Claimed by Shadow

by Karen Chance

  “You can’t kill her,” I told him in a rush. “Just . . . disable her, or something.” Enough to force Myra to come out and face me. Augusta grabbed up a huge iron candleholder the size of a coat rack that had been lighting the area. She hefted it like it was made of paper, and I realized a flaw in my plan. If she was a Senate member, she had to be a first-level master.

  Just like Mircea.

  Augusta came at us, brandishing the flaming candlestick, and Mircea swung me out of the way. She barreled past us but turned in a flash and was back for more, slashing with the candleholder like it was an extra-long sword. Sparks flew everywhere and all hell broke loose in the crowd. Vampires are mortally afraid of fire, and the way she was slinging it around, it could hit anyone. There was a mad rush to the door.

  Augusta took another swing, Mircea dodged and a dark figure broke away from the crowd, dashing at him with an outthrust hand. Mircea hadn’t seen him, but he felt it when the stake slammed into his side. I screamed, and Dmitri looked up for an instant, smirking; then the expression froze on his face. I saw a blade coming out of his chest in the perfect position to have sliced through his heart, and the hilt was in Mircea’s hand. Dmitri gave it a disbelieving look and collapsed, his body spasming violently.

  Mircea dropped to one knee, a hand to his side, and I knew it was bad. Mircea’s blade was metal—meaning that Dmitri might eventually heal. But the stake Mircea pulled out of his side was wood. When I saw it, my world went gray. I tried telling myself that even if it had hit his heart, that alone wouldn’t kill a first-level master. But that wasn’t much comfort with Augusta around to finish the job.

  She had stopped her attack, surprise on her features when Mircea went down. But she recovered almost instantly, running forward to rip the bloody blade out of Dmitri’s chest. She looked at me and laughed. “You aren’t even going to make this a challenge, are you?”

  She turned back to Mircea and I didn’t even hesitate. Killing Augusta would dramatically alter time, but so would letting Mircea die. I’d never been as scared as I was watching the blood pour from Mircea’s side and having no power to stop it. I would not watch his head taken, too.

  My knives leapt out of the bracelet and flew at Augusta. With vampire agility, she was able to get the candlestick up in time to shield herself, but in the process she knocked a candle free. It landed on her shoulder before bouncing to the floor, and a spark caught on the bodice of her dress. It burst into a tiny flame, smaller than that of a match. A human would have snuffed it out between her fingers with no concern, but Augusta started screaming and thrashing around like a drowning victim going down for the last time.

  Apparently, the terror of fire was enough to override Myra’s control, because Augusta promptly forgot all about the attack. Mircea tried to get her to hold still so he could smother the flames with his handkerchief, but she wouldn’t listen. She slipped on a patch of Jack’s blood and ended up on her elegant backside, and I had to jump out of the way to keep from having her roll right into me.

  “Augusta! Stay still!” Mircea bellowed, but Augusta wasn’t listening. Instead of putting out the flame, all her rolling around had caused more oxygen to get to it, and a finger of fire leapt to one of the long curls that framed her face. Her screams became more like shrieks, and she whipped off the fashionable curls, sending them flying. That explained why her head hadn’t gone up like a gasoline fire— half of the golden coiffure was fake and probably made of human hair.

  Myra rose out of her, abandoning ship now that she could no longer control it. I waved my arms and screamed frantically at my knives, which had zeroed in on the terrified Augusta. “No—not her! Get Myra!” They either didn’t hear me or were having too much fun to obey.

  The spirit creature was more single-minded. It dove through Myra, as insubstantial as a breath of wind, but she staggered backwards, clawing at her chest and screaming. After a stunned second, I realized that she’d been given the spiritual equivalent of a mugging. The spirit emerged from her back, so flush with stolen power that it was blinding silver, looking at it like staring into a searchlight.

  I blinked, and when I looked again, it had faded out. Myra dropped to her knees, almost transparent, the energy that should have allowed her to remain here for hours gone. She turned a furious blue glare on me. “Doesn’t matter. You can’t guard him all the time.”

