Hunt the Moon

Page 18

I found myself walking backward, too, unable to control my body’s movements despite the fact that they were the exact opposite of what I wanted to do. I tried to talk but I couldn’t do that, either, except for some garbled sounds that didn’t make sense. For a moment, I panicked, sure I was possessed again—until I caught sight of the drapes.
A minute before, the dark red damask had been a border of flame around the window, embroidered designs standing out harshly against the rapidly darkening fabric, fat tassels writhing as they were quickly consumed. Now the opposite was true. Clean, whole cloth blossomed out of flames that were shrinking, falling back, forming into a ball that flew through the air back to whoever had cast it.
The fleeing crowd was also moving the wrong way, panicked faces streaming away from me as I jumped on the table, jumped off, hit the floor and then was back on my feet, staring at a wide-eyed mage with champagne on his shirt. And then I was in Mircea’s arms, facing the window as if nothing had ever happened. Because it hadn’t yet.
Time juddered and shook, trembling around me for a long second before reversing again. And this time, I didn’t hesitate. I threw off Mircea’s hold and tackled the mage.
We went down in a thrashing heap, my arms around his waist and then his leg when he tried to shake me off. Smoke bloomed around us, harsh and stinging, as he threw something to the ground. But I held on—until a shiny, booted foot caught me upside the face, sending me reeling. But by then Mircea had him by the collar and jerked him up—
And was blasted through the air as if shot out of a cannon.
I didn’t see Mircea hit the wall, recover and launch himself back at our attacker, because it all happened faster than I could blink. But I did see him freeze in the air, midleap, as time shuddered to a halt. At least it did for me, Mircea and everybody else—except the goddamned mage, who shrugged it off like an old coat and bolted into the crowd.
I started after him, pushing hard against the power freezing me in place, but it felt like trying to swim in a river of cold molasses. Time swirled sluggishly all around me, weighing my limbs, slowing my breathing, keeping me back. Away from him. Away from her.
Until I pushed, breaking free in a rush that sent me sprawling into the statuelike crowd, disoriented and breathing hard. A woman toppled over, stiff as a board, her red, red lipstick smearing across the shirt of the man beside her. Another woman teetered back and forth on her high heels, but was unable to fall because of the people pressing her hard on all sides.
They were pressing me, too, but that was a good thing, because they were also slowing down the mage. I could see his blond head bobbing through the crowd, shining under the lights. He was easy to spot, being a good three inches taller than most of the guests and the only one moving. But even if I caught him, I couldn’t take down a crazy dark mage on my own.
And Agnes couldn’t help me. I didn’t know what kind of weird shit was going on with time, but I knew this maneuver. Stopping time was the biggest weapon in the Pythia’s arsenal, a trump card. But it was also a one-shot deal. The only time I’d done it—by accident—it had completely wiped me out for the rest of the day.
And I was a lot younger than Agnes.
It frightened the hell out of me, because she knew the cost better than I did. She wouldn’t have used it if the danger to her or her heir wasn’t acute. But it wouldn’t work this time, and might even backfire. Because if the mage could throw it off, he could hunt them while they thought they were safest, and while she was weakened with her power diverted elsewhere.
I had to follow him, and I had to have help.
And there was only one place to get it.
I looked up to where Mircea was still suspended in the air, amber eyes slitted, staring at the place where the mage no longer was. I grabbed the front of his shirt, the only thing I could reach, and gave a pull. And like a big, Mirceashaped balloon, he floated a little closer to the ground. But he was still frozen, still useless.
It hadn’t worked.
I stood there with tears of pure fury burning in my eyes. I hated the fact that I didn’t know how to use my power, that no matter how much I studied, how much I practiced, what I needed was always something I didn’t know how to do. But if I’d done it once, goddamnit, I could do it again. No stupid mage from some squirrelly little cult was going to beat me at my own damn game.
I fisted my hand in Mircea’s shirt, and fisted my power in the current swirling thickly between us. And pulled.
For a long moment, nothing happened. He didn’t even move toward me this time, not an inch. But while he wasn’t moving in space, he was moving through something. Because I could feel the resistance dragging on him, tugging him back, wanting to fix him in place while I was doing my best to yank him out of it.
