Born To Be Wilde: Immortal Vegas, Book 3 (21 page)

For the record, thirty seconds is a long time to be venerated.

But there was nothing doing. Beyond the first wall of combatants, a second one stood, all of them looking at me as if they’d seen a ghost. I thought about the card burned into my hand. I did sort of resemble that figure, wielding my scales like a weapon. Were they picking up on the image’s energy? If so, I would totally take it.

The interior circle stood again, and two of them stepped forward, like captains of opposing football teams. I tensed, holding out my scales, ready to bludgeon anyone who got too close.

“Stop right there,” I warned, and they stood, whether because they understood what I was saying or from the tone of my voice.

“Miss Wilde.”

Relief spiked again, but I couldn’t spare the words. In front of me, the two creatures brandished the same kinds of weapons I’d seen inside the dome. Delicate arrows, a long curving blade, throwing stars, a narrow sword. They held these up like an offering, and I frowned. I’d lost my other weapons somewhere, other than the broken scales.

Finally, I found my voice. “Any weird contractual obligation I should be aware of before I take these things?”

The Magician was silent for a beat, then his voice whispered in my ear again.
“Take what, specifically?”
he asked, sounding worried.

He wasn’t the only one, though. A rustle of concern seemed to be slipping through both the angelic and demonic hordes, the sound of confusion, almost dismay. The last time that had happened, I’d gotten spears thrown at me.

“Screw it. Never mind.” I thought about Justice and her scales, each side evenly matched, her eyes blindfolded so she wouldn’t make an inappropriate choice. Even though the Justice etched onto my hand didn’t buy in to the blindfolding part, I didn’t want to offend either party by choosing the other first. I bent and set the scales down by my side, then reached out both hands.

It seemed to be the right decision. The two creatures stepped forward and placed their weapons onto my hands and forearms, while bracing my arms and hands with their own. The demon’s long-clawed fingers dwarfed mine, while the angel’s hands were smaller, smoother. I stared at both figures close up, and realized…they looked remarkably humanoid. Even the demon’s image shifted and roiled, like a projection that had slipped its tracks. Beneath its imagery of a snarling-mouthed creature, it looked almost mannish as well. A very big man, but a man.

They seemed to be waiting for me to say something, but I didn’t know Atlantean.

“Thank you,” I said. English wouldn’t have been the universal language in their time, but I threw in a short head bow as well, and their response was swift and sure. They spouted a line of nonsense to me as if I should know it, and I managed a smile.

I shifted my attention back to Armaeus, sensing the tide about to turn. “A little assistance here would be good,” I muttered.

“You have but to say the word.”

Frowning, I rolled my eyes. “Help me!” I called, maybe a bit too loudly, holding the weapons closer to my body.

Apparently, that was the wrong thing to say. As one, the horde took flight around me, their screams a furious bellow—and attacked.

Chapter Sixteen

I burst upward with a scream, throwing my arms out wide to protect myself. Shouts of alarm brought me back into focus as metal clattered against glass. I felt ripped apart, shredded, like some sort of spiny-armed creature, and everything
hurt
.

“Yo, Sara!” The clattering stopped, and Nikki’s strong arms were around me, hauling me back as my arms flailed and legs churned, my eyes not seeing the conference room around me but hands and claws and wings converging on me, my limbs being stretched and pulled in all directions. “Whoa! No more Red Bull for you, sister. Take it down a notch—I said take it down!”

Her words were light, but Nikki’s hands locked on my shoulders as she talked, and I realized a moment later that I was no longer flailing but held fast in place, one of her large booted feet bracing my left leg wide, which felt like the only thing keeping me upright.

“Can’t breathe,” I managed, and she snorted somewhere above me.

“Well, if you can’t breathe, you can’t kill me, so I consider that a win.” She held me for another long three counts. “You good?”

I blinked my eyes open, but my head still hung forward. I saw a series of polished shoes that cost more than I made in a month. The Council ringed me, not those…people. Things. Whatever they were. “Yeah,” I gasped at length.

“Take it easy, dollface. The adrenaline will wear off in a few.”

Armaeus’s voice crackled through the room. “Look up at me, Miss Wilde. Only at me.”

