Chapter Ten
We landed on the same
street, but suddenly there were no electric lights, no cars, no
milling crowd of freaked-out party guests. And no crazy mage and
his captive. Just dirty snow melting in between cobblestones, the
moon riding a bunch of dark clouds overhead, and a few dim puddles
from gas lanterns placed too far apart.
Some dry leaves
rattled along the gutter, but nothing else moved.
“Did he take her into
a house?” I asked Mircea, who had his eyes closed and his head
tilted back.
“I do not think so,”
he murmured. And then he rotated on his heel and opened his eyes,
looking straight at a group of three-story row houses lining the
left side of the street.
They were painted
some light color that glowed ghostly pale in the moonlight. Their
windows were mostly dark, shrouded by heavy curtains, which wasn’t
much help. But the shadows rippling across their fronts were more
useful.
There was nothing to
throw them—nothing that I could see anyway. And there were no
soft-voiced commands, no sounds of running feet, no faint rustles
of clothing to give anyone away. But Mircea didn’t need all that.
He could hear their hearts beat, smell the sweat on their skin,
feel the faint currents of air from their passing. Glamouries, even
good ones, have a hard time fooling vampire senses.
“That way,” he told
me softly, but I didn’t need it. The shadows had disappeared into
the dark mouth of an alley, and I shifted us right in behind
them.
Silver moonlight was
sifting in the far end of the passage, lighting up the kidnapper
and my mother disappearing around a corner. And the figures of
three war mages, who must have been right on their tail, but who
were now stumbling out of thin air, dropping their glamouries as
they turned and tripped and staggered and ran—right back at
us.
For a second, I
thought that they’d mistaken us for enemies and decided to take us
out before going after Mom. Except that they weren’t looking at us.
Judging by the whites showing all around their eyes and the way
they kept running into each other, they weren’t looking at much at
all.
I’d never seen war
mages look that unprofessional—or that panicked. I looked past
them, but there was nothing to explain it, not even a rat nosing at
the garbage littering the alley floor. But clearly, something had
them spooked.
And then they blew by
us, one of them shoving me brutally aside in his hurry. I hit the
brick wall hard enough to knock the breath out of my lungs, and
Mircea hit the mage. The casual-looking blow sent him flying out of
the alley and into the street, but, amazingly, the man didn’t even
try to retaliate. He just staggered to his feet and limped off as
fast as he could, disappearing from view around a corner of the
building.
I gazed after him for
a second, confused, and then shook my head and started the other
way, desperate not to lose the tenuous connection to my mother.
Only to have Mircea jerk me roughly back. I didn’t ask why, because
I hadn’t gotten my breath back and couldn’t talk yet. And because I
knew him well enough to know that he’d have a good
reason.
And because what
looked like a piece of the night had broken off from the rest and
was flowing our way.
It surged along the
sides of the alley like water, turning the dark red brick gray and
chipped and flaking, leaving a pale stripe on the wall like a flood
line. It disintegrated a few pieces of trash that had been blowing
on the breeze, turning them brown and curled and then dusting them
away. It ate through a wooden rain barrel, sending a wash of dirty
runoff foaming across the alley floor.
And it did all of
that in a matter of seconds.
I stared at the path
of destruction, knowing what I was seeing but not really believing
it. Because this wasn’t a time bubble; it was a time wave. One that
had just engulfed the fourth mage.
I hadn’t seen him
until his glamourie melted like dripping paint, showing pieces of
him scrambling through the garbage on the alley floor. He was still
trying to run, but it wasn’t going well. He kept tripping over his
feet, getting up, taking a few awkward steps, and then falling back
down again. Until he abruptly stopped, threw back his head and
screamed.
Suddenly, I was
grateful that there was so little light, that he’d made it into the
shadow of the building, that I couldn’t see details of what was
happening. Because what I could see was bad enough.
A wave of hair sprang
from his head, going gray streaked and then solid gray and then
pure silver-white as it snaked over his shoulders, pooling in the
mud and grime caking the cobblestones. At the same time, the body
under the long leather coat began to move in odd ways, bucking and
writhing, although his hands stayed on the ground as if glued. And
then the wave ate through the coat, disintegrating it like it had
been dumped in acid, and what was underneath—
“Don’t look at it,”
Mircea said harshly, pulling me back.
But I couldn’t not
look. Skin darkened and then peeled away in patches, muscle thinned
and browned, nails sprouted long as talons and a cascade of what I
recognized dully as ropy intestines hit the cobblestones with a
splat. And then the face lifted, the mouth still open but no sound
coming out anymore.
No, of course not, I
thought blankly.
