Reap the Wind (12 page)

“But . . . but he was human when he became a vampire, and I removed
that
—”

“You may have had some help there,” he told me gruffly.

“Mircea.” Marco gave me a nod I didn’t need, because I should have known. Mircea was a five-hundred-year-old senior master with a talent for healing. His power mixed with mine . . . Who knew what it could do? “Then can he—”

“He’s too far away.”

“He was just as far with Jules!”

“But Jules was his—his Child, his blood. This guy ain’t. And none of us has his skill.”

I stared from him to the mage and back again. And read the truth in Marco’s black eyes. He’d been a gladiator once; he knew battle wounds. Both the kind you survived, and the kind you didn’t.

No.
No.

The bubble snapped, as useless as the one who’d made it, and the mage touched my arm. I stared down at him, furious and hurting. But I didn’t see any recrimination on his face. Only desperation to tell me something. I bent over him to hear the whispered words. “Heard them talking—”

“The dark mages?”

He shook his head slightly. “Acolytes. Before—” He cut off, choking.

“The acolytes want the Tears.”

A nod.

“What are they planning to do with them?” I didn’t get an answer, and his eyes were starting to go vague.

“His name is Royston,” Rhea told me, kneeling on his other side. “Elias Royston.”

“Mage Royston. What are they going to do?”

He tried to tell me, but the only thing that came out of his mouth was a gout of blood. It splattered my cheek; I could taste it on my lips.

“Get her away . . .” One of the boys started forward; I didn’t see who. But Marco held him off.

“Elias. What are they planning to do?”

“To bring him back.
Don’t let them. . . .
”

“To bring who back?” I asked, afraid I already knew. “
Elias.
Who are they—”

“The old ones. One of the old—”

He went limp in my arms.

“Gods,” I whispered.

Someone had cleaned up the glass in my bathroom, leaving just a new, blank backboard ready for a mirror that hadn’t arrived yet. I was oddly grateful that I couldn’t see what I looked like, couldn’t see the expression on my face. Couldn’t see anything but the bottle the old man had given me, gripped so tightly in my hand.

It was thick, brown, pitted glass, with little ripples I could feel under my fingertips. I held it up to the light and something moved inside, something dense and syrupy, something that didn’t quite obey the laws of physics. It was a little too sluggish here, a little too quick over there, climbing the sides of the container in ways a liquid shouldn’t.

But it had plenty of room, because the bottle was almost empty.

Maybe an eighth of the contents remained, answering one of the questions I’d had: why had the acolytes wanted the potion so badly if they already had it?

Because they didn’t have enough of it.

They’d searched Agnes’ rooms, just as Rhea and I had, but unlike us, they’d found something. Something that had whetted their appetites for more, so they’d called in their dark mage associates to get it for them. And they hadn’t cared what methods they used to do it.

I put the potion down and ran some water in the sink, scrubbing at the drying blood on my hands and face.

“Did I tell you how I lost my daughter?”

I looked up to find Marco standing in the bathroom door, his bulk almost filling it. It took me a second to register what he’d said, because it was so unexpected. And because my brain didn’t seem to be working so well right now.

“No.”

“You remind me of her. Thought so first time I ever saw you. Not in looks; she was dark . . . but in something. Some stupid sense of optimism, maybe.”

It felt like a slap. My body was bruised, but my nerves were worse. I didn’t need this.

“Then I ought to be reminding you of her less every day,” I said, and reached for a towel.

And had my arm caught halfway.

“No. You’re exactly like her. That’s the way she was, too. Never believed it could happen to her; never believed what men can do—”

“I’m more worried about women right now.”

“You’re not worried about anybody! Not enough!” It was savage.

“So where do you want me, Marco?” I asked, pulling away. And grabbing the damned towel because I was dripping all over everything. “Cowering under the bed? Praying that the big bad god of war doesn’t find me? Because I don’t think that’ll work.”

“And this will? Running around exhausting yourself, barely making it back—how many times are you going to try this shit?”

“Until the job’s done.”

“Are you doing your job? Jonas was right about one thing. You’re the only Pythia we got. Putting yourself in danger for no good reason—”

“It’s a good reason.”

“We both know what it is, or should I say ‘who’?”

I’d been drying my face, but at that I looked up.

“Everybody knows what you’ve been doing,” he told me.

“I doubt that.”

“Not the particulars, maybe, but the main point—yeah, I think we got that.”

“Good for you.” I pushed past him and went into the bedroom.

Marco followed. “Listen to me. You lose people in war, all right? You need to come to grips with that.”

