Chapter Thirty-Two
I didn’t pass out, although I kind of wished I had. The only thing less fun than spiraling into unconsciousness under a suffocating mountain of dirt and vampire flesh was lying awake under said mountain, waiting for rescue. Which wasn’t coming because everybody else was in the same position!
“Okay,” Alphonse wheezed from on top of me. “I got this.”
I sincerely doubted that. But since he was the only reason I wasn’t currently a corpse, I didn’t point it out. Alphonse wasn’t Atlas and couldn’t hold the weight of the world on his shoulders, but he was doing a pretty good job of keeping a large chunk of it from crushing me.
But digging us out of here at the same time was going to be tough.
That was something he seemed to realize because a lot of huffed curses followed, as every time he tried to move, the mountain moved with him. Or at least the crap ton of it residing on top of his back, which sent cascades of sand, rock, and dust down into the little cleared space we had left. And while he didn’t need to breathe, I did!
It was getting harder. The enclosed area had no ventilation, and I didn’t know where to dig to change that, as there was absolutely no light. But the air was warm and getting warmer, and my chest was tight and getting tighter.
I had to move.
I was lying face down so I could crawl forward a little under Alphonse’s arms and feel around, hoping to locate an exit hole or enough loose pebbles that maybe I could make one. But smaller rocks and dirt had collapsed into the crevasses between the larger stones, sealing us in. And leaving me scraping bloody fingertips over what felt like a solid wall and making no progress at all.
Which was about the time I started to panic because I didn’t want to die like this!
“It’s okay,” Alphonse said, probably sensing my heart rate speed up.
“How . . . is this . . . okay?” I gasped.
“I hear something.”
I froze. “Some of those . . . monsters?”
My brain conjured up a sudden, horrible image of things with whipping tails and bat wings crawling all over the rubble, waiting for us to poke a head out so they could bite it off. I stopped breathing altogether at that point, and Alphonse wasn’t doing it anyway. Which I guessed let him hear better because he suddenly chuckled, an almost obscene sound under the circumstances.
“Nope. One of ours.”
Then it came again, magically enhanced this time, and I heard it, too: Pritkin yelling from what sounded like a mile away, probably because his voice was filtering through solid rock. “Cassie!”
“Over . . . here,” I croaked, pretty sure that was useless. But then Alphonse started bellowing, and everybody heard that. Including the mountain, which began sending tricklings of dirt and stones onto our heads.
And then more of them, and more, but not because of another collapse, but because somebody was moving them. Tons of earth and rock were being blasted off us and sent flying back down the tunnel. I couldn’t see them as I couldn’t see anything, but I heard when they hit what sounded like solid stone.
“Getting close!” Alphonse yelled. “Don’t blow my damned head off!”
They didn’t, but more boulders met more rock as layer after layer was peeled away, loudly enough that it resonated even down here. The passage behind us must be pretty well blocked by now, I thought, and perked up slightly. But I was considerably less happy by the time I was dragged out from under the remaining mountain of dirt, bleeding and filthy and gasping for air, and was immediately beaten soundly on the back.
Which I was about to insist I didn’t need when I started hacking up half the damned hillside.
And once I started, I couldn’t seem to stop, coughing and retching until I was pretty sure that I was going to lose my breakfast, only I didn’t. My deprived stomach clung to it like it was the last meal I’d ever get, and maybe it was. And my lungs finally stopped trying to throw themselves up, too, although less because they were clear and more because I was exhausted.
I rolled over onto my back when the beating stopped to see Pritkin, who had cursed every time he’d had to hit me. But his face was stoic in the watery ball of light that Enid was holding, and his eyes were focused and assessing. They were less like a lover’s and more like a soldier’s evaluating an ally in battle, and for some reason, that made me feel better.
Or maybe it was just the fact that I could breathe .
“Are you alright?” That was Enid, looking really invested in my answer for some reason. I couldn’t imagine why, as teaming up with me hadn’t gotten her much. Except almost drowned, eaten, and pulverized.
I remembered what Bodil had said about people who worked with me and hoped that wasn’t a prophecy. But I nodded because Enid looked rough, and it seemed to reassure her slightly. And then Pritkin turned my face towards his again.
“Cassie. I need to know what happened. Can you tell me what happened?”
I licked dirt-covered lips and tried to speak, but my whole throat was coated in dust, and nothing but a vague wheeze emerged.
“Move,” Bodil said, pushing through the small group of people surrounding me and crouching on my other side. She held something out, which my dust-filled eyes finally identified as a globule of what appeared to be pure water. It was the size of a softball and just sitting there, wobbling on her palm.
It was suddenly all I could concentrate on.
I grabbed it clumsily, only to have it fall apart as soon as it left her hand, soaking me everywhere except for my throat. I mewled in distress, and she sighed and magicked up another one. And it was magic; I saw her that time, looking like she plucked it out of thin air.
That was probably exactly what she had done, drawing together the surrounding water in the air and merging it into drinkable form. Something that I finally managed to get down with her help, letting her hold the ball to my parched lips before attempting to swallow. It was warm and slightly dirty from the dust in the air, and I’d never tasted anything so perfect in my life!
