Curse the Dawn
Page 20

I flipped to the back of the book and got another shock. The brunette turned up again, but this time, she was jogging through a park. And the earbud to an iPod trailed down across her left shoulder. I went back through the album and realized that the photos were in chronological order—old sepia images from maybe the nineteenth century giving way to early black and white, then to bold sixties-era color and finally to the modern day. And, except for superficial details, she looked the same in every photo. She was a vampire, ageless and eternally beautiful.
Just like Mircea.
I put the album down with shaking hands and told myself to get a grip. I was just really emotional right now, that was all. That’s why I was feeling this way, like I wanted to gouge those pretty dark eyes out with my thumbs.
That was so very not me it was scary. I didn’t get possessive about people, any people. I never had. And Mircea and I didn’t have an exclusivity agreement, didn’t have any agreement at all, in fact. He could see anyone he wanted. Only for some reason it hadn’t occurred to me that he might actually be seeing—might, in fact, be doing a hell of a lot more than just seeing—someone who made me look like one of Cinderella’s ugly stepsisters.
With my thumbs.
“Find anything?” I turned to see Pritkin coming in the door. He glanced around without interest. Maybe he didn’t realize whose room this was, or maybe he just didn’t care. Mircea was only another vampire to him, and Pritkin had never been fond of those.
“No. Nothing.” I didn’t make any attempt to hide the book, and his eyes passed over it uninterestedly.
“Same here.”
“Feels like a ghost town,” Caleb murmured, joining us. I disagreed. Ghosts were livelier than this.
“They must have gotten out,” Pritkin said. “Trust the vampires to have an escape route even in a supposedly impregnable fortress.”
“But I doubt they stuck around to help anyone else,” Caleb added, glancing at me. I didn’t deny it; I doubted they had, either. “There may be people farther up. Let’s go.”
We were in the foyer, heading for the main entrance, when the crystals in the chandelier overhead started to chime. A blue and white vase that I really hoped wasn’t Ming danced across the central table and crashed to the floor before I could grab it. The ground beneath my feet groaned and shuddered for a long moment, and I had to brace one hand against the wall to keep my balance.
“An earthquake?” I said in disbelief. “What’s next? A tsunami?”
“It’s probably the upper levels settling,” Pritkin said, but he didn’t look convinced. “We should hurry.”
We exited into the corridor and Caleb started for a door near a set of steps cut into the rock and going up. “I wouldn’t do that,” I advised.
He paused, his hand on the doorknob. “Why not?” He gave me a suspicious look from under lowered brows, like he suspected me of assisting the vamps to hide some nefarious secret.
As if they needed my help.
“Those are Marlowe’s rooms.” Kit Marlowe, onetime playwright, was now the Consul’s chief spy. And in the paranoid Olympics, he took the gold. I was betting that even in a magical fortress surrounded by guards, he’d warded his rooms. And, knowing him, probably with something lethal.
Caleb took his hand away under the pretense of straightening his lapels. And didn’t put it back. I guess he agreed with me.
The emergency lights were still working on the next level, casting a red stain over the old rocks. The passage at the top of the stairs turned a couple of times, passing shadowy rooms filled with strange equipment. Cables snaked underfoot, walls were lined with a lot of slimy things in jars, upended cages were everywhere and the overhead fluorescents flickered like horror movie lighting.
“Sigourney Weaver shows up and I’m out of here,” I muttered, surprising a laugh out of Caleb.
“We already killed the alien,” he reminded me.
“You sure about that?” Pritkin asked.
He was a little ahead of us, around a bend in the passage. We caught up with him to find that this level was also empty—of people. But there were plenty of other things prowling, flying and oozing around to make up for it. It looked like someone had been running a menagerie that the disaster had set loose. A very creepy menagerie, I decided after getting a close-up look at something pale pink and orange that was sliming its way out of a hole in a crate. A mass of jellylike similar creatures could be seen inside, waiting their turn. The pretty colors didn’t help obscure the fact that it was frighteningly like a huge slug.
Only it had small, angry, coal-black eyes. Intelligent ones.
I scrambled back, fighting an urge to lose my dinner, while Caleb swore and pulled a gun. I caught his arm. “What are you doing?”
“What does it look like?” His brief good humor was completely gone.
“You can’t just kill it.”
“You didn’t have that problem in the chamber!”
