Page 12

T he portal ejected me out of the other side into a sea of sand. The violence of what had to be a seriously malfunctioning gateway sent me flying and then rolling, and came close to flipping me end over end before I grabbed hold of the ground and desperately hung on. And looked up into wildly whipping sand, blowing so hard that it felt like it etched my skin.

Visibility was practically zero, and I was half-buried before I understood what was happening. I thrashed around, trying to get to my feet, but the dunes beneath me were unstable, plunging me up to my knees in shifting soil and all but immobilizing me as soon as I tried to go anywhere. It didn’t help that I could see nothing past scouring yellow veils, hear over the roar of the winds, or feel beyond the lash of the grit-filled gale.

Until a fist of air punched me in the back, sending me sliding down a massive dune along with half of the hillside. But someone else was there at the bottom, someone who was still standing. And who grabbed me as I careened by, scooped me up, and started to run.

I knew without asking that it was Alphonse, as no human could have managed that feat in those conditions. I’d lost track of him in everything, but trust a vampire to have somehow found his way. And to be able to battle a path across a blinding hellscape while holding my head against his chest with one big hand to shield me.

It wasn’t enough—nothing could have been—but the familiar touch was calming. Something that was especially important when I had no idea who else had gotten out of HQ—or if anyone had. There’d been two more of those creatures behind the first, and if one could figure out how to get to us—

The light suddenly dimmed, and the lashing winds cut off as abruptly as if someone had slammed a door. And maybe they had; I couldn’t tell as the damned sand had welded my eyes shut, caked my nose, and left me struggling to breathe out of lungs that felt like they’d been scoured, too. I fought with the crusty mess, finally getting enough out of the way to let me draw in some oxygen and blink around at a small cave.

“You okay?” Alphonse rasped.

I tried to answer, but a coughing fit took me, leaving me hacking up a bunch of sand onto the darker earth of the floor. It joined a thick sifting that had already scattered over everything in sight, but at least that terrible wind wasn’t tearing at us anymore. I couldn’t even see it, as we’d gone around a bend from wherever the door was, but I could hear a loud roar like all the banshees in hell were after us.

It became progressively softer when Alphonse decided that I wasn’t dead yet and started carting me down a tunnel. I didn’t ask where we were going. I was too busy coughing and spitting, trying to get the rest of the dirt out of my lungs and from between my teeth.

It wasn’t easy, as the stuff was everywhere, and the fact that I’d been covered in mud before landing didn’t help. The sand had stuck to the mud, and the mud had stuck to me, and nothing seemed likely to change that. There was also very little light in here, or maybe that was merely the contrast from the blinding glare outside.

Or maybe not. Alphonse must have been finding his way by scent or hearing because my eyes could only pick up dim flickers on the sides of rough stone walls, which got dimmer as we got further away from the chaos. But here and there, I glimpsed watchful shadows, war mages crouched in alcoves or the mouths of tunnels above us, almost lost in the darkness of a higher-than-normal ceiling, although none of them impeded our passage.

It was like something out of time, I thought, staring. The mages, what little I could see of them, were bundled up like Bedouins with long robes, turbans, and heavy scarves hanging in front of their faces, where I guessed they could be drawn up at a moment’s notice to shield them from the sand. In the darkness, they could have been assassins straight out of the Middle Ages, waiting to fall on their enemies with murderous intent.

But I knew what they were; I could feel their magic peppering my skin as we passed by underneath, even when I couldn’t see them. I swallowed a few times in a completely dry throat and felt Alphonse’s hands clench on me slightly. He didn’t like being under their eyes, either.

At least this tunnel wasn’t moving, and it eventually let out into a large, roundish cave with actual spell light ringing the walls and war mages striding about as if they had somewhere to be. Unlike the ones at HQ or the creepy watchers in the tunnel, these wore regular clothes and appeared relatively well-fed. They were also calm, with the usual stoicism on full display, whereas I was about to lose my shit because I hadn’t seen—

“Pritkin?” I gasped at Alphonse as he swung me down. “Where’s—”

Another coughing fit cut me off when I changed position, and we spent a while with the big vamp pounding me on the back. I hacked up sand, mud, and God knew what while he held my hair back from my face like a concerned boyfriend outside a bar. I didn’t care, not about what I looked like, the watching mages, or any of it.

I just wanted to breathe .

I stayed there for a minute afterward, hunched over and gasping, waiting for more. But nothing else came out, including whatever had remained of my breakfast. I was unsure whether that was because I’d been expelling stuff from my lungs instead of my stomach or whether my body had learned the hard way to hold onto food, but either way, I was grateful.

And when I finally looked up, I glimpsed some of the guys intended for the gallows staggering in with a couple of the Bedouins and collapsing by one wall.

They didn’t look any better than I felt, with even the ones still on their feet leaning against the rock as if they’d fall down without it and trembling. All of them were in loincloths or nude, although it almost didn’t matter as they were as caked in mud and sand as I was and so bony that all I saw when I looked at them was a row of dirt-covered skeletons. One of which was cursing.