  She shifted out just as Augusta scrambled to her feet and careened into Mircea, screaming and clawing like she blamed him for the danger. I tossed him the cloak, and he wrapped it around her to smother the flames, just as I felt the tug of my power.

  “Tell me, little witch,” he gasped, holding the struggling vampire with obvious difficulty. “What happens when you are trying to cause trouble?”

  A wave of dizziness and nausea swept over me, and I felt myself falling. I crashed headfirst into Mac’s cot, where Billy Joe had been playing a game of solitaire, scattering his cards everywhere. “I fold,” I said weakly, and passed out.

  Chapter 8

  I hugged porcelain in the bathroom for the next half hour. Once the power receded, I was wiped out and had a headache so severe I was nauseous. With my usual luck, Mac decided to check on me right after I returned and found me green and shaking. He left to round up a snack, apparently on the assumption that my problem was low blood sugar. If only.

  Billy moved over so I could stretch out on the cot without having to lie through part of his body. “Did you see Casanova?” I croaked. I had commandeered one of Mac’s beers to help my dry throat, and almost succeeded in making myself sick again when the alcohol hit my stomach. I hastily put it down.

  “Yeah, but Chavez is AWOL. Maybe he’s lying low until the mages vacate Dante’s, I don’t know. But Casanova said he’d lock up the stuff whenever he gets there.” I nodded. It was as good as I could have hoped for. If Chavez had been smart enough to dodge the invasion of his workplace, the items he was carrying should be safe.

  “Are you gonna do it?” Billy asked, shuffling the deck of cards. He never lifts things unless forced or showing off, but I was too sick to be impressed.

  “Do what?” I lay back on the cot, trying to convince my stomach that there was nothing left to throw up. I couldn’t figure out what was wrong with me. I’d shifted in time before and never felt like this when I returned.

  “Fix the ward.”

  I blinked blearily at him. I’d almost forgotten about that. My pentagram would have come in really handy with Dmitri, and it had proved capable of traveling through time with me before. Unfortunately, I couldn’t risk fixing it. “Yeah, and I’d owe the power a favor, too.”

  “Seems like it owes you a couple, if you ask me. You’ve been running its errands. It’s not like you wanted to go anywhere. ”

  “But I don’t know if it looks at things like that.”

  Billy blew smoke from an insubstantial cigarette, making a ring that floated up almost to the ceiling before disappearing. I asked him once why he could smoke ghostly cigarettes but couldn’t drink ghostly booze, which would save me some embarrassing incidents and a lot of his whining. He’d said that whatever was with you, as in touching your body or within a few feet of it, when you died could materialize with you. It was all part of your energy, of course—so Billy was essentially smoking himself—but it was apparently satisfying on some level. Too bad he hadn’t had a whiskey flask tucked away when he took his burlap swimming lesson.

  “Why are we talking about this power like it’s a person?” he asked thoughtfully. “You sound like it has a tally sheet and is marking down every favor so it can demand that you pay up one of these days. What if that’s not true? Maybe it’s a force of nature, like gravity. Only instead of keeping everything glued down, it responds to problems with the timeline by sending a repair person to fix it.”

  I shook my head. His theory was surprisingly logical, but some part of me knew that whatever I was dealing with was conscious, not a mindless force. It knew I didn’t like being on its repair
crew. It just didn’t care. “I don’t think so.”

  “Okay, let me make sure I understand this.” Billy dealt out a hand of cards consisting of two black aces, a pair of black eights and the king of spades. It’s called the Dead Man’s Hand in poker because, according to legend, that’s what Wild Bill Hickok was holding when he was shot in the back. Hickok died in 1876, almost two decades after my dealer, but Billy knew his poker lore—and how to be obnoxious with it. “You’re going to refuse to fix the ward even though you’ve got more people after you than I can count and you’re going into Faerie, where trespassers are usually killed on sight? Just so you don’t maybe owe a possibly nonsentient power a favor, which it might not even bother to collect?”

  I was too tired to glare at him. “I don’t know.”

  “Oh, well, I’m glad you’ve at least thought it out.”

