Chapter Thirty-nine
“You brought that
thing?” I asked the next morning, sitting up in bed. I was looking
at a battered old suitcase with a burn scar on its bum that was
hovering near the foot of the bed.
“I could hardly leave
it, dulceață,” Mircea said, pouring
coffee at a little table by the window. “The charm still
works.”
“Sort of.” It was
drooping like a week-old bouquet or a half-deflated balloon. I
pushed it with a finger, and it bobbed a little in the air, giving
off a nasty smell. I wrinkled my nose, wrapped a sheet around
myself and went to see what was for breakfast.
Watery sunlight was
leaking in through the glass, gleaming off white china and solid
silver, and a wire basket that was leaking mouthwatering smells.
Fresh scones. Yum.
Mircea handed me a
cup of coffee. “And I thought you might want to keep it, as it
belonged to your mother.”
“What, the
suitcase?”
He
nodded.
I shook my head,
mouth full of scone. “It was the mage’s.”
Mircea raised a dark
brow. “Not unless he used her perfume.”
I swallowed and
pulled the little case over. I didn’t smell anything but charred
leather and smoke, but I trusted Mircea’s nose. And sure enough,
there was a pile of lingerie and a few obviously female outfits
inside. A pair of shoes a size too big for me. And tucked into a
pocket along the side, a bunch of old letters.
“But . . . how would
she have had time to pack?” I asked, sorting through them. “It’s
not like she knew she was being kidnapped!”
“If that was, in
fact, what we saw.”
I looked up. “What do
you mean?”
“Dulceață, I have seen many people under a
compulsion, and without fail, they are blanks. Almost robotic in
their movements, their speech . . . they do not make decisions;
they wait for orders. And they do not tell their captors to
hush.”
“You’re saying . . .
she went with him on purpose?”
“It would seem the
only answer.”
“But . . . why? How
would she even know someone like that?
She was the Pythian heir!”
“Perhaps the letters
will tell you.”
I shook my head,
opening one after another. “No. These were all written by my
father. It looks like he’d been writing to her for a while and
she’d kept them. . . .” I frowned. “But that doesn’t make sense,
either. Jonas said that my parents barely knew each other a week
before they ran away together. And these . . .” I checked a few
more. “They go back more than a decade.”
Mircea hesitated. I
wouldn’t have noticed, but I was looking right at him. And he
definitely started to say something and then stopped.
“What?” I
demanded.
“I could be wrong,”
he said carefully. “It has been many years, and I had no reason to
pay particular attention at the time—”
“Attention to
what?”
“To your father’s
individual scent.”
I frowned harder.
“What does that have—”
“I did not notice it
at the party. Things were too fraught and there were too many other
scents in the vicinity. But last night, when I was standing by the
mage, I thought I recognized—”
“No.” I looked at him
in horror.
“—the same tobacco,
the same cologne, the same brand of hair pomade—”
“No!”
That damned eyebrow
went up again. I was starting to hate that thing. “Would you prefer
to have been sired by a dangerous dark mage?”
“Yes! If the
alternative is . . . is him. He
was—”
“Quite
capable.”
I stared at him. “Are
you—Did you see?”
“I saw him protect
your mother from four demigods for a protracted period of
time.”
“He did no such
thing! She was driving the
carriage—”
“Yes. Because it is
difficult for anyone other than war mages to keep up a shield and
to concentrate on anything else at the same time.”
“I didn’t see a
shield.”
“No more did I. But I
saw several direct hits bounce off of something. He wasn’t able to
keep it up for the entire chase, but he certainly helped. And last
night—”
“All he did was
enchant a suitcase.”
“And it proved
useful, did it not? The Spartoi must have had them cornered, but he
broke through their ranks—”
“Because he was
acting like a crazy man!”
“—and protected your
mother during a firestorm of spells such as I have rarely
seen.”
“He was screaming the
entire time!”
Mircea’s lips
quirked. “It is only in the cinema that heroes have to look a
certain way. I have been in many battles, dulceață, and can tell you from experience that
what matters is what works. Ladislas’s charge looked heroic—banners
streaming, armor glinting, five hundred horses galloping in one
great wave—but it was the height of folly. Your father’s tactics
were . . . less impressive . . . but they succeeded. Which is the
most heroic, in the end?”
“But he didn’t look
anything like that!” I said, grasping for straws. Because Mircea
could say whatever he liked, but being related to that guy . . .
no. Just no. “The kidnapper was tall and blond and you said my
father was—”
“I told you how he
appeared to me. But he was in hiding; it would not be surprising if
he used a glamourie. In fact, it would have been more so if he had
not.”
“But you said nothing
was supposed to happen at the party—that your men had checked! If
he was my father, if he was supposed to be there, to elope with my
mother or whatever the hell they were doing, wouldn’t your people
have known?”
