AllFreeNovel
Share Us
I bit my lip and stared up at the floor that wasn’t there. It was kind of odd seeing it from this angle, as if the ocean’s surface had been smeared with dirt and pebbles. It didn’t help my concentration, so I pulled back up to a sitting position and stared at the top of it instead.
Once upon a time, my reaction to scary things had been to run and hide. It was an effective strategy for staying alive in the good old days when all I had to worry about was a homicidal vampire. The difference between then and now was that once upon a time I’d had problems I really could outrun. Now I had duties and responsibilities, the kind of things that are always with you. There were about a dozen nightmares vying for the top spot every day, each of them spectacularly horrible in its own way. And right at the top of the list was the fear that I’d have to stand by and watch another friend die trying to help me.
I was suddenly really glad I couldn’t see the bottom.
The rock felt crumbly under my fingers as I slithered over the side. Or maybe that was my hands shaking. A cascade of small rocks disappeared beyond the illusion and some of them must have hit Pritkin, because I heard him swear again.
“What the hell are you—”
“Sheer bloody-mindedness, remember? And can you see my leg?”
I was holding on to the edge of the chasm by my arms and elbows, and still felt unbelievably unsteady. I carefully did not look down, but for a few seconds, I strained to hear the rocks hit bottom. I never did.
I tried to feel around with my toe without falling off, but met only air. Damn it, what if I needed to be touching bare skin? Why hadn’t I thought to remove my shoes first? I tried toeing one off, but the water had made the sneaker shrink around my foot. “Grab my ankle.”
A lot of less than genteel language echoed off the walls. “I can’t grab anything without letting go!”
“You have two arms!”
“Listen to me.” Pritkin’s voice was low and controlled, the tone he used when he was pretending to be reasonable. “I can’t let go of the gun. There’s something down here. It pulled me in. It could get bored with me at any moment and come after you. You have to—” He broke off at the sound of shouts and explosions and booted feet echoing down the corridor. “Shift, goddamn it!”
“Grab my leg!”
I lowered myself down to the point that my head was barely over the top of the chasm, but still touched nothing. The damn rock was falling apart under my fingers and nervous sweat was making my palms slippery. My arms were sending sharp little pains up to my shoulders and there was no purchase on the side of the chasm for my feet. How the hell far down was he?
And then it didn’t matter, because a pair of booted feet stopped right in front of my eyes. I craned my neck enough to see an older man with salt-and-pepper hair and pale gray eyes smiling down at me. Manassier. Well, didn’t that just explain a lot.
?
??I didn’t think you would get this far,” he told me in his thick accent. And to think, only that afternoon, I’d found it attractive.
Somewhere along the line I’d bitten my tongue hard enough to taste copper. I swallowed blood. “Surprise.”
He shrugged. “No matter. I still collect the bounty.”
“There’s a bounty?”
“Half a million euros.” His smile grew. “You are about to make me rich.”
“Half a million? Are you kidding me? I’m the Pythia. I’m worth way more than that.”
He took out a gun, a Sig Sauer P210, which I recognized because of the shooting lessons Pritkin had been giving me. My aim wasn’t any better, but I could identify all kinds of guns now. Even the one about to kill me.
“I’m a simple man,” Manassier said, “with simple needs. Half a million will do nicely.”
It figured that I’d get the nongreedy crook. I swallowed a crazy urge to laugh. “You don’t have to shoot me,” I gasped. “I can’t hold on much longer anyway.”
“Yes, but if you slip, the Circle may say you died of natural causes and not pay the bounty. And then all this was for nothing.”
“Yeah. That’d be a shame.”
He clicked the safety off. “Now hold still and this won’t hurt.”
“That would be a nice change.” My body felt like it weighed a ton, my arms were liquid with fatigue, and my shoulders were aching in their sockets. It would be such a relief to just let go.
So I did.
I heard him yell something in French and felt a bullet whiz by my head, but it was unimportant because I was falling, and there was nothing to hold on to, just sliding dirt and limestone rocks crumbling beneath my hands. My arms flailed wildly, grasping for the one thing I had to find, but for a long second I felt only air. Then my fingers collided with something warm and alive and I grabbed it and we were both falling. There was a dizzying rush of air and my power wouldn’t come and all I could think was that I’d killed us both—then my brain whited out and my heart tried to stop and reality twisted and bent around us.
