Hunt the Moon

Page 19

I stopped because I’d slammed into something, hard enough to hurt. It turned out to be the faint green bubble of a protection spell, so dim against the glowing colors that I hadn’t seen it. An older man was underneath, his hand up, projecting the shield over himself and the woman lying beside him. Her gray chiffon evening gown, silver hair and colorless pearls blended perfectly with the frightened pallor of her face.
“Let me,” Mircea said, taking the lead. I didn’t argue, because his sight was about ten times keener than mine. “And tell me about this Guild.”
“I don’t know much,” I said, hugging his heels. “Just what Agnes told me. She said they’re some kind of freaky cult. They think they can make history better, solve humanity’s problems, if they can identify where we screwed up and then go back in time and change it. Only they’re the ones who get to decide what was a mistake and what wasn’t.”
“Fanatics.” Mircea sounded disgusted.
“She called them utopians.”
“Same thing under a different name.”
“She said they could be dangerous—”
“They always are. Anyone who can only see their point of view is. Once a group decides that their way is the only way, it is an easy progression to vilifying anyone who doesn’t agree with them. And once someone has been demonized, has been characterized as opposing the good, killing him becomes a virtue.”
He sounded like he knew firsthand, but I didn’t get a chance to ask. Because we’d reached the middle of the room, where a dark red stain spread over the floor, like someone had dropped a bucket of paint. But paint didn’t simmer like the top of a boiling pot, with potion bubbles rising from the surface to spill into the air. They were sluggish now, like gas trapped in viscous oil, but they wouldn’t stay that way for long.
“What is it?” Mircea asked.
“It’s fading.”
“What is?”
“The spell. It takes a lot of energy, and no one can hold it for—”
“What spell?” Mircea asked sharply.
“The one I pulled us out of.”
“The time spell?”
“Yes.”
“You’re telling me that time is about to start back up?” he demanded.
“Yes.”
“When?”
“Now?” I said, watching a crimson bubble rise almost a foot before bursting with a little pop.
And then I wasn’t watching it anymore, because Mircea had thrown me over his shoulder and taken a flying leap over the puddle. He landed hard and I gasped, partly because it had hurt and partly because we’d hit a woman in a bright pink evening gown. I grabbed her by the hair before she could topple into the stain, and Mircea thrust her back into the arms of a mage behind her. And then we were sprinting over and under and through the maze at a pace that was definitely not safe.
But then, neither was this.
A spell flashed across our path, hit somebody’s shield and ricocheted back, striking the parquet floor in front of us and sending a hundred little wooden slivers whirling up into the air. Another brilliant beam slammed into the ceiling, causing a cascade of plaster dust to sift down like snow, and a third exploded through the French doors at the end of the room. And then we were bursting through what was left, into darkness and crisp autumn air and the night sounds of a city.
And the sight of a mage dragging a girl in a tacky blue dress.
They were halfway down the street and moving fast, probably because they were being chased by four war mages. The men must have been outside, sneaking a smoke or something, because they obviously hadn’t been caught in the time bubble. They were still half a block back from the running couple, but then they put on a burst of magically enhanced speed, blurring their figures as they tore through the night, hands outstretched, bodies leaping for the fleeing mage and his captive—
And then the whole group disappeared in a flash that lit up the surrounding buildings like a single strobe.
For a moment, I just stared in disbelief. Because I might not know everything about my office yet, but I damn well knew a shift when I saw one. And the entire group had just fled, not through space but through time, shrugging off the fragile grasp of the moment as easily as most people would walk through a door.
But while their bodies were gone, something else remained. I clutched at it desperately as Mircea cursed behind me. “What the devil . . . ?”
“I can still feel her.” My hand clenched on his arm, hard enough that it would have hurt a human.
His head whipped around, scanning the empty street. “You’re saying they’re hiding under some kind of glamourie?”
“No. I’m saying I can feel her.”
And I might even know why. The holders of my office had to train replacements somehow, and one method was on the job. But that required being able to locate an heir who had landed herself in trouble, no matter when she happened to be. At least, I assumed that was why I could sense where she’d gone, like a glimmering golden thread in my mind, tying us together.
A thread getting rapidly thinner as she moved farther away.
“What does that—” Mircea began, but I shook my head.
“Hold on,” I told him. And shifted.