God, that was wonderful!
After a moment, I lay back gasping, and Bodil gave the rest to Enid. The kitchen maid was still staring at me out of a dirt mask, with only her long, dust-covered hair and hazel eyes allowing me to recognize her. I probably looked just as bad, if not worse, but I didn’t care.
I was just grateful to be alive.
“Cassie,” Pritkin said again.
“It was Tony,” I gasped, finally answering his question. “I saw him . . . in the pool . . . for a second.”
“Tony?”
“He appeared . . . right beside me. Did a time spell—”
“A time spell?” That was Bodil, although why she sounded shocked, I didn’t know. After what she saw outside, what did she think had happened?
“That wasn’t you?” Pritkin sounded disturbed, and for good reason. Tony couldn’t do spells of any kind, which was why he had dark mages working for him. And he sure as hell couldn’t use the Pythian power!
“It’s true,” Alphonse backed me up. “He appeared out of nowhere, right beside Cass. I saw him through the waves—”
“How?” Bodil demanded. “I was there and couldn’t see anything through all the water being splashed around!”
“’Cause I was looking for him,” Alphonse said heavily. “I been haunting Cassie’s steps since she got here. I knew he’d come for her, and that was the perfect moment to strike. She’d just towed that one,” he hiked a thumb at a filthy looking ?subrand, whose previously shiny armor was caked with mud and whose face was set on a thousand-yard stare, “back from the finish line—”
“Alphonse,” I said, sitting up and backing off a little because I didn’t want to get stabbed by an enraged fey. Only ?subrand didn’t even blink.
He must have seen his fair share of battles, but that one seemed to have knocked some of the stuffing out of him. Know the feeling, I thought grimly. And he didn’t even flinch when he looked at me, only not with anger, for a change, but with bewilderment.
“What . . . were those things?” he whispered.
“Demons,” Pritkin answered for me.
“Demons?” ?subrand looked like that didn’t compute. “Like the ones the two of you brought?”
“No. Not like them.”
“Old ones,” I croaked. “Bad ones.” It wasn’t much as explanations went, but it was all I could manage, or he would likely understand. If the fey knew little about Earth, it was nothing to the gaping void of knowledge they held about the hells.
And I wasn’t up to a lesson.
Although he looked like he could use one because his face scrunched up in disbelief. “Demons . . . in Faerie ?”
Bodil didn’t say anything, but she looked grim. And poked Alphonse to continue, even though one doesn’t poke a master vampire. But after what he’d just seen of her power, he didn’t object.
“I leaped for him from the side of the lake,” he said, his lips drawing back into a snarl in memory. “It was what I’d been expecting, so I had the stake and knife all ready. It wouldn’t have taken but a sec—”
“Then why didn’t it?” Enid asked.
She didn’t sound angry. She didn’t sound like much of anything, her voice almost expressionless with shock. But Alphonse flushed.
“You know why! Right before I could get my hands on that bastard, there was a flash of light and . . . we were here.”
“And where is here?” Bodil demanded. She was covered in mud and dust like the rest of us but somehow made it look regal. And furious. “What happened? This isn’t the city I know!”
“It isn’t the city that any of us know,” Pritkin said, looking at me. And then came out with the question we had all been thinking. “What year is it?”
I shook my head. “I don’t know.”
He frowned. “What do you mean, you don’t know? Pythias have an innate time sense—”
“Yeah. It isn’t working.”
“And why not?” That was Bodil, sounding as impatient and imperious as if she were talking to one of the slaves. I would have given that the reply it deserved, but I was still relearning how to breathe and didn’t have the energy.
I settled for answering the question instead, as it was relevant.
“Best guess? The portal . . . is turned away. My power . . . doesn’t work unless it’s . . . pointed at Earth—”
“What?”
“—where it was tethered . . . by the gods . . . all those centuries ago. But when it cycles . . . back around . . . I should get an answer.”
Bodil just stared at me, her eyes back to black but no less hard to meet—even when looking gobsmacked for some reason. “You mean to say,” she said slowly, “that you’ve been making yourself a target— the target of the entire Challenge—and your power only occasionally works?”
“Is that true?” Alphonse demanded and then didn’t give me time to answer. “That’s why you were hiding half the time against the Kraken, isn’t it? You were waiting for your power to come back!”
“Do we . . . have to talk about this . . . now?” I asked. There seemed to be more pressing matters, like finding out if I could walk.
Which was a no, I thought, as I got dizzy halfway to my feet.
“Sit down before you fall down!” Alphonse growled, and a heavy hand descended onto my shoulder.
Which I didn’t need, as my ass had already been headed back to the floor. It hit the dirt, and the room slurred wildly around me. God, I felt rough.
I lay back against the rock fall and let the conversation wash over me for a minute. And there was a lot of it, as people were recovering from the initial shock and beginning to get scared. And pissed.
