Hunt the Moon

Chapter Thirty-nine

“You brought that thing?” I asked the next morning, sitting up in bed. I was looking at a battered old suitcase with a burn scar on its bum that was hovering near the foot of the bed.

“I could hardly leave it, dulceață,” Mircea said, pouring coffee at a little table by the window. “The charm still works.”

“Sort of.” It was drooping like a week-old bouquet or a half-deflated balloon. I pushed it with a finger, and it bobbed a little in the air, giving off a nasty smell. I wrinkled my nose, wrapped a sheet around myself and went to see what was for breakfast.

Watery sunlight was leaking in through the glass, gleaming off white china and solid silver, and a wire basket that was leaking mouthwatering smells. Fresh scones. Yum.

Mircea handed me a cup of coffee. “And I thought you might want to keep it, as it belonged to your mother.”

“What, the suitcase?”

He nodded.

I shook my head, mouth full of scone. “It was the mage’s.”

Mircea raised a dark brow. “Not unless he used her perfume.”

I swallowed and pulled the little case over. I didn’t smell anything but charred leather and smoke, but I trusted Mircea’s nose. And sure enough, there was a pile of lingerie and a few obviously female outfits inside. A pair of shoes a size too big for me. And tucked into a pocket along the side, a bunch of old letters.

“But . . . how would she have had time to pack?” I asked, sorting through them. “It’s not like she knew she was being kidnapped!”

“If that was, in fact, what we saw.”

I looked up. “What do you mean?”

“Dulceață, I have seen many people under a compulsion, and without fail, they are blanks. Almost robotic in their movements, their speech . . . they do not make decisions; they wait for orders. And they do not tell their captors to hush.”

“You’re saying . . . she went with him on purpose?”

“It would seem the only answer.”

“But . . . why? How would she even know someone like that? She was the Pythian heir!”

“Perhaps the letters will tell you.”

I shook my head, opening one after another. “No. These were all written by my father. It looks like he’d been writing to her for a while and she’d kept them. . . .” I frowned. “But that doesn’t make sense, either. Jonas said that my parents barely knew each other a week before they ran away together. And these . . .” I checked a few more. “They go back more than a decade.”

Mircea hesitated. I wouldn’t have noticed, but I was looking right at him. And he definitely started to say something and then stopped.

“What?” I demanded.

“I could be wrong,” he said carefully. “It has been many years, and I had no reason to pay particular attention at the time—”

“Attention to what?”

“To your father’s individual scent.”

I frowned harder. “What does that have—”

“I did not notice it at the party. Things were too fraught and there were too many other scents in the vicinity. But last night, when I was standing by the mage, I thought I recognized—”

“No.” I looked at him in horror.

“—the same tobacco, the same cologne, the same brand of hair pomade—”

“No!”

That damned eyebrow went up again. I was starting to hate that thing. “Would you prefer to have been sired by a dangerous dark mage?”

“Yes! If the alternative is . . . is him. He was—”

“Quite capable.”

I stared at him. “Are you—Did you see?”

“I saw him protect your mother from four demigods for a protracted period of time.”

“He did no such thing! She was driving the carriage—”

“Yes. Because it is difficult for anyone other than war mages to keep up a shield and to concentrate on anything else at the same time.”

“I didn’t see a shield.”

“No more did I. But I saw several direct hits bounce off of something. He wasn’t able to keep it up for the entire chase, but he certainly helped. And last night—”

“All he did was enchant a suitcase.”

“And it proved useful, did it not? The Spartoi must have had them cornered, but he broke through their ranks—”

“Because he was acting like a crazy man!”

“—and protected your mother during a firestorm of spells such as I have rarely seen.”

“He was screaming the entire time!”

Mircea’s lips quirked. “It is only in the cinema that heroes have to look a certain way. I have been in many battles, dulceață, and can tell you from experience that what matters is what works. Ladislas’s charge looked heroic—banners streaming, armor glinting, five hundred horses galloping in one great wave—but it was the height of folly. Your father’s tactics were . . . less impressive . . . but they succeeded. Which is the most heroic, in the end?”

“But he didn’t look anything like that!” I said, grasping for straws. Because Mircea could say whatever he liked, but being related to that guy . . . no. Just no. “The kidnapper was tall and blond and you said my father was—”

“I told you how he appeared to me. But he was in hiding; it would not be surprising if he used a glamourie. In fact, it would have been more so if he had not.”

“But you said nothing was supposed to happen at the party—that your men had checked! If he was my father, if he was supposed to be there, to elope with my mother or whatever the hell they were doing, wouldn’t your people have known?”

