Chapter Thirty-five
Time twisted, colors
ran and the bottom fell out of my stomach. And the next thing I
knew, I was bouncing on the lap of a tuxedo-clad man in the back of
one of London’s iconic black cabs. I stared at him and he stared
back, brown eyes big and astonished. After a second, I leaned back
and checked him over.
His tux didn’t tell
me much, but the wide-eyed woman clinging to his arm was wearing a
cute bob and a flippy little piece of chiffon that practically
required rouged knees. “Twenties?” I guessed, because for some
reason my time sense was seriously messed up.
“Sixties,” Mircea
told me, staring out the back of the cab as it crept along through
a snarl of traffic.
I adjusted my
position so I wasn’t actually straddling the speechless guy’s leg.
“How do you know?”
“Because they didn’t
have miniskirts in the twenties.” He nodded at a nearby giggle of
girls in tiny outfits.
“Are you
sure?”
“Believe me,
dulceață, the advent of the mini is
forever emblazoned on my mind.”
I scowled; it would
be. But under the circumstances, I preferred some confirmation. I
poked the girl, who jumped and gave a little screech. “What year is
it?” I asked, but she only stared at me.
“Che anno è?” I tried.
Nada.
“En quelle année sommes-nous?”
Uh-uh.
“What are you doing?”
Mircea asked.
“I don’t think they
speak English.”
“I think it more
likely that they are merely startled.”
“Okay. But they’ve
had time to get over it now.”
“N-nineteen
sixty-nine,” the woman finally whispered.
I frowned. “Then why
are you dressed like that?”
“We’re on our way to
a fancy dress party, if you must know,” her date said, finally
finding his voice. “Now, who the hell are you and how did
you—”
“There!” Mircea
cried, pointing at something in the crowds outside.
“Thanks for the
ride,” I told the partygoers, as we climbed over them to get out of
the cab.
Outside, snow was
swirling down out of a black sky, gilded by the lights that poured
out of shop windows and glittered from stacks of multicolored
signs. It looked vaguely like Times Square, except it was more of a
circle, with a tipsy Cupid presiding over what looked like the
Christmas rush. Hanging nets of illuminated stars hung across every
street, swaying lightly in the wind. A wreath dangled drunkenly off
a nearby lamppost. And half the people filling the sidewalks and
dodging the street traffic were carrying shopping
bags.
I looked at Mircea.
“Is this—”
He nodded.
“Piccadilly.”
That meant nothing to
me, except that this was where my mother had dropped us off on our
last little trip into time. And now, for some reason, we were back.
And so was she, judging by the Victorian coach that was lying on
its side across one lane of traffic, causing a major
jam.
The horse was still
in place, bucking and rearing at the smell of smoke from the
burnt-out hulk behind it. My heart clenched; why I don’t know. I
was still alive, which meant my mother had to be, too. But I didn’t
see her or the kidnapper or anything else in the rapidly growing
crowd.
But I guess Mircea
did, because he grabbed my hand and took off.
“I think I left a
shoe in the cab,” I told him, struggling to keep up as we wove
through the human obstacle course at a breakneck pace.
“Considering how
often that happens, perhaps you should consider ankle
straps.”
“They’re
dangerous.”
He tossed a
disbelieving look over his shoulder. “That is what you consider dangerous?”
“You can break a
foot.”
“And we wouldn’t want
that,” he said, sweeping me up in his arms as we came to the
entrance to a tube station.
I stared around as we
were swallowed up by London’s steamy underbelly, but I didn’t see
anything but coat-clad torsos, all of which appeared to be in a
hurry. Finding one hustling couple in the wall-to-wall crowd
wouldn’t have been easy at any time. But doing it while being
buffeted by pointy elbows, harassed mothers and kids with the
hyperactive look of the overly sugared was pretty much
impossible.
“I’m not tall
enough,” I told him, only to be hoisted up onto a strong shoulder.
I put a steadying hand on the grimy wall and tried to spot a tall
woman in an electric blue evening dress. The mage’s tux blended
with the standard city uniform in any era, but that color would be
hard to miss.
Only apparently I was
missing it, because I didn’t see them.
“Did they shift
again?” Mircea asked, as I desperately scanned the
crowds.
“No, I’d have felt
it.”
“Are you
certain?”
“She’s the heir, but
I’m Pythia. I’m certain.”
And a moment later I
spotted her, wearing a shabby brown overcoat that wasn’t quite long
enough to cover an eye-searing hem. The mage was by her side, a
lanky figure in a tan trench hiding his formal blacks, but it was
the right guy. I saw him clearly when he turned from the ticket
counter, a panicked look on his face and that damned suitcase in
his hand. And then he dragged his captive back into the crowd and
down a hallway.
