Curse the Dawn (54 page)

“You told me that spell takes thousands of mages! There’s no time for that.”

“Do you have a better idea?”

“I have an idea,” I hedged. I wasn’t taking any bets on how good it was. “Just get us some distance ahead.”

We left the city behind, speeding into an area of high rounded hills and smooth, empty valleys. The ley line twisted and turned among them, and sometimes through them, and that seemed to give Pritkin an idea. “Hold on,” he told me, and raced straight for the very top of the line.

We left the line, sailing into the vast and brilliant canopy above. So many stars, jeweled and burning bright. A meteor slid eastward. Beautiful, I thought dazedly, as a roar split the air behind us.

I turned in time to see the world go briefly monochrome in a tremendous flash of light, the hills jumping up at me against the terrible whiteness behind. Then we plunged back into the line, and a cloud of dirt and rubble incinerated all around us, throwing burning bits against the car’s shield. “What was that?”

“Slowed him down!” Pritkin said with a little of Marsden’s mania in his eyes. “He took off half the hill trying to follow us. But it wasn’t enough. We need bigger mountains!”

He jumped again just as the line curved around another hill. We went one way and Apollo went the other, taking out the hilltop along with him. But I didn’t care because the ground was racing up at us and there was no line to catch us and—

The line curved around the other side of the hill and caught us.

“You knew that was there, right?” I asked, shaken.

Pritkin swallowed. “Of course.”

I shut my eyes. “Can we make it as far as Chaco Canyon?”

“Even if we could, he would simply hop with us! He can follow us wherever we go!”

“But can we
get
there?”

“No,” he said tersely. “My weapons aren’t designed for fighting a god, and I’m running out of tricks.”

I opened my eyes and stared at the dashboard. “Then maybe Marsden has a few.” There was a panel of buttons by the steering wheel that didn’t look like standard equipment. “What do those do?”

“I don’t know. Some of Jonas’ meddling. And don’t—”

I punched a green one and we rocketed forward. We were going fast enough to throw me back against the seat and to flatten my cheeks to my face. I couldn’t see. The pressure was too great for me to even catch a breath, too great for me to so much as move. The ley line looked like an almost solid tube around us, the flashes and flares streaming together into one long line of color.

“—touch anything,” Pritkin finished as we shuddered back to normal speed.

I drew in a gasping breath, my lungs feeling flattened in my chest, and leaned forward against the dash. I groaned when I had enough breath, feeling every pain, every bruise. But when I raised my head, the vortex was shining like a small star in the distance.

We made it there ahead of Apollo, but only just. We jumped from the dazzling energy of the line into the non-space pooling around the vortex with maybe a ten-second lead. Pritkin was desperately searching for the correct current that would allow us to hop to the next vortex, so he didn’t see Apollo enter. But it was all I could see.

This time, it seemed, Apollo was done talking. The boiling energy ball never even slowed down. Neither did the huge flock of demons that poured in after him. The faint glimmers of thousands of Rakshasas were visible even to my eyes as they wheeled around us like a colony of bats.

I grabbed the wheel and jerked it straight at the vortex. “We’ve got to get closer in!”

“Closer to what?” Pritkin snarled, fighting the current to keep us from doing exactly that.

“The vortex!”

“You said we need a weapon to use against a god.” I pointed at the Rakshasas. “I think we’ve found one!”

Pritkin’s head jerked up, watching the long arc of demons flowing around the vortex. I saw when he realized the same thing I had—they weren’t following us. Every single one of them was clustered on Apollo’s tail, like dust following a comet.

“Apollo is an energy being,” he said slowly.

“
Life
energy,” I corrected. The very kind the Rakshasas fed on.

“And he isn’t from Earth. So the prohibition doesn’t apply.”

I nodded. “But he’s shielded. If he gets close enough to the vortex, it may weaken his protection enough for them to get at him.”

“And it may do the same to us!”

“Do you have a better idea?” I demanded as the black cloud caught up with us.

“No,” he said, and swerved straight for the heart of the vortex. It had been my plan, but I screamed anyway, staring into the face of oblivion. Then Pritkin threw on the brakes and bumped across three currents before sliding to a halt on an inner one. It had a shorter orbit and whipped us around the phenomenon at a crazy pace.

