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I glanced around for a second as fiery motes turned in the air, drifting leisurely toward the floor, as spells streaked the night, still fast but suddenly possible to track with my vision, and as a blow, camouflaged to hide it this time, rippled across the air between my opponent and me, like a heat wave on the desert.

I stepped to the side, watched it go by, and wondered what the hell.“Pritkin?”I whispered, but there was no reply.

Or maybe I couldn’t discern it through the distortion in my hearing, which was no less altered than my vision.I could hear the roar of the surrounding crowd, but distantly, like the surf hitting a beach.It was also slowed down and warped to the point that I couldn’t make out any individual words.Like the sizzle of flying spells, like the beating of my heart, like—

Like a new whisper, not in my ear this time, but in my head.

“Dulceata…”

And just like that, Iknew.Not only that I wasn’t fighting alone, after all, but that someone else had survived the fifty years between when I’d disappeared and this misbegotten hellscape.

I also knew something else.Pritkin hadn’t dissolved the spell linking us, even though every second that he waited could mean his death.And someone else’s because this spell of ours had a third member, forming a triumvirate of power that I had thought lost to time.Our third was supposed to be either dead in another universe or fighting his own battles there, but fifty years is a long time, and if ever anyone was resilient, capable, and fucking hard to kill, it was—

“Mircea,” I whispered, and heard him laugh.

“You are fighting for us all, little one.Show them what that means,” and with the comment came a flash of vampire fangs so clear in my vision that I thought for a second that he was really there.

He wasn’t, but his power was, and the next second, I felt it slam into me so hard that I nearly staggered.

And I guessed the crowd of surrounding witches noticed.Or, at least, they noticed something, probably my eyes starting to glow, which tended to happen when I was hopped up on our triumvirate’s strength.Because they suddenly threw up shields all around the circle where I was, trapping me on one side and everyone else, including Zara, on the other.Because yeah.

They didn’t like gods around here, did they?Not even the low-rent, demi-god variety.And apparently, they didn’t like us enough to change sides abruptly, even those who had been wavering.

Because suddenly, everybody was firing at me.

Crap!

The only thing that saved me was that I was still in the slow-time vamps used when shit had hit the fan, giving me more time to react and allowing me to dodge the maybe three dozen spells crisscrossing the makeshift arena, all zeroing in on me.But I couldn’t avoid this kind of barrage forever, not when more and more witches were getting on the screw-Cassie train by the moment.So I threw up a shield, vaulted over the ring of semi-transparent, light blue barriers in front of me, and tried to grab Zara.

I had no idea how long Mircea’s power might last when it depended a lot on how many of his Children had survived the Apocalypse, which I had no way of knowing.So I needed this fight over with yesterday!But before I could grab the witch who had started this and who was looking at me like she’d just seen a slavering, two-headed ghost, I was met with a combined spell that must have involved half the room.

It hit my shields hard enough to throw me back into the air and over top of the blue wall, and before I could jump to my feet, those damned shields were pressing in everywhere.

I found myself suffocating under a cerulean mountain, with goddamned witches crawling on top of the buzzing energy shields to weigh them down even more and press me closer and closer into a pancake.I couldn’t see anything but hateful, distorted faces, couldn’t expand my chest enough to breathe, and couldn’t shift away even though I might now have the energy because I was about to suffocate!And no matter how much I twisted and fought in my panic, it made no difference.

I was going to die in here, and even Mircea, who was shouting something in my head that I couldn’t focus enough to concentrate on, wasn’t able to save me.

But somebody else was.

I felt the stones move underneath me, felt a sucking sensation I had come to know so well grab me, like a great hand from beneath, and felt myself start to moveintothe ground.And then the portal that had just been ignited under my ass kicked into high gear, and I was sucked down what felt like a raging highway and into a maelstrom of heat and light so intense that I wondered if this was a rescue or another attack.I honestly wasn’t sure, but I grabbed a passing person, one of the witches tumbling through non-space along with me, tight, tight, so very tight, hoping for something to ground me—

And then we were gone.

Chapter Six

Icame back to myself face down on a wet, muddy road.I was lucky to come around at all, as the road appeared to be pretty potholed, and the pits had filled up with the rain that was still bucketing down.My face had come to rest on the edge of one of the larger ruts, leaving me inches away from drowning in the middle of dry land.

And then I was almost run over.

Someone who smelled like Pritkin grabbed me when I tried to sit up and slammed us both flat onto the asphalt again.A large truck passed over top of us, dripping hot water from a leaky radiator onto my head.It would have had me yelping in pain, except that a strong hand was clasped firmly over my mouth.

The truck lumbered on, its patched tires thumping rhythmically down the pitted thoroughfare, and I came up gasping.I clung to Pritkin for a moment, dragging in breath after breath and wondering if my ribs were broken because everything hurt.And still did when he half led, half dragged me off the street before we ended up like road kill.

Instead, we landed in a ditch that was a third full of water, but I didn’t care, because it was also full of air.I just crouched there, getting wetter by the second, and breathed and breathed and breathed.It was glorious!

“Are you all right?”Enid asked, sloshing over to join us.

She was wetter than me but looked better, as the water loved her.Instead of my drowned rat status, her brilliant red hair was a beacon under the boiling gray skies, which looked like it was still day wherever we’d ended up, but was so dark it almost didn’t matter.Her skin was pearlescent, and her hazel eyes were lit up from the lightning flashing overhead.