I hopped down and we
took off after them, Mircea hoisting me over turnstiles and then
forging ahead to clear a path. It was still tough going, but the
crowds parted for him a lot better than they would have for me, and
my bare toes got stepped on only a few dozen times before I limped
onto a platform behind him. And stopped in confusion.
There were maybe
three dozen people sitting on benches or leaning against walls,
waiting for the next train. But a quick scan showed that none of
them were the two we were after. “They didn’t shift,” I said,
wrinkling my nose at the pungent smell of pot and body
odor.
They were coming from
a busker in beads and buckskin who was standing beside the
platform, shaking his filthy hair and doing an enthusiastic
rendition of “Proud Mary.” At least he was until Mircea thrust a
bill into his hand. “Woman in a brown coat and blue dress; man in a
trench. Where did they go?”
I was about to
protest the bribe—not in principle, but because you never knew what
seemingly little thing could alter time. And there’d been enough
done to this era already. But then the hippie smiled the smile of
the happily buzzed and pointed at the yawning mouth of the train
tunnel.
And my protest turned
into a curse.
I started toward the
side of the platform and the dropoff to the tracks, but Mircea
pulled me back. “I’ll go.”
“And if they shift
again?”
“I’ll come back and
get you.”
“And if there isn’t
time?”
“I’ll be
quick.”
I shook my head, hard
enough to cause my wig to slide over one eye. I threw it down in
annoyance. “I don’t know how the link between us works. If I get
too far from them physically, I may not be able to follow if they
shift again.”
“That seems unlikely.
If the power is meant to retrieve the heir, it couldn’t be that
restrictive.”
“I can’t risk
it!”
Mircea’s brown eyes
narrowed, like a man who was prepared to argue indefinitely, but I
didn’t give him the chance. I kicked off my other shoe and jumped
down beside the tracks, feeling the collected muck of who knew how
many years squelching between my toes. And a second later, he
landed lightly beside me, a scowl on his face and a penlight in his
hand.
I assumed the little
flashlight was for my benefit, but it didn’t help much. Neither did
the work lights set into the walls here and there, which did little
more than stretch the shadows. I couldn’t see squat once the
brightly lit station had faded behind us.
Not that there was
much to see. The tunnel itself was claustrophobically small, to the
point that it seemed impossible that trains actually ran through
this. It was also warm and damp, and reeked of dust and mildew. I
was kind of glad I couldn’t see details. I could hear, though, and
it wasn’t helping my nerves.
There were odd
rumblings of trains that shook the ground under our feet and seemed
to come from every direction at once. There was a weird echoing
effect that threw our footsteps back at us, making it hard to
listen for others up ahead. And then there were some very
suspicious squeaks.
“I think there may be
rats,” I said, my grip tightening on Mircea’s arm.
“At least one,” he
said softly, about the time I saw the dim glow of another light
bouncing off the concrete walls ahead. It was surprisingly distant,
considering that we couldn’t be more than a couple of minutes
behind them. But if they got far enough ahead to break the fragile
connection, that lead might well become permanent.
I started to
run.
And almost bumped
into the kidnapper booking it from the opposite direction. I hadn’t
seen him in the dark until he was right on top of us, but suddenly
there he was, his blue eyes wild, his hair sticking up everywhere
and his mouth open in the O of Oh,
shit. He almost knocked me down with the damn suitcase,
gangly legs churning up the dark as he and Mother headed back
toward the platform at a dead run.
“What the—” I didn’t
get a chance to finish before Mircea grabbed me around the waist
and flung us at the wall.
I hit hard, bruising
my knee and smashing my cheek against the filthy concrete. But I
didn’t complain. Because at almost the same instant, a bolt of red
lightning sizzled through the tunnel, electrifying my hair and
raising gooseflesh on my skin. Goddamnit!
“They’re supposed to
be dead!” I said, furious.
“Perhaps this is a
different group.”
“Jonas said there
were only supposed to be five!”
“Yes, we’ll have to
mention that to him when we return,” Mircea said grimly, as a bunch
of pissed-off demigods blew past us.
I thought there were
four, not five, but I couldn’t be sure. It was hard to see anything
at all with bright green afterimages leaping across my vision. And
then it was impossible, when so much spell fire lit up the tunnel
that it looked like a sophisticated security system had been
installed in there.