“Get that damned thing off me!” Jonas threw aside the blanket that a concerned war mage was trying to put around his shoulders.

He sounded older than when I’d last seen him, with the once forceful voice a thin thread on the air. The magnificent mane of hair was different, too, shorn almost off like that of the rest of the men, I supposed by their captors. And the emaciated face was so hollow that it had completely changed shape.

But the fire in the eyes was the same when he spotted me.

“Ah! There she is!” He staggered over and took my filthy face in his hands. “Yes, yes, there she is! ”

It seemed to be all he could say.

“Jonas,” I croaked and was crushed in a hug stronger than I’d have believed the old arms could manage.

Or maybe that was just me, as I had almost no strength left. My legs felt like water after bracing themselves on that crazy ride in a runaway hallway, and my arms were noodle-y from gripping onto Bodil. I wouldn’t have made it if Alphonse hadn’t carted me in.

As it was, I staggered when Jonas released me to grab onto Pritkin, who had just arrived, shedding sand and looking around agitatedly, only to be intercepted on his way over to me. He seemed a little surprised to be embraced by his old boss, as he and Jonas had had a complicated relationship. But all appeared to have been forgiven.

“Cassie?” Pritkin said, looking at me past the old man’s head.

“Okay,” I croaked. It was the best I could do.

He nodded, looking relieved, and then hugged Jonas back. “Are you all right, sir?”

“John! My boy, my boy!”

That sort of thing was all there was for a while, as small groups trickled in, so coated in sand that they looked more like statues come to life than people. I recognized Bodil because of her height; ?subrand for that and the fall of pale hair that he was scratching at like an annoyed cat; Enid for her voice, which was yelling at the knot of witches that had also come along, and who were trying to curse every war mage they saw. They were wild-eyed and seemed confused about what had just happened, or maybe they didn’t care whether the mages here were the good guys or not.

As far as they were concerned, any mage had always been an enemy.

But this group was organized, at least, and we were soon whisked down another maze of corridors to one with a line of spartan bedrooms that reminded me of the ones in the old HQ. They had been little more than burrows carved out of the earth with few amenities except for a bed, a chest for clothes, and a few hooks on the walls that the guys had put up themselves.

This one had no hooks, but it did have an actual, working shower. I’d never been so glad to see anything as my eyes and nose were running, I was still wheezing with every breath, and sand had gotten into places I didn’t even want to think about. Pritkin had been supporting me down the hall and started talking as soon as the door shut behind us, but my ears were too clogged to hear it.

“Give me... a minute,” I gasped, trying to strip off the caked-on armor and mostly failing.

Until he helped me and then helped me some more to get into the shower, which was in an alcove off the main room.

The bathroom, if you could call it that, was tiny, and the shower even smaller. It was also cramped, as it had not been built for two. But I didn’t feel like complaining, especially when my new bath buddy turned me around and started soaping up my nasty hair.

“Oh, God,” I gasped, turning my face to the water and letting it beat against all that dirt. It felt like I was wearing a clay mask, even though Alphonse and I hadn’t been outside for more than a few minutes. But I was lucky I’d been wearing armor and had mud covering most of the bare parts, because the few areas that hadn’t been protected...

Damn! Everything hurt, with biting stings whenever the water hit places where bits of my flesh had been blasted off. And there were a lot of those, as my armor had taken a beating lately and no longer fit perfectly. Wherever one of the gaps had been, a line of rough, red flesh marked the spot.

The marks crisscrossed my body like the lashes of a tiny whip. But Pritkin’s fingers were gentle and soothing on my scalp, which I guessed my hair had protected as it was almost the only thing that didn’t hurt. God, that felt good!

After a while, my body decided to calm down, my pulse returned to something like normal, and my mind stopped racing. The water beat the welts into submission while those talented fingers proved that he had missed his calling; he should have been a masseuse. It was honestly the best I’d felt in a while, and I could have happily stayed that way for hours, if not days.

But I didn’t know how long the water would last in a desert or how much longer I would last without knowing what was going on.

“Rosier,” I finally rasped.

“I saw.” It was grim.

“But did he see you?” I turned to face Pritkin, who still looked like a mud monster, his face and hair running with it as the spray had loosened some dirt. Yet said hair was somehow still reaching for the stars, usually a sign that his magic was surging, whatever he had left of it. The war mages in the cave had looked that way, too, as if they’d just stuck their fingers in a light socket.

But he didn’t look startled so much as pissed. It was a weird contrast to how gentle his touch had been, but it was undeniable, with tension in every line of his body and a storm brewing on his face. That plus the fact that the danger was over, yet his wild mop hadn’t calmed back down...

Yeah, this was going to be fun.

And he didn’t waste any time getting into it. I guessed he’d wanted to be sure I was alive and well before he reamed me out. And that was rich, considering who had started all this!

“No,” he said tersely. “He was too busy running from the gods you summoned up!”

“Pritkin—”

“Demigods are a fine meal these days, and those bastards went straight for you! What were you thinking , deliberately luring up those things —”

“We had to get to Caleb and couldn’t find you—”

“I’d have found you had you stayed put!”