“By all accounts, the
party was supposed to be uneventful,” Mircea agreed. “I would
hardly have taken you there otherwise. Your mother was not reported
missing for several months.”
“There. You see? He
can’t be my father!”
“Yes, but,
dulceață, the important term is
‘reported.’ My people were not at the party; they did not see for
themselves. They were going on the official reports. Reports that
may well have been . . . adjusted.”
“Adjusted? But
why—”
“To give them time to
find her.” He waved a hand. “The Pythian court likes to appear
infallible, mysterious, all knowing. This is not a reputation that
would be enhanced by losing their heir to a set of circumstances
none of them foresaw. It would not be surprising for them to wait
some time before admitting that they had lost her. They would want
a chance to locate her and bring her back without anyone realizing
there had ever been a problem.”
“You think they lied
about when she left.”
He shrugged. “I think
it possible, yes. I always found it odd that they maintained that
your father knew her for such a short time before they eloped.
Eight days is not much in which to persuade the heir to the Pythian
throne to leave it all behind for a life on the run!”
“But . . . but at the
party, he was trying to disrupt things! That’s what the Guild
does,” I insisted.
Mircea cocked his
head. “But if that were the case, why not focus on Lady Phemonoe?
She was Pythia; your mother was merely the heir. And one due to
disappear soon, in any case. Removing her from her position a few
months early would hardly seem likely to make a huge impact on
history.”
“No! There were
spells everywhere—”
“Yes, thrown by war
mages attempting to shield your mother and the
Pythia.”
“How do you know
that?”
“Because the spells
were frozen, dulceață. If your father
had thrown them, they would not have been trapped in time any more
than he was.”
I shook my head. “My
father was a member of the Black Circle, not the
Guild.”
“Is there any reason
he could not have been both?”
I sat back in my
chair and glared at him. “Okay. So he’s part of some crazy cult
that wants to change the world, but then one day he gets bored and
decides—just for the hell of it—to join the most infamous group of
dark mages around and try to take them over? And when that doesn’t
work, he thinks, oh well, and elopes with the Pythian heir? Is that
what you’re saying?”
Mircea laughed. “I
thought your father was an interesting man. I just had no idea how
much.”
“He isn’t
interesting; he’s a nut. And he isn’t my father.”
Mircea shook his
head. “As you say. But perhaps we can discuss it later, in our
time?”
“You just want to see
how badly the guests trashed your house.”
His lips quirked.
“With representatives from five of the six senates in attendance,
it is a concern.”
“All right.” I
drained my coffee and grabbed another scone. “But we hit the suite
first. I need some clothes.”
“And afterward, if it
remains standing, I will show you around the house.”
“Deal,” I said,
grabbing his hand. And shifted.
And knew immediately
that I was in trouble.
One clue was the
slick, wet feel of damp grass under my feet, instead of the suite’s
plush carpet. Another was the Cheshire cat grin of Mircea’s glass
ballroom, glowing gold against the night—a night that should have
been over. And a third was the fist slamming into my jaw, hard
enough to send me sprawling.
“Pathetic, weak,
idiot child. You killed the great Apollo?” Something reached
into my brain like a rain of quicksilver, clean and cold, but
burning down all my nerves. “Obscene.”
I couldn’t see what
was attacking me—the transition from watery daylight to thick
darkness had left me half blind—but I really wasn’t that curious. I
reached for Mircea, intending to shift us out of there, but I
didn’t find him. His strong grip was no longer on my hand, and I
doubted that he’d have just let go. For one thing, I couldn’t
remember him materializing with me. And for another—
For another, he
usually objected when people kicked me in the ribs.
The pain was
breathtaking, like a dagger through my flesh, robbing me of breath
and bringing tears to my eyes. But it wasn’t bad enough to keep me
from shifting. That was something else, grabbing me, jerking me
back the second I tried.
“Oh no. Not this
time, little Pythia.” A booted foot came down on my wrist, crushing
it into the dirt, sending pain lancing up my arm—and trapping my
daggers against the ground. My hand spasmed, still holding a warm
scone, which tumbled into the mud.
“This time, there
won’t be any running away—or any powerful friends to save you. This
time, I have you all to myself.”
I looked up to see
boiling, dark clouds laced with distant lightning, backlighting a
face. It blurred across my watering eyes, or maybe that was the
rain, which was still coming down. But for a moment, I couldn’t
tell what I was looking at.
And then my vision
cleared and I still couldn’t.
On the surface, it
was a sharp-faced brunet with slickedback hair, thin cheeks and a
long nose, vaguely familiar although I didn’t . . . and then it
snapped into place. Niall, the officious pain-in-the-ass from the
publicity department. It had taken me a second to recognize him,
because while the face was the same, the eyes—
The eyes were
horrible.