I jerked open a dresser drawer. “
I
need? I’ll ask you the same thing I asked Jonas: what the hell are you saving me for? To trot me out when Ares shows up, and say hey, here’s our champion? Because that’s not going to work. I’m not humanity’s get-out-of-jail-free card!”

“I never said—”

“You implied it. Everyone’s always implying it.”

“Everyone is trying to keep you safe!”

“I’m not safe!” I turned on him. “None of us are safe! We’re all in this together, and if the gods come back, vampire or mage or Pythia or whatever isn’t going to matter!”

“
If
they come back. We don’t know—”

“We know. Rhea
saw
. She saw him come back, and not half dead like Apollo—”

“Rhea saw,” he repeated. “Why didn’t you see? You’re Pythia, not her.”

“I don’t know. I don’t see much anymore. Maybe the power is used up with all this shifting.”

“Or maybe there’s nothing to see. Maybe she’s wrong—”

“And if she’s not?”

“All the more reason for you to stay here, and not waste yourself—”

“I can’t stay here!” I slammed the drawer shut.

“You need to calm down.”

“I am calm! I just want to know what you or Jonas or anybody thinks I’m going to do for you if Ares comes back. Here’s a clue—I’m going to die, just like everybody else. Keeping me in reserve is no different from . . . keeping a queen in reserve on a chess board because you’re scared to lose her. Know how best to lose her? Lose the game!”

“We’re not playing a game,” Marco said as I started back for the bathroom.

“No, we’re not. But life involves risk.”

“Yeah, but maybe I don’t want to risk you.”

“Maybe it’s not your call.”

“Maybe I don’t want to see another girl I love lying bloody and broken in the damned road!”

I turned toward him and saw the agony on his face. Like it had just happened. Like all those years hadn’t mattered at all.

“She was eight,” he told me.

“You don’t have to do this.”

I might as well not have spoken. “I was away on a training exercise with the troops. She and her mother were back home, on the farm with my brother. He had a gimp leg and couldn’t serve, but he could wield a sword—I’d taught him that.

“And stupidly believed it would be enough.

“I still don’t know what happened. Never did. Just came back to a burnt-out farmhouse and the crisped body of my brother, still clutching that damned sword. And my wife and daughter in a ditch across the road, as if they’d been running away but hadn’t made it. And neither of them had been spared.”

“Marco—”

“Do you understand what I’m telling you? They were dead and worse than dead, and there was nothing left for me but burying the bodies! I don’t want to bury yours!”

“You won’t.” I barely got the words out.

“No, I won’t. I won’t have it. I won’t be there. You’ll die in some damned other place, in some other time, where I can’t reach you—”

“I’m not an eight-year-old child, Marco—”

“And you’re not your mother, either!”

It stopped me again, but not because of the violence. “I know that.”

“Do you?” He grabbed me, so lightning fast my eyes couldn’t track the movement. And the next thing I knew, I was over by the closet, facing the full-length mirror on the inside of the door. And a wild-eyed barbarian with tangled hair, blood-flecked skin, and a clenched fist.

It took me a second to realize it was me.

The stomach of my T-shirt was completely drenched, parts of it were singed, and there was a bloody handprint on one shoulder. I stared at it, at the deep impressions where Mage Royston had gripped me so hard at first. And then at the elongated marks trailing down the front, as his strength failed.

A pulse started pounding in my head.

“Four months ago you were answering phones and making copies at a travel agency.” Marco grated. “I don’t care whose blood you have; you’re
twenty-four
. An untrained magic user with a damned tenuous grip on your power. And a sitting duck if you run out of it!”

For a moment, I saw myself through his eyes. Saw that girl I’d been for so long, small and weak and alone, huddled in the dark so the big bad things didn’t find me. Marco was right. That was who I’d been, who I’d been my whole life.

But it wasn’t who I was.

I wasn’t my mother, and I never would be. But I wasn’t that girl anymore, either. I looked in the mirror, and my own eyes stared back, but they weren’t the ones I was used to. They should have been clouded with fear, with uncertainty; should have been darting around, looking for the nearest exit, getting ready to run. Instead, they were angry, steady, defiant.

I wasn’t my mother.

I wasn’t even Agnes.

But I was Pythia.

I heard Marco curse. And slam out of the door a second later, because he could read expressions, too. He almost ran into Rhea coming in.

She flattened herself against the door frame, getting out of his way, and then stayed there, as if unsure whether she should come the rest of the way in or not. And yeah. I guess even human ears had been able to pick up that little discussion.

Right then, I didn’t care.

“I can’t use my power where I want,” I told her bitterly. “I can’t save who I want. What exactly
can
I do?”

She raised her eyes from the bloody bottle I was still holding up to mine. “Make an old man’s last moments free from torture? Give his death meaning? These are not small things, Lady.”

