. Chess pieces taken off the board to molder near the entrance to their catacombs. Ortega graced the top, the burned skull of St. Benedict on her chest like the crown of a fallen king. Only Red seemed to gawp at the ghoulish sight.
The guards of the spoils watched the center of the octagon. One yelled, “Give ’em hell, Gary!”
Another trotted around the bodies for a better look. “Drink that, monk!”
Hannah crept to the skull, head darting between it and the guards. If she could trap it in the prison box, then the magic would come back. She was so close.
Red looked down at her gun, frustrated by the helplessness. If she shot now, at least one vampire would look back and see the teen.
Hidden amid his taller followers, Gary O’Sullivan barked out. “Quit watching me and charge!”
The throng shifted, revealing what had captivated the room.
Ian stood over the fallen, dark-robed First Alchemist, shooting anything that stepped toward the injured elderly man. Darius Jefferson cradled his left hip, leg cocked at an awkward angle.
The undead guarded the fight, separating the alchemists from their leaders.
Wall crawlers skittered over the ceiling to fall on the defenders. Two fell to the ground as bones from clear heart shots. The last ripped out a man’s throat before he was staked. Minions tackled five agents rushing to aid Ian, snapping their necks. A volley of academy-grade vamp-killing bullets rained down in vengeance.
Pinned in the tunnel, Red could only watch Hannah helplessly as the skull’s guardians backed up to the sides of the corpse pile for cover.
The young witch pressed against the back of the disturbing stack, stock-still, only feet away from guards.
Groans rose from the besieged Gendarme on the other side.
One of the guards pointed to the center duel. “Look, he’s out of ammo!”
Ian cursed, dropping his gun, and pulled a silver knife from his belt.
Gary O’Sullivan stepped forward in a white tuxedo stained a deep crimson. He tipped his top hat at the man. “My kudos. Your reward is something better than Valhalla if you join me.”
“Hard pass,” Ian grunted, slashing out.
“Ooh, that’s a good phrase.” The Supreme bent to the side casually, dodging the blade. He grabbed Ian’s wrist and snapped it back. “I’m using that.”
The tall Gendarme bellowed and punched him in the face.
“He earned that.” Gary shrugged, then tossed Ian aside. “I still call dibs on sire rights. Y’all drink the rest,” he called out to his followers’ primal cheers. Stepping to the First Alchemist on the ground, he giggled like a child.
Darius grimaced as he forced himself into a sitting position. He lifted his chin, meeting the vampire’s eyes. Whatever he said was lost in the roar of the fight.
The guards abandoned their posts to join the melee. Red took it as her cue to stalk out from the catacombs, edging the perimeter for a decent shot on Gary.
A female vampire broke from the pack to rush her.
Red put three bullets in her before the vamp dropped. Navigating the skirmish only took her farther away from the Mad Supreme huddled in a whispered yet animated discussion with his powerless rival.
Furious tears on his face, Gary lifted the First Alchemist to his feet. He tugged on Darius’s gray dreadlocks to force his head back. “You’re just an old man, after all!”
Freed energy surged over the octagon. The hanging lighting rigs flickered with borrowed sunshine. Red staggered as her magic snapped to life.
As the Gendarme fired their rifles, the bullets shimmered like purple fireflies. Basil stepped from the line of golf carts with his hands glowing a brilliant white.
Gary fell to his knees, screaming and crawling away from the First Alchemist. His minions fled as the chamber brightened with searing light.
As the glare overwhelmed her sight, Red cheered Hannah, who ran toward the alchemists with the captured skull.
12
Time Loop #92 – July 3, Afternoon, Las Vegas
Staggering Gendarme, bloody and bruised, leaned on each other as they hobbled through the giant gate to the subterranean chamber under the academy. Golf carts traded the injured for fresh reinforcements.
Red studied each face, looking for her friends. Her eyes still sparkled from the vamp-killing lights. Once the First Alchemist had been recovered, the front line had moved deeper into the catacombs. She was happy to leave it behind.
A weary band of alchemists cheered Hannah and Basil by an arched portal door. The soulmancer puffed up his chest even as he leaned on the blushing witch for support. He’d earned every brag.
Red waited until the two were alone to approach. She waved, tugging down her hood.
The teen shrieked and hugged her. “Have you been here the whole time?”
“Long enough to see you two kick major ass,” Red said, releasing her before hugging Basil. “You were amazing.”
He preened. “Naturally.”
“Especially you, Hannah,” she said. “You did Hero-level work out there. How’d you find the reliquary?”
Hannah smiled, dipping her head. “You told me about that time Kristoff took you to Gary’s office, so I started there.”
“Did you take an invisibility potion?” Red asked. She had seen an enchantment fade on the girl in the catacombs once within the radius of the skull. “Is that how you infiltrated the lair?”
“How’d you know?” Hannah gasped. “When they took Basil away, no one would tell me anything! Vic wouldn’t answer his phone either. So, I went to Fremont Street to eavesdrop. Then it escalated.”
Basil gestured them into the portal. “That’s an understatement, girl.”