Chapter Ten
We landed on the same street, but suddenly there were no electric lights, no cars, no milling crowd of freaked-out party guests. And no crazy mage and his captive. Just dirty snow melting in between cobblestones, the moon riding a bunch of dark clouds overhead, and a few dim puddles from gas lanterns placed too far apart.
Some dry leaves rattled along the gutter, but nothing else moved.
“Did he take her into a house?” I asked Mircea, who had his eyes closed and his head tilted back.
“I do not think so,” he murmured. And then he rotated on his heel and opened his eyes, looking straight at a group of three-story row houses lining the left side of the street.
They were painted some light color that glowed ghostly pale in the moonlight. Their windows were mostly dark, shrouded by heavy curtains, which wasn’t much help. But the shadows rippling across their fronts were more useful.
There was nothing to throw them—nothing that I could see anyway. And there were no soft-voiced commands, no sounds of running feet, no faint rustles of clothing to give anyone away. But Mircea didn’t need all that. He could hear their hearts beat, smell the sweat on their skin, feel the faint currents of air from their passing. Glamouries, even good ones, have a hard time fooling vampire senses.
“That way,” he told me softly, but I didn’t need it. The shadows had disappeared into the dark mouth of an alley, and I shifted us right in behind them.
Silver moonlight was sifting in the far end of the passage, lighting up the kidnapper and my mother disappearing around a corner. And the figures of three war mages, who must have been right on their tail, but who were now stumbling out of thin air, dropping their glamouries as they turned and tripped and staggered and ran—right back at us.
For a second, I thought that they’d mistaken us for enemies and decided to take us out before going after Mom. Except that they weren’t looking at us. Judging by the whites showing all around their eyes and the way they kept running into each other, they weren’t looking at much at all.
I’d never seen war mages look that unprofessional—or that panicked. I looked past them, but there was nothing to explain it, not even a rat nosing at the garbage littering the alley floor. But clearly, something had them spooked.
And then they blew by us, one of them shoving me brutally aside in his hurry. I hit the brick wall hard enough to knock the breath out of my lungs, and Mircea hit the mage. The casual-looking blow sent him flying out of the alley and into the street, but, amazingly, the man didn’t even try to retaliate. He just staggered to his feet and limped off as fast as he could, disappearing from view around a corner of the building.
I gazed after him for a second, confused, and then shook my head and started the other way, desperate not to lose the tenuous connection to my mother. Only to have Mircea jerk me roughly back. I didn’t ask why, because I hadn’t gotten my breath back and couldn’t talk yet. And because I knew him well enough to know that he’d have a good reason.
And because what looked like a piece of the night had broken off from the rest and was flowing our way.
It surged along the sides of the alley like water, turning the dark red brick gray and chipped and flaking, leaving a pale stripe on the wall like a flood line. It disintegrated a few pieces of trash that had been blowing on the breeze, turning them brown and curled and then dusting them away. It ate through a wooden rain barrel, sending a wash of dirty runoff foaming across the alley floor.
And it did all of that in a matter of seconds.
I stared at the path of destruction, knowing what I was seeing but not really believing it. Because this wasn’t a time bubble; it was a time wave. One that had just engulfed the fourth mage.
I hadn’t seen him until his glamourie melted like dripping paint, showing pieces of him scrambling through the garbage on the alley floor. He was still trying to run, but it wasn’t going well. He kept tripping over his feet, getting up, taking a few awkward steps, and then falling back down again. Until he abruptly stopped, threw back his head and screamed.
Suddenly, I was grateful that there was so little light, that he’d made it into the shadow of the building, that I couldn’t see details of what was happening. Because what I could see was bad enough.
A wave of hair sprang from his head, going gray streaked and then solid gray and then pure silver-white as it snaked over his shoulders, pooling in the mud and grime caking the cobblestones. At the same time, the body under the long leather coat began to move in odd ways, bucking and writhing, although his hands stayed on the ground as if glued. And then the wave ate through the coat, disintegrating it like it had been dumped in acid, and what was underneath—
“Don’t look at it,” Mircea said harshly, pulling me back.
But I couldn’t not look. Skin darkened and then peeled away in patches, muscle thinned and browned, nails sprouted long as talons and a cascade of what I recognized dully as ropy intestines hit the cobblestones with a splat. And then the face lifted, the mouth still open but no sound coming out anymore.