Page 146 of Fortune's Blade

“It is the closest thing to a portable ley line sink that exists,” that same small voice said, sounding offended.

But not as much as Ray was. “Portable my—we’ve been sitting on a nuclear bomb this whole time!”

Everyone looked at him.

“I do not think they know what a nuclear bomb is,” Louis-Cesare volunteered.

“I don’t give a damn what they know! They know boom, right? You know big fucking boom—”

“Which is why it can power a city,” the queen said, shutting him down. She might be small, but she had a presence, there was no denying that.

“Could power,” Antem said. “Before Steen and his people interrupted us, a group of your best magic workers were trying to contain the breech. But the fight intervened and now it has gone on for too long. We have to get out!”

“Go, then. My guards are seeing to the evacuation, with the help of Lord Rathen’s people.” Her eyes narrowed and her lips suddenly curved into a vicious smile. “I have something else to do.”

“But the portal—”

“The Pythia has it handled.”

“Cassie is here?” Louis-Cesare interrupted, sounding hopeful for the first time.

“And?” Ray said. “What can one person do against half the dragons in Faerie?”

Radella only laughed. And then a new image rose in front of my eyes, whether from the Pythia’s mind or the queen’s I didn’t know, but it showed the mouth of the portal from head on and above, as I had briefly seen it when it caught us in the cave. Only . . . things looked a little different now.

The ghostly spiral was surrounded by what had to be a hundred dragons. Enough that their enormous size and wingspan almost filled the great cave. They looked as ferocious as they had in the arena, but strangely beautiful, too. Their savagery was its own sort of beauty, with talons outstretched and shining in the portal’s light, maws gaping, fire-lit eyes glowing, and scales of every hue and configuration gleaming—

But not moving. The portal was still churning beneath them, but they looked like a fixed tableau, except for a few tiny exceptions. I saw a piece of wing, tattered from the battle for the city, fluttering as if in slow motion; a few coronas seeming to expand in the growing light; and a handful of dust mites spiraling gently toward the portal’s heart.

But all of it was slowed to the point that it might have been a static painting on a wall.

Caught ‘em in a slow-time spell, I remembered the Pythia saying. And immediately revised my estimate of the small woman with the questionable makeup skills. But Ray was less impressed.

“And what happens when the spell ends and they blow the fuck outta that portal? And strand everybody on the other side? Dorina went through that thing!”

“They can’t blow it up,” the queen said. “This isn’t a normal portal with a talisman to destroy. It’s sitting on top of a ley line sink—the same one we use as our ‘gas pump’. That’s how I knew about this place when Lord Mircea asked. We come back here often to—”

She broke off as the picture skewed even more heavily to the side, throwing them all into a wall. It looked as if the whole place was coming down around their ears. The queen flew off without another word, still hugging her child, and our party pounded in the other direction, I assumed looking for a space big enough for the dragonkind to change and carry them away.

And then to one side, I suddenly glimpsed—

“There she is!” the Pythia said, spotting my body at the same time I did, in Ray’s arms. And the next second I spotted something else—her missing limb, which appeared in the air above them and took a swipe.

She grabbed for my hair, Ray yelped and jerked back, and she reoriented herself and tried again. But he had spotted the danger now and a master vampire is fast. Faster than her it seemed.

“Tell him . . . to stay still,” she gasped at Marlowe.

“Like he’ll listen to me!”

“He better.” It was grim. “I’m running on empty here. I opened a small portal to save power, piggybacking off the big one, but I can’t hold it forever. And if I have to go get her, I may not have enough power to shift back. So, call him off!”

“I can’t call him off. He isn’t one of my family. He doesn’t answer to—”

“Ray!” I yelled, and his head jerked up. His eyes scanned the space, and then narrowed in fury.

“Marlowe? You son of a bitch! What are you doing?”

“It isn’t Marlowe,” I said. “It’s me, Dorina. And I need my body.”