Tempt the Stars

Chapter Thirty-four

The mansion was dark and quiet when we shifted in to the front hall of the Pythian Court. London is seven hours ahead of Vegas, which would make it somewhere around midnight, and I had jumped us back as far as I could. Which wasn’t very damned far, because carrying five has a cost, and it is high.

I dropped to my knees, staggered at the power drain.

“Lady—”

“I’m fine,” I told Rhea, harshly enough that she jerked back her hand.

I stayed down for a moment, watching the marble tile of Agnes’ front hall pulse in and out, wondering if my eyeballs were about to pop. And cursing inwardly, because my time sense had kicked in to tell me what I’d already suspected. I’d had to drop the time shift earlier than I’d wanted or risk rupturing something.

At most, we had fifteen minutes.

Which meant I didn’t have time for this, I told myself severely, and got up.

The place looked about the same as the last time I’d been here. Shafts of what were probably streetlights, but which looked like silver moonbeams, slanted through high, neoclassical windows. There was lots of marble, some paneling that looked like it might be genuine mahogany, and a couple statues of Grecian-looking women holding jugs. A staircase, the one where Rhea had had her vision I assumed, ran up to a landing.

A chandelier tinkled softly overhead, blown about by the freshening wind through a transom. It sounded impossibly loud to my straining ears, like the world’s most expensive wind chime. Nothing else moved.

I found that less than reassuring.

Rhea seemed to think the same. “There should be guards,” she said worriedly. “The Circle—it keeps people here, all the time.”

“They’re here,” Evelyn said grimly, from behind me. I turned around to see her over near the main doors, where a figure in a leather trench coat lay slumped behind a potted plant.

I’d been about to ask how he’d died, but then she rolled him over. And I didn’t have to. The skin was gray and papery, and crumpled into unrecognizability, since the flesh underneath had mostly withered away. It pulled back the mouth into a silent scream, left the eyes sunken into the head and the bones brittle enough that several cracked just from the gentle movement.

A ring dropped off a wasted finger, to clatter against the floor, and Rhea made a small sound. “McClaren,” she whispered. “One of his granddaughters . . . She’s a new initiate. . . ”

“Adepts,” Evelyn cursed. “I was hoping Marsden was wrong.”

“Question is, are they still here?” Beatrice asked.

“They shouldn’t be.” That was Jasmine. “A bomb destroyed the building, not an attack. If the adepts had any sense, they fled after setting it.”

I swallowed. Maybe cutting things close hadn’t been such a bad idea. But Beatrice didn’t seem convinced.

A streetlight was shining through a window, glinting off her chains and turning her Afro faintly blue. And highlighting the frown on her face. “Then why attack the Circle’s men? The adepts were already inside and free to move about. Why involve the patrols?”

“If they were messing about with the wards, they might have been nervous,” Jasmine offered. “Wanted them out of the way—”

“And speaking of wards, why didn’t we set any off when we came in just now?”

“You’re with me,” Rhea said, but she sounded doubtful. “But that should only have kept the general alarm from sounding. There should still have been somebody here by now, to check. . . ”

“Hence the attacks on the corpsmen,” Jasmine said.

“All of them?” Beatrice demanded. “And how did a group of untrained girls manage that, Pythian power or no?”

“Took ’em by surprise,” Evelyn said, fingering her wand. “Must have.”

“And again I say, all of them? You know what they’re like: suspicious, jumpy buggers, every one. And yet—”

“Let’s just get the kids out,” I said, glancing around. My skin was crawling. “Where are they?”

I didn’t have to ask twice. Rhea had been vibrating, just standing there, and now she took off for the stairs. “Wait!” Evelyn called, and put a hand on my arm.

“We have less than fifteen minutes,” I told her.

But she didn’t answer. “Beatrice.”

The little witch already had her staff up. One of the little indentations that I’d mistaken for hollows in the wood was glowing with a pale blue light, like a flashlight. Which I didn’t understand the point of, since we could already see—

Nothing, compared to when she brought it down on the floor, hard. And a pulse came out of the bottom, like a wave heading to the beach. Or maybe like a stone thrown into a pond, because this one was moving outward in all directions, highlighting mop marks on the floor, dust in the corners, cracks here and there in the grout between tiles. Like a black light at a crime scene, it showed everything hidden.

Including the feet of a bunch of men arrayed along the walls.

“I hate when I’m right,” Evelyn muttered, and then shoved me at the door. “Go!”

I hit the floor instead as the paneling bulged outward in the shape of bodies, dozens of them. And then melted away entirely as the spell ran up their legs, stripping off the camouflage as it went. War mages, and not ours, I realized, as they peeled off the walls and started slinging spells that sparked off the shield Jasmine had thrown up, barely in time.

But one had gotten through, a split second before the shield snapped closed, strobing the room in poisonous green. It missed, thanks to a curse I hadn’t even seen Evelyn hurl, which hit the thrower at almost the same moment he moved. But it took out the transom and most of the front door with it, showering us with glass.

