Vintage Soul (32 page)

The young vampire stood inside, stared out at Donovan, then reached through the hole and held out his hand.
 
Donovan hesitated only a second then took the offered grip.
 
He released his hold on the wall and swung out, and the moment he was directly in front of the molten hole in the elevator wall, Vein drew him through.

“You don't eat much, do you?” Vein asked.

“It will wear off.
 
Get out.
 
I can handle this from here.
 
You only have a few minutes.”

Vein hesitated, staring at the hole in the outer wall longingly.

“Go,” Donovan said, pushing lightly on Vein's shoulder.
 
“There's nothing more you can do here.
 
Either I can stop this, or I can't, but you need to get out.
 
The sun is rising.”

It was true.
 
Vein nodded, dove through the hole, and was gone.
 
Wisps of smoke marked his passage, and Donovan wondered briefly if it was already too late.
 
He hoped the vampire would reach the ground and safety, but there was no more time to waste on it.
 
He stepped to the inner door, pressed his amulet to it and spoke the command sharply.
 
He felt resistance; there were charms and wards on that door, but they weren't strong enough.
 
There was a mechanical whir, the sound of heavy locks disengaging, and the glass slid aside.
 
Beyond it the sliding metal doors opened onto an empty passageway, and Donovan dove through.

He sensed Amethyst's presence, though he didn't know where.
 
He should have been able to locate her, but all he felt was the circle.
 
It was huge, powerful, and no matter what the cost, he knew he had to stop it.
 
He found the elevator shaft.
 
The door was open, as Amethyst had left it.
 
He glanced over the rim and saw that the car rested a ways below him.
 
He reached out, gripped the ladder inside, and then dropped.
 
He didn't bother to climb down because he was still light.
 
He floated the two floors to the elevator's roof, scanned it, and found the maintenance hatch.
 
He opened it and dropped through.
 
Moments later he was in the passage, facing the large, ornate doors of
Ezzel's
inner sanctum.

He started forward, and then froze.
 
A blood-curdling scream rose, and he recognized it.
 
Amethyst!

Donovan dove through the door, rolled to the side, and stared at the huge, smoke-curtained circle across the room.
 
A cry erupted behind him, but this time he knew it instantly, and he called the bird, Asmodeus, to his shoulder.
 
It landed heavily, nearly knocking him sprawling.
 
The Thunderbird bag was wearing off, but he was still only about half his full weight.

Amethyst lay limp squeezed in a long, dark tentacle of shadow.
 
She struggled feebly, but there wasn't much fight left in her.
 
Donovan turned away with an effort and concentrated on the circle.
 
He knew he had to stop what was happening.
 
He pulled a flat, clear crystal from his pocket and concentrated on it.
 
He couldn't break the protections, even for a quick glimpse of what was happening on the far side.
 
He could drag bits and pieces of images from the recent past of the surrounding room, however, and piece some of it together.

The crystal fogged; stayed that way for what seemed forever, and was likely about two seconds, and then an image shimmered to life.
 
It was a vial, the vial that held Vanessa's blood.
 
It rested on a long table, but that was all he could make out.
 
He dropped the crystal back into his pocket and quickly walked the perimeter of the circle, as Amethyst had done.
 
He found the crystals, felt their near resonance, and cursed sharply.
 
His time was nearly gone.

Drawing a long, thin wand from a leather case on his hip, he held it before him with both hands.
 
He dropped his head between his arms and concentrated, willing his essence up through his slender frame and into his arms.
 
He sent it in waves down toward the thin strip of yarrow wood and the even thinner crystal tip.
 
The stone was bound to the wand with a detailed weave of copper, bronze, gold and silver wire.
  
As he drove his will down the length of the instrument, the crystal glittered, and then glowed brightly.
 
The light was white and very bright, like that of the heat he'd used to melt the elevator wall, but somehow different.
 
There was no heat, and though an aura of energy stretched up and out from that center, encasing him in a sheath of energy, there was no sound.

The old crow, Asmodeus, clutched his shoulder tightly, and Donovan reached out to it.
 
He pictured what he wanted in his mind and pressed that image into the bird's thoughts, forcing aside the few barriers remaining between them.
 
Their bond, which had strengthened slowly since their first encounter in the old church, solidified in that moment.
 
The bird knew his thoughts and acted.

Donovan pressed his mind to the outer circle, wove through tendrils of smoke and the whispered voices of demons to the crystals, and the portal.
 
It was nearly complete, and instead of trying to disrupt that harmony, Donovan hastened it.
 
In the same second that the timeline stones resonated as one, Asmodeus launched off of Donovan's shoulder.
 
The bird shot through that portal like an arrow, bursting through outer and inner circles without leaving a ripple, and disappeared from sight.

A heavy thump to his left told Donovan that the guardians of the protective ring had ceased their attack on Amethyst.
 
Either she was dead, or they were coming after him.
 
He couldn't afford to think about it.
 
If he allowed the fear to seep in and taint his thoughts, the portal would fail, and they would all die.
 
He stood very still, concentrated, and waited, keeping that slim hole in the fabric of smoke and dreams open.

~ * ~

 
The portal hummed to life with sudden intensity, and Ezzel very nearly lost control.
 