Laserlike spells
bounced off walls and ceiling, crisscrossing each other in a deadly
web of crimson fire. They turned the small, round space into
something straight out of hell, and gave me plenty of light to see
that the spells weren’t the kind meant to stun. Everywhere they
hit, they blackened the heavy concrete, sparked off the rails and
sent a thick layer of dust from the floor billowing into the
air.
Mircea cursed and
pulled me behind him, which would have been fine, except that a
bolt slammed into the wall just down from us a second later. It
must have hit an electrical line, because a great shower of sparks
spewed across the tunnel, a few flaming out against my dress.
Mircea cursed again and pulled me back the other way, near the
stillsmoking blast mark from the previous spell.
“Get out!” he
rasped.
I stopped staring at
the fireworks long enough to stare at him. “What?”
“Shift out of here!
Now!”
I shook my head.
“We’ve been through this. If they kill her, I’m dead anyway! Why do
you think my power brought me back here?”
“I’ll deal with
it!”
“You can’t!
Mircea—”
He pushed me against
the wall, his body shielding me, his eyes reflecting the sparks.
And their expression was pretty damn scary.
“Why are you doing
this?”
“Because I don’t know
how to keep you safe.”
“I don’t expect you
to.”
“What?” He looked at
me like he thought I’d gone mad.
“Would you protect
the Consul if she was here?”
“Of course
not!”
“What would you
do?”
“Whatever she
needed—”
“You would help
her.”
“Yes!”
“Then help
me.”
“You are not the
Consul, Cassie! She has abilities you cannot
possibly—”
“—understand. I
know.” And from the little I’d seen of them, I was really okay with
that. “But I have abilities she doesn’t. She can survive a direct
hit from one of those blasts; I can shift out of the way and miss
it. It’s the same—”
“It is not the same!
You are this.” He gripped my arms, hard enough to bruise. “You are
flesh, soft and sweet and yielding and vulnerable. You need protection, but I
can’t—”
“Mircea! They’ve been
trying to kill me for three days and I’m still
here.”
“Due to
luck!”
I stared at him.
“Then I must be the luckiest person alive!”
He just looked at me,
and I’d never seen that expression on his face before, like he was
really going to lose it. There was something going on here, some
issue I didn’t understand. But there was no time to figure it
out.
“I have to fix this,”
I told him, as clearly and calmly as I could. “If you want to help
me, then help me. Don’t shield me, don’t protect me, don’t bury me
alive. Help me.”
He stared at me a
moment longer and didn’t move. The fight was escalating and also
getting farther away from us, back toward the crowded platform. And
I didn’t think the Spartoi cared much how many people they killed,
as long as my mother was one of them.
“Mircea, please!”
“What do you need?”
It was harsh.
“To touch her. That’s
all I ever needed. One second and we’re gone—all of us—and this is
over.”
He nodded briefly and
let me go.
I pushed off the wall
and back into the corridor, trying to get a glimpse of my mother. I
only needed to touch her for a second to shift her away, but I
couldn’t just appear beside her. Spatial shifts required me to see
where I was going, or risk ending up in a wall or a ceiling or part
of a mage.
And right now, I
couldn’t see shit.
Except for billowing
clouds of dust, crisscrossing spells—and the crazy-ass kidnapper,
erupting from the fray and screaming bloody murder.
He was headed
straight at us, but he wasn’t running this time. Instead, he and
Mom were levitating on something I couldn’t see, thanks to their
flapping coats. But I felt it just fine when it slammed into my
stomach, picked me up off my feet and sent me careening backward
into the far reaches of the tunnel.
And now there were
two of us screaming, me and the mage, as we pelted into darkness,
him trying to push me off and me holding on for dear life,
struggling to reach behind him, to grab her, to touch—
But either he figured
out what I was doing, or he was the worst damn driver in history.
Because we went weaving across the narrow space, bouncing off the
sides and scraping across the ceiling, red bolts of spell fire
following us into the gloom. And then he got smart and tipped over,
dumping me ass-first onto the hard gravel between the
tracks.
I cursed and
scrambled back to my feet, about the time that a blinding radiance
flooded the air. It sent wildly leaping shadows dancing around the
walls, disorienting me almost as much as the deafening sound of a
horn and the tracks vibrating under my feet and the dirt shimmering
like gold dust in the air—
“What’s happening?” I
screamed.
“Train,” the
kidnapper shrieked.
I stared up at him.
“Train?”
“Train!” Mircea
yelled, flinging one of the Spartoi against the side of the tunnel.
