“I assume they are the cause of the gunshots?” Rafe asked, smoothing my tangled hair.
“They’re doing mercy killings of the experiments,” Marlowe said, sounding amused.
“Now?”
“Why not now?” I asked.
“Because the wards will fail in fifty-three minutes,” Marlowe answered, “rather taking care of the problem.” The ground rumbled under our feet again as if to underscore his words.
“Then why are you two still here? We haven’t found any bodies, so I’m guessing there’s a way out.”
“There are several,” Rafe agreed, glancing at Marlowe.
I turned to find the Senate’s spymaster regarding me thoughtfully. The candlelight gleamed off the small hoop in his left ear and leapt in his dark eyes. I knew that look; I’d been getting it a lot lately. It usually meant,
I wonder if she’s actually stupid enough to fall for this?
And usually, the answer was yes.
“I’m going to hate this, aren’t I?” I asked, resigned.
“Perhaps not.” Marlowe tapped the roll of papers on the desk, which I now realized was a schematic, presumably of MAGIC. “You are here on a rescue attempt?”
“Yeah. Only, so far, we haven’t found anyone to rescue.”
“Most of those who survived the blast have already been evacuated. However, one area remains populated—the mages’ holding cells.”
“The prisoners are still here? Why?”
“A cave-in,” Rafe said. “For security reasons, there is only one way into the cells, and the wards failed in that section.” One long finger traced a line on the map two levels up from our position. “It cut them off from any hope of rescue.”
“We went over the schematics and questioned the mages, but there’s no convenient back door,” Marlowe added. “And the cave-in is too extensive for us to clear in the time we have. Almost the entire length of the passageway was affected.”
I blinked at him. “I must have heard wrong. You remained behind to rescue
humans
?”
He grinned behind his goatee. “Well, one, anyway.”
“What about the others?”
He shrugged. “You can rescue them, too, if you like.”
“Oh, thank you! Now tell me what this is really about.”
“The answer to a prayer,” he said piously.
“You pray?”
“Naturally,” he said innocently. “Of course, I didn’t say to what.”
“Stop teasing her, Kit,” Rafe reproached. He looked at me. “If we are to rescue anyone, we must hurry.”
I decided I could get the story out of Rafe later. “It’s not that simple,” I told them. “Spatial shifting doesn’t work the same as time travel; my power doesn’t give me a preview. Without knowing where I’m going, I could end up inside a wall or, in this case, a bunch of rock.”
“It is thirty meters to the area we believe to be clear,” Marlowe told me.
“You
believe
?”
“The wards are reporting that area as safe. However . . .”
“However, what?”
“They may not be completely reliable. Not with this level of damage.”
I stared at him. “
Not completely reliable
means I could shift into the middle of a rockfall, Marlowe! No guesses—this is going to be hard enough as it is. I have to know!”
He just looked at me, but Rafe’s eyes slid to the right to an area still swathed in utter darkness. A hissing sigh came out of the gloom, and a moment later, the Consul appeared so suddenly that it was almost as if she’d shifted in. I knew better—she’d probably been there all the time, but she’d been so still I hadn’t noticed her. And considering that she was dressed in her everyday outfit of live, writhing snakes, it was a good trick.
Ancient, kohl-rimmed eyes sized me up, and as usual, they didn’t look as if they liked what they saw. “I will tell you
exactly
, Pythia,” she informed me. “And then you will do as we have bid.”
It wasn’t a request. She swept regally out the door and Rafe, Marlowe and I followed. Rafe went downstairs to round up Pritkin and Caleb, while Marlowe and I ran up two flights after the Consul.
The dust became thicker as we ascended, and small siftings of sand were starting to trickle down the walls every time there was a mini-quake. “What happens when the wards go?” I asked as we reached a tumbled mass of stone and dirt at the top of the second flight of steps.
“The levels above this one have solidified into a solid mass,” Marlowe told me. “Without the support of the wards, their weight will crush anything below it.”
