Claimed by Shadow

Chapter 9

Pritkin looked as if he was trying to determine whether I was genuinely crazy, or just temporarily insane. "Do you remember what that place contains?" he asked in a savage undertone, gesturing at the dark outline of MAGIC. "If we had every war mage in the corps, it wouldn't be enough!”

Billy was nodding violently behind Pritkin's head. "Listen to the mage, Cass. He's talking sense.”

I didn't even try to persuade Billy to do something for Tomas. He'd never liked him, even before the betrayal, which because of our arrangement he viewed as an attack on himself as well as on me. I glanced at Mac but didn't see much in the way of encouragement. He seemed like a fairly sympathetic guy, but he was also Pritkin's friend, not to mention that there was no love lost between mages and vamps. They tolerated each other, but they didn't risk their necks for each other.

I sighed. "If none of you want to help, then wait here. I'll manage without you." Tomas was not dying tonight.

"He tried to kill you!" Pritkin had apparently decided to reason with me.

"Actually, he tried to kill you. He thought he was helping me; he's just not that bright sometimes.”

Pritkin moved, but Mac was suddenly there, a hand on his friend's chest. "Throwing her over your shoulder isn't going to help, John," he said quietly. "I don't know what this vampire is to her, but if we let him die I think we can kiss the Pythia's help goodbye.”

"She is not Pythia yet," Pritkin said, teeth clenched so tight that I don't know how he got the words out. "She's a foolish child who-”

I started down the incline, wondering if I really had gone mad, but within seconds a Pritkin-shaped bulk appeared in front of me, blocking my way. "Why are you doing this?" he demanded, looking genuinely confused. "Tell me you're not in love with him-that you're not about to risk our lives because of some vampire's seduction techniques!”

I paused. I wasn't sure what to call the stew of emotions Tomas inspired, but I didn't think it was love. "He was my friend," I said, trying to explain so Pritkin would understand- which was difficult since I wasn't sure I did. "He betrayed me, but in his own warped view of things he thought he was helping me. He endangered my life, but he also saved it. I guess we're sort of even.”

"Then you don't owe him anything.”

"This isn't about what I owe him." And it wasn't. I wanted to rescue Tomas, but, I realized with sudden clarity, I also wanted something else. "It's about making a statement. Someone who is known to be important to me is being publicly humiliated, tortured and killed. Yet no one- not the mages, not the Senate, not a single individual in the supernatural community-ever once thought to ask my permission!”

"Your permission?" Pritkin looked dumbfounded. "And precisely why would they need that?”

I looked at him and shook my head. Screw this. If I had to deal with all the downsides of the office, it was about time I had a few of the perks, too. "Because I'm Pythia," I said quietly, and shifted.

I had assumed the Senate would be using its own chamber for this, and I'd been right. The usual echoing vastness was empty no longer. The huge mahogany slab that served as the Senate table was still there, although it had a new purpose now. The chairs that normally lined one side had been moved, arranged in a semicircle in front of the table. Behind them were row upon row of benches, crowded with weres, mages and vamps. The only no-shows were the Fey, unless they looked so much like the mages that I couldn't tell them apart. After my experience at Dante's, I kind of doubted that.

I had landed right where I'd planned, directly beside Tomas. I wasn't interested in subtlety, although there would have been no way to manage it in any case; I had to touch him in order to shift us away. Jack had stepped back a few feet when I flashed in, and to my surprise he made no move to grab me.

My eyes automatically scanned the rows, looking for one face in particular. I found him easily, sitting at the end of the front row of seats in the position nearest me. Mircea's stylish black suit was perfect in cut and fit, and the pale gray banded-collar shirt he wore under it was silk. Platinum cufflinks that shimmered faintly in the lamplight constituted his only jewelry. He looked as elegant and in control as always, but his aura was fluctuating wildly. It spiked when he saw me, but he made no move forward.

Behind him, many of the spectators had overturned their chairs in haste to get to their feet. The Consul stood with one hand up, some sort of signal to hold them off, I guessed. Each group's area inside MAGIC was sacrosanct, the same way an embassy on foreign soil belongs to its host government. The weres and mages had to behave themselves on vamp territory or they violated the treaties that protected them and it was open season.