We came rushing back around the vortex, Pritkin fighting the current to keep us from falling in, the car groaning and shaking in protest. And then we had to duck as Apollo came rocketing by in front of us. He must have gotten a lot closer to the phenomenon than we had, because his shields were virtually gone.

The Rakshasas realized it the same time I did and dove as one entity straight for him. We passed out of sight once more, and by the time we zoomed back around, the cloud of raw energy had been savaged. It looked like the Rakshasas didn’t have much reverence for gods of any sort.

Apollo broke and ran, but they pursued him over and around the vortex, weaving easily through the lines of energy. The massive battle churned up the currents, tossing us around like a ship on the high seas, and for a few moments, I couldn’t see anything. I finally caught sight of a much reduced energy sphere edging closer to the pulsing heart of the vortex.

That may have been deliberate—Apollo might have thought that the energy it was giving off would hurt the demons badly enough that they would give up the chase. But it didn’t seem to affect them much that I could see, possibly because they weren’t entirely in this world. Maybe that’s why they were able to pull back when he got a little too close and the vortex sucked him in.

The death of a god caused barely a ripple on the surface of the massive ley line sink at the heart of the vortex. But an energy wave radiated outward, picking up our small bubble of protection and throwing it completely out of the lines. Pritkin cursed, grabbed me around the waist and jumped clear.

We started to drift slowly downward in a chute formed from Pritkin’s shields, just as the star-filled sky above bled into golden dawn. The crash of Marsden’s car was barely audible so far below. But Pritkin winced as it smacked down and immediately went up in a ball of flame.

“We got out of this alive!” I reminded him, hardly able to believe it.

“
You
did,” he said, staring at the burning pile of metal far below. “Jonas is going to kill me.”

“Explain again why I am paying for this . . .
this
?” Mircea asked, indicating with a gesture the cackling drag queen who was all but dismantling Augustine’s shop. The great man himself was standing by the door, wincing at the carnage and fingering my AmEx. He still detested me, but it seemed my money was okay.

“I’m paying for it, or I will be,” I assured him. “Jonas says I have a month’s back salary coming.” Of course, at Augustine’s prices, that meant I might be able to pay Mircea off in a decade or so.

He sighed and laid his head back against the nice Louis XIV striped satin chair that Augustine had rushed to bring up for him. I’d had to fetch my own. I shifted uncomfortably. Everything hurt.

Mircea noticed and opened an eye to look at me. “You are going to give me a stroke,” he said flatly, with none of his usual charm. “I sent you away to keep you safe. Instead, you kill the Lord Protector—”

“That was Pritkin, and Saunders isn’t actually dead,” I corrected. “Jonas is circulating the rumor that he was tragically wounded while bravely battling Apollo’s forces.”

“Apollo didn’t have any forces.”

“Yes, but nobody knows that.” Luckily very few mages had witnessed what really occurred, and they’d mostly been Apprentices. Apprentices who currently had bad headaches from having their memories altered.

Marsden had decided that it was better to get his rival out of the way diplomatically rather than risk civil war when we could least afford it. He’d managed to convince the Senate, but Mircea didn’t appear pleased to have the former head of the Circle still with us. I had a sneaking suspicion that Saunders’ recovery wasn’t going to go well.

“And for an encore, you kill a god!” Mircea accused.

“Technically, the demons did that. Or maybe the ley line. We’re not completely—”

“So your argument is that you did
nothing
?”

“Isn’t that what you wanted me to do? Swim, read, maybe do a little shopping?”

“Yes! I would vastly prefer that you spend your days doing exactly that rather than come back to me covered in blood!”

“At least I came back.”

“This time.”

“Mircea . . .”

“Yes, you have a job to do, or so you keep informing me. I understand that—intellectually. Do not expect me to like it.”

“But no more handcuffs?”

He gave me one of his slow smiles, the first sign of good humor I’d seen. “Not unless you request them.”

I swallowed. “About that . . .”

He sighed and laid his head back again. “Why do I doubt that this is going to be a request for one in every color?”

