I don’t know if he was panicking or if he thought we were playing an elaborate game of chicken. But if it was the latter he was in for a surprise. Because I couldn’t shift again, could barely tell which way up was, a fact not helped by the unmistakable feel of the SUV beginning to slide sideways off the hood.
“Francoise!” I hoped she had an idea, but all I got back was a stream of four-hundred-year-old French invective.
And then the bumping and the sliding and the earsplitting shriek of metal on metal suddenly stopped. As did the SUV, despite the fact that the limo continued on its crazy zigzag course through traffic. I realized with a lurch that we were somehow floating a dozen feet or so off the ground, wafting in the general direction of the curb like the giant leaf we weren’t.
“Telekenetic, remember?” Alfred asked as we touched down.
Francoise scrambled out of the car so fast that she fell into the road. “I like ze horses!” she screamed, apparently addressing traffic. “Thees form of travel, it ees insane!”
I extricated myself from the backseat and stumbled out onto the pavement. Everything was a big, pale blur, and since I’d never shifted anything that large before—hadn’t even known it was possible—I had no way of knowing how long it would be before the exhaustion would subside enough for me to get us out of here. But Jesse was in the limo that was fast disappearing into traffic, and if I didn’t at least try to get him back, I didn’t know how I’d ever face Tami again.
“Stop them!” I told Alfred.
“How?”
“The tires!” He nodded and sent a narrow-eyed look the limo’s way. For a moment, nothing happened, and then both of the back tires blew simultaneously. The already smoking rear end of the car hit the ground, dragging a river of sparks behind it for a few seconds before veering off the road and slamming into a light pole. It bounced off, did a 180 and ended up back in the middle of traffic.
“Get back to Dante’s,” I told Francoise while digging around in my purse for the gun. “Help the kids.”
“And who will ’elp you?”
“I can take care of myself.” It might have sounded more convincing if I could have completely focused my eyes. She didn’t say anything, just stood there with crossed arms. “Francoise! Please!”
“I can get us back,” Alfred offered.
“’E probably drives bettair zan me,” Francoise agreed.
I glanced from the limo, which was now rocking slightly side to side, to Alfred, who stared back placidly. The kid had to be on Prozac or something. “Stay on the main drag. Don’t break any traffic laws or do anything to draw attention to yourselves.” Other than the fact that the SUV’s doors were all stubbornly open. “And, uh, tell Tami I’ll explain when I get back.”
Francoise and I darted into traffic and Alfred pulled out behind us. Neither was as dangerous as it sounds, because thanks to the big black barrier in the road, nobody was going anywhere. The horns were deafening, and even worse, a few people were starting to get out of their cars. The police couldn’t be far behind.
Alfred did a highly illegal U-turn over the fake grass in the median and was out of there before Francoise and I even reached the limo. I wrenched open the nearest door, which in Alice’s absence had stayed properly closed, and leapt inside. “Cassie!” I heard Jesse’s voice but couldn’t respond because I had a mage on top of me and another was trying to wrestle me for my gun. There was also a lot of kicking going on.
I kneed the mage somewhere painful and came up for air. “Jesse, grab my hand!” I had only one free, but one was all I needed. I waved it wildly in the air.
“What about the others?” he demanded.
“I have the others!”
“You found the other car?”
I stared down the length of the limo at him over the top of the mage’s head. He’d given up on magic in favor of trying to choke me to death. “Other car?” I croaked. Oh, shit. I’d forgotten there were supposed to be two limos.
“They separated us so they’d outnumber us! Tell me you already found the other one!”
He looked eerily like his mother all of a sudden. I was distracted by a couple of guns zeroing in on my cranium, but Francoise said something that sent them flying. Then the driver somehow lurched the limo forward a foot or two, sending us all tumbling backward.
I slipped out from under the would-be choker, crawled behind a mage who had wrestled Francoise to the floor, and hit him on the head with the butt of my pistol. Unfortunately, that works better in the movies, because all it did was make him mad. But he did let Francoise go in favor of lunging at me, giving her a chance to clock him with a still-intact bottle of Pernod.
Shields were difficult to use in such a tight space, as there was little enough room to move as it was, but that didn’t stop the mages from waving lethal weapons around. One of them leveled a gun on me at the same moment I turned mine on him. We froze, both of us looking at the other.