No, not horrible.
They would have looked perfectly fine in the face of his alter ego,
the dragon that had chased Pritkin and me through an office
building. But seeing those same firelit orbs in a human’s face,
complete with elongated pupils and reptilian, nictitating membranes
. . .
A wave of visceral
revulsion washed over my skin, making every hair stand on
end.
I guess I knew where
the fifth Spartoi had gone, I thought wildly, even as I panicked
and tried to shift again. But the same thing happened—I was slammed
back onto the dirt at his feet, hard enough to hurt, like I’d been
grabbed by one of the Circle’s lassos. But I didn’t think that was
it. Because the creature standing over me held something
up.
Lightning flashed off
a slim gold chain, and the familiar charm dangling from the end of
it. “Recognize this?” Niall asked pleasantly. “I took it off your
good friend the war mage. I told him Jonas had sent me after it,
but he didn’t seem to believe me.”
I stared at the
innocuous-looking little thing, swinging slowly to and fro, and
remembered with a lurch that I hadn’t seen Pritkin today. I hadn’t
thought about it; had assumed he was resting. But what if
instead—
My blood ran
cold.
“What—what did you
do?” I asked thickly. Blood dribbled down my chin. I didn’t bother
to wipe it off.
“Let’s just say, I
don’t think you should count on having him come to your rescue yet
again. Or anyone else, for that matter. The coronation has begun;
the lockdown is in place. And by the time it ends”—he smiled—“I do
not think there will be much left to rescue.”
“I wouldn’t bet on
that,” I snarled, and shifted.
Of course, I didn’t
go very far. The damned necklace that I was going to grind into
powder if I got out of this saw to
that, jerking me back almost immediately. But that got my arm free,
and when I rematerialized, I was a couple of yards away—behind
Niall.
He spun, some sixth
sense warning him of danger just as two ghostly daggers shot out of
my bracelet. They looked brighter than usual in the dim light, but
had all of their normal enthusiasm for any kind of violence. As
they demonstrated by slamming into his torso with enough force to
send him hurtling back into a tree—and to pin him
there.
For about a second.
His hands were free, but he didn’t bother to use them. He just
leaned forward, against the knives, which disappeared into his
blood-drenched shirt up to the hilts. And then vanished completely
when he simply walked right through
them. There was a little pause as the hilts caught on
something—his heart, his rib cage; who the hell knows?—and then he
tore free with a sucking, squelching sound that left me a little
dizzy, even before I saw the knives quivering in the wood behind
him.
Then I blinked and he
was on me, bearing down on my already injured wrist until I felt
something pop. A dagger of pain shot up the length of my arm,
making me gasp. And that was before he rotated his foot slightly,
causing bone to grind against bone.
I screamed, trying
not to curl around my broken wrist, trying to shift again. But God,
it hurt, it hurt, and I couldn’t
focus—
Couldn’t do anything,
not even cover myself. My towel had ended up a few yards away,
leaving me naked except for a lot of mud. But I didn’t think Niall
cared. There was no lust in those horrible eyes as he looked me
over, no heat, no human emotion at all. Just cold assessment, the
same spine-shivering stare he’d given me in the air.
“You know,” he said
mildly. “I think I will enjoy this.”
“This is about
revenge?” I gasped.
“No, you foolish
child. That will be a bonus. This is about the end of a chase that
started long before you were ever born. When that damned bitch
Artemis turned on her own, banishing the gods from what was
rightfully theirs. Using her power over the pathways between worlds
to slam a door shut in their faces, and her power over the hells to
keep it there.”
“The
hells?”
“Earth is an upper
hell. How else could demons travel here so easily? She was a queen
in her castle; no one could touch her. No one but the children the
gods left behind.”
“You—you’re looking
for Artemis?” Small world.
“Not looking; found.
We hunted her for millennia, and nothing—nothing! But we were patient, because we knew,
queen or no, this world doesn’t feed her kind. Every century that
passed made her weaker, sapped her strength. Why do you think she
had to form the Circle, to fuel her spell? Could not a goddess
power it herself?”
“I . . . never really
thought about it.”
“No. Neither did
they. Never wondered why she had to rely on the humans she loved so
much—because her own power was failing. We watched and we waited,
knowing that, sooner or later, she would be forced to go to the
only source of the gods’ power remaining in this
world.”
It took me a moment
to get it, because of the pain and because it felt like something
was pounding on the back of my skull. “The Pythian
power.”
“Yes. Her own
brother’s legacy. How she must have hungered for it, lusted after
it, more and more each year as her own vast store of power faded
and thinned and drained away. And at last, after three thousand
years, she broke and we had her. We had
her!”
“You killed her?” I
said, even knowing that wasn’t right. Knowing something . . . the
pounding in my head was getting worse.