It’s kind of hard to
scream with no vocal cords.
And then my paralysis
broke and we were pelting back toward the street, just ahead of the
tidal wave boiling toward us. Mircea threw us into the road and
then slammed us back against a building all in one quick movement.
I stayed there, nails biting into the cold stones, as the wave
shimmered through the air right past us.
I still couldn’t see
it, other than as a vague distortion against the night. But I
didn’t have to. I could see what it did well enough.
The sidewalk in front
of the alley cracked and splintered, and the section of roadbed
beside it suddenly rippled like an angry sea. The individual stones
began moving up and down like keys on a piano, the whole expanse to
the other side dancing as the mortar between the pieces crumbled
and age pushed them out of place. It was like watching hundreds of
years of wear happening in seconds.
But it didn’t stop
there. A lamppost across the street began to writhe, the metal
twisting and groaning as rust surged up the sides. The lamp on top
cracked and then shattered, before what was left of the structure
tumbled into the road, exploding against the uprooted
stones.
But it didn’t stop
there, either. The fence around a grassy area disintegrated in a
pouf of bronze rust, glimmering in the moonlight like fairy dust.
Flowers in a small bed bloomed and died and bloomed again, pushing
upward against the snow as the sticklike sapling they hedged
suddenly shot toward the sky. Limbs bulged, bark flowed and leaves
sprouted in abundance. Acorns rattled down like rain as the leaves
changed and fell and sprouted again, piling up around the rapidly
thickening trunk like a mountain.
I blinked, and when I
looked again, it was at a fully grown tree, branches huge and
rustling, spreading luxuriantly against the night where a moment
before there had been only sky. I stared up at it, the breath
coming fast in my lungs, because no way. No freaking way.
I’d been willing to
take the shifting thing on faith, to believe that maybe the mage
had somehow learned a spell the others hadn’t, or had a special
talent that allowed him to control the needed power, or had just
gotten really lucky. But that? That was the sort of thing that only
a Pythia could do—and a damned well-trained one at
that.
Or a well-trained
Pythian heir.
My head turned on its
own, and I found myself staring at the darkened mouth of the alley
again. It looked a little different now, the bricks on either side
of the entrance cracked and discolored and in some cases missing
altogether, crumbled into dust. But there was no sign of the mage,
nothing to show that a man had ever been there, much less that he
had suffered and died on those stones. It was almost like nothing
had ever happened.
But it
had.
And my mother had
done it.
“I believe it has
stopped,” Mircea said softly, examining a nearby fountain. As far
as I could tell, the wave had done nothing more than add a little
to the verdigris etching over the elaborate metalwork. It should
have made me feel better, because I’d had no clue how to counter it
if it had just kept going.
But it
didn’t.
“Why would she help
him?” I asked harshly.
Mircea looked up. I
couldn’t see him very well with the only nearby lamppost now a
bunch of rusted shards in the street. But he didn’t sound surprised
when he answered; he’d probably been thinking the same thing. “He
must have her under a compulsion.”
“But . . . why
bother? If he could make her do anything, he could order her to
kill herself! He doesn’t need—”
“If he wished to kill
her, why not do so at the party? Why take the risk of trying to
control power like that?” He sounded slightly awed, as if he’d
never before seen precisely what a Pythia could do. And maybe he
hadn’t.
It sure as hell was
news to me.
“Why take her at all,
then?” I demanded.
“As you said, the
Guild exists to disrupt time. But their power is insufficient to
allow them to travel where they wish. And even when they manage to
collect enough, through whatever means, for a shift, there remains
the problem of controlling it. Perhaps they decided—”
“That it would be
easier to get themselves a pet Pythia,” I rasped. “To act as their
goddamned cab ride!”
“It would make
sense.”
I didn’t say
anything. But I had a sudden, vicious image of the mage, kneeling
in place in that alley, hair shooting out of his head as his body
slowly disintegrated along with his clothes. It was surprisingly
satisfying.
“What do you wish to
do?” Mircea asked, as a lone figure darted across the end of the
street. One of the remaining mages, no doubt. I was going to have
to get them back to their own time before they screwed up something
here, whenever this was. But that would have to come later. Right
now, my mother was top priority, or there wouldn’t be a later.
“I want to find her,”
I said savagely.
“Then let’s go find
her.”
Two streets over, we
came to another alley that looked a lot like the first, except that
the light spilling in the end of this passage was a dim, hazy gold.
The sun hadn’t suddenly come up, so I assumed that the light was
man-made. It went with the sound of horses’ hooves on cobblestone,
the rattle of wheels, and the shouts of people hawking something
nearby.