I felt Sheba wake up and start licking a paw on my left shoulder blade. She was ready to rumble-too bad there was only one of her and about a thousand of them.

"Cassandra, you have returned to us." As always, the Consul appeared perfectly serene. The only movement was her outfit, which consisted of bare skin covered by a lot of writhing snakes. It was little ones this time, none longer than a finger, who slipped over her like a shimmering second skin. "We have been concerned for you.”

Something suddenly rippled across me, an odd, skin-prickling sensation. It didn't hurt, but I didn't know what it was, and under the circumstances that wasn't good. I decided not to hang around and find out.

"I bet. Wish I could stay and chat, but maybe next time." I gripped Tomas' shoulder tighter and tried to shift, but nothing happened. I didn't feel the slightest surge of my power, even though it had been bright and strong just moments before.

"You cannot shift, Cassandra," the Consul said in her habitual even tones. She had a good voice, well modulated and slightly husky. A guy would have probably found it sexy; I was having a very different reaction.

Tomas moved slightly and I looked down at him. "It's a trap," he croaked weakly. "They said you would come for me. I didn't believe it-there was no reason. Why did you come back?" The anguished cry seemed to sap his strength and he collapsed into unconsciousness. I stared at the Consul, who looked calmly back, no hint of apology visible on that beautiful face.

Tomas was alive, but his wounds were bad-very bad. He was laid out on the dark wood like some bizarre form of art-something Picasso might have painted if he was in the habit of putting his nightmares on canvas. This might have been a trap, but it was obvious that, if I hadn't shown up, the Senate would have let Jack kill him. They probably planned to do so anyway, now that he'd served his purpose.

I narrowed my eyes at the Consul, but she made no response. I'd seen her kill two ancient vampires with little more than a look, when they were farther from her than I currently was. But I felt no sting of desert sand against my face, no warning rush of power. It suddenly occurred to me that, in a room full of magical creatures, I felt no magic at all.

"You used a null bomb on me, didn't you?”

The Consul smiled. It wasn't a nice expression. "You overlooked a few.”

Considering everything, I didn't feel much like apologizing for taking their stuff. "Well, damn. I'll try to be more thorough next time.”

"We don't have time for verbal sparring," an old mage interrupted, glaring at me. "The effect won't last much longer, and you know we can't afford to explode another-”

One of the Senate members, a brunette in hoop skirts, picked him up by the throat, choking off his voice as she hoisted him into the air. She looked inquiringly at the Consul, but the Senate leader shook her head. The damage was done. All I needed was to stall long enough for the spell to break. Then my power could get Tomas and me out of this. Unfortunately, I had no idea how long that might take.

"Look, all I want is Tomas," I told her. "You were about to kill him, so I guess you won't miss him.”

My attempt to start a dialogue fell flat. "I wish this were not necessary, Cassandra," the Consul said quietly. She glanced at the vampires around her, some of the most powerful on the planet. "Take her," she said simply.

I didn't try to run. There was no point. Under other circumstances, it would almost have been funny. What did she think I was going to do that would require half a dozen first-level masters to stop? Without my power and with my ward acting up, the youngest vamp in the place could make me into dinner with no problem at all.

Then I realized that I wasn't the one she was worried about.

"Remove it!" Mircea had stopped short of the table, and although his face was impassive, his fists were clenched at his sides. Not a good sign on someone who normally controlled himself so well. The other vamps seemed to agree. They weren't looking at me-every eye was riveted on him.

"Mircea." The Consul walked up behind him and placed a smooth bronze-skinned hand on his shoulder. It looked like it was meant as a calming gesture, but he shrugged it off. The circle of vamps drew in a collective breath, and the southern belle actually gasped. The Consul's hand quickly became an arm around his throat, but it was as if he didn't even notice. "I suggest you heed him," she told me. I noticed that, despite her grip, Mircea was making slow progress forward, if only by inches. "What do you hope to gain by allowing this to continue?”