It was unbelievably difficult, far harder than it had been in my own case. I started to shake, and sweat broke out on my face, and for a second, I almost lost him. It was like time was slippery and he was oiled, and along with the sheer physical strain was the stress of keeping my wobbly grip. But I could feel time peeling away from him, layer after layer, as if he were shedding some kind of strange skin.
And then suddenly I was hitting the floor, with a hundred and eighty pounds of freaked-out vampire on top of me.
Mircea jumped back to his feet and then ducked into a crouch as I lay there, panting and half-sick. God damn, that had sucked. He seemed to think so, too, because he was staring around, minus his usual sangfroid. Mahogany silk whipped around his face as he took in the motionless crowd, the frozen clouds of smoke and a glass that had been caught midfall a few feet away, the contents spilling out like a champagne waterfall.
He put out a tenuous hand and touched it, and then jerked back when it wet his fingers. He looked at me, dark eyes wide. “What did you do?” he asked in wonder.
“Never mind that.” I staggered back to my feet, wondering why I felt like throwing up. “We’ve got to get to him before he finds her.”
“The man who attacked you?”
“Yes.”
“He’s trying to harm the Pythia?”
“Yes!”
“Why?”
“Because Agnes and I stopped him on his last mission. And because that’s what the Guild does—they disrupt time!” And killing a Pythia and her heir would definitely do that.
It would also do something else, I realized. My mother was still the Pythia’s chosen successor, still the good little Initiate preserving her virginity until the all-important transfer ceremony. She had yet to meet my disreputable father, yet to run away with him.
Yet to have me.
Suddenly, my skin was too cold, too tight, and my lungs couldn’t seem to pull in any air. “Mircea—” I grabbed his sleeve.
But I didn’t need to explain. I saw when he got it, and I’d never been more grateful for that whip-fire intellect, which rarely missed little details. Like the fact that if the maniac succeeded, he wouldn’t take out two Pythias tonight.
He’d eliminate three.
Mircea didn’t ask any more questions. He caught me by the waist and surged ahead, cutting a swath through the motionless crowd faster than I’d have thought possible. But the mage had a sizable lead, and in the few moments it had taken to get Mircea on board, I’d lost sight of him.
It didn’t help that smoke hung heavy in the air like a thick, dark fog. I thought it would get better as we moved farther from the source, but the opposite seemed to be true. The far end of the room was a sea of clouds, darker in some areas and lighter in others where lines of spell fire crisscrossed in the gloom.
The clouds were annoying, but it was the spells that had me worried. They were frozen in place like neon tubes at a bad ’80s disco, but there were a lot of them. And while they wouldn’t slam into us with time the way it was, if we hit them—
I didn’t know what would happen if we hit them. But I didn’t think it would be fun.
“Can you shift us across?” Mircea asked grimly.
“Not without seeing where I’m going.” And the smoke pretty much excluded that.
“Then we’ll go around.”
“There’s no time! He’s already—”
“Then I’ll go,” he said, putting a heavy hand on my arm as I dropped to the floor, preparing to crawl under the nearest beam.
“You can’t manipulate time, and he can! He can freeze you and kill you before you know what’s happening.”
“I’ll take that chance.”
“Well, I won’t!”
His jaw clenched stubbornly, and I felt like screaming. “Mircea, you’re going to protect me to death!”
He stared at me a moment longer, and then cursed inventively and dropped beside me. I took that as assent and started forward. But it wasn’t nearly as easy as it sounds.
A bright beam sparkled in the air above our heads like a frozen column of raspberry ice. Frost spell, cold enough to burn, cold enough to freeze any skin it touched. Cold enough to kill. I made very sure to hug the floor as I slithered below.
It was marginally safer down here, because most of the spells were higher up, forming a brilliant lattice above our heads. But even though the smoke was thinner down here, visibility was actually worse, with gowns caught in midswirl everywhere and a forest of men’s trouser legs. I scurried forward anyway, careful not to topple any of the living statues in my path.
“I thought only Pythias could manipulate time,” Mircea said, from behind me.
“So did I.”
“Then how is he doing it?”
“I don’t know,” I said, aggrieved. “Agnes didn’t say anything about the Guild being able to do something like this. They’re supposed to be time travelers, but she said that most of them are losers who manage to blow themselves up attempting dangerous spells they can’t control.”
“And yet this one is different.”
“He didn’t seem that way,” I complained. “At least not when Agnes and I were after him. He was kind of an idiot. He couldn’t shoot worth a damn, and he kept running around screaming, and running into—”