I didn’t see my
mother, but I kind of thought she might have been by.
“What is that?”
Mircea demanded, staring at a mage loping along in the shadows
beside us.
His arms were
pumping, his legs were working, and his long coat was flapping out
behind him as if caught in a stiff breeze. Only he wasn’t going
anywhere. He also wasn’t paying any attention to us, which wasn’t
surprising.
As far as he was
concerned, we weren’t there yet.
Mircea frowned and
reached out a hand, as if to give him a push. Until my fingers
tightened over his wrist. “Don’t do that.”
He looked a
question.
“Time loop,” I told
him shortly, moving closer to the mouth of the alley. I was
cautious, staying well inside the shadows provided by some stacked
crates. I didn’t think my mother could manage another wave like
that so soon—if she could, the man behind us likely wouldn’t be
alive. But I wasn’t sure. And that little demonstration earlier
wasn’t something you just forgot.
I kept telling myself
that it hadn’t been her, that she hadn’t chosen to kill him like
that, that she hadn’t known. But it still sent chills rippling over
my flesh. God, what a horrible way to—
“Time loop?” Mircea
asked, putting a hand on my shoulder.
I jumped and almost
screamed.
He lifted an eyebrow
at me, cool as always. Like he regularly saw people disintegrate
into puddles of flesh. I licked my lips and told myself to get a
grip.
“He’s stuck on
repeat,” I explained, glancing back at the mage running his
personal marathon.
“And that
means?”
“That he’ll keep
reliving the same few seconds over and over until the bubble fades
or he breaks out of it.”
“He’s encased in a
time bubble?”
“Yes.”
“Then why can’t I
sense it?” Mircea asked, wrinkling his nose, as if he expected to
be able to smell it or something.
I thought that
unlikely. All I could smell was pee. The alley must serve as the
local latrine.
“Did you sense the
other one?” I asked.
“Not . . . precisely.
But I saw something, like a current in the air—”
“Probably caused by
the different weather patterns that piece of air was shifting
through,” I told him, figuring it out as I spoke. “Rain, sleet,
snow—on fast forward, they’re going to make it look a little
weird.”
“Then you’re saying I
didn’t actually see anything.”
“You can’t see time,
just what it does.”
His fingers
tightened. “Then your mother could throw a bubble over us and we
would never see it coming?”
“Something like
that,” I said grimly.
Mircea abruptly
pulled me behind him.
“That won’t help,” I
said, peering between the crates at a busy street. “If she hits you
with something, I probably won’t know how to counter it. And
without you, the mage can take me out easily.” He’d managed to
throw a master vamp at a wall, so that was sort of a
given.
“Then how do we fight
something we cannot see?” Mircea demanded.
I glanced back at
him. “By not getting hit with it in the first place.”
“And how do we do
that?”
“I’m open to
suggestion,” I told him honestly.
I actually had no
idea what to do. I’d assumed that my mother would be resisting her
captor, and that when we caught up with him, the fight would be
three against one. I’d liked those odds; I’d been all about those
odds. I wasn’t so thrilled with these.
Because I couldn’t
manipulate time like that. I hadn’t known that anybody could
manipulate time like that. And while I had to get only a finger on
her to shift her away, I had to stay alive long enough to do
it.
I also had to find
her. But the light was lousy and the street was packed with people
rushing home through the cold. Most were in dark colors—brown or
black or dark gray—not electric blue. But outside the illumination
of shop doors and gas lamps, pretty much everything looked the
same. If she stayed in the shadows, she’d blend in
perfectly.
But while I couldn’t
see her, I could feel her rapidly getting farther away, the golden
cord between us stretching like an elastic band. “She’s moving,” I
said, and ducked out into the street.
Mircea didn’t try to
stop me, but he looked less than thrilled. I didn’t say anything,
because I wasn’t any happier. As if I didn’t have enough other
reasons, I was freezing to death. Unfortunately, my coat was a
century or so away.
He must have noticed
me shivering, because he stripped off the jacket of his tux and put
it around me. It was thin, but the wool was top quality and still
warm from his body. I clutched it around me as we dodged a street
preacher, a hawker selling roasted nuts and a seemingly endless
line of wagons.
Despite the weather,
it looked like half the damn city was out tonight.
And then I saw why
when we came to a crossroads. Four streets, all of them busy,
converged here. I was sure we were in the right area, but there was
no way to know which road they’d taken. And if I guessed wrong, by
the time we backtracked—
“Can you shift to
her?” Mircea asked, as we stood on the street corner, trying to
look four ways at once.
“No.” Spatial shifts
had more restrictions than the time variety, and if I couldn’t see
her, I couldn’t shift. “Can you track her?”
