Ignite the Fire: Incendiary by Karen Chance

 

 

Chapter Three

 

 

I hit the ground running and almost immediately smacked into a wall. The blow had me stunned for a moment, but I was pretty sure that we’d landed okay since I felt modern carpet under my butt when I abruptly sat down. I was also pretty sure that I’d managed to bring both guys back with me, because a fight had just broken out.

A big one.

The landing pad I usually used in these cases was in my bedroom, so that was probably my favorite lamp, I thought, as something big shattered against the wall. The pieces went everywhere, including down onto me, so I flipped over and started crawling. There were a lot of feet in the way, scuffling around, and some pointy bits that I was fairly sure were the trailing ends of the wings that Mircea should not have had, because contrary to legend, vampires did not turn into bats.

Well, most vampires, I corrected myself, because the old ones had some pretty freaky powers, but I’d seen Mircea’s and that particular trick wasn’t among them.

“Pardon, dulceață,” the man in question said, as he fell into my path.

“Urp,” I said, because my brain didn’t seem to be working right.

Mircea didn’t notice, and launched himself right back into whatever was going on above my head. Didn’t know; didn’t care. I felt funny and I could swear that I saw Pritkin’s legs cover the same bit of floor three or four times in quick succession, as if he was doing some kind of weird dance move.

Michael Jackson would have loved that one, I thought, just as the door to the hallway slammed open and a bunch more legs joined the party.

Mircea’s were directly in front of me again, because he seemed to be trying to shield me from the fracas while still pummeling something off to the side. You had to admire the manners. It reminded me of a story about Marie Antoinette that my governess had once told me, while trying to improve my childish ways.

“She accidentally stepped on the executioner’s foot,” Eugenie had said. “On the way to the scaffold. Yet she asked the man for his pardon, nonetheless. Now, what would you have done in her stead?”

“Kicked him in the balls,” I’d answered promptly, which I guessed was not the hoped-for response, judging by the fact that I did not receive pudding that night.

Pudding, I thought, while crawling determinedly for the hallway door. It had been Eugenie’s catch-all phrase for dessert, because I guess British people really like pudding. She’d called it the pudding course, although sometimes it was actually cake or trifle or pie.

Pie. My brain latched onto the idea with enthusiasm. I could really do with some pie. I was absolutely ravenous for some reason, although pudding—

Somebody snatched me off the floor.

—would be nice, too, I decided, dangling from a hand the size of a catcher’s mitt.

“What the fuck did you do?”

“Hello, Marco.”

I was having a problem focusing suddenly. The big, handsome face of my chief bodyguard kept doing the mambo, shifting back and forth every time I tried to catch it with my eyes. Focus, shift, focus, shift, like it was dodging my eyeballs. It was making me woozy, and I guessed I must have looked a little weird, because he shook me.

Urp, I thought again, and tried not to retch.

“Mage Pritkin!” he yelled.

“I am here as well,” Mircea said, sounding slightly aggrieved. Maybe because Marco used to be his vamp, not so long ago. But the former gladiator had thrown in his lot with me, deciding that my court needed more help than Mircea’s did, and making me joke that I’d got him in the divorce.

That wasn’t true, of course. There’d been no divorce, since Mircea and I had never been married in the human sense of the word, and since such things didn’t exist in vamp land, anyway. But even if it had, Marco wouldn’t have been divvied up. Not because he was a person instead of a tchotchke—vamps tended to view their servants and their furniture on something of a par—but because he was a master, too. A second-level one, in fact, one of the most powerful tiers, and the kind who often had their own courts.

Marco could have left Mircea’s service years ago, but he hadn’t seen the point when it wouldn’t get him out of the dog-eat-dog vamp world, but just set him up with a new set of headaches. So, he’d stuck around, telling me once that everybody serves somebody, and that Mircea was a better master than most. But then he’d seen a chance to join a different kind of court, where he made the rules, at least where security was concerned.

