by Karen Chance
Not that there was much to see. It looked like he was in some kind of tunnel, cut through dirt instead of rock, with a few stones poking out of the walls, ceiling and floor. I couldn’t tell much more than that, because it was dark enough that I wouldn’t have been able to see anything at all, except that I was looking through a vampire’s eyes.
“What’s going on?” I asked. “Where are you?”
“Not Kansas,” he said, as a commotion came from down the tunnel somewhere.
And then he giggled.
I sat there for a second, unsure of what I’d heard. Mircea did not giggle. He laughed sometimes, a rich, infectious sound that brightened the dark eyes and crinkled their edges, and made the handsome face even more so. Hearing him laugh wasn’t unusual, as he somehow managed to combine a reputation as a fearsome master vamp with a decent sense of humor, and preferred to rule his family through bonds of affection and loyalty rather than fear.
But he did not giggle.
And then he did it again.
“Mircea, what—” I began, but had to stop when he snatched something from the ground and took off down the corridor with it, so fast that the walls blurred together into a single, dark line.
We slammed back into a crevasse a moment later, where we panted and giggled and panted and giggled. One of us was losing our minds, I thought. And, after today, I wouldn’t swear that it wasn’t me.
But then Mircea’s voice came again. “It’s not you.”
“Why are you out of breath?” I demanded. “And what’s so funny?”
“My apologies, dulceață. I believe I am—I think the word is ‘high’?”
I stared at the uninteresting dirt wall in front of us. It had an overlay of Gertie’s stairs and back hallway on it, because my eyes had flown open in surprise. I shut them again.
“Did you say high?” I asked, before catching sight of what he’d dumped unceremoniously at his feet. “Is that Pritkin?”
“Yes, he’s high, too.”
“Mircea, what—”
“One moment.” And then we were back on the move, Pritkin thrown over our shoulder, his head and arms dangling comically behind us as we all but flew down the tunnel, while frequently glancing back, looking for something that even Mircea’s eyes couldn’t see.
We hit a cross tunnel, turned sharply to the left, and found another depression. It was shallower than the last, leaving Pritkin’s head and shoulders sticking out into the corridor when he was dumped on his ass again. Or they were until Mircea kicked them back inside.
“Mircea!”
“He weighs a ton,” Mircea panted, unrepentant. “And I have been lugging him about for the last half hour, barely ahead of our enemies—”
“What enemies? What’s going on?”
“I don’t know. I was unconscious when I first arrived—”
“You’re a vampire. You don’t do unconscious.”
“I don’t normally leap through booby-trapped portals, either,” he said fiercely, as another distant commotion came to my ears, this time including gunfire.
Mircea swore.
“Mircea, if you don’t tell me what’s happening—”
“The creature we retrieved from the fey dungeon escaped the hotel and headed out into Las Vegas. The mage and I traced it to a disused part of the run-off tunnels under the city, where it activated an illegal portal. Likely to some part of Faerie—the mage said the fey can sense their own type of magic, and it probably honed in on that.”
“And you followed it inside?” I didn’t know why I bothered to ask; this was Mircea. Of course, he had.
“Of course, I did! I didn’t come this far to lose it now! But that put us outside the grip of Earth, which is why the incubus brought our minds to you instead of our bodies.”
“You . . . remember that?” I said, biting my lip.
He glanced down at Pritkin. “I remember a great many things, some of which are frankly . . . disturbing. But I cannot currently tell fact from wildly exaggerated fiction—”
“You should probably go with the fiction,” I admitted. “The wilder, the better.”
Mircea scowled; I could feel the muscles stretching his face, since it was currently my face, too. “In that case, we need to talk—”
Great.
“—but not now. Sometime when I can think, which I can’t at the moment! The portal must have been rigged to explode if any non-fey passed through—”
“Explode?” I suddenly forgot about my personal life. “Are you okay?”
