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It was basically a roar, and finally snapped her out of her frenzy. “They—the fey—can weave memories into things, like paint or cloth. Letting you relive what one of them saw—”
The entire wall blew in, sending paneling flying, dust billowing, and a vampire in Medusa-head armor lunging for Mircea.
And then writhing on the floor, seemingly possessed, as he fought with a crowd of people long dead.
Mircea grabbed the witch out of the
shelving she’d staggered into and towed her through the wall.
“W-what happened?” she demanded, looking back. “What did you do?”
“Threw the book at him,” Mircea said, and started out the door.
Only to crash into the secretary running in from the hall.
“That’s it! Look in his hand!” The witch pointed at something the secretary was clutching, as his startled eyes took in the two of them. Something glowing like a beacon, with a stronger, purer light than it had ever had before. The praetor’s shield!
Mircea lunged for it, and the next thing he knew, he was hitting the wall on the other side of the study. The secretary might look weak, and he wasn’t a master, or Mircea would be dead already. But he wasn’t a baby, either.
And more guards were doubtless on the way.
The window was open, letting in a scattering of rain and offering a quick escape, but there was nothing but death out there. And if he was going to die, he was going down fighting, not cowering under a damned bridge! The secretary had just knocked the witch aside and now he looked up, in time to see the resolution settle onto Mircea’s face.
“You want this?” the man sneered, holding up the orb, which had just flushed a deep, dark crimson. “Take it!”
He threw the shield right at Mircea, just as the woman sprang off the floor, a heavy tray in her hands, which she swung at the secretary’s head.
And hit the stone instead.
The little thing slammed back into the vampire, hitting him smack in the middle of his chest. Mircea was halfway through a lunge, trying to grab the stone and the witch at the same time, only to have her grab him instead, sending both of them to the floor. “Don’t touch him! Don’t touch him!” she screamed, and this time, Mircea listened.
Because something very strange was happening to the secretary.
The long, dark hair he wore in a clip had come loose, and was flooding white, as quickly as if someone had poured a bucket of paint over his head. Like his skin, already vampire pale, was fading to alabaster. And the eyes, formerly beady and black, were now beady and blue, almost colorless.
He was albino pale as he batted at the orb, which appeared to have become stuck, and he started screaming: “Get it off! Get it off! Get it off!”
What looked like a whole squadron of guards appeared in the hallway behind him, but they didn’t get it off. They also didn’t come in. Perhaps because the secretary was screaming; the guard in the hidden room was yelling that he was sorry, sorry, so very sorry; and the witch was standing in the middle of the room, breathing hard and looking . . . fairly witchy.
She’d partly dried, leaving wild tufts of muddy hair sticking up everywhere. They matched her expression, which was a cross between anger and panic that mostly read as furious. And she’d just grabbed the broken spear shaft again, which was too thick for a wand, but it didn’t look like the guards knew that.
Do something, Mircea told her mentally. Pretend to cast a spell!
She did not cast a spell. She did, however, panic at the sound of his voice in her head, habit and fear overriding good sense. Which also seemed to be the case with the guards, when she suddenly ran at them, screaming and waving the “wand.”
They fell back against the outer wall of the hall, alarm on their features, while the secretary flailed wildly and the shield finally dislodged. It fell to the ground, almost clear again, spinning around on the hard tiles of the floor. The secretary gasped and went staggering backward, the witch screamed and beat him with her stick, and Mircea swallowed and stared at the orb.
And then took a calculated risk and grabbed it.
Nothing happened.
Nothing happened! Except that it felt warm and strangely full in his palm. As if it contained far more power than before, and it had already contained enough.
“Come on!” he yelled at the witch, and held it up.
And was immediately tackled by one of the guards, who hadn’t bought into the pantomime. Until Dorina flew at the man, doing something that made him scream and flail around, and Mircea yelled: “That’s it! Curse them! Curse them all!”
Suddenly, he and the witch were alone, the vampires thundering down the hallway, the secretary yelling profanity outside the door, and the guard in the hidden room sobbing apologies that echoed off the walls.
