The Sorceress Screams (9 page)

Bodies froze
in place, droplets of water cascading off Susan’s body hung in mid-air, and not
an eyelash fluttered.
Except mine.
The spa looked as
if someone had hit the pause button on the remote control of life. And someone
had. I’d used a Time witch power—one I rarely used because I’d be burned alive
on a pyre if anyone realized I could do it. But I might be burned alive in a
Vegas spa if I didn’t take the risk.

Across the
stone floor, the Fire witch stood frozen in the act of exploding into pure
fire—a transformation spell. The upper portion of her body had blown apart into
an orange inferno spanning a quarter of the space. Her energy would engulf the
ceiling in the millisecond following my release of Time unless I did something.
The Fire witch’s stomach and pelvis were locked mid-transformation. A mere hint
of her figure remained within the orange blaze as the only marker a body had
once been there. And her lower half was still corporeal within its flame
coating.

What would
happen if I hit her with Water magic at this exact moment? Water was Fire’s
natural enemy. My fear she’d be killed made me try another option instead. I
worked to syphon away the energy she’d sucked into her from the
aether
. Using myself as the conduit, I sent all of the
unused energy back where it had come from. Then with a breath for fortitude, I
called on the air within the witch’s fire.

Removing the
air that fueled the fire had better not remove part of
her
now that she was only partially corporeal. I held my breath as
I released Time back into its ordinary flow.

Nadir swiveled
toward his captive. The Fire witch’s body reformed into her tangible shape. His
eyes narrowed to tiny slits.

“Do not use
your power unless I allow it!” His outraged shout echoed across the stone
space. “
All
of you!”

The Fire witch
stared down at her fleshy hands, eyes spreading as wide as my titanium dinner
plates. Her lips began to quiver, not from fear, but from a bone-sapping
hopelessness I sensed across the spa even without an empathic link. My heart
went out to her. I knew what it was like to be enthralled.

Though I’d had
to stop her from destroying herself and us with her, I wasn’t going to
neutralize her power as I’d done to so many other witches gone berserk. And my
mother would probably have my head for the failure to observe the rules. I’d
deal with her ire later. Now I had to deal with the vampire.

I sucked in
energy from the nearby pool, and then shoved all of the manipulative power into
the vampire that I could. “Let us go,” I said. “All of us.”

Nadir made a
dismissive gesture. “You all may go.”

For a moment I
could only stare at him. This was proof I could, in fact, manipulate a vampire
using Water magic. There had to be something different about Maximo. But there
would be time enough to consider that later. I hoped.

“Don’t try to
follow us,” I said.

He flapped a
hand. “Go on, you’re wasting my time.”

“
Nadir
!”
The vampire Susan called out the two syllables with sharp
enunciation.

“Come
on
,” I said to the witches who were in
varied states of disbelief. A head nod and imploring stare emphasized my
demand.

One
dark-haired witch headed the escape. However the other witches lingered at the
other end of the pool or dumbly stared from their seated positions. It took a
wave from the first witch, and the threat of Susan grabbing one of them, for
the others to hurry toward me.

I held the
door until each of the witches made it through, and then I led them to the
storage room where I fetched my clothing and purse. We disappeared into the
employee only corridors moments later with the vampires’ bickering as the
soundtrack to our escape.

Chapter Seven

“How did you
do that?” A childlike voice asked once our party of seven emerged from the
battered freight elevator on Caesars Palace’s ground floor.

I glanced,
spotting the speaker as she stepped out of the metal box. While she wasn’t the
youngest of the group, she wasn’t the eldest. I decided she was an Air witch
without drawing in the scent to find out. It was the volume in her dark hair.

“She must be a
vampire
.” The redheaded Fire witch
drawled the final word in bitter emphasis.

A pale-skinned
witch with the cute page boy hair replied. “She’s not a vampire.”

“I’m not a
vampire,” I said.

I’d taken
several steps before I noted the lack of sound behind me. They hadn’t followed.
I twirled back on the ball of my foot.
What
was the hold up
?

The Air
witch’s voice went sharp. “How do we know you’re not something worse?”

I checked for
the wandering eyes of vanilla humans who might be listening in. Though we
appeared to be alone, I whispered my response in case of cameras. “My guess is
you’re all enthralled to him. I’m not sure what could possibly be worse than
being beholden to a monster like that.”

“What’s the
point of running if he’s only going to call us back?” The redhead snapped out
the question, gesturing her freckled arm toward the spa we’d escaped. “We need
to take real action.”

I held her
angry glare. Their situation would have been so much easier to solve if I could
simply kill the vampire. But my soul couldn’t handle that kind of blemish, even
with a creature who was already dead. “You can stick around and attempt to blow
up half of Caesars Palace in the hope he’ll be taken out with you, or you can
come with me to
Wipuk
where the covens can keep you
safe.”

I hoped to
Zeus I wasn’t making false promises.

“You’re from
Wipuk
?” the orange-haired Asian girl asked. She smelled so
heavily of aloe it was impossible to miss. Clearly she was a Healer.

“I live there
now.” I nodded. “Please, come with me.” I met each witch’s eye, silently
pleading for understanding. “Las Vegas isn’t safe for you while he’s here. We
can put three hundred miles between us before he wakes up tonight. And with the
most powerful witches in the country in your camp, you’ll have a chance to
fight him.”

Hera, help me
make it true!

“I need my
luggage,” the Healer declared.

“I’m not going
anywhere in a terry robe,” another witch with long blonde hair said, as if
terry were the lowest form of fabric.

I pulled in an
irritated breath. “He can call you back without warning if I let you out of my
sight.”