And then the guy’s friends leapt for Mircea and he leapt for me and
I leapt for my mother—
And grabbed a handful
of something soft and rubbery and gelatinous instead, completely
unlike human flesh. That wasn’t surprising, because the bastard of
a mage had flung a shield around the two of them and I’d grabbed a
handful of that. It stretched, encasing my arms like thick latex as
I tried to punch through, and Mircea tried to keep the mages from
incinerating us all, and the damn kidnapper tried his best to kick
me in the head.
He gave me a glancing
blow on the temple, but I stubbornly held on, as the rattling
around us grew worse and the horn sounded again, deafeningly close,
and my hand finally closed over one of my mother’s. For a second, I
stared at her and she stared back, her wide blue eyes reflecting
the approaching light. But while I could feel the fingers under
mine, could trace the bones of her hand, could grasp her wrist, I
couldn’t actually touch her. A thin membrane of the shield still
separated us, and as long as it did, I couldn’t shift—
And then I couldn’t
anyway because something smacked into us with the force of a Mack
truck.
We went shooting down
the tunnel like we’d been fired out of a gun, bounced off a wall,
hit the floor and then went tumbling head over heels over head. I
had the mage’s shield in a death grip and I didn’t let go, even as
it careened around the small space like a Ping-Pong ball on acid.
It absorbed some of the damage, and Mircea absorbed most of the
rest, throwing his body over mine until something scooped us up and
carried us along like a—
Well, like a speeding
train.
The train must have
been pretty much automated. Because the driver had been tipped back
in his seat, reading a magazine and enjoying a cup of tea. The
latter was now all over his natty blue uniform as he stared in
wide-eyed disbelief at the knot of yelling, fighting and kicking
people rolling around in the air just outside his front
window.
And then Mircea
grabbed the kidnapper, getting a hand around his neck despite the
shield that still encased him. I tried to remember what Mircea had
said about how long it took to drain someone through a shield. But
my brain was a little busy and I couldn’t remember, and then it
didn’t matter anyway, because the next thing I knew, they were
gone.
I ended up with my
butt half on, half off some type of levitating luggage and my face
smashed against the train’s front window. It gave me a perfect view
of the mage dragging my mother through the narrow cabin and into
the next compartment. Damn it!
I grabbed for the
door leading into the driver’s cabin, but my hand slid off
something hard and glasslike. It took me a second to realize that
the mage had flung a shield over the front of the train, and then
another second to bypass it, shifting into the cabin right on his
heels. Only to have the door he’d flung open slam back and hit me
in the face.
That turned out to be
kind of lucky, because I staggered back against the front window,
and a glance up reminded me that I’d forgotten something. Namely
Mircea, who was pelting down the tunnel just ahead of the barreling
locomotive. I didn’t see the Spartoi, who I really hoped were the
train version of roadkill by now, but he was using vampire speed to
stay out in front.
Sort of. It actually
looked like he might be losing ground, which would explain the
expression on his face when he turned to look at me over his
shoulder. Cassandra, he mouthed, and,
okay, I deserved that one.
Sorry! I mouthed back, staring frantically at the
buttons and dials and thingamajigs on the driver’s
console.
There were a lot of
them, but none that were all lit up in red and conveniently marked
STOP. And I couldn’t just shift back outside and grab him without
my added weight sending both of us plunging to the tracks. I
grabbed the driver instead.
“How do I stop this
thing?” I demanded, only to have him turn that blank stare on
me.
I shook him as Mircea
slowed down or we sped up, and he slipped within inches of
oblivion. But shaking didn’t do any good. So I slapped the man,
which turned out to be the wrong move, because it broke his
paralysis, but then he started shrieking like a little girl. I
cursed inventively and stared around, out of time and ideas both,
and caught sight of the lightly bobbing suitcase.
It had shifted inside
with me, maybe because I’d been sitting on it at the time. It was
old and worn and vaguely trunklike, like something out of another
era. But the spell the mage had cast was obviously still in decent
working order, making it the closest thing to a life preserver in
sight.
I grabbed it under
one arm, shifted outside and grabbed Mircea with the other. And
after a terrifying few seconds flailing around a hairsbreadth in
front of a few hundred tons of speeding metal, we landed back
inside in a heap of arms and legs. And as a bonus, we managed to
trip up the driver, who had been about to run into the compartment
behind us.
Mircea snaked up an
arm and grabbed him, jerking the guy down to eye level with less
than his usual calm. “Forget,” he told him harshly, and the man
suddenly stopped hyperventilating. He docilely sat back in his
seat, looking bemusedly into his empty teacup, as we scrambled
unsteadily to our feet.
“Sorry,” I told
Mircea again, only to have him smile grimly.
“We’ll discuss it
later,” he told me, somewhat ominously. “For now, where are
they?”
“That way,” I said,
and we ran.