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“Which will be the title of my autobiography, if I live long enough to write one. Now, can we get out of here?”
“My thought exactly.” The voice came from behind me, and a gun was pressed to my rib cage.
I twisted my neck enough to get a glimpse of Caleb’s face. He’d said he was willing to die to capture me. It looked like he hadn’t been kidding.
Marco snarled, letting loose a barrage of bullets that ricocheted off the mage’s shields, threatening everyone but him. “Marco! Cut it out before you kill someone!”
“I got every intention of killing someone,” he said as Caleb pulled me back toward the limo. I couldn’t imagine why—that car wasn’t going anywhere—but we kept backing that way nonetheless.
Marco followed, but couldn’t get past Caleb’s shields. I felt around in my pockets, hoping that Francoise had shoved my gun in there, not that it was likely to help much against a war mage. She hadn’t, but she’d left me something possibly more useful. My hand closed over something hard, and I looked down to see the grinning face of Daikoku staring up at me.
Francoise must have grabbed it when the cabinet fell over. And if it worked half as well as the Shroud, it might be able to get me out of this. But did I dare use it?
I clutched Daikoku tightly, feeling energy radiate outward from the cool surface under my fingers. Whatever this thing was, it was powerful—and therefore dangerous. But I’d seen enough war mages to know that the Shroud wouldn’t hold them for long, and even if it did, Caleb hardly needed their help to take me in. I was seriously debating using it when the night tore open and Pritkin tumbled out of nothing.
Caleb threw a spell as soon as Pritkin left the ley line, but he had to lower his shields to do it. And Marco lunged for us the instant they dropped. Caleb had expected it and sent him flying with a muttered word, but the distraction gave Pritkin time to roll under a nearby car, out of view.
“Let it go, John!” Caleb called. “I’ll guarantee her safety, but I’m taking her in.”
A spiky blond head poked up over the car’s roof. “You can’t guarantee anything of the kind! Or have you forgotten what happened the last time the Council wanted a meeting!”
“Richardson was blinded by grief over his son. Nothing like that will happen again—you have my word.”
“Your word isn’t in question, Caleb. It’s your judgment I doubt.”
“There was a time when you trusted me with your life!”
“And there was a time when you used your brain instead of blindly following orders,” Pritkin said, coming around the front of the car. There was a raw red spot in the dead center of his chest, like maybe his shields had given out a fraction before his buddy’s spell did. “She goes with me.”
Caleb’s answer to that was to throw another spell. But Marco had been waiting on the sidelines, silent and dark, for exactly that. As soon as Caleb lowered his shields, Marco grabbed him and Pritkin grabbed me.
We started backing toward the ley line Pritkin had used to come in, but the mages had finished ripping the Shroud to pieces and were blocking the way. All eight of them. They didn’t immediately attack—there was just enough doubt among them about whether Pritkin was a hero or a psychopath to be useful in a situation like this. But it wouldn’t be long.
I needed to think, needed a plan, but they were coming for us and there was no more time. And even Pritkin couldn’t fight those kinds of odds. I clenched my palm around Daikoku’s cool shape, hard enough to hurt. “Give me the energy to shift us out of here!” I wished.
I hoped that was clear enough, and then just hoped it would work at all, as a long moment passed and nothing happened. I opened my fist and stared at the little thing, wondering if Francoise had stolen a dud. Then one tiny eye dropped in a tinier wink, and the world tore apart.
Chapter Eighteen
There was a sudden tumbling sense of vertigo and then a jolt that drove the air from my lungs. It felt almost like I’d shifted, but the pavement was firm under my feet and the smell of burnt asphalt and magic still hung in the air. I didn’t wait for the dizziness to pass, just grabbed the warm body beside me and got us out of there.
I immediately knew something was wrong, because instead of a short free fall, as should have been the case with a shift no farther than Dante’s, it seemed to take forever until I hit the ground again. I landed on my feet, but then someone crashed into me. I couldn’t see who—it was pitch dark—but the impact drove me back a couple of steps. That would have been fine, except there was suddenly nothing under my foot but air.
I fell on my butt and went sliding at what felt like sixty miles an hour down a steep embankment. There were no trees or rocks to grab, only slick, sparse grass and a lot more mud. My flailing hand finally grabbed someone’s arm, and I held on for dear life, tumbling and falling, until we finally slammed to a stop in—of course—a muddy puddle.
The impact tried to shove my tailbone up through my shoulder blades and made my teeth snap together. I stared up at the dim arch of the Milky Way while I tried to get my breath back, only to have a drop of water hit me right on the cornea. I wiped it away, dragging my muddy sleeve across my forehead in the process. Of course it would rain. Of course i
t would.
My usual post-almost-dying routine—and, God, there was an actual routine—mostly involved getting yelled at by Priktin and then going to get a sandwich. And a bath. And some aspirin. Since none of those was immediately available, I settled for rolling over to check on the source of the wheezing breaths coming from behind me.
I still couldn’t see clearly, with only a sliver of moonlight for illumination, but he was swearing inventively enough to make sight irrelevant. Pritkin’s grumblings are the soundtrack of my life these days, but my relief at knowing he was okay was immediately followed by the realization that there was something wrong with his voice. I fought to get free from the enveloping folds of the heavy leather coat I seemed to be wearing and the mud that had latched onto it with vicious suction.
I finally managed it and staggered over to the side of the puddle, dripping, filthy and exhausted, only to meet my own furious blue gaze. “What did you do?!”
I stared in complete shock. My voice wasn’t that high, was it? I sounded like a little girl. A very pissed-off little girl. I was struggling to absorb the fact that my body was sitting there, yelling at me, when a chill wind tickled my neck and wrists and tried to seep under my clothes. I started to tug my sleeves down, but quit when I caught sight of the hands sticking out of them. I stopped moving entirely for a moment after that, except for my ass, which abruptly made contact with the ground.
The cold knife of recognition twisted in my stomach. The things at the end of my arms were a man’s hands. To be more exact, they were Pritkin’s hands, only for some reason I seemed to be wearing them. After a few frozen seconds, when even breathing became difficult, I realized what that bastard Daikoku had done.