“By all accounts, the party was supposed to be uneventful,” Mircea agreed. “I would hardly have taken you there otherwise. Your mother was not reported missing for several months.”

“There. You see? He can’t be my father!”

“Yes, but, dulceață, the important term is ‘reported.’ My people were not at the party; they did not see for themselves. They were going on the official reports. Reports that may well have been . . . adjusted.”

“Adjusted? But why—”

“To give them time to find her.” He waved a hand. “The Pythian court likes to appear infallible, mysterious, all knowing. This is not a reputation that would be enhanced by losing their heir to a set of circumstances none of them foresaw. It would not be surprising for them to wait some time before admitting that they had lost her. They would want a chance to locate her and bring her back without anyone realizing there had ever been a problem.”

“You think they lied about when she left.”

He shrugged. “I think it possible, yes. I always found it odd that they maintained that your father knew her for such a short time before they eloped. Eight days is not much in which to persuade the heir to the Pythian throne to leave it all behind for a life on the run!”

“But . . . but at the party, he was trying to disrupt things! That’s what the Guild does,” I insisted.

Mircea cocked his head. “But if that were the case, why not focus on Lady Phemonoe? She was Pythia; your mother was merely the heir. And one due to disappear soon, in any case. Removing her from her position a few months early would hardly seem likely to make a huge impact on history.”

“No! There were spells everywhere—”

“Yes, thrown by war mages attempting to shield your mother and the Pythia.”

“How do you know that?”

“Because the spells were frozen, dulceață. If your father had thrown them, they would not have been trapped in time any more than he was.”

I shook my head. “My father was a member of the Black Circle, not the Guild.”

“Is there any reason he could not have been both?”

I sat back in my chair and glared at him. “Okay. So he’s part of some crazy cult that wants to change the world, but then one day he gets bored and decides—just for the hell of it—to join the most infamous group of dark mages around and try to take them over? And when that doesn’t work, he thinks, oh well, and elopes with the Pythian heir? Is that what you’re saying?”

Mircea laughed. “I thought your father was an interesting man. I just had no idea how much.”

“He isn’t interesting; he’s a nut. And he isn’t my father.”

Mircea shook his head. “As you say. But perhaps we can discuss it later, in our time?”

“You just want to see how badly the guests trashed your house.”

His lips quirked. “With representatives from five of the six senates in attendance, it is a concern.”

“All right.” I drained my coffee and grabbed another scone. “But we hit the suite first. I need some clothes.”

“And afterward, if it remains standing, I will show you around the house.”

“Deal,” I said, grabbing his hand. And shifted.

And knew immediately that I was in trouble.

One clue was the slick, wet feel of damp grass under my feet, instead of the suite’s plush carpet. Another was the Cheshire cat grin of Mircea’s glass ballroom, glowing gold against the night—a night that should have been over. And a third was the fist slamming into my jaw, hard enough to send me sprawling.

“Pathetic, weak, idiot child. You killed the great Apollo?” Something reached into my brain like a rain of quicksilver, clean and cold, but burning down all my nerves. “Obscene.”

I couldn’t see what was attacking me—the transition from watery daylight to thick darkness had left me half blind—but I really wasn’t that curious. I reached for Mircea, intending to shift us out of there, but I didn’t find him. His strong grip was no longer on my hand, and I doubted that he’d have just let go. For one thing, I couldn’t remember him materializing with me. And for another—

For another, he usually objected when people kicked me in the ribs.

The pain was breathtaking, like a dagger through my flesh, robbing me of breath and bringing tears to my eyes. But it wasn’t bad enough to keep me from shifting. That was something else, grabbing me, jerking me back the second I tried.

“Oh no. Not this time, little Pythia.” A booted foot came down on my wrist, crushing it into the dirt, sending pain lancing up my arm—and trapping my daggers against the ground. My hand spasmed, still holding a warm scone, which tumbled into the mud.

“This time, there won’t be any running away—or any powerful friends to save you. This time, I have you all to myself.”

I looked up to see boiling, dark clouds laced with distant lightning, backlighting a face. It blurred across my watering eyes, or maybe that was the rain, which was still coming down. But for a moment, I couldn’t tell what I was looking at.

And then my vision cleared and I still couldn’t.

On the surface, it was a sharp-faced brunet with slickedback hair, thin cheeks and a long nose, vaguely familiar although I didn’t . . . and then it snapped into place. Niall, the officious pain-in-the-ass from the publicity department. It had taken me a second to recognize him, because while the face was the same, the eyes—

The eyes were horrible.