"Allowing what to continue?" I looked from her to Mircea in mounting confusion, only to see his calm facade slip a little more. I didn't need her to tell me that something was wrong. His face was as white as bone, but his eyes burned like two candles.

"This has gone on long enough," the Consul agreed. "Release him, and we will discuss matters amicably. Otherwise…”

"Otherwise what?" I might not understand what was happening, but I knew a threat when I heard one.

"I will let go," she said quietly. "Then we will see if you can deal with the results of your revenge. We have been doing it long enough." The dark eyes flashed, and I suddenly understood how she'd dominated an empire when only a teenager. "I need him, Cassandra! We are at war. I cannot have him like this, not now.”

"Cassie…" Mircea had somehow managed to lift his right arm, despite the fact that a Senate member almost as old as the Consul was hanging off it. Tendrils of sensation radiated outward from his hand like smoke from a fire. At first I thought he was just leaking power, but then one wisp brushed against me and I understood. It felt like one of my old visions, the kind in which I saw flashes of the future. They had been absent since my run-in with the Pythia, and I had wondered whether they were gone for good. I'd half hoped so. They had been a part of me for as long as I could remember, but they'd never shown me anything good. This was no exception.

A fragment of vision curled around my arm despite my best attempt to dodge it. It was so hot that I expected to see a welt rise on my skin. What I got instead was worse-a mosaic of images, each more cruel than the last: a blood-covered Mircea battling for his life in a swordfight almost too fast to see; a triumphant-looking Myra running from the shadows to throw something at him; an explosion that was more felt than heard, reverberating through the ground and tearing the air; and then, where two elegant fighters had been, a sodden mass of flesh and bone gleaming slick and red in low light, so mixed up that it was impossible to tell where one body began and the other ended.

I screamed and jerked away, causing the scene to shatter. I stumbled backward, too desperate to get away from the images to worry about dignity. I stared around frantically, but most of the vamps were still fixated on Mircea. A few spared me a puzzled glance, but none looked as if they had seen anything unusual, much less the gory death of one of their senior members. But there was no doubt in my mind what I'd witnessed. Somewhere, somewhen, Myra had succeeded.

It felt like someone had dumped a bucket of ice cubes into my stomach. My visions always came true-always. I'd tried to change the outcome of things before, especially when I was younger. I'd gone to Tony numerous times to report upcoming disasters, believing him when he swore he would do everything in his power to stop them. But, of course, the only thing he'd ever done was to figure out how to profit from them. And, in the end, everything had always happened exactly as I'd foreseen. The same held true for a vision I'd seen as an adult, when I tried to warn a friend of his impending assassination. I didn't know whether he'd received the message or not, but it hadn't mattered. He still died.

But all that was before I became Pythia, or, at least, her heir. I had changed things since then, hadn't I? And, if Myra had won, why was Mircea still here?

I finally focused on the Consul. I needed answers and Mircea was in no shape to give them to me. "What is going on? Is this a trick?" Even as I said it, I knew it wasn't. I'd had enough visions to know the real thing when I felt it.

The Consul's eyes narrowed to slits. "Do you play with me?" she demanded, so quietly that I hardly heard her.

I looked down at Tomas and drew in a sharp breath. I wasn't the one playing here. "I want Tomas," I said, more unsteadily than I liked. "You obviously want something, too. Tell me what it is and maybe we can make a trade.”

"You don't know." I finally saw emotion cross that lovely face. It was surprise.

Tomas made a small sound and I lost it. "Just tell me!" The vision had shattered my nerves, and I didn't feel like chatting while Tomas slowly bled out.

The Consul took a breath, which she didn't need, and nodded. "Very well. Remove the geis you placed on Lord Mircea, and I will give you the traitor.”

I goggled at her. "What?" Somewhere along the line, I'd missed something. "The only geis around here is the one he put on me! It's been causing me hell.”

"Hell?" Mircea laughed abruptly, but it was mirthless. "What do you know of hell?" He tore free of his living restraints and dropped to the floor. Two vamps dove under the table after him, but I never saw how close they came. All I know is, it wasn't close enough. I was suddenly crushed against a hard chest. "Try mine," he whispered before catching my lips in a bruising kiss.

