“He tried to kill you!” Pritkin had apparently decided to reason with me.
“Actually, he tried to kill you. He thought he was helping me; he’s just not that bright sometimes.”
Pritkin moved, but Mac was suddenly there, a hand on his friend’s chest. “Throwing her over your shoulder isn’t going to help, John,” he said quietly. “I don’t know what this vampire is to her, but if we let him die I think we can kiss the Pythia’s help goodbye.”
“She is not Pythia yet,” Pritkin said, teeth clenched so tight that I don’t know how he got the words out. “She’s a foolish child who—”
I started down the incline, wondering if I really had gone mad, but within seconds a Pritkin-shaped bulk appeared in front of me, blocking my way. “Why are you doing this?” he demanded, looking genuinely confused. “Tell me you’re not in love with him—that you’re not about to risk our lives because of some vampire’s seduction techniques!”
I paused. I wasn’t sure what to call the stew of emotions Tomas inspired, but I didn’t think it was love. “He was my friend,” I said, trying to explain so Pritkin would understand— which was difficult since I wasn’t sure I did. “He betrayed me, but in his own warped view of things he thought he was helping me. He endangered my life, but he also saved it. I guess we’re sort of even.”
“Then you don’t owe him anything.”
“This isn’t about what I owe him.” And it wasn’t. I wanted to rescue Tomas, but, I realized with sudden clarity, I also wanted something else. “It’s about making a statement. Someone who is known to be important to me is being publicly humiliated, tortured and killed. Yet no one— not the mages, not the Senate, not a single individual in the supernatural community—ever once thought to ask my permission!”
“Your permission?” Pritkin looked dumbfounded. “And precisely why would they need that?”
I looked at him and shook my head. Screw this. If I had to deal with all the downsides of the office, it was about time I had a few of the perks, too. “Because I’m Pythia,” I said quietly, and shifted.
I had assumed the Senate would be using its own chamber for this, and I’d been right. The usual echoing vastness was empty no longer. The huge mahogany slab that served as the Senate table was still there, although it had a new purpose now. The chairs that normally lined one side had been moved, arranged in a semicircle in front of the table. Behind them were row upon row of benches, crowded with weres, mages and vamps. The only no-shows were the Fey, unless they looked so much like the mages that I couldn’t tell them apart. After my experience at Dante’s, I kind of doubted that.
I had landed right where I’d planned, directly beside Tomas. I wasn’t interested in subtlety, although there would have been no way to manage it in any case; I had to touch him in order to shift us away. Jack had stepped back a few feet when I flashed in, and to my surprise he made no move to grab me.
My eyes automatically scanned the rows, looking for one face in particular. I found him easily, sitting at the end of the front row of seats in the position nearest me. Mircea’s stylish black suit was perfect in cut and fit, and the pale gray banded-collar shirt he wore under it was silk. Platinum cufflinks that shimmered faintly in the lamplight constituted his only jewelry. He looked as elegant and in control as always, but his aura was fluctuating wildly. It spiked when he saw me, but he made no move forward.
Behind him, many of the spectators had overturned their chairs in haste to get to their feet. The Consul stood with one hand up, some sort of signal to hold them off, I guessed. Each group’s area inside MAGIC was sacrosanct, the same way an embassy on foreign soil belongs to its host government. The weres and mages had to behave themselves on vamp territory or they violated the treaties that protected them and it was open season.
I felt Sheba wake up and start licking a paw on my left shoulder blade. She was ready to rumble—too bad there was only one of her and about a thousand of them.
“Cassandra, you have returned to us.” As always, the Consul appeared perfectly serene. The only movement was her outfit, which consisted of bare skin covered by a lot of writhing snakes. It was little ones this time, none longer than a finger, who slipped over her like a shimmering second skin. “We have been concerned for you.”
Something suddenly rippled across me, an odd, skin-prickling sensation. It didn’t hurt, but I didn’t know what it was, and under the circumstances that wasn’t good. I decided not to hang around and find out.
“I bet. Wish I could stay and chat, but maybe next time.” I gripped Tomas’ shoulder tighter and tried to shift, but nothing happened. I didn’t feel the slightest surge of my power, even though it had been bright and strong just moments before.