“We were being attacked in the chamber!”
“And now we know by what. Some perverted experiments your vampires were running!”
He took aim again, but I guess his powder must have been wet, because the gun didn’t fire. He scowled, muttered a spell and tried again. This time, the gun worked fine, but I knocked his arm and the shot went wild.
The sound was enough to send a small stampede down the corridor, away from us. “I said, no killing!”
Caleb glared at me. “She’s Pythia,” Pritkin reminded him quickly.
“Not mine,” Caleb said grimly.
“Then who is? Or do you intend to fight this war without one?”
The two stared at each other for a moment, and then Caleb swore. “We can’t do this with those things jumping us at every turn!”
“They don’t look too interested in attacking to me,” I pointed out.
“And what about the ones that are?”
“We’ll take care of them if and when we find them.”
“And if these creatures find a way out of here? You want to let something as potentially lethal as the things we killed loose into the general population?”
“We’re nine levels down! And these don’t look too dangerous to me.”
“Looks can be deceiving. We know nothing about their abilities, about why the vampires were breeding them,” he argued stubbornly.
I watched as the slug thing started to ooze away from us. The underground streams would probably survive the pending implosion. What if the creature got into the water system? What if several did, and they started to multiply? There could be thousands within weeks.
“Most will die anyway,” Pritkin pointed out quietly, “of starvation or drowning or by being crushed under a mountain of rock.” He nodded to where a couple of sort-of birds were already feasting on something’s remains, tearing off strips of flesh with their long black beaks. “Or at the claws of the larger predators. It’s kinder this way.”
I stared at the impromptu feast and felt my stomach roil. “Do what you have to,” I finally said. “I’ll be at the top of the stairs.”
The sound of gunfire and the smell of smoke followed me up. It was dark and silent at the top except for a faint blush of light from below. I sat down, wrapped my arms around my knees, leaned my head against the wall and tried not to think at all. Which was when a hand reached out from the dark and covered my mouth.
I was dragged kicking and fighting into a blacked-out room. A light flared—only a single candle—but in the dense dark it shone like a searchlight. It highlighted a small table cluttered with papers and the man sitting behind it. His curls were in disarray and his cashmere sweater was dirty and torn. But the bright brown eyes and quick smile were the same as ever. “Rafe!”
He stood and moved around the desk and I all but threw myself in his arms. I’d known he was probably okay, but some part of me hadn’t believed it until now. My heart expanded in my chest at the sight of him, whole and unhurt, exhilaration flooding my veins like bright water.
“Look what I found prowling the corridors,” Marlowe’s voice said cheerfully from behind me. “She has two mages with her, Pritkin and one I don’t know.”
“I assume they are the cause of the gunshots?” Rafe asked, smoothing my tangled hair.
“They’re doing mercy killings of the experiments,” Marlowe said, sounding amused.
“Now?”
“Why not now?” I asked.
“Because the wards will fail in fifty-three minutes,” Marlowe answered, “rather taking care of the problem.” The ground rumbled under our feet again as if to underscore his words.
“Then why are you two still here? We haven’t found any bodies, so I’m guessing there’s a way out.”
“There are several,” Rafe agreed, glancing at Marlowe.
I turned to find the Senate’s spymaster regarding me thoughtfully. The candlelight gleamed off the small hoop in his left ear and leapt in his dark eyes. I knew that look; I’d been getting it a lot lately. It usually meant, I wonder if she’s actually stupid enough to fall for this? And usually, the answer was yes.
“I’m going to hate this, aren’t I?” I asked, resigned.
“Perhaps not.” Marlowe tapped the roll of papers on the desk, which I now realized was a schematic, presumably of MAGIC. “You are here on a rescue attempt?”
“Yeah. Only, so far, we haven’t found anyone to rescue.”
“Most of those who survived the blast have already been evacuated. However, one area remains populated—the mages’ holding cells.”
“The prisoners are still here? Why?”
“A cave-in,” Rafe said. “For security reasons, there is only one way into the cells, and the wards failed in that section.” One long finger traced a line on the map two levels up from our position. “It cut them off from any hope of rescue.”
“We went over the schematics and questioned the mages, but there’s no convenient back door,” Marlowe added. “And the cave-in is too extensive for us to clear in the time we have. Almost the entire length of the passageway was affected.”