  “Why are you nagging me about this?”

  “Because, turtledove, in case you’ve forgotten, we made a deal. I’ve kept my end and I expect you to keep yours— which you can’t do if you’re dead. Okay, yeah, you don’t like being bossed around. Who does? But, newsflash, being dead is a lot worse. Have Mac reattach the damn ward. If you don’t need it, great, you don’t owe anybody anything. But if you do, it’ll be there, and when the smoke clears, so will you.”

  “Uh-huh,” I said testily, giving up on the idea of getting any sleep with Billy around. “And what if it flares when it isn’t a life-and-death situation? I don’t have control over what the power perceives as a threat. If it’s fueling the ward, it’ll be in charge, and it’s already tried to trick me . . .” I trailed off because Billy hadn’t been there when I’d assaulted Pritkin, and I didn’t want to be teased about it. Luckily, either he didn’t notice or he let it go.

  “Okay, you’re taking a risk, wagering a few chips that this thing won’t be able to trick you. But that’s a lot better than gambling your life on not needing the ward and then finding out you were wrong. Take it from someone who knows, Cass—never bet when you can’t afford to lose.”

  We were interrupted by Mac returning laden with the four fast-food groups—salt, grease, sugar and caffeine—in the form of fries, burgers and extra large, sweetened coffees. I forced myself to eat, as it was the fastest way to regain some energy, despite feeling queasy. Halfway through the meal I told Mac that I’d decided to have the ward reactivated. Billy gave me a thumbs-up and I grimaced at him. The only thing more annoying than Billy when he’s wrong is Billy when he gets something right. I’d hear about this one for a long time.

  When Pritkin returned, I’d just finished dressing after Mac’s adjustment. The ward remained lopsided because fixing aesthetics could wait. Mac said he thought that the power transfer had gone well, but I was skeptical. I couldn’t feel anything—not a single spark or twinge. Of course, I usually didn’t unless there was a threat, but I would have liked some sign that it was back at work. It didn’t look like I was going to get one, though. I guessed I’d have to wait until someone tried to kill me to find out whether Mac was as skilled as he claimed. The way my life was going lately, that shouldn’t be long.

  “We need to go,” Pritkin said without preamble. He tossed something over my head and it caught on my ear. I pulled it off and saw that I was holding some kind of charm—actually several charms—on a sturdy red cord. The little cloth pouch contained either verbena or a really ripe gym sock—they smell about the same—but I wasn’t sure about the significance of the others.

  “Rowan wood cross,” Billy identified, “set with amber and coral—all three said to ward off Fey attacks. The pentagram is probably iron,” he added, squinting at it despite the fact that that couldn’t possibly help his eyesight. “It looks like he’s serious about this crazy expedition. I’m beginning to think he’s as nuts as you are.”

  Pritkin had pulled another, matching necklace out of the bulging pack on his back. It would have made him look like Santa Claus, except that I doubt the jolly old elf ever looked that grim. He threw it to Mac and scowled. “The Circle’s closing in.”

  “As expected,” Mac said lightly. He stood and brushed off some crumbs. We’d been talking about wards before Pritkin showed up, mainly because Mac had wanted to distract me from focusing on what he was doing to my star. He grinned at me now and held out his right leg. “Here’s one I didn’t have time to tell you about,” he said, pointing to a small, square patch of empty skin below his knee.

  “I don’t get it.”

  Mac just grinned bigger and took a folded piece of paper out of his pocket. He spread it out on the cot and I identified it as a map of Las Vegas and its surroundings. It was old and yellowed, except for patches of bright red inked onto different areas. It reminded me of a subway map, except that, of course, Vegas doesn’t have one.

  “There,” Pritkin said, pointing out an area close to MAGIC’s canyon.

  Mac nodded. “No worries.” He raised an eyebrow at me. “Ever see The Wizard of Oz?”

  “Uh, yeah. Why?”