“No.” It was flat. “The explosion was a potion bomb, filled with something that knocked us both out. It appears to have worked on the body rather than the mind, allowing my subconscious to remain active, and thus be able to assist you. But as soon as I came around . . .” He shook his head violently, then clutched the wall, hard enough for his fingers to sink into the earth. “The last time I felt this way was after feeding on a human high on LSD, back in the sixties—”
“Okay, we need to get you out—”
“—not one of mine, you understand. I was visiting the consul, and she offered—did you know she calls them blood-pigs? I haven’t heard anyone do that in centuries, and many of us—”
“Mircea—”
“—never did. Anjo de sangue—blood angel—to the Portuguese; Levengever—literally life giver—to the Dutch; Băiat de Aur or Fata de Aur—golden boy or girl—in Romanian, because they are prized, you see—”
“Mircea! Try to focus,” I said desperately, which felt surreal, because he was nothing if not strong minded.
Except for today, it seemed.
“I am trying,” he said, and to be fair, he sounded like it. There was tension in his voice, and he appeared to be sweating.
A vampire.
Was sweating.
The world really had gone mad.
“What the hell did they put in that bomb?” I asked.
“I don’t know. I don’t even know who ‘they’ are. The bomb went off, filling the small area we were in with smoke, and when I woke up, I was caught in a metaphysical trap of the kind the Circle likes to use.”
I shivered slightly in sympathy. The traps he was talking about looked like a shoebox on the outside, just a shiny black rectangle. But inside was an undefined space, a totally black prison cell with no doors or windows or any other way out.
Physically, it wasn’t uncomfortable. Mentally, it was a complete mind-fuck. Especially the longer you stayed inside.
Mircea seemed to agree, because he jerked Pritkin up by the collar at another sound, while looking frantically in both directions. I didn’t say anything, as I wasn’t sure what would help. I’d never seen him like this.
Then the noise came again, more clearly. And, this time, it wasn’t the sound of booted, running feet, indistinct shouting, or gunfire. This time, it was worse.
“What was that?” I said, as a stuttering roar echoed off the walls, loud enough to make my flesh think about separating from my bones.
“A cave troll?” Mircea suggested, and laughed again, a high pitched, somewhat crazed sound.
“What?”
“From The Lord of the Rings. You remember—when they were in Moria?”
I stared at the wall in front of us, in complete shock. “My God, you’re high.”
“That’s what I’ve been saying! I cannot throw off the effects of the potion. I tore through their flimsy trap, rescued this lump,” he shook Pritkin, harder than technically necessary. “And escaped into a maze that never ends, pursued by men in black and a monster I cannot see, but who is hunting me. Hunting us, do you understand?”
“Yes,” I said. “I get it now.”
Mircea somehow grabbed me by one shoulder, even though I wasn’t there. And shook me hard enough that I almost fell off the stairs. “I need you. I know you are not fully healed, and I apologize for that. But the mage won’t come around and I am having difficulty using my own powers, much less yours—”
“It’s okay; I
’ve got you.” My hand closed over his, and he felt warm and real under my fingers. “We’ll find you a way out—”
“I don’t want a way out; I want a way to the creature. That is why I brought you here. I can’t trust my own senses, but yours are uncorrupted. You can borrow mine—”
“Mircea—”
“—and help me find it. It’s here; I can smell it—”
“Mircea! Pritkin is unconscious and you’re compromised!”
“—and if it escapes this maze, I’ll never find it again—”
“If you die, you’ll never find it again!”
“And afterwards, we can worry about—”
He cut off abruptly, and my vision slurred once more. It snapped back to show me what looked like another dirt wall, only with the tops of a bunch of heads sticking out. After a few seconds, I realized that I was looking down at the floor from above, and that the heads were those of a bunch of people passing underneath us.
Mircea must have heard them coming and jumped up, and was managing to cling to the ceiling above their heads.