“I can try.” He did
the eyes-closed, head-back-andmouth-slightly-open thing again while
I huddled inside the coat and tried to be optimistic. But it wasn’t
easy. Even in the cold, the place reeked. The streets were packed
with horse manure, garbage rotted in the gutters, and the joys of
deodorant were apparently unknown to most of the crowd. Add that to
the smell of spilled beer radiating out of a nearby pub, and it
wasn’t looking good. My only hope was that she would shift through
time again, and I could catch up that way.
At least, I hoped I
could.
The fact was, I was
getting pretty tired. The stuff at the party hadn’t been fun, and
then there’d been the small matter of shifting a century or so and
taking someone else along for the ride. I didn’t know how many more
shifts I had in me, especially of the time variety. And if I ran
out of juice and she shifted again—
I decided not to
think about that. Besides, she had to be getting tired, too. I
didn’t know if she’d had anything to do with what happened at the
party, although it seemed likely. But even if not, she’d just
shifted herself and five other people
more than a century.
I didn’t know how the
hell she’d done that. Or, rather, I understood it technically—the
mages had been too close when she shifted, and had ended up trapped
in the backwash of the spell. That was what happened when I took
someone along with me, only I usually had to be touching them to do
it. But I’d accidentally taken Pritkin on a shift once without
touching him, so I knew it was possible. But six?
Carrying just one
person this far had felt like it was wrenching my guts out. I
couldn’t even imagine doing five more. Not that the power couldn’t
handle it; the Pythian power was pretty much inexhaustible, as far
as I’d been able to tell. But the person channeling it was not. And
then there’d been the time wave and the time loop and the haring
across London and—
And I didn’t know why
she wasn’t passed out on the damn sidewalk. But she had to be
tired. She had to be.
Because if she
wasn’t, we were screwed.
“This
way.”
I hadn’t realized I’d
closed my eyes, half dozing despite the cold, until a tug on my arm
woke me up. I followed Mircea down the street, not saying anything
because I didn’t want to distract him. But apparently he could
track and talk at the same time, because he glanced at me before
we’d gone five yards.
“Do we have a
plan?”
“I need to touch
her.”
“That is not a plan,
dulceață; it is an
objective.”
I frowned. “Okay,
your turn.”
“If I get close
enough, I can drain the mage and end this.”
He was referring to
the ability of master vampires to pull blood particles through the
air, without the need to do the Bela Lugosi thing. I’d seen Mircea
drain a guy dry in a few seconds once, but while it was damned
impressive, it wouldn’t work here. “He’ll have a shield
up—”
“I can drain a man
even through a shield. But it takes longer.”
“How
long?”
“For the average mage
. . .” He shrugged. “Thirty seconds to incapacitate; perhaps a
minute to kill. But with stronger shields, war-mage strength, for
instance, multiply that by five.”
I didn’t think the
mage had that kind of shield, but what did I know? I hadn’t thought
he’d be able to kidnap my mother, either. “So worst-case scenario,
two and a half minutes to unconsciousness.”
“From across a room,
yes. But if I am right on top of him . . . perhaps cut that by
two-thirds.”
I didn’t stop moving,
but I stared at him incredulously. “You can drain a war mage to
unconsciousness in fifty seconds—through his
shields?”
“It depends on the
mage, and I do not know this one’s capacities. But
normally—”
“Normally?”
His lips quirked.
“Let us say, it is what I would expect.”
I decided not to ask
what he was basing that on.
“Still, two and a
half minutes isn’t bad,” I said hopefully. “We might be able to
keep them in sight for that long.”
“Yes, but if I try it
from a distance, he will almost certainly notice before I can
incapacitate him. And then they will either shift away or
attack.”
“And we can’t afford
for them to do either.”
“No.” He looked
frustrated. “Normally, I would call on the family to assist, but I
have never cared for London and do not keep a residence here. And
while I could borrow people from another senator—”
“We don’t have
time.”
“No.”
“Then we’re on our
own.” And for some reason, I felt the tension relax in my
neck.
It must have in my
voice, too, because Mircea looked at me narrowly. “Is there a
reason you suddenly sound relieved ?”
“It’s not . . .
relief exactly. It’s just that . . . well, it’s
fly-by-the-seat-of-our-pants time, isn’t it?”
“And that is a good
thing?”
“No, but it’s . . .
sort of familiar.”
He closed his eyes.
“Do you know, dulceață, there are
times when I truly believe you are the most frightening person I
know.”
I blinked. “Thank
you?”
“You’re
welcome.”
And then we didn’t
say anything else. Because we spotted them.