Emerging in the academy, the three were swept up in the crowd on the wooden platform. A swath of Pyramid Hall had been transformed into a field hospital. Medics sorted the wounded. Ian sat on a cot, barking orders as a cast was put on his wrist. On the far side of the pyramid, the buffet was quickly doling out elixirs and hot meals to the troops.
“I’m starving,” Red said, rubbing her stomach, leading them to the food. “You have to be too, Hannah. Probably used more magic than I did today.”
The teen touched her bruised cheek. “It wasn’t exactly easy to find the prison box. I got hit with my own ricochet when I distracted the first round of guards in Gary’s office, then was lost a bit. It’s a real maze down there. I almost blew it, even invisible.”
“You handled it,” Red insisted. The potion only worked until someone touched you. How Hannah had navigated the Turquoise Mine and then the catacombs without a curious vamp grabbing her was a feat in itself, not including the feat of finding the skull. “You didn’t have any help either. I’m impressed. Not sure if I could have done it so cleanly.”
“But—”
Basil put his arm around Hannah. “Take a compliment, my dear. You saved our lives.”
“All that stowing away finally came in handy.” Hannah grinned. “I can rub Vi
c’s face in that one.”
Red stopped herself in mid-laugh. “Oh shit, someone needs to call him. I don’t have my phone. He thinks I’m exploding things back east.”
Basil lifted an eyebrow. “And why would that be?”
“Who’s that lady?” Hannah nodded toward a shuttered kiosk in the empty bazaar section of the Pyramid. “She won’t stop looking at Red.”
Elianna fiddled with her glasses, a contrite expression on her preternaturally pretty face. She held a backpack out like an olive branch of peace.
Red recognized it as her own. Intrigued, she was ready to accept it. She weighed the need to bring her friends to a powwow. As much as she wanted their help, she could tell they were thrashed and clueless about her situation. They were better off that way.
She smiled. “You two go on. I have business with her. Might as well finish it now.”
“You need backup?” Hannah asked, crossing her arms.
Basil whispered, “She’s not human.”
“I know.”
Red walked to Elianna and reached for her bag. When the other woman gave it up, she judged the weight to still have her laptop despite being left on a public train. It was more of a surprise than their reunion. “You went back and got it. Why?”
“It’s yours, and I made you leave it,” Elianna said, looking down at her shoes. “I didn’t intend to scare you before.”
“Then you failed. What’s your angle?” Red asked, putting on her backpack. “Are you here to kill me or what?”
“Oh dear.” Elianna cringed and smoothed her dark bangs. She didn’t seem to know what to do with her hands. Even with her teleportation powers, she looked more like a shy college kid than an assassin. “That’s worse than I imagined you thought. No, I came for the opposite.”
“Then yelling ‘running is futile’ at someone is a bad way to show it.”
“Apologies. I was quite frustrated then. Only you can imagine what I’ve endured. Allow me to tell you.”
Sighing, Red gestured her into a side corridor off the Pyramid.
When they’d met in Newark, she’d been surprised while grieving the Goldbergs and had fled on instinct. She’d instantly connected Elianna to the mysterious female shooter in the loop before. Whoever the shooter was, she’d gotten a jump on two witches and a cop, yet Elianna’s lack of combat training had been obvious in their fight. Whatever she was, she wasn’t a killer.
A hair puller at worst.
Red asked, “So, what’s your deal?”
Voice wooden, Elianna spoke to her shoes. “I practiced my lines the first time we met, but then later, I had to improvise, and I didn’t do that right. All I know is that I need your help. Can I hire you already?”
Red checked to see that all the doors in the hall were closed. She leaned against the wall, settling in to hear the supe out. “Keep your gold and tell me who you are. Or at least what you are.”
Elianna blushed, shifting on her feet. Her round glasses slipped down her nose. She covered the coffee stain on her white sweater self-consciously. “I’m one of Hekate’s Daughters.”
“You’re kidding me.” Red forced the very dopey mortal expression off her face. “A demigod?” She swallowed back her next sentence, which would have been, “Oh shit, I sucker punched you.”
“It’s more complicated—” Elianna shied, hiding her eyes as if embarrassed.
A Gendarme approached them. Plain faced, he was often at the portal door platform, checking the poker chip keys, but Red couldn’t remember his name. He tipped his hat to them both. “Madam, I’d like you to come with me.”
Red swore on the inside. “Sure.”
“No, her.” He gestured for Elianna. “You don’t have a visitor’s pass, and we’re on lockdown. Join me for a few questions. Comply and you’ll be on your way quicker.”
“Okay…” Elianna nodded, wringing her hands. She left with him through a hall door.
Sigils on the threshold sparkled in their wake. They could be anywhere now.
Red cursed to herself, not liking any of this. In the frenzy of securing the school and striking against their weakened enemies, the Gendarme might hold onto Elianna for hours. That was enough time for the loop to reset and separate her from the one person who might know what the hell was going on.
It was a long shot, but Perenelle had once mentioned a pregnant priestess of Hekate on staff.