And finally sent wards screaming through the house.

“Well, the kids are up,” Beatrice said as Evelyn turned on me.

“Damn it, are you deaf?” she demanded.

“If I leave, and the adepts show up, you die,” I said, fumbling with the dead war mage’s coat. And trying not to breathe because it was covered in flaky white dust that flew up everywhere as I pushed and pulled and broke him to pieces trying to get it off. But I had to have it. The coats were spelled to resist assaults, and I was about to get assaulted unless I was way luckier than usual.

“You heard Zara,” Evelyn said. “They’re probably already gone!”

It took me a second to realize she meant the witch I’d been calling Jasmine. “And if they’re not? You may be good—”

“We’re better than good.”

“But you can’t fight someone who can manipulate time!”

She started to answer, but the shield shattered as a dozen spells hit it all at once. And then Beatrice brought up her staff again. A different hollow glowed this time, a dark, bloody red. And all the lights around the room suddenly shattered, showering the floor with sparks and sending flames running up the walls.

“Nice parlor trick, old woman,” a mage said, grabbing her.

The staff came down again.

And lines of flame tore out of every light, carving a pentagram of fire in the air and spearing half a dozen mages through with flame.

“Glad you liked it,” she told him as the man collapsed at her feet.

But while it cleared our general area, it didn’t do much else. Because mages were running at us from all sides now, rushing into the room from where I guess they’d been hiding, not knowing where we’d come in. But they knew it now, and we had to—

Hit the floor again.

Zara muttered something low and vicious, and the witches jerked me down beside them just as the windows all blew out. The curtains billowed inward and then broke off to fly across the room, and what felt and sounded a lot like a hurricane roared through the house. Mirrors shattered, the chandelier whipped about like a crazed thing, statues toppled over. And half a dozen mages who hadn’t gotten shields up in time went flying. But others just hunkered down, shield bubbles dotting the room, waiting it out.

Because yeah.

I didn’t think she was going to be able to keep that up for long, either.

“If they planted the bombs, they’re not here,” Evelyn yelled, to be heard over the roar of the storm. “This was likely a trap. The old man was right—they’re after you!”

“You were right, too,” I panted, still struggling to free the coat. “They’re willing to kill a few dozen children to get to me.”

Evelyn swore. “I can’t protect you and help the girls, and they can’t take this many on their own!”

“Then don’t protect me,” I said as the wind died and the coat came free with a sickening crunch, both at the same moment.

Shields popped everywhere as mages surged back to their feet. We were about to get overrun, and the witches couldn’t cast and shield at the same time, and letting a bunch of mages get to point-blank range wasn’t smart. Of course, neither was this, I thought, grabbing them and shifting all four of us to where Rhea was flattened against the stairs, halfway up, the thin bubble of her shield rippling in the still-strong winds.

And then collapsing entirely as a bolt of purple flame hit it.

I threw myself on top of her, the coat covering both of us, but it wasn’t enough. Another curse hit, and spelled or no, the coat had aged along with its occupant. I felt something lash my back, a thin line of fire along the weakened back seam, and screamed even as I shifted.

And landed in the middle of a bunch of mages at the top of the stairs, who were heading down now that the hurricane had tapered off to a tropical storm.

And then tripping and falling as we shifted into the middle of them.

Literally, in Rhea’s case. She’d ended up welded to a mage through the skirt of her dress, which was now bisected by a heavy leather coat—and the leg behind it. She jerked away, and he screamed, which only made her jerk harder. And then she was grabbed by another mage and slung to the side—

And the man’s leg came off at the thigh.

Because flesh and bone don’t react well to being split by a swath of embroidered linen.

Blood spewed everywhere, coating surrounding mages and splattering me. And sending Rhea, who had obviously not had this as part of her training, into a frenzy. She tore away from her attacker, kicked another into the railing and fled up the remaining stairs, none of the mages trying to stop her since she already appeared mortally wounded.

Or maybe because they were lunging at me.

And there was nothing I could do, because I couldn’t shift again, not right now, maybe not ever. But it didn’t matter because triple bolts of something red and lethal tore past me, one bolt close enough to singe my hair. And ripped holes through the mages left above me.

And then I was being pulled up the stairs by three maniacs, who were cursing everything in sight. And getting cursed right back as the mages in the hall figured out we weren’t there anymore, maybe because a bunch of their fellows had just fallen on their heads. But they were behind us, and the landing and a hallway were ahead, the one Rhea had just disappeared into.

Something hit the wall beside me, leaving a heavy scorched mark, and something else lashed my back, turning my arm numb even through the coat’s protection. But then we were in the hall, and Jasmine—Zara— was throwing a shield over the end of it, like a plug.

Which sent three mages staggering back when they ran straight into it.