  “You might want to hold on to something,” was the only reply I got before what felt like a giant earthquake hit the shop. I clutched the cot, which was bolted down, while Pritkin looped a foot around the table and held on with both hands. Only Mac looked unperturbed, ignoring the spinning, tilting and bucking room to trace a finger along a line on the map from the city to the desert. A few seconds after he finished, the building gave a last thudding shudder and was still. A few pieces of paper wafted down from where they’d been tossed near the ceiling, but otherwise, it was like nothing had ever happened.

  “What was that?!”

  “See for yourself.” Mac waved a hand at the front of the shop, and after regaining my rubbery legs, I walked into the front room. Instead of the asphalt street and busy hamburger restaurant that had constituted the view out of the front window, there was only a bare expanse of desert, without so much as a cactus to break up the monotony.

  “I think she needs a backup,” Mac was saying as he came through the curtain.

  “She has those damn knives.”

  “They’re unreliable—they came off a dark mage and their loyalty is in question. They serve her now because it suits their purpose, but later?” Mac shook his head. “I don’t like it. Not to mention that we don’t even know if they’ll work there.”

  “You reactivated her ward; that should be sufficient,” Pritkin replied, dragging his sack out of the back room and starting to unload it on the counter. “She is more than strong enough already.”

  Mac didn’t say anything, but he quietly reached up to his left shoulder and grabbed something that had been concealed by the gently waving leaves. He put a finger to his lips and glanced at Pritkin, who was lining up a collection of weapons on the counter. If he thought we were going to carry all of those, I hoped he’d brought a cart.

  Mac reached for my arm and I looked down to see a gleaming gold charm in the shape of a cat being held to my elbow. As soon as it touched bare skin, it morphed into a sleek black panther with narrowed orange eyes. I recognized them as the ones that had been peering at me malignantly earlier, and they didn’t look much happier now. The kitty didn’t seem pleased to have lost Mac’s generous camouflage, and after a brief glance around, it ran up my arm and disappeared beneath my shirt.

  I could feel it almost like it was a real cat, with warm fur and little claws that pricked my skin. It was weird and it tickled and I didn’t like it one bit. “What the—”

  “Come on, Cassie, you need to finish lunch,” Mac said, pushing me ahead of him through the curtain.

  “What the hell is going on?” I hissed once we were in the back. Mac shushed me and made a weird gesture in the air.

  “Silence shield,” he explained. “John has better hearing without enhancements than most do with them.”

  “Mac, if you don’t explain what—”

  “I just gave you that other ward you wanted. Sheba will take good care of you. Top of the line, she is.”

  Ms
. Top of the Line was crawling around on my stomach, occasionally stopping to lick me, and it was creeping me out. “Mac! Get this thing off me!”

  He chuckled. “Can’t. That kind can only be transferred once a day. Sorry.”

  He didn’t look sorry, and I had no way of knowing whether he was telling the truth. I frankly doubted it. “Mac!”

  “You may need her, Cassie,” he said more soberly. “You let me reactivate your ward, but it’s like John said: your power may not work in Faerie, and if it does it could be sporadic. If the energy isn’t flowing to fuel it, your ward won’t function. Sheba’s going to tag along to make sure you have some protection even if your main ward fails—think of her as a slightly temperamental backup. There aren’t many wards that’ll work in Faerie, but that one will. I bought it off the Fey who enchanted it. And I wouldn’t be much of a gentleman to let you go off defenseless, now, would I?”

  “But I’m not going alone.” Sheba had now climbed around to my back and was doing something with her claws that was less than pleasant. I reached around to get her to stop and got swatted at by a small paw for my trouble. Fortunately, the next minute she curled up in a warm ball at the base of my spine and went to sleep. If I concentrated, I could hear her purr contentedly.

  “You’re assuming we’ll all get past the guards. But it won’t be as simple as just walking in tonight.”

  “You said you know them.”

  “I do, but they know me, too. I used to be John’s partner before I retired. He’s a wanted man now, after that exhibition you two put on this morning, so my walking in there out of the blue and making small talk is going to look strange. The idea is that I create a diversion and you two run into the portal while the guards are busy with me. But there’s no saying it’ll work. Even if it does, you and John are going to be on your own after the guards apprehend me.”