I blinked at that audacity of that, and because soap was trickling into my eyes. “You’re the one who ran off.”

“And I said for you to wait for me. I would have freed Caleb and returned to you—”

I stared at him. “You didn’t say anything! And do you actually expect me to believe that you’d have left Jonas and the rest to—”

“I didn’t know about them then!”

“—die? Because we both know you’d have gone after them, too, with practically no magic and no backup—”

“Did it look like I lacked backup?” The green eyes were wild. “And you summoned gods! ”

I stared at him, hands on hips, which caused me to bark my elbow on the shower’s narrow confines, but I didn’t care. “I might have acted differently if I’d known what you were planning,” I pointed out. “But you ran off without a word—”

“I told you where I was going—”

“You told me nothing! And don’t try to say that my cloak was interfering—”

“Your cloak was interfering,” the bastard insisted stubbornly. “Black and white magic don’t mix, and when you put it on—”

“ Twenty minutes , Pritkin. That’s how long it took me and the witches to find those awful things, dig them up, and get them on. Twenty minutes, and I was trying to contact you the whole time, but you didn’t bother to reply—”

“I deliberately didn’t reply—”

“So you admit it!”

“I state it,” he snapped, the green eyes hard and angry. “You were with people who could have used that signal to trace me, and I didn’t want that! I wanted you safe for once while I dealt with this, but once I realized you were following me anyway—where are you going?”

“To find another damned shower!”

He hauled me back. “There aren’t any more. They had to turf a Corpsman out of this room to accommodate us.”

“Then I’ll stay dirty!” I was being ridiculous, but right then, I didn’t care. “When are you going to accept reality?”

“And what is reality?” The crossed arms weren’t a good sign, but I was too angry right then to care.

“That your job isn’t to protect me anymore. It’s to protect everybody, the whole freaking world, and you can’t do that when you only concentrate on one person!”

“Pot, kettle.”

“What?”

“You know perfectly well what,” he said, the scowl turning thunderous. “You do the same thing. You ended up in that damned fey camp trying to save me!”

And goddamnit, we were back to that again!

The camp that haunted my dreams and Pritkin’s, too, I guessed, because he wouldn’t freaking drop it , had belonged to Aeslynn. He was the fey king who’d been trying to bring back the gods, and I guessed he’d succeeded. Part of his plan had involved kidnapping Pritkin and holding him in one of his military encampments, and Mircea had gotten carried along for the ride, and neither had been likely to survive the experience.

So, I’d gone in after them. I’d gotten them out, but at a price, one that had involved me ending up the prisoner of a bunch of sadistic monsters for a while. In turn, Pritkin and Mircea had helped to rescue me, but the whole thing had left scars.

Enough that I didn’t want to think about it now; I didn’t want to think about it ever.

And Pritkin knew it. Whatever registered on my face caused him to change tactics and veer off in a different direction. But not a better one.

“You proved it again by coming after me tonight and almost getting yourself killed,” he said more quietly.

“Which I wouldn’t have done if you hadn’t run off!” I wasn’t quiet because any recall of that horrible night felt like fingernails raking down my nerves, which weren’t in great shape to begin with.

“Which I wouldn’t have needed to do if I could trust you—”

“To do what? ”

“To listen to me! You used to know how to do that!”

I stared at him, and the fact that water was dripping off his substantial nose in a steady stream did not make the expression any less formidable. He meant every word, and that was not okay. None of this was.

“I used to read tarot in a bar and didn’t know one end of a gun from another,” I reminded him. “You made sure that isn’t the case anymore. You trained me yourself—”

“Yes, for your protection . Not so you could do whatever the hell that was!” He flung out a hand, hit the shower wall, and cursed inventively. “Not to mention that you didn’t have a gun—you didn’t have anything but a bunch of crazed women who never met a fight they didn’t like! The covens are mad, and I was mad to leave you with them and—”

He kept on talking because, despite being pretty taciturn most of the time, when he got going, he could go for a while . But I couldn’t hear him anymore over the roar in my head. I fought Zeus, I thought dizzily.

I took on the father of the gods, one on one, and while I didn’t win, I didn’t lose, either. But Pritkin hadn’t been there; he hadn’t seen it. And despite everything, he insisted on treating me like spun glass.

I didn’t know how to make him stop if everything we’d gone through hadn’t already done that, but I had to figure it out.

We couldn’t go on like this.

“You don’t trust me to handle myself,” I interrupted. “Even though you trained me.”

“I trust you.” It was grim. “In a normal fight, I’d rather have you at my back than anyone else. But this isn’t a normal fight, and you—”

He stopped abruptly, enough that I knew I wasn’t going to like whatever he had to say.

“And I what?”

He stared at me for a moment, but apparently, he thought whatever it was needed to be said. Enough to risk upsetting me when he knew I was already teetering on the edge. But he didn’t look like he was happy about it.

“I’m not the only one who can’t get over that camp, Cassie.”