“You cannot shift, Cassandra,” the Consul said in her habitual even tones. She had a good voice, well modulated and slightly husky. A guy would have probably found it sexy; I was having a very different reaction.
Tomas moved slightly and I looked down at him. “It’s a trap,” he croaked weakly. “They said you would come for me. I didn’t believe it—there was no reason. Why did you come back?” The anguished cry seemed to sap his strength and he collapsed into unconsciousness. I stared at the Consul, who looked calmly back, no hint of apology visible on that beautiful face.
Tomas was alive, but his wounds were bad—very bad. He was laid out on the dark wood like some bizarre form of art—something Picasso might have painted if he was in the habit of putting his nightmares on canvas. This might have been a trap, but it was obvious that, if I hadn’t shown up, the Senate would have let Jack kill him. They probably planned to do so anyway, now that he’d served his purpose.
I narrowed my eyes at the Consul, but she made no response. I’d seen her kill two ancient vampires with little more than a look, when they were farther from her than I currently was. But I felt no sting of desert sand against my face, no warning rush of power. It suddenly occurred to me that, in a room full of magical creatures, I felt no magic at all.
“You used a null bomb on me, didn’t you?”
The Consul smiled. It wasn’t a nice expression. “You overlooked a few.”
Considering everything, I didn’t feel much like apologizing for taking their stuff. “Well, damn. I’ll try to be more thorough next time.”
“We don’t have time for verbal sparring,” an old mage interrupted, glaring at me. “The effect won’t last much longer, and you know we can’t afford to explode another—”
One of the Senate members, a brunette in hoop skirts, picked him up by the throat, choking off his voice as she hoisted him into the air. She looked inquiringly at the Consul, but the Senate leader shook her head. The damage was done. All I needed was to stall long enough for the spell to break. Then my power could get Tomas and me out of this. Unfortunately, I had no idea how long that might take.
“Look, all I want is Tomas,” I told her. “You were about to kill him, so I guess you won’t miss him.”
My attempt to start a dialogue fell flat. “I wish this were not necessary, Cassandra,” the Consul said quietly. She glanced at the vampires around her, some of the most powerful on the planet. “Take her,” she said simply.
I didn’t try to run. There was no point. Under other circumstances, it would almost have been funny. What did she think I was going to do that would require half a dozen first-level masters to stop? Without my power and with my ward acting up, the youngest vamp in the place could make me into dinner with no problem at all.
Then I realized that I wasn’t the one she was worried about.
“Remove it!” Mircea had stopped short of the table, and although his face was impassive, his fists were clenched at his sides. Not a good sign on someone who normally controlled himself so well. The other vamps seemed to agree. They weren’t looking at me—every eye was riveted on him.
“Mircea.” The Consul walked up behind him and placed a smooth bronze-skinned hand on his shoulder. It looked like it was meant as a calming gesture, but he shrugged it off. The circle of vamps drew in a collective breath, and the southern belle actually gasped. The Consul’s hand quickly became an arm around his throat, but it was as if he didn’t even notice. “I suggest you heed him,” she told me. I noticed that, despite her grip, Mircea was making slow progress forward, if only by inches. “What do you hope to gain by allowing this to continue?”
“Allowing what to continue?” I looked from her to Mircea in mounting confusion, only to see his calm facade slip a little more. I didn’t need her to tell me that something was wrong. His face was as white as bone, but his eyes burned like two candles.
“This has gone on long enough,” the Consul agreed. “Release him, and we will discuss matters amicably. Otherwise . . .”
“Otherwise what?” I might not understand what was happening, but I knew a threat when I heard one.
“I will let go,” she said quietly. “Then we will see if you can deal with the results of your revenge. We have been doing it long enough.” The dark eyes flashed, and I suddenly understood how she’d dominated an empire when only a teenager. “I need him, Cassandra! We are at war. I cannot have him like this, not now.”
“Cassie . . .” Mircea had somehow managed to lift his right arm, despite the fact that a Senate member almost as old as the Consul was hanging off it. Tendrils of sensation radiated outward from his hand like smoke from a fire. At first I thought he was just leaking power, but then one wisp brushed against me and I understood. It felt like one of my old visions, the kind in which I saw flashes of the future. They had been absent since my run-in with the Pythia, and I had wondered whether they were gone for good. I’d half hoped so. They had been a part of me for as long as I could remember, but they’d never shown me anything good. This was no exception.