The punch of his emotions came clearly through the geis, hitting me like a kick to the stomach. The same energy that arced between us whenever we met thrummed through Mircea, only it had grown. This was no vague frisson of passion. The craving had lain smoldering, waiting for the proper fuel, and now it ignited into a roaring blaze. It was like drowning in a river of molten lava. I felt it in his veins for an instant, pleasure as sharp as pain, before it poured into mine in a scalding wash of desire. I felt myself flounder, falling into heat, falling away from thought to a place that was all-consuming sensation. Fire. Sweet fire.

The kiss was hard and brutal, as if he would eat me alive. There was nothing gentle about it, nothing romantic. And it was just what I wanted. My hands closed convulsively on his shoulders, my nails digging into his coat. His mouth was relentless on mine, fierce and insistent, and a hard hand slid behind my head to hold me in place. One of his fangs nicked me and I tasted my own blood. He made a strangled cry and pulled back, his eyes wild, his face beautifully feral.

His tongue darted out to taste my blood on his lips; then his eyes closed and he shuddered. I ripped open his collar and his head tilted, almost blindly, towards the ceiling, giving me better access. My hands tore at his shirt, popping buttons, while my tongue and lips slid down the cords of his neck. My palms traced the contours of his chest and trailed along his ribs, reveling in the fact that his breath quickened under my touch. I kissed a path across the taut skin and hard muscle to a nipple, and when I bit down, he let out what was almost a scream. I knew how he felt-the energy between us sang in time with the throbbing of my pulse and I felt like I could combust at any moment.

Mircea pushed me against the sandstone wall of the chamber, but I was held there more by the physical impact of those fire-lit eyes than by the body pressing against mine. I looped a leg around one of his and slid a hand to the nape of his neck, molding myself to him. His hands dropped below my waist and lifted, and I gasped as his arousal pressed full against me. He was large and hard and it felt wonderful, but I wanted more. It seemed that he did, too, because he gasped my name in between savage, hard kisses, ran a hand through my hair and over my face, cursed in Romanian and generally forgot about dignity. I wasn't doing any better myself, making inarticulate demands whenever I could catch a breath.

I found myself straddling one of his legs, my thigh tight against his groin. Even through our clothes, the sensation was unbelievable: a combination of raw pleasure and yearning hunger. But then he wrenched away, abruptly putting inches between us. His expression was desperate and he looked almost ill, as if racked by the same need that tormented me. Yet, when I reached for him, uncomprehending, he flinched away as if my touch was painful.

Immediately the geis showed both of us what pain really was, flaring into a white-hot heat. Pain beyond imagination slammed into me, ripping from my throat scream after scream that all but shredded my vocal cords. The blood burned under my skin until I thought I would die from unfulfilled need. Hot tears fell over my cheeks onto Mircea's hands as he gripped my face, trying to calm me. But nothing helped; the pain was literally unbearable. My knees gave out when the screams stopped spearing me upward, and Mircea caught me as I sagged against him.

"Mircea! Please…" I didn't know what I was asking for, only that he make it stop, make it better. I closed the small distance between us and kissed him desperately. I had a few seconds to delight in the familiar warmth of his mouth and the clean scent of his flesh before he jerked back.

"Cassie, no!" It sounded tight, like he was forcing the word out. He put both hands on my upper arms, holding me away from him, but they trembled, and the strong column of his throat worked in a silent swallow. He was fighting the geis, I finally realized, but I couldn't help him. His hands moved up to cradle my head, smoothing my hair. The pain and pleasure together were devastating. My body was wracked by alternating surges of agony and ecstasy, and my pulse roared so loudly in my ears that I could hardly hear.

Just when I thought I would tip over the brink into insanity, the energy flared and reformed into something completely new-a sparkling brilliance, like water under a desert sun. It broke over us like a tidal wave, and the pain was simply gone. In its place was an overwhelming sense of relief, followed by a rush of pure joy. I saw the astonishment in Mircea's eyes as it broke over him, too.