“We tried. Oh, how we
tried. For you see, little Pythia, there is no spell that can block
off a world. No word, no enchantment, no charm has that kind of
power. The only way even she could manage it was to weave a piece
of herself, a piece of the very fabric of her being, into her
spell. She became part of it, an integral part. And what happens,
little Pythia, when you remove a vital component of a
spell?”
“It falls,” I said
blankly.
“Yes. So we tried.
But we missed her. An idiot mage helped her, something we hadn’t
expected. And she disappeared again like smoke. But her power was
weak—so weak! We knew we were close. We redoubled our efforts,
worked tirelessly day and night. And finally, five years later, we
found her again.”
The pounding was a
hammering thrum now, like a thousand running horses.
Or one, pulling a
crazy carriage through a distant street.
“The mage had hidden
her away—with a vampire, of all things! And by the time we finally
tracked her, the vampire had already taken care of the situation.
He had been cheated by the mage on a business deal, or so he said.
And had taken the most final possible revenge.”
The drumming was so
loud, I could barely hear. Hard and fast, like the pounding of my
heart, like the blood drumming in my ears, like the crest of a
wave, about to break—
“He swore to us that
she was dead, and after some checking, it appeared that he was
telling the truth. And yet the spell hadn’t fallen! She had been
blown to a thousand fragments by the vampire’s bomb, but it was as
solid as ever. And that was when we realized—she must have left
something of herself behind.”
“No.”
“Oh yes. But the
vampire lied to us. He never mentioned a child, wanting to keep his
little cash cow alive and well and working for him. And to our
discredit, the idea never so much as crossed our minds. Why would
it? She was the famous virgin goddess. There were no gods here, no
one worthy of her, so who would she have taken to
bed?”
“No!”
“Yes, horrifying,
isn’t it? That ridiculous creature—but we should have known. It was
all there in the name. Garm was Hel’s faithful companion in all the
old sagas, was he not?”
I nodded
slowly.
“But did you know?
‘Garm’ in Old Norse . . . is ‘Rag.’ ”
I shook my head. That
didn’t mean—
He saw and smiled.
“Ragnar Palmer—that was your father’s real name, wasn’t it? Before
he changed it? And ‘Ragnar’ means ‘warrior of the gods’ in Old
Norse.”
The wave broke,
crashing over my brain, whiting out all thought for a moment. And
when I could think again, it was a succession of images, clues,
things I should have seen and totally hadn’t. My mother overriding
Agnes’s spells at the party, something no heir should have been
able to do. Her unbelievable stamina, leaving her stronger at the
end of a fight than I was at the beginning. Her saying that the
Spartoi had chased her for “a long time.” The look on Deino’s face
when I asked about the child of Artemis.
I finally recognized
it for what it was: stunned incredulity.
I could
sympathize.
“After your parents
died, the trail went stone-cold,” Niall told me casually. “We had
no choice but to work on other avenues. Five times we painstakingly
amassed the power to go back in time, to attack her when she was
weakest. And five times we failed, dying over and over as those
damned spells misfired and backfired and ripped us to
shreds!”
The face lowered
until I could feel the hot breath on my face, warm—too warm—to be
human. Not that there was any chance of that with those eyes
staring directly into mine. I stared back at them, paralyzed less
by fear than by sheer disbelief.
This wasn’t
happening. This wasn’t happening. This wasn’t—
“Having the ability
to be resurrected by one’s brothers does not mean one does not feel
pain in the dying,” he hissed. “I bled,
my brothers bled, over and over again. For nothing. Until a month ago, when that idiot
Saunders came to me, wanting a little favor. It seems the vampires
have a golden girl, a shiny new Pythia, whose name he would like me
to blacken. Oh, and by the way, you’ll never guess who her mother was.”
That last was a
scream, but I didn’t even flinch. I was way too far gone for
that.
“Must have been a
shock,” I said blankly.
“It was ridiculous!
That one stupid little girl could be so much trouble. Before you
came on the scene, Myra was well on her way to destroying the
Senate. Our allies among the vampires were posed to take over what
was left. Our people had infiltrated the Circle, removing Marsden
and substituting a greedy, duplicitous idiot in his place, who
could be manipulated and blackmailed at will. Weakened on all
fronts, with no allies and nowhere to turn, the Circle would have
fallen to our forces in a matter of weeks, and Artemis’s damned
spell along with it.
“But at the ninth
hour, what happens? A stupid, bumbling, ridiculous child stumbles onto the scene and ruins
everything. In a matter of a few
months, you destroyed Myra, reinstated Marsden and are on the brink
of uniting the vampires! Oh yes, we know what they’re really doing
up there,” he said, gesturing at the house. “But that isn’t going
to happen, Pythia. You’re going to repair the damage you’ve done.
This ends now.”