A fragment of vision curled around my arm despite my best attempt to dodge it. It was so hot that I expected to see a welt rise on my skin. What I got instead was worse—a mosaic of images, each more cruel than the last: a blood-covered Mircea battling for his life in a swordfight almost too fast to see; a triumphant-looking Myra running from the shadows to throw something at him; an explosion that was more felt than heard, reverberating through the ground and tearing the air; and then, where two elegant fighters had been, a sodden mass of flesh and bone gleaming slick and red in low light, so mixed up that it was impossible to tell where one body began and the other ended.
I screamed and jerked away, causing the scene to shatter. I stumbled backward, too desperate to get away from the images to worry about dignity. I stared around frantically, but most of the vamps were still fixated on Mircea. A few spared me a puzzled glance, but none looked as if they had seen anything unusual, much less the gory death of one of their senior members. But there was no doubt in my mind what I’d witnessed. Somewhere, somewhen, Myra had succeeded.
It felt like someone had dumped a bucket of ice cubes into my stomach. My visions always came true—always. I’d tried to change the outcome of things before, especially when I was younger. I’d gone to Tony numerous times to report upcoming disasters, believing him when he swore he would do everything in his power to stop them. But, of course, the only thing he’d ever done was to figure out how to profit from them. And, in the end, everything had always happened exactly as I’d foreseen. The same held true for a vision I’d seen as an adult, when I tried to warn a friend of his impending assassination. I didn’t know whether he’d received the message or not, but it hadn’t mattered. He still died.
But all that was before I became Pythia, or, at least, her heir. I had changed things since then, hadn’t I? And, if Myra had won, why was Mircea still here?
I finally focused on the Consul. I needed answers and Mircea was in no shape to give them to me. “What is going on? Is this a trick?” Even as I said it, I knew it wasn’t. I’d had enough visions to know the real thing when I felt it.
The Consul’s eyes narrowed to slits. “Do you play with me?” she demanded, so quietly that I hardly heard her.
I looked down at Tomas and drew in a sharp breath. I wasn’t the one playing here. “I want Tomas,” I said, more unsteadily than I liked. “You obviously want something, too. Tell me what it is and maybe we can make a trade.”
“You don’t know.” I finally saw emotion cross that lovely face. It was surprise.
Tomas made a small sound and I lost it. “Just tell me!” The vision had shattered my nerves, and I didn’t feel like chatting while Tomas slowly bled out.
The Consul took a breath, which she didn’t need, and nodded. “Very well. Remove the
geis
you placed on Lord Mircea, and I will give you the traitor.”
I goggled at her. “What?” Somewhere along the line, I’d missed something. “The only
geis
around here is the one he put on me! It’s been causing me hell.”
“Hell?” Mircea laughed abruptly, but it was mirthless. “What do you know of hell?” He tore free of his living restraints and dropped to the floor. Two vamps dove under the table after him, but I never saw how close they came. All I know is, it wasn’t close enough. I was suddenly crushed against a hard chest. “Try mine,” he whispered before catching my lips in a bruising kiss.
The punch of his emotions came clearly through the
geis
, hitting me like a kick to the stomach. The same energy that arced between us whenever we met thrummed through Mircea, only it had grown. This was no vague frisson of passion. The craving had lain smoldering, waiting for the proper fuel, and now it ignited into a roaring blaze. It was like drowning in a river of molten lava. I felt it in his veins for an instant, pleasure as sharp as pain, before it poured into mine in a scalding wash of desire. I felt myself flounder, falling into heat, falling away from thought to a place that was all-consuming sensation. Fire. Sweet fire.
The kiss was hard and brutal, as if he would eat me alive. There was nothing gentle about it, nothing romantic. And it was just what I wanted. My hands closed convulsively on his shoulders, my nails digging into his coat. His mouth was relentless on mine, fierce and insistent, and a hard hand slid behind my head to hold me in place. One of his fangs nicked me and I tasted my own blood. He made a strangled cry and pulled back, his eyes wild, his face beautifully feral.