I realized abruptly that more tears were streaming down my face. It wasn't from memory of the pain, but from how good, how safe I felt being near him. It was every dream I'd ever had rolled up into one-home, family, love, acceptance-and so exhilarating that it blinded me to everything else. For an instant, I forgot about Tomas and Myra, about Tony and my whole laundry list of problems. They didn't seem to matter anymore.

I shook in dawning comprehension. I wasn't simply attracted to Mircea. Attraction didn't feel like this, didn't destroy my ability to breathe, didn't make me ache, didn't make me feel hopeless and desperate at the thought of being apart from him. I clung to him, knowing there was no way he could possibly return my feelings unless a spell compelled him, and I didn't care. It didn't matter if he loved me back. I craved him like a drug, needed him to feel alive and whole. Much more of this and I would do anything, anything at all, never to be parted from him again.

I felt an answering emotion in the tightness of his grip and finally understood. It seemed that passion was only one of the tricks in the geis' repertoire, and not the most devastating. Not by half.

"When did you place the spell?" the Consul demanded.

I gazed at her blankly, having forgotten she was even there. My thoughts were thick and sluggish, the very air around me heavy, and I had to fight to understand the question. I considered my options and they were sobering. "I don't know" wasn't likely to go over well, but pointing out the obvious fact that the Consul was mistaken wasn't likely to do any better. I had no idea what answer might satisfy her, or how long I needed to stall. And Mircea jabbing something into my rib cage wasn't helping.

I looked down to see that the offending object was a pale pink high heel that he must have been concealing in an inner pocket of his coat. It was oddly fragile looking, with the delicate satin material starting to flake off in places and a few darker colored sequins hanging by threads. It looked like an antique, except for the design. I didn't think they made three-inch spiked heels in the good old days.

After a minute, my brain caught up. I'd hobbled around Dante's kitchen that morning because I'd lost a shoe. It had been bright red, not shell pink, and had looked brand new, but otherwise it was the twin of this one. Luckily, Mircea's body mostly blocked me from view, because I doubt I managed to keep my face under control. The theatre. I'd lost that shoe more than a hundred years ago in a London theatre.

"Cassandra?" The Consul did not sound pleased at the delay, which was ironic considering her habit of fading out at inopportune moments. I didn't answer, remembering the spark I thought I'd imagined in that other time. The Mircea of that era had not been under the geis, but I had. The spell must have recognized him as the needed element to complete itself, and made the connection on its own. The implication hit me like a sledgehammer. I'd inadvertently laid a spell on him that had had more than a century to grow.

"How long?" the Consul repeated in the voice of someone not accustomed to having to say anything twice.

"I'm not sure," I finally said. My voice was hoarse, but I couldn't seem to clear my throat. "Possibly…" I finally managed to swallow. "It may have been the 1880s.”

Someone uttered a profanity, but I didn't see who. It was as much as I could do to keep even part of my concentration on the Consul. The heat of Mircea's body and the horror at what I'd done to him were causing chaos in my emotions. Passion and guilt struggled for dominance, but fear was making a strong showing, too. My stomach contracted viciously.

The Consul did not look pleased. “The geis went dormant after you left, unable to complete itself without you," she mused. "And when the two of you encountered each other again, you were only a child-too young for it to manifest. But when you met as adults, it activated and its power began to build.”

I managed to nod. Mircea had been caressing my hand to keep contact between us, stroking the bones in my wrist and sliding down to massage my palm with his thumb. But now he'd graduated to running his hands up and down my arm, as if craving more contact. And everywhere he touched left what felt like liquid pleasure behind. It soaked into my skin, making me as giddy as if his touch was an intoxicant, and maybe it was. I didn't know how the spell worked, only that it was far too good at what it did.

All I wanted was to stay there forever, the geis flowing around us like a dazzling waterfall. I knew it wasn't real, that it was just a spell that had had far too long to take hold, but it was very hard to care. When in my life would I ever feel like this again? I'd had twenty-four years of reality and never even come close. Wasn't a lie this good worth something? My body's answer was a resounding yes. Only, some tiny voice whispered, that wasn't really the question, was it? Not was it worth something, but was it worth everything, because that was what the spell demanded.