“They come in colors?” He smiled without opening his eyes. “No! No, I mean, I’ve been thinking. We knew each other when I was a child, but now . . . there’s just so much I don’t know about you.”

“You know me,” he said, his forehead wrinkling. “Better than most.”

“But it doesn’t feel that way. I’ve never even been to your court!”

“That’s easily remedied. Indeed, you may visit sooner than you think. Mage Marsden is proposing to have your inauguration there. A goodwill gesture to the Senate after the unpleasantness with his predecessor.”

“Will the consuls still be there?” I asked nervously.

“Probably.” Mircea opened his eyes to frown at the ceiling. “The negotiations are dragging somewhat. The Consuls are currently asking why they should agree to an alliance when our chief adversary is dead.”

“They can’t be serious! We have a major war brewing in Faerie, Tony’s group is still on the loose and plotting who knows what, and we have no idea how Apollo’s fellow gods are going to take his untimely demise!”

“All valid points. Whether they will be enough to override centuries of suspicion and dislike is yet to be seen. The Consul believes they will, and I sincerely hope she is correct. I do not relish the idea of proceeding into Faerie on our own. But Antonio is hardly going to come out and face us after this.”

“So we have to go in and get him.” The thought didn’t make me any happier than it did Mircea. I’d been to Faerie once. I hadn’t enjoyed the experience.

“Yes, but that can wait for another day. To more important matters.” He looked at me severely. “Are you attempting to break up with me?”

“No! It’s not . . . That isn’t what I . . . I’d like to date,” I blurted out.

He raised an eyebrow. “By vampire law, we are already married.”

“But I’m not a vampire, Mircea! And I wasn’t exactly asked about the marriage thing!”

“You wish I had not claimed you?” His face shifted to the closed expression vampires use when they’re being especially guarded. Great. This was going about as well as I’d expected.

“No, that isn’t what I’m saying.”

I stopped and gathered my thoughts, trying to put what I felt into words. “I always viewed not having any attachments as a strength. I thought I was better off, not getting too close to people I’d probably just end up hurting. Sometimes, I still feel that way. I’m more of a target than before, more of a liability in some ways than I ever was. But I always will be now. And I can’t live the rest of my life closed off from everyone. . . .”

“Dulceaƫă,”
Mircea said patiently. “I am a target independently of anything you will ever do. And I assure you, I can take care of myself.”

I shook my head. “Nobody can be sure of that, not anymore. We almost lost Rafe; we did lose Sal—”

His eyes closed, and a flicker of something crossed his face. “If I had broken her bond as she asked, Tony would not have been able to use her.”

“He would have found someone else. We were vulnerable because of the problems within our alliance. He exploited it.”

“Nonetheless, I will blame myself for that, always. And for Nicu’s death.”

I swallowed. I was still trying to deal with that myself. He’d died to protect me, and I’d barely even known him. And the only times I had talked to him, I’d mostly been yelling. Marco was right—there was a lot about vamps I still didn’t understand.

“At least Marco’s okay,” I said, thinking about the last time I’d seen him. He’d been assigned a bed in the clinic, while the penthouse was being remodeled. He’d looked surprisingly cheerful for a guy who’d been staked through the heart. That would have killed anyone below master status, but Sal hadn’t lived long enough to take his head, too, so Marco would recover.

“But it looks like I’m off guard duty for a while,” he’d informed me, and then he’d made a noise that sounded suspiciously like a giggle. I’d just stared. I’d never seen him so happy.

“I have been too busy of late,” Mircea said, watching Dee strip a pink negligee off a mannequin while a valiant salesman tried to shove her size fourteen foot into a maybe size eight shoe.

“I don’t think it’s going to fit,” the sweating salesman gasped.

“If I had a nickel for every time I’ve heard that,” she muttered, and shoved it home.

“You’ve done the best you could,” I told Mircea. “That’s all any of us can do. And that’s . . . I think that’s what I’ve come to realize. I can’t keep the people I care about safe by distancing myself. They’re at risk anyway; they’re always going to be. I just have to love them now, while I can. Now is all we have.”