I stared back at her until her face started to blur. “Then why doesn’t it feel like enough?”

But Rhea didn’t have an answer for that.

“Did you want to see me about something?” I asked, after a minute. And turned back to the bureau to jerk on a fresh tee.

She nodded. “The children. They’re . . . I think it would do them good to see you. That you’re all right, I mean.”

I glanced at the bloody pile of clothes on the floor. Yeah. Maybe should have thought to shift to the bedroom.

“Mage Royston was popular,” she said, following my gaze. “He used to do magic tricks for the girls.”

“A Circle member would be good at that.”

She shook her head. “He was terrible. His magic . . . It wasn’t very strong anymore, so he did the human kind.”

“You mean the fake kind.”

She nodded. “Card tricks mostly . . .”

“And the girls liked that?”

“They liked trying to figure them out.”

Too bad I didn’t know any.

I finished dressing and followed Rhea back into the living room. The door to the foyer was closed now, but the girls were still staring at it. And looking grim, anxious, shocked, and stoic by turns, depending on their natures. But none of them was looking all that great—or that well cared for.

They’d had enough to eat; I knew Marco well enough to be sure of that. But their clothes were starting to look grubby, which I guess wasn’t surprising since they’d been wearing the same things for two days now. And damn it, this was no place for children!

I had a brief moment to wonder if they wouldn’t have been better off with Jonas, before the first one noticed me. And the look of joyous relief on her face made me feel ashamed. These girls had been brought up to have their whole lives revolve around the Pythia, only to have her abruptly snatched away from them. And then to almost die when her acolytes tried to kill them. And then to get dragged off here, into the midst of a bunch of what they probably thought of as monsters, in the service of another Pythia they didn’t know and who was never here anyway.

If I were them, I’d have hated me.

But instead, they pushed past the vampires to get to me, a wave of grubby white gowns and reaching hands, touching me, pressing around me, worried about
me
instead of what had happened to them. And what, from their perspective, was still happening. The knot of shame in my breast grew exponentially, but so did something else. The same something that had flared when that damned acolyte grabbed Rhea. A fierce, almost frightening possessiveness.

They were mine, this ragtag group of girls, and I wasn’t turning them over to Jonas. Wasn’t seeing them broken apart, wasn’t having them sent off to those damned schools the Circle ran, wasn’t giving them into the care of people I didn’t know and sure as hell didn’t trust. I was going to take care of them; I was going to figure it out. They were my court, and . . . and that’s all there was to it.

But I couldn’t tell them that.

Suddenly, I couldn’t seem to say anything.

And then Fred came to the rescue.

“No, no, no, I got this,” he said, jogging in from the lounge, and talking to someone over his shoulder.

“Got what?” I asked warily as he turned to me and grinned. And shoved out a fistful of floppy.

It took me a second because of the color. “Balloons?”

“Picked ’em up at the grocery store,” he told me proudly. “Thought they might come in handy.”

“The grocery store?”

“Yeah, they had a sale. Practically giving them away. Don’t know why.”

Because they’re depressing,
I didn’t say, since he was only trying to help. But honestly, who bought black balloons? Fred, apparently, and now he was blowing them up.

“Trust me . . . I used to do this . . . all the time,” he told me in between breaths. He soon had a cluster of long, skinny tubes, which he then proceeded to tie together using vampire speed. One second, there was a depressing bunch of cylinders, and the next . . .

It was worse.

The kids were glancing at each other, like they didn’t know what to make of it, either. But Fred looked hopeful. And then he started moving his creation up and down, so that the tortured appendages hanging off either side flopped about in a dying-bird sort of way. One of the littlest girls made a sound and hid her face.

“Fred,” I began, trying to figure out how to say
please stop
without hurting his feelings.

And then one of the guys solved the problem for me. “What the fu—uh, heck?”

“Leo,” Roy said, frowning at him from beside the bar.

“What? I said
heck.
And look at that thing.”

“What is it?” another guy asked. “A spider?”

“A bat, obviously,” Fred said. And flapped it about some more, on the theory, I assume, that he just hadn’t been vigorous enough the first time.

“Freakiest thing I ever saw,” the vamp mumbled.

“Freakiest?” Roy dropped ice into a glass. “You haven’t been here long enough.”

“Then why does it feel that way?”

“I have more,” Fred said, finally realizing that his distraction was not a hit. “A lot more. I used to make these all the time—well, the pig bladder kind—”

“But were any of them any good?” Leo asked.

Fred stopped to glare at him, while Roy assessed his latest attempt. “What is that?”

“It’s a clown!”