And that it couldn't have.

"The person who initiates the spell controls it," the Consul was saying. "But you left it untended for more than a century.”

"Not intentionally!”

She arched a perfect eyebrow and repeated the unofficial vampire code. "We are discussing outcome, not intent." Vamps are extremely practical about such things. The results of an action are always more important than whether or not harm was intended. And the result of my action was catastrophic.

"What about the original spell-the one Mircea put on me?" I asked desperately. "If he removes it, maybe the… the effects will lessen." And buy us time to find a mage who could lift the duplicate.

"That has already been tried, Cassandra," the Consul informed me patiently. "The spell is proving remarkably… resilient.”

"It won't break?" I tried to wrap my mind around that, but Mircea was making deep thought impossible. I tried to step out of his embrace, just long enough to clear my head, but he gave an inarticulate sound of protest and pulled me closer.

"It will not," the Consul said mildly.

I gave her a look meant to scald, uncaring for the moment how stupid that was. If she wanted to help Mircea, she was doing a lousy job of it. According to Casanova, the spell would grow faster with Mircea and me in close proximity, and we couldn't get much closer than we currently were. Soon, neither of us would care about anything else. And that meant there would be no one to stop Myra. I was beginning to see how my vision could easily come true.

For a moment, I contemplated trying to explain the situation to the Consul, but I doubted she'd believe me. I had zero proof to offer, and vamps aren't exactly known for taking things on faith. I moved slightly so that I was momentarily hidden from her sharp gaze and met Mircea's eyes. He'd thought to bring the shoe, which meant that, at some point, he must have figured out what had happened. I just hoped he remained lucid enough to understand what I needed to tell him.

" Myra," I mouthed. The mages were out of earshot, and with no magic they couldn't use enhanced hearing. But the vamps would hear any conversation just fine.

Mircea gazed at me for a long moment, and I could almost see him putting the pieces together. How much he understood I didn't know, but he'd been with me when Myra and I first met. He knew she'd tried to kill me and that she'd gotten away. And he'd heard me call her by name in London, assuming he remembered so minor a detail after so long. I frankly doubted it. He would probably guess that she was up to the same tricks, but not that he was her new target. And I had no way to tell him.

Not that there was much he could do even if he did know. Mircea might be able to defend himself in the present if forewarned, but Myra could attack him in the past. The fact that he was still here was proof she hadn't yet succeeded, but if I didn't remain sane enough to stop her, that wouldn't be true for long. History would rewrite itself, without Mircea in it. And with Myra as Pythia.

After what felt like a year, Mircea gave a slight nod. "Two minutes," he said silently. I stared at him in confusion until I figured out what he meant. He was telling me when the null bomb would wear off.

He was going to let me go.

I gazed at him in disbelief. "What about you?" I mouthed. He shook his head. I didn't know whether that meant he couldn't tell me with such limited communication or whether he didn't want me to know. I realized I was gripping his arms hard enough to bruise, had he been human. But it was only when I let go that a spasm of pain crossed his face. I felt an echo of it myself, a physical ache from the lessened contact, and had to force myself not to reestablish it.

"You must go," he said silently.

I swallowed. The second geis was new to me, but it had had a century to take hold of Mircea. If I felt like this, and the spell had had only a day to get its claws into me, what was he experiencing? Even if the Consul was right, and it had toned down after I returned to my own time, it had still been there, slowly maturing over decades. And judging by his reaction, when it woke up, it had done so with a vengeance.

The thought of deliberately putting him back in that hell was excruciating, but what other choice was there? I had to deal with Myra or we were both dead, and I couldn't take him with me and risk continued exposure. I looked up at him, letting my remorse show on my face. "I know.”

He closed his eyes and his arms clenched around me for a long moment. I pulled him to me, kissed him and immediately the pain receded. The geis was satisfied as long as we were in close contact, and I knew why. I could almost feel the bond between us strengthening, the energy humming happily everywhere we touched. It was contented now, but what would happen when I left? I'd felt the agony he was in when I arrived and doubted this brief meeting would relieve the craving for long. In fact, it might make it worse, like offering a starving man a single bite of bread.