No, not horrible. They would have looked perfectly fine in the face of his alter ego, the dragon that had chased Pritkin and me through an office building. But seeing those same firelit orbs in a human’s face, complete with elongated pupils and reptilian, nictitating membranes . . .

A wave of visceral revulsion washed over my skin, making every hair stand on end.

I guess I knew where the fifth Spartoi had gone, I thought wildly, even as I panicked and tried to shift again. But the same thing happened—I was slammed back onto the dirt at his feet, hard enough to hurt, like I’d been grabbed by one of the Circle’s lassos. But I didn’t think that was it. Because the creature standing over me held something up.

Lightning flashed off a slim gold chain, and the familiar charm dangling from the end of it. “Recognize this?” Niall asked pleasantly. “I took it off your good friend the war mage. I told him Jonas had sent me after it, but he didn’t seem to believe me.”

I stared at the innocuous-looking little thing, swinging slowly to and fro, and remembered with a lurch that I hadn’t seen Pritkin today. I hadn’t thought about it; had assumed he was resting. But what if instead—

My blood ran cold.

“What—what did you do?” I asked thickly. Blood dribbled down my chin. I didn’t bother to wipe it off.

“Let’s just say, I don’t think you should count on having him come to your rescue yet again. Or anyone else, for that matter. The coronation has begun; the lockdown is in place. And by the time it ends”—he smiled—“I do not think there will be much left to rescue.”

“I wouldn’t bet on that,” I snarled, and shifted.

Of course, I didn’t go very far. The damned necklace that I was going to grind into powder if I got out of this saw to that, jerking me back almost immediately. But that got my arm free, and when I rematerialized, I was a couple of yards away—behind Niall.

He spun, some sixth sense warning him of danger just as two ghostly daggers shot out of my bracelet. They looked brighter than usual in the dim light, but had all of their normal enthusiasm for any kind of violence. As they demonstrated by slamming into his torso with enough force to send him hurtling back into a tree—and to pin him there.

For about a second. His hands were free, but he didn’t bother to use them. He just leaned forward, against the knives, which disappeared into his blood-drenched shirt up to the hilts. And then vanished completely when he simply walked right through them. There was a little pause as the hilts caught on something—his heart, his rib cage; who the hell knows?—and then he tore free with a sucking, squelching sound that left me a little dizzy, even before I saw the knives quivering in the wood behind him.

Then I blinked and he was on me, bearing down on my already injured wrist until I felt something pop. A dagger of pain shot up the length of my arm, making me gasp. And that was before he rotated his foot slightly, causing bone to grind against bone.

I screamed, trying not to curl around my broken wrist, trying to shift again. But God, it hurt, it hurt, and I couldn’t focus—

Couldn’t do anything, not even cover myself. My towel had ended up a few yards away, leaving me naked except for a lot of mud. But I didn’t think Niall cared. There was no lust in those horrible eyes as he looked me over, no heat, no human emotion at all. Just cold assessment, the same spine-shivering stare he’d given me in the air.

“You know,” he said mildly. “I think I will enjoy this.”

“This is about revenge?” I gasped.

“No, you foolish child. That will be a bonus. This is about the end of a chase that started long before you were ever born. When that damned bitch Artemis turned on her own, banishing the gods from what was rightfully theirs. Using her power over the pathways between worlds to slam a door shut in their faces, and her power over the hells to keep it there.”

“The hells?”

“Earth is an upper hell. How else could demons travel here so easily? She was a queen in her castle; no one could touch her. No one but the children the gods left behind.”

“You—you’re looking for Artemis?” Small world.

“Not looking; found. We hunted her for millennia, and nothing—nothing! But we were patient, because we knew, queen or no, this world doesn’t feed her kind. Every century that passed made her weaker, sapped her strength. Why do you think she had to form the Circle, to fuel her spell? Could not a goddess power it herself?”

“I . . . never really thought about it.”

“No. Neither did they. Never wondered why she had to rely on the humans she loved so much—because her own power was failing. We watched and we waited, knowing that, sooner or later, she would be forced to go to the only source of the gods’ power remaining in this world.”

It took me a moment to get it, because of the pain and because it felt like something was pounding on the back of my skull. “The Pythian power.”

“Yes. Her own brother’s legacy. How she must have hungered for it, lusted after it, more and more each year as her own vast store of power faded and thinned and drained away. And at last, after three thousand years, she broke and we had her. We had her!”

“You killed her?” I said, even knowing that wasn’t right. Knowing something . . . the pounding in my head was getting worse.