I turned my head toward him, and his gaze trapped mine as Nikki eased her hold on me. Eased it—but she didn’t let go. Still, her words proved prophetic. Every fight-or-flight urge seemed to dissolve to nothing as I came fully back to present, and I sank into her grasp like I never wanted to leave it, my mini collapse all the more pleasurable because I had somewhere soft to fall.

“Simon.”

The Magician’s words vaguely penetrated my skull as Simon’s Chucks came into my peripheral view. He edged in close beside me, but I didn’t see him, not really. I couldn’t see anything but the Magician’s gold-and-black eyes. “You fed us all the imagery we need, but I want to take the device off you, submit it to further testing,” Simon said. “You good with that?”

“Mmph,” I managed as I felt his light touch at my neck. He removed the chain with a delicate tug. Then there were more tugs at my arms, my legs. Gentle at first, but one made me flinch away. All the while, Armaeus’s gaze held mine, his wordless energy surrounding me.

“Can we move this along, please?” Nikki’s voice sounded unnaturally strained in the silent room, but it wasn’t Armaeus who responded. It was Eshe.

“It would be best for her to black out,” she said dispassionately.

“I’m not going to black out.” I shook my head, shrugging off Armaeus’s stare and Nikki’s light hold. No one moved as I took a step forward, my hands coming up for balance. I was surprised at the state of my arms. They were chapped and raw, like I’d had to run through a fire pit. “What the hell?”

Another realization came to me as my senses slowly bounced back online. My clothes were in tatters, with long rents in my leggings, and angry blisters beneath. I stank of charred leather too. And when I glanced up to the room around me, I didn’t look for the Council members’ faces, I looked at Nikki’s.

It was frozen in horror.

“Not good?” Before she could respond, the pain swamped me like a tidal wave. Every bone and organ in my body seemed to explode outward, radiating agony, then to pull all that misery back tight, compressing it into a ball. Fire, slashing, blade and bone all crashed together in my mind, and I realized why I’d felt so…spiny when I’d first come out of the trance.

There had been things sticking out of me.

Knives. Arrows. Stars. And one long spear.

I blacked out.

Chapter Seventeen

What seemed a millennia later, Armaeus’s warm voice brushed over me, solid and comforting. “You’re doing well, Miss Wilde. Don’t rush it.”

I was lost in an enormous pile of soft pillows and blankets, as I somehow knew I would be. Memories leaked through my comfort barrier, and I stiffened, my breath catching at the pain. “Do not remember,” he soothed. “Not yet. Drift.”

That was an idea I could get behind, particularly as I felt the bed dip, the weight of Armaeus’s body running the length of mine and beyond. His heat radiated over me in a soothing arc, and I groaned, willing myself back to sleep but knowing it wouldn’t come. With him so close, my breathing regulated, though, and his soft touch against my cheek felt good and right.

It also felt like I still had skin on my face. Which seemed an important consideration.

“What happened to me?” I managed. My voice was raspy, but my teeth were intact, along with my tongue. I couldn’t quite bring myself to open my eyes, but that meant I had eyelids. Things were improving all the time. “Did I…did I catch on fire?”

“Your reentry from Atlantis was much faster than your exit, and the transfer through the dimensional veil did not go as smoothly. Simon and Eshe are trying to figure out why.”

“It seemed a little rocky.”

“Yes.” He leaned forward and drifted a kiss along my temple. I didn’t resist it. I didn’t want to resist it. Where the Magician’s lips touched my body, everything felt whole again. My headache eased, my eyes rested more easily behind their lids, my cheeks felt smooth, their skin unbroken. “You carried back weapons as we directed.”

“Um…they were stuck into me.”

“Unfortunately, yes. Until we pulled them free. But the mission was a success.” He moved his mouth down to my chin, and the mini vortex of healing expanded again, a cool wash of relief against the roof of my mouth, my throat easing its constriction. I shifted my hands beneath the blankets, and my fingers flexed easily. My arms as well.

Then my legs.

I opened one eye. I saw the Magician in duplicate, my third eye fluttering to life with him so close. He fairly glowed with power, surrounding me in a cocoon of magic.

“You’ve been at this awhile, haven’t you?” I murmured.