Mircea slowly opened his arms and pulled back. I had been expecting it, but the pain still almost drove me to my knees. I somehow kept my feet, but only half stifled an agonized noise. Wild shudders of shock radiated from my center, shaking me violently, and my hands went ice-cold. I hunched my shoulders against the blaze of longing that shook me, and wrapped my arms around myself to keep them from dragging him against me.

Casanova had made it sound like the bond was a slow progression, growing in stages over a long period of time. But ours wasn't acting that way. Maybe because it wasn't exactly new, at least on one side, or maybe because it had accidentally been doubled. All I knew was, it was vicious.

Mircea was standing close enough to give the impression that he was still holding me. The pain had cleared my head like smelling salts, allowing me to understand why. Although he might be willing to release me, the Consul most certainly was not. I'd refused to become her puppet, had stolen valuable merchandise from her and had placed her chief negotiator under a dangerous spell. The fact that the latter, at least, had been inadvertent was irrelevant from her perspective. I wondered what she had planned for me if her mages couldn't break the spell. Based on Mircea's action, I could make a good guess. Few spells outlive the demise of the caster. And if I wasn't going to be her pet Pythia, she had no vested interest in keeping me alive.

I met Mircea's gaze. "I'll find a way to break this," I told him. I didn't bother to whisper this time. "I promise.”

He smiled slightly, but his eyes were infinitely sad. "I am sorry, dulceaţă.”

The Consul said something, but I didn't hear her. One minute, the chamber was quiet enough to hear a pin drop; the next, a howling arctic wind had filled the room, whipping my hair in stinging strands against my face. It paused for an instant, gathering strength near the high ceiling of the chamber, before exploding into the worst ice storm I've ever seen.

The slashing, brutal winds ignored me and a small space around me, and for a minute I thought my ward had finally decided to wake up, but there was no flood of golden light, no distinctive pentagram shape. Something else was protecting me, and for the moment I didn't care what-just so long as it kept it up. Everywhere outside that small island of calm, chaos raged.

Mircea stepped away and I gasped in pain as the geis realized that something had gone wrong. I would have grabbed him again, despite the consequences, but I couldn't see him in the swirling white void. "Mircea!" I screamed, but my voice was lost in the deafening winds.

Not knowing what else to do, I leapt forward and threw myself over Tomas. Thankfully, the clear spot went with me. It didn't cover him entirely, and his wounds were too extreme for me to stretch out on top of him, but frostbite on his lower legs was the least of my worries.

I fumbled for his restraints, but I couldn't see them, couldn't see anything next to the violent, thrashing world of white. Then something bounced on the table right beside me and I understood what the odd, thumping noise raining down all around us was. The wind carried hailstones the size of bowling balls, and since they were trapped between the four walls of the Senate chamber, they had nowhere to spend their fury except to ricochet off every available surface. It was like being caught in Hell's pinball game. If I didn't get Tomas loose soon, they'd crush his feet, and no way could I drag him anywhere.

I had to get us out of there and I had to find Myra, although how I was supposed to deal with her in my current state I had no idea. All I wanted was to curl into a little ball and wait for Mircea to find me-and if I stayed, I knew he would. Whatever strength had allowed him to pull away, the geis was stronger. It wouldn't be long now.

Something hit Tomas' right leg, jarring his whole body. I stretched but couldn't reach far enough to shield his lower limbs without leaving his head unprotected, and I couldn't pull his legs up because they were strapped down. I tried to shift, but although I felt something this time, like a slight tug, I still couldn't go anywhere. Hurry up, I thought desperately.

I finally figured out the release on Tomas' hand restraints and had just clicked them open when the room suddenly became a lot more crowded. A tattoo parlor was sitting in the middle of it, so close to the main table that it was almost on top of us. Mac's face, half obscured by snow even though it was only a few yards away, appeared in the main window under the flashing mag ink sign. A second later, an arm covered in wriggling designs reached out the front door and grabbed Tomas by the leg, clicking off the right ankle restraint with practiced ease.