It had been a win for both of us, with Marco’s six-foot-five-inches of studliness striding around, giving orders that my young initiates cheerfully ignored. They knew that, despite his size, he was a softy underneath, at least where they were concerned. Marco, who had lost his own daughter centuries ago, now had dozens of them, who tended to flock after him like goslings after an oversized mother goose.

You haven’t lived until you’ve seen a two-hundred-and-fifty-pound vamp, with inch long fangs when fully extended and glowing, amber eyes, sitting quietly while a tiny tot carefully painted his fingernails.

I grinned sloppily at the handsome Italian features and saw him scowl. “I’m too old for this,” Marco muttered, making me laugh. “Are you drunk?” he demanded.

“I wish.”

Marco muttered something else I didn’t catch, and tucked me under the bunch of boulders masquerading as his arm.

But that didn’t please someone.

“None of that,” a voice said sharply. “Give her here.”

The booming voice belonged to my new Eugenie, although technically her title wasn’t governess, because at twenty-four, you don’t get one of those. At least, not officially. But Hilde didn’t seem to know that.

In fairness, the robust older women with the shelf-like bosom, which was currently wrapped in a blue bathrobe, and the head of silver white hair done up in curlers, had been left with the unenviable task of trying to wrangle my out-of-control court. That included shepherding a brand new, largely clueless Pythia, developing training programs for my growing number of initiates, and somehow turning a Vegas penthouse into a war-time base of operations. She’d managed admirably, like she did everything else, so I supposed she could be forgiven for getting a little strident sometimes.

And for grabbing my arm and trying to pull me away from Marco, who was now wading into the fray with me still tucked securely under his bicep.

Since said bicep was as the size of a baby’s head, I wasn’t going anywhere. Which was bad, because pretty soon, Hilde would be using something a lot more powerful than old lady strength. Only, for once, that didn’t happen.

“Damn it, you walking mountain!” Hilde snapped. “I said put. Her. Down!”

“In a minute—”

“We don’t have a minute! She’s phasing!”

The unfamiliar word must have gotten Marco’s attention, because the next second, my butt hit the floor again. Repeatedly. I stuttered through a half dozen smack downs, like a glitching video game character, and kind of felt like one, too. Before the craziness stopped and I fell back against the carpet.

I lay there, watching the people above me zoom about as if I’d put time on fast forward. And then abruptly freeze, dead still, with the rabbit/goat thing stuck halfway through an arc in the air above me. I’d almost forgotten about him, despite the fact that he’d been the whole point of our trip, but it looked like I’d successfully brought him back, too.

And he was pissed about it.

Or maybe that was because someone had thrown him, although I couldn’t see who. I couldn’t see much of anything, since I could no longer turn my head or even blink my eyes. It felt like somebody had stopped time, although I didn’t think that was what was happening here. I could pull out of a time stoppage, even one thrown by another Pythia. But this . . .

I didn’t know this.

The rabbit/goat was looking a little worse for the wear, I noticed, with his coat torn and his pantaloons splattered with blood. It didn’t look like the blood was his, since more deep crimson was dripping off of the seriously elongated fangs in the snarling little maw. But the golden eyes had a contrasting expression, and the square pupils stared bewilderedly into mine, as if asking “do you know what the hell?”

I stared mutely back.

I did not know what the hell.

Time abruptly snapped back to normal, the rabbit/goat sailed off and hit the floor, and then scrambled up and ran in a panic for the door. Mircea and Pritkin raced after him, with Pritkin pausing long enough to look at me oddly. “Are you—”

“Go,” Hilde barked, kneeling by my side.

Pritkin’s green eyes continued to look at me, because he did not take orders from Hilde. Of course, he didn’t take them from me all that often, either, but this was one of the rare exceptions. I managed a slight nod and off he went.

“What is it?” Marco asked, kneeling on my other side.

And continuing to do so, in a stuttering motion that made me want to close my eyes or look away, but it was almost impossible to do either. Damn it! What the hell was wrong with me?