“So, no pressure, then.” I stared at the passageway to the left, which, as Marlowe had said, was totally blocked. Red sandstone from the lower levels had mixed with deep yellow from the upper, forming a jumbled mass that didn’t appear to have even a small gap at the top. It was like the corridor had been reabsorbed by the rocks around it.
“We believe that it is blocked almost to the cells themselves, which have an independent ward system for added security,” Marlowe told me quickly.
“I need more than a good guess,” I reminded him.
“You shall have it,” he said, steering me back down a few steps.
We both looked up at the Consul, who remained at the top. “You never saw this,” she ordered.
“Saw what?” I asked, bewildered. She was just standing there, a slim figure who, I suddenly realized, was only about my height. Funny; she’d always seemed taller.
Marlowe’s arm curved around my waist, moving me back even farther right as there was an abrupt burst of motion. Suddenly there were snakes everywhere—a thick mass of black, squirming shapes that boiled up around the Consul’s feet and legs. They swarmed up her body, twined around her neck, flowed over her face and twisted into her hair. A particularly fat one forced its way past her lips and started down her throat, distending the flesh on either side of her neck as it undulated.
“Marlowe! Do something!” I cried, horrified.
He didn’t say anything, but his grip tightened as more snakes appeared and began to cleave her flesh, their black bodies sheathed in red as they forced their way inside her. I could see them moving in writhing patterns under her skin, the small ones pulsing like overfilled veins, larger ones distending her form in ghastly ways as they tunneled inside, seeming determined to consume her. There was a sound like a ripe fruit bursting, and suddenly there was no woman at all. Only a corridor filled with slick, gleaming creatures writhing in a puddle of bloody goo.
“Oh, God!” I stumbled backward and would have fallen without Marlowe’s arm around my waist. I stood transfixed by shock and revulsion as the truth slowly dawned. The Consul was still there; she’d just changed form.
The snakes found holes in the rockfall through which a human could never have fit. We watched them wriggle away, slipping into the earth as easily as water, until they had all disappeared. Then Marlowe slowly lowered me into a seated position.
“Are you going to be sick?”
I shook my head. I was too freaked out to be sick. “I’d heard stories. . . .”
He sat on the step next to me, facing the darkness below, and stretched his legs comfortably out in front of him. “About us turning into mist or wolves or bats?”
“Yes. But I didn’t believe. . . . I thought they were myths.”
“For the most part, they are. There are very few of us who live long enough to acquire the sort of power needed for bodily transformation.” His voice was admiring, as if the Consul had done a particularly nifty parlor trick.“I’ve heard stories that Parendra—the Consul’s Indian counterpart—can do it, too. They say he becomes a cobra.”
I didn’t say anything. I was too busy trying to swallow the lump that had risen in my throat. It felt like I might be sick after all, and then I wondered how the Consul would take that, if she’d be offended when she got back, all hundred pieces of her. . . .
I swallowed the lump back down.
“It can be a little . . . disturbing . . . the first time you witness it,” Marlowe said, glancing at me. “I recall being somewhat taken aback myself.”
Taken aback. Yeah. That covered it.
We sat there for a few moments while precious seconds ticked away. And then she was back. Dozens of dusty, scaly bodies wriggled their way out of gaps in the rockfall and fell onto the sticky floor. I blinked, and the Consul was the Consul again. She staggered over to the far wall and stood there, trembling slightly, looking more shaken than I’d ever seen her. Marlowe started toward her side, but she waved him back.
“It is blocked for thirty-two and one-half meters,” she told me, sounding perfectly composed. “All the way to the mages’ holding cells. Their wards are all that is keeping this level intact, and they will not last much longer.” She looked at Marlowe. “You will accompany the Pythia on her errand.”
I shook my head. “The more people I take with me, the faster my power is drained.” And it was pretty low already.
“And the more desperate men become, the less clearly they think,” Marlowe responded.“These cells are among the most secure in the Circle’s control. As a result, they house the most dangerous criminals. You cannot go alone.”
I wasn’t sure I could go anyway. The idea of shifting into a place I’d never seen was making me feel a little faint, not to mention that I wasn’t entirely clear on exactly how far a meter was. “So, it’s about thirty yards, right?” I said nervously.