We pelted down the hall, where small people in white nightgowns were already spilling out of several rooms. Or maybe it was their day-wear, since who could tell the difference? But it looked like Rhea hadn’t lost it as much as I’d thought, because she appeared at the door to a room down the hall, breathing a little funny, but with a child in each hand.

And screamed, “Behind you!”

Damn, that hadn’t lasted long, I thought, and hit the floor, just as something blew out a light on the wall beside me. Glass scattered and children screamed, but to my amazement, they didn’t run amok. Not when Rhea snapped out a command and started them moving in orderly lines down the hall, even as the witches cursed the shit out of everything behind them.

But the odds were ridiculous, and we were getting tired. The next time Zara tried a shield, it was popped almost immediately, under a barrage of spells so thick it looked like a miniature sun had gone off in the hallway. The only thing that saved us was the fact that this wasn’t one of those made-to-look-old kinds of places, but the real deal. And the hall was narrow, not allowing us to be rushed by everyone at once.

But it let through enough, more than enough. Zara took a hit to the arm, screaming half in pain and half in fury. And something hit me, catching one side of my coat on fire that didn’t go out. I had to shed my only protection or go up in flames with it, throwing it down the hall at the mages.

They batted it away, but it distracted the ones in front for half a second, which was long enough for Evelyn to throw a spell—not at them, but at the ceiling. And there was enough power behind it to bring half the hallway down, cracking it along the center and spilling a load of billowing plaster and falling debris on our pursuers. Along with a bunch of water pipes, dripping and then spewing on their heads, which didn’t seem to bother them much.

Until Beatrice sent a plume of flame down the hall, and turned the water to blistering-hot steam.

And it seems that even dark mages have an aversion to being boiled to death. Some got up shields, but more panicked and tried to turn around, crashing into those behind them. Creating enough of a temporary bottleneck that we were able to get the last of the kids out of the dorm rooms, pushing them down the hall as fast as small legs could move.

I didn’t know where we were going, but everyone else seemed to, with the older kids helping the younger. Down the hall and around a bend, to a back stairway. Which would have been great, except that it was as narrow as the hall that fed into it.

I stared at it, not even needing to do any mental math. And the looks on the faces of the witches would have told me the truth, even if it hadn’t been obvious. I didn’t know how long it was going to take all those kids to get down all those stairs, but it worked out to more than we had.

A lot more.

And then the dark mages were coming again, around the bend, with shields initially, and then dropping them to fire when they realized the truth. A mass of spells like the one they’d done before, that had shattered Zara’s shield, only this time, we didn’t have a shield. But the spells stopped anyway.

Or, to be exact, they slowed to a crawl, because I didn’t have enough power left to stop them completely.

“You have six minutes,” I told them. “Get them as far away as you can.”

Beatrice nodded, grasping Zara, who was panting and shaking and pale as a sheet, firmly by the arm. But Evelyn just looked at me. “And what are you going to do?”

“Buy you time,” I choked, because talking was . . . hard right now.

“I’ll stay with you,” Evelyn said staunchly.

“That . . . wouldn’t be a great idea.”

“And why not?”

I was panting now, my vision blurring. And the stupid woman was still talking to me. “Because I won’t . . . have enough . . . to shift you out.”

“And you’ll have enough to shift you?”

Okay, maybe not so dumb.

“I’ll be okay.”

“You’ll be dead! And then the power will go to one of those miserable adepts—”

“No, it won’t,” Rhea said. She’d wisely sent the older children down first, and was now shepherding the smaller. But she paused for a second, to look back at me.

“And how do you know that?” Evelyn demanded. “They’re next in line!”

“Because the power chooses the Pythia,” Rhea said, fierce pride on her face as she looked at me. “It was what you needed to understand today, what I needed to remember these last weeks. It doesn’t just go to the next in line, whoever people think is best. It goes to the actual best, the very best choice out there.” She dropped another of those perfect curtsies. “Lady.”

I stared at her, and for the first time, and I guessed the last time, I was proud, I was damned proud, that it had come to me.

And then they were gone, Evelyn still complaining, bringing up the rear as the last of the children faded into darkness in front of them. I went to my knees, because it was easier. And because it didn’t matter anymore if I looked good, since there was no one to see me but a bunch of guys who were about to die with me.

Because I didn’t think they’d be so enthusiastic if the adepts had mentioned what was about to happen to this place. But I had no way to tell them, and no strength to do it if I had. The corridor was dimming even as the spells sped up, noticeably moving now, about the pace a person could walk casually. And painting the floor and ceiling with lines of unnatural spell light.

I watched them come, and thought it was funny. Because they looked strangely familiar. Like the ones in the skies over Rosier’s court. Dangerous, but so beautiful. Like the moon-flooded sands of an alien world, like the endless stars in the council chamber, like the flash of attraction in a pair of green eyes.

Pritkin, I thought, feeling gold spangled light on my face. And shut my eyes.