“You were far more injured than we first realized,” he said without apology. “And injured in ways not consistent with astral travel as Eshe has directed it over the centuries.”

“Well, you know. Atlantis.” I sighed and let my eyes slip closed again as he levered his body over mine, dropping a light kiss on each of my brows.

“That certainly accounts for some of it,” he agreed. “But your clothes and skin were torn. You looked like you’d been in a fight.”

Um, yeah. “I thought Simon recorded all that.”

“He recorded everything you saw and reported on until you reached the dome. At that point, we lost all contact with you. When you emerged from the dome, we could hear you, but your words were mainly a distress signal after that, and nothing transferred to the scouting device.” He paused. “What did you see? What happened to you?”

I considered responding, I really did. But I was…so tired. Besides, this was Armaeus, and he’d been over the ground of my brain before. The idea of him plumbing my deepest, darkest secrets didn’t appeal, but I couldn’t bring myself to speak of what I’d seen. Far easier to let him see it for himself.

He must have sensed the moment my mental barriers gave way, laying open my mind for him. When his lips brushed mine, the electric jolt ripped through me, threatening to fry my already abused nerves.

Armaeus spoke words I couldn’t follow as I watched the tumble of images stream through my mind once more, a visitor to my own brain. The beauty within the dome, the light following from the center oculus. The whistling winds that had so unnerved me. The weapons and the golden scales. With another breathed word, he slowed the passage of images as I picked up the scales, turning them over in my hands. He saw what I had seen, the imprinted image of Justice on my palm, so similar and yet different from the original Tarot deck. He played my shifting hands over and over again, me weighing the weight of the scales, hefting the weapons. Me turning back toward the door, becoming entangled in the chain trailing from the scales. Me hauling the golden artifact with me, some sort of treasure-hunting Quasimodo, hunched beneath my stolen spoils.

When I breached the outer courtyard once more, the images sped up again. I watched in growing fear as the armies of light and dark amassed around me, hurling spears and weapons as I ducked and ran.

“You could have warned me about those guys,” I murmured against his lips.

He was silent above me, his mouth barely touching mine.

“You there?” I prompted.

“Shhh.”

The images sped more quickly then, as if Armaeus realized that his time for brain exploration was rapidly nearing an end. He stopped abruptly, though, when I was surrounded by a circle of angels and demons—and they knelt.

“Yeah,” I muttered. “That threw me too.”

The rest rushed by in a blur. He didn’t comment as the angels and demons stood once more, didn’t murmur any surprise as their weapons were placed in my hands. He didn’t comment, and I contented myself with watching a rerun of my life in fast-forward. The gift of weapons, Armaeus asking me to say the words, me saying them, and then the attack. The angels and demons converged on me until an explosion of white-hot light propelled me from the scene, and then there was only darkness.

He reran that piece a second time, then a third.

“You asked for help,” he murmured at last.

I shifted away from him to look at his face. His eyes were the color of black gold again, as if an infusion of dye had somehow slipped into his irises without permission. But those strange eyes held me fast. “I told you to say the word. I needed a vocalization. You said ‘help.’” He tilted his head. “Then they attacked you.”

“That’s pretty much how I remember it, yeah.” I moved my arm out from beneath the cocoon of blankets and studied it. A new web of fine white lines danced down the length of it, the scarring from the attack. “They seemed on my side, then suddenly, they weren’t.” I shrugged. “Of course, I was able to leave Atlantis, so maybe they did it on purpose. Maybe the full threat of their attack was what was needed for me to break free. God knows it didn’t feel like it was going to happen on its own.”

“They weren’t speaking English to you, but a language that has not been spoken on Earth for millennia.”

“And yet you know every language ever born, so spill. What were they saying?”

He hesitated. “Did you show them the card you had etched into your hand?”

I turned the offending hand and let my gaze drift over its now-clean surface. “Sort of a souped-up Justice card, but not the whole thing.” I frowned. “Where’s the deck?”

“Focus would be appreciated. Did you show them your hand?”

“Fine,” I snapped. “I honestly can’t remember. I think so, at least the two at the end who gave me the weapons. But I was running at them with a set of broken scales, so if those cards are from Atlantis, then they could have recognized me from that. Minus the flowing robes and outstretched hand holding a whatever.”