Marlowe sighed. “A little over thirty-five. But perhaps you should add one to be safe.”
Right. Like anything about this was safe. But it was either try or accept defeat and go home now. And we were running out of time.
The ground shook again, longer and more violently than before, throwing me to my knees. The vibrations ran through my skin into my bones, doing weird things to my balance even this close to the ground. And then a crack opened up right in front of us, exposing jagged, striated rock, with sand pouring over the edge like water.
Marlowe snatched me back as the floor beneath us completely disintegrated. Vamps don’t fly, but he moved fast enough that it almost felt that way. The next thing I knew, we were down to the curve in the stairs, choking on a billowing cloud of dust.
“Go now!” the Consul ordered. I hadn’t seen her move, but she was somehow beside us. I didn’t wait to see how much more ground we were about to lose, just tightened my grip on Marlowe’s shoulders and shifted.
We landed in another world—cold, sterile and dust-free, with sputtering lights and gray concrete walls. “This way,” Marlowe said, pulling me down a corridor.
We passed a long row of cells, most of which had an occupant. I quickly realized that, unlike in human jails, the people incarcerated here weren’t conscious. They were frozen in some form of stasis, leaning against the walls of their three-foot-deep cells like department store mannequins, staring outward with expressions ranging from startled to angry to defiant.
I stared back at them in mounting concern. Ten, fifteen, twenty—and this was only one half of one corridor. There was likely at least this many in the other direction, and probably more than one passageway. . . .
It was simply impossible. I could feel it in my bones, like the jerking pulse of my own heart. There was simply no way could I shift so many. Even if I’d been well-rested, I could have made only four or five trips, taking out two at a time. As things stood, I’d be lucky to rescue the man the vamps seemed so interested in and still get the rest of my own party out.
We stopped in front of a cell containing a middle-aged man with frizzy brown hair. Marlowe worked to get the ward on his door to release while I glanced at the cells on either side of him. One contained a red-haired woman with a sly, calculating look on her face. The other held another middle-aged man who was losing the fight with male-pattern baldness, despite there being charms for that sort of thing. Maybe he’d been too proud to use them—his expression was certainly haughty enough—or possibly the Circle didn’t allow such vanities in its cells.
Neither of them looked particularly sympathetic, but the thought of what was about to happen to them sent cold chills across my skin nonetheless. This was my doing. Not my fault—I hadn’t told Richardson to betray us, hadn’t thrown the spell that caused this. But if I’d left that meeting when Pritkin had warned me, none of this would have happened. His voice came back to me suddenly:
“They’ll die of starvation or drowning or by being crushed under a mountain of rock.”
I looked into the man’s face and shuddered.
A ward snapped, the buzz ringing in my bones like a struck tuning fork, and the frizzy-haired man tumbled bonelessly into Marlowe’s arms. “How many can you take?” Marlowe asked me.
“I . . . not this many,” I said, admitting the obvious.
“Tell me which ones.”
“Which ones?” I stared at him. “You’re asking me to choose who lives and who dies.”
“Someone has to do it,” he said with a shrug, hoisting the man onto his shoulder. “And the Senate has no stake here. We have the one we want.”
I looked at the red-haired woman again. She had gray eyes that, in the flickering light, seemed almost conscious, almost aware. We stared at each other, her stiff and lifeless as a doll, me as wooden as a carved statue. In a few more minutes, she’d be dead. Or I’d take her and the rest would die. Like the human servants the vampires had housed upstairs, like anyone who had happened to be on the upper levels. It seemed so horribly random.
“There has to be a way,” I said desperately.
“A way to do what?” Marlowe asked, his brow knitting.
“To rescue them. All of them. We can’t just leave them here!”
Marlowe stared at me blankly. “Yes. We can. In approximately forty minutes this entire level will collapse and in the process take out those below it. Your compassion is admirable, but if we don’t leave soon, none of us will get out of here. And I, for one, would miss me.”
“And I’m sure a lot of these people would be missed, Marlowe!”