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“And allowed me to communicate, albeit with great difficulty, with my priestesses,” he acknowledged. “But the damn Circle corrupted them, turned them against me, blocked the only link I still had with this world. I couldn’t get anywhere with any of them!”
“Until I came along.” I was suddenly feeling really queasy.
“Yes. I thought I had a good candidate in Myra, but she fizzled out.” He dismissed the former heir with a wave. “She was more interested consolidating her own position than in following my lead. I was quite pleased when you disposed of her.”
“I didn’t.”
He shrugged. “You helped. Thus winning you many friends, young Herophile. Artemis never bothered to consider that the spell barring us from earth would close those worlds linked with yours as well. Faerie, for example, which depended on our magic and has been in decline since we left. They will be glad to see our return.”
“That would explain why some of the Fey are so eager to get their hands on the Codex,” I said.
He beamed approval. “They understand that the old ways were best, for your people as well as for us. Think of all we have to teach you.”
“Yeah, you keep promising to tell me what’s going on.”
“As I have done. Give me the Codex, Herophile, and take your rightful place as the chief of my servants.”
“You keep calling me that, when I’ve already told you.” I took a deep breath and moved a little closer to the Consul. “My name is Cassandra.”
Apollo’s face immediately changed. “Yes,” he hissed, “the name your mother gave you. Do you know why, little seer?”
“No.”
“Because she had a vision. Saw that her daughter would be the one to free me. Saw that, if you became Pythia, the spell would be unraveled and I and my kind would return. She knew your destiny, but she couldn’t bring herself to kill you—her only real chance. Instead, she ran, and named you after another rebellious servant of mine, in an act of defiance. It was a decision that cost her her life.” He held out a hand. “Don’t make the same mistake. Give me what is mine!”
I glanced at the Consul. She didn’t nod or blink or anything so obvious, but something shifted behind her eyes. I really hoped I was reading her right, because if not, I was toast.
I pulled the Codex out of my bodice, and Apollo’s eyes immediately focused on it. One last gamble; one last chance. Because I didn’t need it, after all; I knew the author. And he really, really owed me one. “Jesse,” I said briefly, “do your thing.”
“What?” His eyes had hardly left his mother the whole time. I didn’t know how much he had understood, but I didn’t need him to understand. I just needed him to do what he did best.
“Fry it,” I said.
“You cannot circumvent fate, Herophile!” Apollo snarled. “The Circle is weakening, fracturing from within. And when it falls, the spell falls with it! Don’t choose the losing side!”
“I’m not.” I tossed the Codex into the air. Time seemed to slow down as it flipped once, twice—then a plume of fire thicker than my leg caught it before it even approached the top of its arc. When the flames cleared, there wasn’t enough left to make ashes. “And my name is Cassandra.”
“You might have done well to remember your namesake’s fate, Cassandra,” he spit, as two dark mages started toward me.
And the vampires just stood there. I desperately tried to shift out with Jesse, but I was too tired, and nothing happened. At least, nothing normal.
A bubble formed out of nothing and bobbed around just out of reach, heavy and strangely thick, distorting the room in its reflective surface. And then there was another one, smaller than the first, and for a moment the two were bouncing around like helium balloons, colliding and rising and drifting with no particular direction. Until the larger one drifted against the taller mage.
Instead of bouncing off, it clung to his outstretched arm, flowing over the leather of his coat like molasses. And despite my panic, I couldn’t seem to look away. Because the sleeve under the bubble was changing.
The leather grew dark and hard and started to crack, and the mage began to scream as the sleeve dusted away like the cover on one of Pritkin’s old books. It flaked and crumbled until I could see the arm underneath. Only it wasn’t an arm anymore, I realized, as the mage tore away from me. He left behind the tattered remains of the sleeve and the hand clutching my wrist, which was now nothing more than a collection of bones under brown, papery skin.
I flinched and the bones collapsed, hitting the ground with a dry rattle. I looked up to see the mage staring at me, a look of horror on his face as it aged decades in a few short seconds. I gasped, realization slamming into me even before a clear, almost transparent substance peeled away from him. It reformed itself into a bubble that floated off a few feet before popping out of existence. What was left of his body collapsed like a deflated balloon.
I stared at him, remembering the dead mages in the fight with Mircea two weeks ago. I thought they’d been hit by friendly fire, by a spell gone awry. Looked like it hadn’t been so friendly after all.
“I see you have had lessons from someone.” Apollo was seething. “The traitor Agnes must have had more time with you than I thought. No matter—you cannot defeat them all.” And the entire line of mages surged toward me.
I watched them come out of blurry, exhausted eyes. What had that been, anyway, some way of speeding up time within a small area? I didn’t know, but one thing was sure: I couldn’t do it again. If I hadn’t been holding on to Jesse, I’d have been on the floor already.
But the mages didn’t reach me this time. The ones on the front row, six in all, were met by a stinging desert storm that blew up out of nowhere and concentrated only on their bodies. They were shrouded in whirling, dancing sand for maybe twenty seconds, and when it dissipated, the only things left to fall to the floor were bones and metal weapons. The rest of the mages were
met by angry vampires, half of them Senate members, and the fight was on.