Red traveled to the quietest part of the academy—the Hall of a Hundred Shrines.
Sacred stillness filled the spacious marble corridor of the shrine complex. Incense floated like fog in the air. It flickered with the lights of thousands of candles. How many were prayers for the academy’s defense?
Painted life-sized statuary peered from recessed niches. The alchemists weren’t a discriminating bunch. She crept past chapels dedicated to everyone from the Virgin Mary to Vishnu. Each was gloriously decorated, but her more sacrilegious side felt that the alchemists had designed it for convenience. A one-stop shop to the Gods.
Like a timeline to human religions, the pantheons grew more pagan as she walked. She stopped at a bronze statue of Zeus, glowering through a beard, guarding the entrance to an altar room. A worshipper inside placed a honeycomb at the feet of a sculpted Hekate. The goddess held a torch in each hand. Hopefully she was in a charitable mood.
The woman, with her hair in a messy bun and an infant wrapped around her chest in a sling, looked like a young mother on laundry day. Worry lines crinkled around her eyes. It couldn’t have been an easy afternoon for the alchemists with children. She patted the baby’s bottom as it began to fuss.
Red guessed, “You’re initiated into her rites, aren’t you?”
“I’m Thelma, the priestess. Are you here to make an offering, Second Witch?”
Red smiled, gripping her backpack straps. “I have a better way to make good with the goddess—help her daughter. The Gendarme have a demigod in custody.”
“That’s impossible!”
“How many impossible things have happened today?”
“Shit.” The priestess sighed. “Come with me.”
She led Red through a portal door in the back of the shrine room. It led into a perfectly normal home. The TV played a romantic comedy on low volume. A pile of clothes waited in a chair for folding. “Ignore the mess. There’s mac and cheese if you want some. I made it for the lockdown. Stay here while I hand my baby over to a neighbor and figure out what’s going on.”
Too hungry to argue as the other woman left, Red investigated the cooling baking dish on the kitchen stovetop. She made herself a bowl and returned to the living room to wait for a demigoddess. As a sappy move played on the priestess’s TV, Red was struck by how weird her life was. At least the homemade macaroni was great.
Elianna materialized, sitting on the laundry pile, and bounded to her feet. “There you are!”
“How did you get out?” Red set her empty bowl on a side table.
The raven-haired woman smiled mysteriously. “I travel roads these alchemists can’t detect, even in their laboratories.”
Red crossed her arms. “Then how’d you get turned around on Fremont Street?”
“Miscalculation.” Elianna tugged her ear sheepishly. “At first, I desired conversation, and then you threw coffee. It was very hot. I didn’t like it. You kept running, and we started fighting…”
“I think I get it now.” Red cocked her head. She patted the couch beside herself. “You’re awkward around new people, aren’t you, bud? I’m sorry about burning your face, by the way.”
Elianna dropped her head in her hands as she sat. “I’ve studied your cinema to understand your culture, but I’ve never been to this realm before. Or captive in some temporal anomaly.”
“Same.” Relief spread through Red. She wasn’t alone. “I’ve been going nuts with everyone forgetting. What’s it like for you?”
“I begin at the same place I crossed into this realm—the crossroads by the diner. Dawn on July 2. I last unt
il 10:32 in the morning on the fourth. No matter my location or activity. It’s maddening.”
Red blew out a heavy breath. “That’s when I was shot.”
“I was scrying for a statue I suspected of causing quantum disturbances. Then I was back where I started. At first, I thought it was my spell,” Elianna reflected ruefully. “I didn’t suspect you were connected for some time.”
“How did you guess?”
“When I noticed your friends mourning you for different circumstances. Whispers travel swiftly around that diner. It was the only change in the days. The loop when your head was mailed to your lover was particularly chaotic. I came here to discover the anomaly, to prove it to my sisters. I didn’t expect to be caught in it.”
“Sisters? Hekate has more daughters?”
“She’s my grandmother on my mom’s side. My dad is one of Hermes’s, thrice removed. It’s why I’m so good at languages.” She shrugged as if searching for the right words. “The phrase Hekate’s Daughter is like a job title. You can think of it as a family business, monitoring the crossroads and the places in between. When the Gods separated the worlds eons ago, Hekate was assigned to maintain the walls to their new realm. I guess you’d call them dimensions or planes of existence.”
Elianna fidgeted, gaze everywhere but on Red. “Except I don’t work with the Daughters who go out in the field. I process records.”
“Are you telling me you do data entry for Mount Olympus?”
“I analyze it,” Elianna corrected, a proud pout on her lips. “And I was the only one who discovered this anomaly. It goes back to the 1890s, maybe even before, an unregistered link, stealing power from my world to yours. The movements appear like natural gaps in the warp and weft in the dimensional walls, sealing too quickly and randomly to seem like a concern. It wasn’t until I matched the path with human reports that I realized it was possibly a forbidden relic. Only an Oracle in training believed me because she saw the statue in a vision. No one else.”
Witch in Time: A New Adult Urban Fantasy (Red Witch Chronicles 6) Page 18