“Ph-ph-ph-ph-ph-ph-phasing,” Hilde said, and then time normalized again and she snapped her fingers at someone behind me. “My case. In the corner of my etagere—”

“I know it.” I heard the breathless voice of my heir, Rhea, and then her running footsteps. Out of my room and down the hall she flew, almost noiseless on the subtle beige carpeting. She could have just shifted, but Rhea was kind of new to all this.

I could sympathize.

“Yeah, heard you the first time,” Marco was saying. “Doesn’t tell me much.”

“She’s stuck in transition,” Hilde said. “The shift did not complete, leaving her simultaneously occupying numerous times, all at once.”

“And that’s bad?” Marco said, his voice making it clear that he already knew the answer.

“If we don’t get her out, it could tear her apart.”

Yeah, I thought, staring up into Hilde’s concerned brown eyes.

Bad.

Her hand was gripping mine tightly enough to bleach the color from her fingers. It should have been excruciating, since that was, with my usual luck, the hand with the arrow wound in it. Yet I didn’t feel a thing.

Really bad, I decided, just before we were flocked by a bunch of old dames in white. They were my acolytes, although it mostly felt like they were Hilde’s acolytes, since they were all old friends of hers. And I do mean old.

There wasn’t one under a hundred, with many being almost double that, and most of them had known each other for longer than I’d been alive. I frequently felt ganged up on as a result, not that they were trying, but they had a bad habit of talking things out with each other before “bothering” their Pythia. Meaning that they already had the defense prepared before I even knew what was going on.

But putting them in their place was harder than it sounds. For one thing, they really did mean well, and had been a huge help around court. I hadn’t realized how much we’d needed them until they arrived, and everything seemed to magically sort itself out. Tami, my rather frazzled major domo, had been walking around with a smile on her face lately, and the little initiates were noticeably better behaved with a bunch of powerful grandmas around to keep us all in line.

Not that they were the martinet type. They left that to Hilde, who seemed perfectly happy to play the bad guy when needed. Like now, I thought, as she squeezed my hand, and this time, it was hard enough to hurt.

“Ow-w-w-w-w-w-w-w-w-w-w-w-w—"

Another spasm hit and the room juddered, along with my thoughts. I vaguely heard Hilde yelling for the acolytes to help anchor me, but it didn’t feel like they were successful. Suddenly, I couldn’t feel her grip on my hand at all anymore, not like she’d let go, but as if her fingers had simply dissolved into mist.

Or that mine had.

The room went hazy, as if my eyes were dissolving, too, and I couldn’t feel anything anymore. Not the carpet below me, or the air around me, or anything but the mad thudding of my heart. But I could hear, not Hilde anymore, but someone else.

“There you are,” a voice said, seemingly coming from all directions at once.

I blinked, and was no longer in my bedroom, with its dim lighting and subtle, blue, sand and cream color scheme. I was somewhere with dazzling light and pale blue skies and stacked white clouds. But I could only see them as vague impressions out of the corners of my eyes.

Because looking up . . .

Was overwhelming.

Not just because of the brightness, which surpassed the sun’s cheerful yellow to venture into blazing white. But because of a feeling of power, so much and so awe-inspiring, that I couldn’t look at it or even speak. I couldn’t do anything but lay there, prone and helpless and scared out of my mind.

“Ah, you see me, too, don’t you?” the voice mused. It might have been a man’s—it was deep enough—but there was a hint of many voices, some male and some female, all talking at once, that confused my mind. The others were just echoes, barely-there vibrations on the edge of his words, but enough to make me unsure about who was speaking.

“You know who is speaking, little Pythia,” the voice said, sending vibrations through me. “But you do not know what I can do. It seems only fair that you should, and that we meet before you get in over your head.”

I’m always in over my head, I thought, and heard the voice chuckle. And strangely, it was a pleasant sound, even as it shivered through my body with the same strength as the words. It made me want to quake in fear, and yet to raise my head, too, like a beaten dog still hungry for its master’s approval.

That made me furious with myself, even before the laughter came again.

“Yes, you do see. That is good. Greater souls than yours have bowed before me, and found peace.”