He sensed it before he heard the sound, and that moment's warning saved him from total disaster.
 
Something burst through into the circle, screeched like a banshee, and dove for the table.
 
It was too late.

He had one final step to complete, and immortality would be his.
 
None of the rest of it would matter.
 
He didn't even believe that he would be destroyed if the circle's protections crumbled if the ritual was completed first.
 
The building might cease to exist, but he would go on.

He heard his raven launch from its perch, and he braced himself against the pull of its mind on his own.
 
The bird had been with him for nearly a decade, and their minds were linked very closely.
 
He wanted badly to glance through the bird's eyes and see what had entered the circle, but he didn't' dare turn from the ritual.
 
He poured the ashes of the priest's bone marrow carefully into a bowl in the center of the altar.
 
He'd already added the other ingredients, one by one, stirring, mulching, pummeling some of it to paste and straining out imperfections.
 
When the ashes were beaten in, only blood remained.
 
The vial that held all that remained of Vanessa rested on a silver stand beside the bowl.

Something dark shot across in front of him, but he didn't feel the familiar lurch – it was not the raven.
 
He continued to mix the ingredients, fighting the urge to watch, to look and see what it was.
 
There was so little left to do.
 
Then the shadow returned, closer, and with lightning precision, Asmodeus plucked the vial from its stand.
 

Ezzel cried out.
 
As he did so, he reached for the speeding bird, missed it, and his hand collided with the raven, diving in pursuit.
 
The bird's beak slashed
Ezzel's
wrist, and he drew back.
 
Blood poured from the wound in his wrist, and he held it up instinctively.
 
The blood splashed down into the bowl, and the mixture sizzled.
 
Ezzel clutched his wounded wrist and stared at the bubbling formula in horror.
 
He backed away from the table, but it was too late.
 

His bird, stunned, wobbled to its feet.
 
It recovered fast and made a lunge for the portal, where Asmodeus had disappeared from the ring.
 
Ezzel turned, watching in horror.
 
He was afraid the bird would break the ring – then as he realized what had just happened, he hoped it would break – mercifully – and blast them all to oblivion.

The raven shot into the opening, and it seemed it would burst through to the other side, but something stopped it.
 
Ezzel stumbled toward the circle, watching the rear end of his familiar twitch in the grip of something and feeling the dark tendrils of that something reaching into his mind through the bird's thoughts.
 
It felt like ice.

On the altar, the bowl cracked, and he whirled, crying out a charm to prevent the mixture from spilling.
 
It was only partially effective, and he saw the thick, viscous fluid leaking into jelly-like puddles on the altar.
 
He started toward it, stopped, and dropped to his knees as pain shot through his limbs and stopped his heart.

~ * ~

 
Asmodeus shot back through the portal, past Donovan, and out of sight, clutching the vial of blood tightly.
 
Donovan maintained the portal, shaking with the effort.
 
If he released it suddenly, it would snap.
 
The crystals would shatter, and all of them would cease to exist.
 
He fought the hammering of his heart, watched the portal, and allowed it to close of its own accord.
 
The crystals remained in resonance, but without the catalyst of his will, the portal was unfinished and incomplete.

As it closed, a dark head snapped through and Donovan gasped.
 
He dropped his hold on the crystals too suddenly, but something prevented the portal from snapping.
 
Something dark and sleek.
 
Its head protruded from the mist and it glared at him in wild-eyed anger and hatred, unable to move.
 
Donovan watched in dark fascination as the portal, unable to remain open, slowly forced its way through the creature's flesh.
 
The raven let out a pained squawk, but the sound died almost the second it was born.
 
The bird hung loosely from the smoke, as Amethyst had dangled from the shadow tentacle moments before, and then it let go.

The bird's body, severed cleanly, slid down to the floor against a surface that Donovan could not see, but only sense.
 
There was no blood.
 
It appeared that whatever force had dropped half the animal on the outside of the circle had separated it completely – turned the one animal into two separate, lifeless lumps of flesh, bone, and feathers.

Donovan spared it no more attention.
 
The portal was closed.
 
He whirled and saw that Amethyst had managed to roll over and push herself groggily up on her knees.
 
He ran to her side and lifted her carefully.

“Nothing broken,” she said.
 
Her breathing was pained, and she clutched her ribs tightly.
 
“Might have cracked some ribs, but I'll live.”

“We have to get out of here,” Donovan said.
 
He glanced toward the door.
 
Asmodeus had landed on a small table just inside the door and stood beside a large, clear crystal globe, watching them intently.

“Ezzel?” Amethyst asked, glancing back at the circle.

“He's in there,” Donovan replied, “But the ritual will never be complete.
 
He's going to have to offer something to whatever he summoned, and I'm guess that nothing short of everything is going to do the trick.
 
He won't break the circle unless he's certain there's no other way out.
 
I'm guessing that buys us time to get the hell out of the way.”

She nodded, shuddered, and he led her toward the door.
 
When they reached Asmodeus, Donovan reached out and took the vial carefully from the old bird's claw.
 

“Good work,” he said solemnly.

The bird ruffled its feathers, preened one wing, and stared back at him.
 
There was no emotion to read in those dark, predatory eyes, but Donovan had no need to see.
 
He felt the bond, and he smiled.