“We tried. Oh, how we tried. For you see, little Pythia, there is no spell that can block off a world. No word, no enchantment, no charm has that kind of power. The only way even she could manage it was to weave a piece of herself, a piece of the very fabric of her being, into her spell. She became part of it, an integral part. And what happens, little Pythia, when you remove a vital component of a spell?”

“It falls,” I said blankly.

“Yes. So we tried. But we missed her. An idiot mage helped her, something we hadn’t expected. And she disappeared again like smoke. But her power was weak—so weak! We knew we were close. We redoubled our efforts, worked tirelessly day and night. And finally, five years later, we found her again.”

The pounding was a hammering thrum now, like a thousand running horses.

Or one, pulling a crazy carriage through a distant street.

“The mage had hidden her away—with a vampire, of all things! And by the time we finally tracked her, the vampire had already taken care of the situation. He had been cheated by the mage on a business deal, or so he said. And had taken the most final possible revenge.”

The drumming was so loud, I could barely hear. Hard and fast, like the pounding of my heart, like the blood drumming in my ears, like the crest of a wave, about to break—

“He swore to us that she was dead, and after some checking, it appeared that he was telling the truth. And yet the spell hadn’t fallen! She had been blown to a thousand fragments by the vampire’s bomb, but it was as solid as ever. And that was when we realized—she must have left something of herself behind.”

“No.”

“Oh yes. But the vampire lied to us. He never mentioned a child, wanting to keep his little cash cow alive and well and working for him. And to our discredit, the idea never so much as crossed our minds. Why would it? She was the famous virgin goddess. There were no gods here, no one worthy of her, so who would she have taken to bed?”

“No!”

“Yes, horrifying, isn’t it? That ridiculous creature—but we should have known. It was all there in the name. Garm was Hel’s faithful companion in all the old sagas, was he not?”

I nodded slowly.

“But did you know? ‘Garm’ in Old Norse . . . is ‘Rag.’ ”

I shook my head. That didn’t mean—

He saw and smiled. “Ragnar Palmer—that was your father’s real name, wasn’t it? Before he changed it? And ‘Ragnar’ means ‘warrior of the gods’ in Old Norse.”

The wave broke, crashing over my brain, whiting out all thought for a moment. And when I could think again, it was a succession of images, clues, things I should have seen and totally hadn’t. My mother overriding Agnes’s spells at the party, something no heir should have been able to do. Her unbelievable stamina, leaving her stronger at the end of a fight than I was at the beginning. Her saying that the Spartoi had chased her for “a long time.” The look on Deino’s face when I asked about the child of Artemis.

I finally recognized it for what it was: stunned incredulity.

I could sympathize.

“After your parents died, the trail went stone-cold,” Niall told me casually. “We had no choice but to work on other avenues. Five times we painstakingly amassed the power to go back in time, to attack her when she was weakest. And five times we failed, dying over and over as those damned spells misfired and backfired and ripped us to shreds!”

The face lowered until I could feel the hot breath on my face, warm—too warm—to be human. Not that there was any chance of that with those eyes staring directly into mine. I stared back at them, paralyzed less by fear than by sheer disbelief.

This wasn’t happening. This wasn’t happening. This wasn’t—

“Having the ability to be resurrected by one’s brothers does not mean one does not feel pain in the dying,” he hissed. “I bled, my brothers bled, over and over again. For nothing. Until a month ago, when that idiot Saunders came to me, wanting a little favor. It seems the vampires have a golden girl, a shiny new Pythia, whose name he would like me to blacken. Oh, and by the way, you’ll never guess who her mother was.”

That last was a scream, but I didn’t even flinch. I was way too far gone for that.

“Must have been a shock,” I said blankly.

“It was ridiculous! That one stupid little girl could be so much trouble. Before you came on the scene, Myra was well on her way to destroying the Senate. Our allies among the vampires were posed to take over what was left. Our people had infiltrated the Circle, removing Marsden and substituting a greedy, duplicitous idiot in his place, who could be manipulated and blackmailed at will. Weakened on all fronts, with no allies and nowhere to turn, the Circle would have fallen to our forces in a matter of weeks, and Artemis’s damned spell along with it.

“But at the ninth hour, what happens? A stupid, bumbling, ridiculous child stumbles onto the scene and ruins everything. In a matter of a few months, you destroyed Myra, reinstated Marsden and are on the brink of uniting the vampires! Oh yes, we know what they’re really doing up there,” he said, gesturing at the house. “But that isn’t going to happen, Pythia. You’re going to repair the damage you’ve done. This ends now.”