“Well. This is awkward,” I said as Caleb glowered at me.
“I don’t want to kill you,” he said, and it actually sounded sincere.
“Ditto.” I swallowed. “Only, see, you have someone I kind of want back.”
He ignored that. “The warrants for you don’t specify that you have to be brought in alive, but it would certainly be my preference.”
“It wouldn’t be mine,” I told him truthfully. A quick death by spell or gunshot was probably a lot more pleasant than what the Circle would do if they got their hands on me with no witnesses.
He frowned. “You’d receive a fair trial. If the charges against you are in error—”
“The charges against me are a bunch of crap,” I said with feeling.
“Cassie!” Jesse sidled up next to me. “We have to go!”
“What about the other mages?” It wasn’t like I could turn around to see for myself.
“Francoise and I got ’em. Goddamn, she can fight!”
“Don’t swear,” I said automatically.
The frown on Caleb’s face got a little bigger. “I’m not afraid to die,” he told me, his weapon steady. “Can you say the same?”
I gripped Jesse’s T-shirt a little tighter and grabbed Francoise’s arm. “Hell, no,” I told him, and shifted.
We ended up outside the car, which was better than I’d feared, but not anywhere near as good as I’d hoped. I’d been aiming for Dante’s, but apparently I didn’t have enough juice left for that. It was a problem, but not as big of one as the second limo that had pulled up and was spewing mages all over the asphalt. It looked like someone had found time to call for backup.
“I keep telling you I should be carrying,” Jesse said accusingly.
“Shut up!”
I tried to shift again but this time got nowhere. Even worse, the mages had spotted us. It was like their heads were all on a string: suddenly, every eye was fixed on me. I needed a plan, but I didn’t have time for one. I just knew that keeping Jesse with me was the best way to get him killed. I pushed the boy at Francoise. “Get him out of here!”
She didn’t ask questions. She shoved something into my pocket and simultaneously muttered a word that caused a burst of light that blinded me. I felt her rip Jesse out of my grip and heard the sound of shoes crunching glass underfoot as they took off.
I decided that the best thing I could do to help her was to give the mages another target—one with a much higher bounty attached. Before the blinding light had faded, I turned on my heel and ran in the opposite direction. Right into Marco.
He caught me by the shoulders and shook me like a dog, obviously ready to rip me a new one. But then the light faded and he glimpsed the tide of dark shapes surging toward us. He snarled, baring a lot of fang, and shoved me behind him.
I bounced off his friend’s chest, which was thankfully back in one piece, as Marco turned the Shroud of Night loose on the mages. It flew straight at them, its deep, inky nothingness making the surrounding night look like high noon by comparison. But rather than being the size of a sheet, it now covered half the road.
Marco started forward, gun drawn, but I grabbed his arm. “Let’s get out of here!”
“Sure,” he responded as the darkness cut through the mages’ shields like they weren’t even there. Marco’s buddy tossed him an M16. “In a minute.”
I grabbed the muzzle of the freakishly large gun. “What are you doing?”
“Like shooting fish in a bucket,” he said with relish.
“You can’t kill them!”
“Wanna bet?”
“Marco!”
He raised an eyebrow in a way that reminded me eerily of Mircea. “And what do you think they had in mind for you?”
It was a reasonable question, but it also wasn’t the point. “I’m trying to keep the Circle intact,” I told him as the Shroud boiled over the ground like a black mist. I assumed the mages were fighting to get out, but there was no sign of it from where we stood. No sound, no gunfire, no spells, no light. Nothing.
At least it hid us from the traffic, I thought, as Marco stared at me.
“Are you crazy?” He looked like he was seriously starting to worry about me.
“It’s complicated,” I said, marveling at the understatement. “But you can’t go around shooting mages.”
“Why not?”
It was obvious Marco wasn’t going to give up on his proposed slaughter without a damn good reason. So I gave him one, although he didn’t seem to understand my explanation about the vengeful god and the portal to another world and the ancient spell that the Circle supported that was the only thing keeping it closed. To give him credit, he did grasp the major point though.
“You’re saying you got to keep alive the very people who want you dead?”
“That’s what I’m saying.”
“That sucks.”
“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.