As soon as Mac hauled Tomas in the door, I scrambled across the table after them. The shop had landed on the impressive row of steps leading up to the dais on which the table sat, and was therefore tilted towards me. If I made it another few feet, my momentum should do the rest.

I had just managed to clasp the hand Pritkin held out when someone grabbed my ankle. My ward-damn it- didn't flare, but Sheba suddenly got busy. She had ignored Mircea, either because of the null effect or because she didn't view him as a threat. But whoever had grabbed me was another matter. I felt her flow down my body, then there was the sound of a snarling great cat and a surprised yelp from a dignified Senate leader. Sheba launched herself off my foot, and a second later the Consul let go of my leg.

"Come on!" Pritkin gave a heave and I almost flew the rest of the way across the slick tabletop. We tumbled in the door of the shop and suddenly I could see again. Neither Mac nor Tomas was in the front, but I didn't have time to worry about it. At Pritkin's yell of "We're clear!" the whole building started to shake.

The next minute we were barreling through pure stone, on a crazy zigzag course into the middle of MAGIC's foundations. We were making pretty good time, it seemed to me, although I was so busy holding on to Pritkin, who had a death grip on the counter, that it was hard to tell. I did see a dark blur, however, coming down the newly carved tunnel, and the next minute Kit Marlowe tumbled into the wildly lurching room.

He looked grim and determined, and there was an air of danger about him that I didn't remember from our brief childhood meeting. Of course, that night he'd been enjoying Tony's best hospitality, not bleeding from half a dozen wounds. "Oh, bugger it!" I heard Pritkin mutter. He pulled me off his back, pressed my hands around the edges of the desk and yelled, "Hold on," loudly enough to threaten to rupture my eardrum. Then he let go and went flying across the room at Marlowe.

They grappled, but without magic it was down to old-fashioned dirty fighting and pure muscle, and they seemed about evenly matched. Marlowe was yelling something at me, but I couldn't hear him over the racket our tunneling efforts were making. And I was too consumed by the waves of pain coursing through me from the geis to care.

The farther I got from Mircea, the worse they became, to the point that I was barely aware of what was happening. Tears blinded me, spasms clenched my stomach and it was becoming increasingly hard to breathe. I remembered Casanova saying that people under the geis had committed suicide rather than endure the pain of separation and I finally understood why.

Marlowe got Pritkin in a headlock and the two stumbled into the desk, almost causing me to lose my already tenuous grip. Then Pritkin stabbed a knife into the vamp's chest and they broke apart. But the mage, looking dazed from the loss of air, didn't follow up his advantage and for some reason neither did Marlowe. He was grimly pulling out the knife when, with no warning, the shop shuddered to a halt.

My knees knocked painfully against the side of the desk and I barely kept from sailing over it. But I couldn't have cared less. The geis was suddenly gone, cut off like a stereo when someone turns a switch. I gasped for air and found that I could breathe deeply again. My head swam with the influx of oxygen and with relief. But almost immediately I noticed another sensation: hunger.

It was only in the magnitude of its absence that I could tell the true strength of the bond. I wanted to laugh and cry at me same time. Relief from the pain had also brought an end to the addictive, all-consuming pleasure. And the craving started immediately.

I staggered around the desk, feeling strangely hollow and empty inside. Then I looked out the front window and did a stunned double take. What I saw was enough to take my mind off even the geis. In front of us wasn't another sandstone corridor or even an empty stretch of desert. Instead, I saw a large meadow filled with long grasses that bent to the left in a gentle breeze. By the sun's height I guessed it was midday, although the diffused light made it hard to tell for sure. In the distance lay a ridge of sharp blue mountains capped with snow, but the breeze that swept in through the shop's front door was warm and smelled faintly of wildflow-ers. It was beautiful.

Mac stuck his head out from behind the curtain warily, then gave a whoop of pure joy. "All right! And they said it couldn't be done! Bloody hell!" I noticed that his wards had stopped moving, frozen in place like normal tattoos, and light dawned. Mac, that crazy son of a bitch, had driven the tattoo parlor straight through the portal and into Faerie itself.