AllFreeNovel
Share Us
The two men moved off, leaving the girl—a blonde who was drinking in the sight of my boyfriend before I blocked the view—behind. “Is—is there anything you need?” she asked, like she hadn’t just pimped on us to the war mages.
“Yes. Mage Pri—the mage will need some clothes and toiletries. We both will. You can send them up to this room—tomorrow.”
She nodded, tried to see past the hanging, voluminous sleeve of my robe again, failed, and curtsied. I closed the door on her before she finished and rejoined Pritkin on the bed, who had managed to throw the coverlet over his lap, at least. I pulled it up and climbed underneath, after shedding the robe I didn’t need, because the room was now borderline hot. Or maybe that was me.
I snuggled close, and a strong arm went around me. We had a thousand things to talk about, to work out and to work through, but we didn’t say another word. Sleep was pulling at me hard, and there’d be time for that tomorrow. There’d be time for everything.
I’d make sure of it.
Chapter Forty-seven
A bolt of spell fire tore through the big room, and almost tore through me. But I shifted at the last second, leaving it to detonate against the wall, and reappeared behind my assailant. I spun, grabbed her long dark hair as a handle, and pulled out a knife.
Only to see Lizzie’s face suddenly in place of hers, causing me to let go and stagger back.
“Concentrate,” Gertie’s voice boomed. “This is no time to lose focus.”
I’m not losing focus, I thought savagely, and shifted, as half a dozen more dangers converged on me.
“Human weapons have their uses,” Gertie’s voice was saying, as I reappeared, panting, behind a column. “As do magical ones. Specifically, they are good for saving your strength, since they cost very little power to deploy.”
Another brunette threw a magical snare at me, but I shifted it out of the air and behind her, and the lariat-looking device grabbed hold of her torso and wrapped her up like a mummy. She could have shifted out of the trap, but it took her by surprise. Leaving me plenty of time to stab my dagger into her chest, only I didn’t.
I told myself that it was because two more adepts had just targeted me, but their spells flew through the air where I’d just been, not on the ground where I’d just hit. I’d slammed myself down beside the bound girl, who, like me, looked completely freaked out by all this. Her eyes were huge as she stared at the dagger in my hand, which was shaking along with it. I said a bad word and threw the damned thing away, then shifted the mummy girl into the two adepts springing for us through the air.
And, okay, this was not how I’d assumed the Pythian Court did their training sessions! I understood the concept of live fire training. Human armed forces used it all the time, because otherwise, soldiers might freak out the first time they had real ammo coming at them. But this was insane.
Seriously, what the hell? I thought, as the force of my shift sent the bound girl flying sideways into the two acolytes, blowing them off their feet and into the warded will-kill-you-if-you-touch-it barrier, because this arena of horrors wasn’t bad enough on its own.
They hit, the ward flashed, and their bodies burst into a haze of ash. I could feel it on my skin, taste it on my tongue, gagged on it as it caught in my throat. I tried to avoid losing my lunch, which thankfully I hadn’t eaten much of anyway, and mostly succeeded.
Mostly. “Guns, knives, and magical snares allow you to dispose of or trap an opponent without using up your reserve of strength,” Gertie’s voice continued, as if nothing had happened. “But they can also give away your position and thus leave you vulnerable for a moment—and a moment is all it takes.”
No shit, I thought, and then screamed as a bunch of fiery arrows flew at my head. I didn’t see who’d sent them; didn’t care. I just threw a time bubble that aged the wood to nothing, using up all their fuel. Which left little puffs of fire going off all around me, like silent fireworks. It was disorienting, but not as much as the spell that hit me right afterward.
Goddamn it!
The ballroom, where we were having our little afternoon in hell, suddenly tilted wildly. I was standing on the ground, or to be more precise, I was crouching behind a sofa, but that’s not what it felt like. It felt like I’d just gotten shoved out of a 747 cruising at 35,000 feet, without a parachute.
I screamed again, but not because of the spell. But because I knew what was coming. Jo had already acquainted me with what it felt like to get stabbed in the chest, and I could really do without a repeat. Or being electrocuted by the barrier. Or being garroted by the big acolyte, who I’d been told was only sixteen but who could have linebacked for any pro football team. Hell, she was bigger than some of the war mages, and she loved her little bit of string.
I loved keeping my head on my body, so I wasn’t real thrilled to see her heading my way.
“The Pythian power is inexhaustible. You are not,” Gertie intoned, because that was all I needed. “Reserve your strength at all costs; it may be what saves your life.”
No, what would save my life is getting out of here, I thought viciously. But since that wasn’t possible, I shifted to the grand piano, which looked like a Picasso drawing, thanks to my wonky head. Or maybe that was the angle, because my shifting abilities had also been screwed up by the disorienting spell, and I was a little off target.
Like maybe twelve feet in the air off, before I dropped like a stone to smash into the delicate wooden bench seat. I hit the ground in the midst of a pile of carved wooden shards, one of which had stabbed my calf—thank you, Gertie! And all of which I shifted blindly, not being able to tell what was happening, just that a large blur was headed for me at a run.
My vision cleared a moment later, I didn’t know why. And then I did, when the blur resolved itself into five acolytes who had been running and were now sliding across the marble floor on rivers of their own blood. Because I’d just shifted the equivalency of a couple dozen wooden stakes into their bodies.
They slid at me, their eyes going glassy, their hands still outreached, while the spell one of them had used on me died along with the caster.
I didn’t scream this time; I didn’t make any sound at all. One of the girls slid straight into me, and all I could do was to scramble back, my nose running, my eyes watering, and vile-tasting stomach acid dribbling down my chin. She was the blonde from the previous night, the nosy one with the pretty curtsy.
Never learned how to curtsy properly, I thought dazedly, although my governess had tried her best to teach me. The same one who had ended up in pieces scattered all over the floor after Tony finished with her. Like my parents, who’d been blown apart in a car bomb he had set. Like Pritkin, getting cursed by the demon council, halfway through a leap, his body crashing lifeless to the floor—
I screamed, holding my head, as picture after picture out of my past flew at me, hammered at me, beat on me. It was so much like my dreams, like the nightmares that sent me sitting bolt upright in bed, sweat slicking my skin, or the visions that had paralyzed me in panic attacks for years, that it took me a moment to realize that it was another spell. One I didn’t know how to throw off, because my knowledge of regular magic was close to zero.