But he hadn’t had time to take Pritkin with him. I could see the light orbs that some of the men were carrying in lieu of flashlights splash his blond hair, highlighting him even among the crevasse’s shadows. All that was needed was for one of them to turn his head—
And then one of them did, but before he could utter a warning, he was up here, too, having been snatched out of the pack so quickly that his companions never missed him.
He wasn’t fey. His height should have told me that already, as a fey’s head would have been a lot closer to the ceiling. This guy was shorter—maybe by a foot and a half—and human. I had a brief impression of a rounded ear, of an acne-scarred, human face, and of the stench of dark magic, like the funk off a week-old corpse, staining the air around him.
And then the mage matched his smell, when Mircea proved the difference between a master and a regular old vamp, and exsanguinated him in about a second flat. It left the skin ivory pale, the eyes fixed and staring, and the mouth still open on a word of warning. One he’d never had a chance to utter, because Mircea had killed him before he even knew what was happening.
But everyone was going to figure it out in a second, because we were no longer steady.
I looked ahead, and saw Mircea’s free hand half buried in the wall, where cracks in the earth were starting to appear. I looked behind, where I could just see a booted foot clinging to a boulder on the opposite side. But only one, because the other foot and its leg were wrapped around the corpse, as was Mircea’s other arm, holding it up and away from the mages. The ceiling of the tunnel was low enough that they were passing maybe all of three feet below, with the trailing tail of the mage’s long, leather coat almost brushing a few of the taller one’s heads.
I held my breath, while small trickles of dirt cascaded down the wall from underneath Mircea’s hand. Only the darkness hid us, although the light from the orbs gleamed dangerously off the slick surface of the mage’s outerwear, and his dead, open eyes. And even if no one saw us, there was no reason to believe that someone else wouldn’t see Pritkin, too.
I’ll try a shift, I told Mircea mentally. If the portal is still active, my power may be able to reach you.
Good, but not out. Back to the corridor where you came in.
I didn’t like it, but I wasn’t sure that I could shift two people any further than that. Not right now and not from centuries away. I’d never done anything like this—
Annnnd that record held, I thought, when they went exactly nowhere.
Cassie?
Trying. Only I wasn’t. I was straining enough to cause me to gasp, and my blood to pound in my veins, but nothing was happening. Maybe because I was attempting to feel something that simply wasn’t there.
Cassie! Mircea’s mental voice was becoming desperate, maybe because the hard packed earth wasn’t hard enough, and his hand was sinking. But there was nothing I could do, and there wasn’t going to be.
Plan B, I told him grimly.
What happened to Plan A? Shift us!
I can’t—
Why not?
The portal is closed.
And then we fell, when the wall gave way in a cascade of dirt. But we fell silently, landing no louder than a cat, right behind the last line of mages. The platoon kept going, pelting hell bent for leather somewhere that thankfully wasn’t here, and from over a century away, I realized that I’d covered my mouth to keep silent.
I let go, and concentrated on just breathing for a moment. Mircea, however, didn’t hesitate. He shoved the dead man into the surface of the crumbling wall, pushing until the dirt all but liquified around him. Until only the round oval of his face was visible, staring out at us with its glassy eyes.
Mircea pushed it the rest of the way in, essentially burying the man standing up, and then he did an encore—only instead of hiding someone, he was doing the opposite. I felt a fist knotting in the front of my robe, and then a powerful jerk. And the next moment, a solid looking me was standing beside him on the rocky soil, which felt uncomfortable, cold, and all too real under my bare feet.
That was disorienting enough, but then I looked up and found myself facing Captain Jack Sparrow.
It took me a second to recognize Mircea with unbound, sweaty hair, a dirt-streaked face, and wearing the tattered remains of his once opulent ballroom attire. That consisted of a pair of wide legged trousers confined by calf hugging boots; a stained, blue silk sash around his waist with a sword thrust through it; and a Renaissance type shirt with a lace up front and full sleeves. There was blood on the sleeves, as well as on the shirt, where big rents had left him with cold shoulders.