The blonde
snapped her fingers to the right in a haughty gesture I’d never seen outside of
reality television. “
Chickybabe
, I don’t go anywhere
without shoes. If you want to help me, you’ll give me a half hour to get to my
room.”

I was halfway
through the act of nodding when I caught the scent of a crisp Arctic sea.
Water witch?
Damn my distracted mind. The blonde had a
reciprocal empathic link. How had I failed to notice her magically skimming my
emotions? No wonder I was feeling an overwhelming urge to agree with her. I
snapped the link back into her.

She flinched,
lips parting in surprise.

“
Don’t
manipulate me,” I said. Then I
glanced at the others. “This is foolish.
Insane
.
He can make you come back the second he tosses off
my will. But if it’s so damn important for you to get your precious luggage,
then go. You have thirty minutes to meet me at the shuttle entrance. If you’re
not there, we’re leaving without you.” Was I being too hard? It wasn’t their
fault. I could soften my approach a tiny bit. “Take down my phone number. Call
me if he calls you back to him.”

We scrambled
to find things to write on and write with. I’d had a pen in my purse and
several scraps of paper I hadn’t tossed in the waist bin yet. I’d be in deep
trouble if the vampire got his hands on my phone number. I could only hope I
could get the witches out before he realized what had happened.

One by one the
females darted out the nearest door into the hotel. Only an orange-haired Asian
was left of the group. She gave me a pretty smile, murmuring soft words. “Thank
you, Becky.”

I winced
because I’d to have to come clean about my identity at some point.

The family
style restroom in the hotel’s lobby was probably the safest place to call my
mother. I visualized her most recent lime T-shirt as I pressed myself firmly to
the tiled wall. “I summon you, Hecate.”

She appeared
within two feet of my spot. A deep frown creased her mist-coated face. “It
hasn’t been two hours yet.”

I must have
interrupted a good run on the slot machines. “I need you to leave me here this
time. Can you do that, or is it against the rules of favors?”

My mother’s
lips pursed. Her image shuddered like a television picture flickering. “You
stopped the event.” She nodded. “I can leave you here if you truly wish.”

Relief flooded
me. I expelled a long breath. “Oh, thank Zeus. Yes, please, leave me here. I’ve
got money. I’m going to rent a car and drive home. Thank you, Mother.”

She gave me a
thin-lipped smile and then disappeared into the Void.

Time to dig up another miracle—finding someone to rent me a van at
four in the morning.

****

Finding a car
for rent on the strip this early proved impossible. I resorted to checking the
airport. We took two cabs there. By some miracle we loaded the necessities of
six women into the rented Dodge Caravan and extra trailer. Needless to say,
there was very little room to sit when all was said and done.

Each of the
six had turned up at Caesars shuttle entrance within their allotted thirty
minutes. Only one had complained—the Water witch with her four items of
luggage. She’d spent minutes in the cab on the way to the airport, haggling
with the front desk about her room and shipping of her the two suitcases I
hadn’t let her bring. And then she’d delayed us by stopping at the in-airport
Starbucks for a
grande
espresso. No doubt she’d get
along swimmingly with Desmond. And that made me just a little miffed.

The females
peppered me with questions about
who
I was, how I’d
gotten into the locked spa and why I’d saved them. Each query was met by vague
answers until they got the picture. Fortunately they weren’t quite as stingy
with the information. I quickly learned their names.

The witch with
the childlike voice was named Gemma, and she was from the Air school of magic.
She had a slight British accent because her mother was English. The
orange-haired Asian was named Kaila—a Healer. Isabelle had been the Death witch
who had verified I was no vampire. The blonde Water witch with the most luggage
of anyone had an unnecessarily difficult name—Veronica spelled with a “K”
rather than a “C”.

I almost
missed the Dark witch—a quiet woman with short black hair and skin a shade
lighter than what I currently sported. She’d whispered her name was Jacqueline
as she’d crushed herself into the corner beside the Water witch’s cosmetics
bags.

And the feisty
redheaded Fire witch was named Rose. Rose had been the first to give up her
name when she’d grabbed the passenger seat beside me. I put her in charge of
the map. She’d successfully navigated the way out of Las Vegas onto
ninety-three like a Nevada native despite being from upstate New York.

The witches
exchanged stories about how Nadir had trapped them. Each mentioned being
drugged and unable to access their power before he’d bitten them. A cold chill
passed over me at the similarities between what had happened to them and my
experience with
Ascencion
.

They’d had it
so much worse than I had. Nadir had kept them in his company every hour he was
awake. They’d been symbols of his power … like some sort of supernatural harem.
And when he’d been dead to the world, he’d had
Were
guards keeping the witches unconscious with steady shots of magic-blocking
drugs.

I couldn’t
help but think of myself. The threat of enthrallment was ever-present unless an
individual were already enthralled. I needed a steady diet of Bear’s garlic—a
rare herb I couldn’t afford—or to find a vampire I trusted not to abuse me.
That certainly wouldn’t be Maximo de Sole.

An hour out of
Vegas on an empty stretch of highway seemed like as good a time and place as
any to call for help. Since Desmond had told me about
Dea
Woods being enthralled, he was the person I called first. And unfamiliar raspy
voice answered his phone.

“Marino?”
My pitch lifted
uncertainly.

“I hope you
didn’t call me at five o’clock in the morning to apologize again.”

The response
proved it was him, but his voice sounded as if he’d been gargling steel wool.
“You sound awful. Are you sick?”

“I’m not
awake, Ms. Walsh. What do you want?”

I hadn’t
realized quite how early it was until his frosty retort. If I known it was
quarter after five, I might have waited another hour. We still had nearly four
hours left to drive—three and a half if I pushed the speed limit. But I’d
wanted him to have time to make arrangements.