And this time, along with the words came more than power. For an instant, I was suffused with the most wonderful feeling I’d ever known, like warm arms engulfing me, like the world itself embracing me. It was all I’d ever longed for: home, family, love, joy, and yes, peace. A pure, unending flood of it, turning my bones liquid with relief.

I hadn’t realized just how much of a burden I’d been carrying these last six months. Hadn’t known how heavy it had all been, ever since this terrible war started, or seen how close I’d come to cracking. But all of it hit now that I no longer had to carry the load anymore: the desperate fear that I wouldn’t be good enough; the agonizing pain of friends lost; the creeping suspicion that I was going to get even more people killed, perhaps all of them, all of those who had trusted in me, who had dared to believe . . .

When I didn’t believe in myself.

That was the terror that had kept me up at nights, and the dread that had shadowed my feet during the day. We’d won victory after victory, but no one knew as well as I did how close most of those battles had been. One little change, one tiny alteration, and they could have gone the other way. And what had made the difference?

Not me. I’d spent most of my time running to catch up—on all the training I’d never had, on all the politics I didn’t understand, on all the things a normal Pythia would have grown up with, but which didn’t come so easily to someone plucked out of the gutter. It had been a trial by fire, and I’d spent most of my time trying not to get burned. And those victories?

They belonged to the people around me, and some very fortunate, last minute, Hail Mary passes that had somehow made it to the in-zone. I was a secretary who read Tarot in a bar; I had no right to be here, to be doing this, to be leading people to their doom, and the supernatural community off a cliff. I was a fool—

No! I cried out as all the doubts, the fears, and the inadequacies I’d fought so hard against for months, and which I’d thought I’d finally put behind me, came flooding back. No, I hadn’t done everything on my own, not even close. I wasn’t some kind of superhero, striding in to save the day. But I had helped. And these thoughts were a lie, because I knew I had—

“Yes, you fought courageously,” the voice said. “You are so frail, so small, so human. I was surprised to see you come so far. But you must have known you couldn’t win. Not alone—”

“I’m not alone!” I tried to reach out to Mircea and Pritkin through our bond. The spell that tied us together us was called Lover’s Knot, and was a powerful enchantment. It allowed me to see through their eyes, and to use their powers as my own. But right now, I couldn’t even feel them.

I couldn’t feel anything.

Except fear.

The warm glow of a second ago was gone as abruptly as it had come, replaced by a harsh chill. Like the voice, when it came again. It had lost its previous charm, and was now as warm as ice.

“Others have resisted, and known only exile, pain and loss,” it said. “I would not have you make the same mistake.”

With the words, the world shifted, showing me the other side of the coin. A cold wind swept across bare, desolate cities, stretching as far as the eyes could see. It was a blighted world I saw, a desert world, where nothing moved but the wind. It ruffled the decaying clothes on what looked like acres of corpses, which were now no more than skeletons, bleached white by the merciless sun.

I had done this, the more panicked part of me thought, staring around in horror. I had wrought this. I was a fool and should have never started what I couldn’t finish—

“It’s not too late,” the voice whispered. “There is a choice, Pythia. A decision that only you can make. Forgiveness is still possible, for the penitent. But for the stubborn, the willful, the proud, there is only death, and not just yours. Will you gamble with your world? Will you?”

The wind seemed to ask the same question, with a howling, haunting cry, like the voices of millions of ghosts rushing out of the desolate cities, screaming across the sands, headed straight at me. I screamed myself and ducked, with my arms over my head, but still they came, merging with the swirling, leaping sands. Shades with dark pits for eyes and elongated, open mouths, and bodies that battered me as they passed, yelling things in a thousand tongues that I didn’t know, and didn’t need to.

I knew what they said, knew what I’d done. But whenever I tried to explain, to apologize, to beg, all that emerged were more screams. Until even those were cut off by a river of sand, pouring down my throat, into my eyes and ears, as if they would bury me alive, all those vengeful shades. As if they would draw me down with them, until there was nothing anymore. No world, no time, no suffering, just hopeless howls.

And endless darkness because I had failed.