But no wings.
He’d lost them somewhere, but I could see the ridges where they’d been through the gaps. My hand moved before I could stop it, feeling strange bumps beneath the skin that had never been there before. And that shouldn’t be there now, with a vampire’s healing abilities.
“What is happening to us?” I whispered.
He caught my hand and kissed it, and his lips felt warm, too. “I don’t know. Are you alright?”
I nodded automatically, and then had to clutch his arm to stay upright. “What is this? How did you shift me here?”
“I didn’t.”
“Then what do you call this?”
“Projection. It’s easier to talk to you this way.”
I stared around some more. “That sounds familiar.”
“What?”
“Nothing.”
But unlike the incubus, who had used the same trick, I wasn’t smoking. In fact, I looked just as I had when descending the stairs a few moments ago. Where my body still was, I realized, feeling the vague impression of hard wood under my butt. And the pattern of Gertie’s raised wallpaper on my cheek, where I’d slumped against it when my consciousness was hijacked.
Again.
I decided that I could either freak out and waste time, or kneel down and check Pritkin over. I chose the latter, and didn’t like what I found. His skin was pale and clammy, and his breathing was shallow. The usually spiky blond hair was limp and covered in the same dust that smeared the ratty old coat. I tried to push the leather back, to get a better look at him, but of course, it didn’t work.
I wasn’t really there.
But Mircea was, and he knelt and did it for me, revealing the gray breeches, worn vest and old-fashioned shirt of a hired coachman. That had been our cover story, to explain the lack of the Basarab family ride: that it had broken down on the way to the party, and we’d had to rent one at the last inn we passed. But it left Pritkin looking like an overgrown Oliver Twist who’d taken to drink and was sleeping it off.
The good news was that there weren’t any obvious wounds, except for a few scratches on his hands and arms that the goat thing had probably given him. But anything strong enough to knock out a master vamp would kill most humans, and while Pritkin wasn’t entirely human, it clearly wasn�
�t doing him any good. And the fact that he’d been unconscious for something like a day now seriously worried me.
Of course, his incubus had been busy, hadn’t it? So maybe it had kept him unconscious so he couldn’t rein it in. But it had faded a while ago, at least an hour and probably more, so why hadn’t he come around?
I didn’t know, but getting him to a healer was a priority.
“How high are you?” I asked Mircea. “What are the odds of you fighting your way out of here?”
It wasn’t as crazy as it sounded. Under normal conditions, he could have drained that platoon of every drop of blood, row by row, while they double timed it beneath him. Only not today, it seemed, because he laughed again, a little madly.
“Fuck all?”
“I’m serious, Mircea—”
“As am I. I do not know what was in that bomb, but it was devastating. Concentration is difficult; thinking is difficult. I have my speed, but the rest of my senses are dulled and I am currently mind blind, unable to communicate even with family. I managed to reach you through the spell, but you are the only one I can see. Otherwise, I am alone.”
There had been no emotion in that last line, deliberately so. But there didn’t have to be. Mircea had been a vampire for well over five hundred years. He’d started building a family early, so for most of that, he’d never been alone. There had always been voices in the back of his mind, chatting, laughing, arguing, teasing, something.
To have it all suddenly go silent must be terrifying.
“It’ll wear off,” I said.
“Let us hope so. In the meantime, we have to find—”
A high-pitched squeal, distant but deafening, cut through the air. It sounded like a cross between an animal’s desperate cry and torn metal, and felt like someone had stabbed me through the brain.
“—that,” Mircea said, grabbed my hand, and took off.
Chapter Twenty
W e zipped down the corridors so fast that, if Mircea hadn’t been leading me, I’d have been utterly lost. There were no signs down here; no guideposts of any kind. I didn’t know how the people who used this place navigated, but it wasn’t in the usual ways.