“You’re damned right we have to talk about this now!” Alphonse said. “You’re supposed to know what you’re doing—”
“She’s been handling things better than you, vampire!” Enid said, with a little of her old spirit coming back. “We won that race, in case you’ve forgotten—”
“And what did it get us?” Alphonse said, throwing out his arms.
“A chance! This may be a game to you—”
“It’s not a game.” That was low and menacing, but she didn’t seem to hear. Or care if she did.
“—but it’s deadly serious for us! Do you know what happens to the slaves if someone else wins? We can forget about any hope of freedom!”
“Freedom?” Pritkin repeated. “I thought this was about maintaining the status quo—”
“Why? Is that what Rhosier told you?”
“It’s what he believes—”
“Which is why he isn’t told everything!”
“—and a reasonable conclusion from the available evidence. In a revolt, you’d be slaughtered. You must know that—”
“You might be surprised!”
“And so might you,” Bodil said dryly.
“This isn’t your fight!” Enid snarled. “It’s ours, and we want a chance!”
“At what?” Alphonse asked.
“The things you already have and take for granted,” she said passionately. “A life we can call our own, a chance to live where we choose, do what we like, and marry by our choice. Do you have any idea—”
She broke off. “No. Of course, you don’t. And those who do, like Rhosier and our betters,” she glanced at Bodil, and it wasn’t friendly. “Want us to accept that this is how things are and will always be. But I, for one, will not accept!”
“We have been getting your people out,” Bodil said, frowning at her.
Enid laughed scornfully. “Oh, yes. A handful at a time. Should I thank you for that?”
“Yes.” It was flat. “I have risked much—”
“You have risked nothing!” Enid was suddenly in her face, making Alphonse start looking worried because Bodil wasn’t someone you wanted to piss off.
But Enid had the bravado of someone who had almost been killed half a dozen times today and had officially reached fuck it. She was telling truth to power, and power had best sit down and listen. Or lose it and kill us all, I thought, exchanging a glance with Alphonse.
“Hey,” he said, but Enid wasn’t listening.
“Do you think I don’t know what you’re doing?” she said fervently. “You serve the system just as much as Feltin and the rest!”
“Be careful,” Bodil warned. “Do not speak my name and his in the same sentence.”
“Or what? Will you have me beaten? Or do even worse? At a word from you, I could vanish, never to be heard from again—”
“If I acted in such a way, which I do not!”
“No. They have enough people to terrify us. You act as a pressure release, like the valves on the cooks’ pots. Shuffle out the troublemakers, the dissidents, the ones willing to fight. Get them to Earth before they cause too much unrest and influence others. Keep the docile ones, let them continue to breed for you, die for you—and raise more just like them. A perpetual slave class to preserve your power—”
“Is that what you think?” Bodil demanded.
“It’s what I know. Rhosier can believe what he likes and tell himself he’s a rebel, so he can channel his rage and not explode when they grind him under their collective heel. But I know the truth—”
“You are an angry child who understands nothing,” Bodil said calmly.
“I understand that your ‘help’ is why we haven’t fought before and continue to suffer this! You who so value children, do you know what it’s like to give birth, to suckle a babe, to see him grow—
“And to watch him go off to war to die for his jailors and yours? Or to watch your daughter be taken by one of those fine lords, to be ‘selected’—what a lucky girl! To be ripped away from her family and—” She stopped with her face crumpling as if she couldn’t go on. “It’s you who doesn’t understand,” she whispered.
I put a hand on her arm because I didn’t know what to say. I didn’t understand all that, either, and I was grateful for it. Sometimes, it was easy to resent my life until I met someone like Enid and got some damned perspective.
Enid looked from my hand to my face, and her eyes were flooded but resolute. “I wanted to fight for years but couldn’t,” she told me. “I never had the chance. Everything was the same no matter how much we tried to change it—until you came.”
“I thought you hated her,” Alphonse said.
“I hated her when I thought she was the same as all the rest. But she’s like . . . like that earthquake out there—”
“Which I did,” Bodil said sourly, not appreciating the love fest.
“—and changed everything in an instant! Suddenly, the world looks different!”
“Considering where we are, I wouldn’t say that’s a plus,” Alphonse pointed out, but Enid wasn’t listening.
“Thank you for that,” she said to me, her voice wavering. “No matter what happens . . . thank you for letting me fight!”
I blinked at her, feeling a hundred different things, but mostly shame. Because I hadn’t been doing any of this for her. Or for any of the slaves.
This was a power struggle for everyone in the contest. Some wanted the power for good, some for self-aggrandizement, and some for evil. But all of us were reaching for the brass ring as hard as we could.
Except for the slaves. They were just fighting to survive without many people in their corner. Or anyone, if Enid’s take on this was right, and she knew this place better than I did.
So yes, I felt ashamed.
“Enid,” I began when Pritkin shot me a look I didn’t understand and cut me off.
“We need to get moving,” he said tersely. “We’re being hunted, and they’ll find a way in soon enough.”
“They won’t,” ?subrand argued, blinking and returning to life. Maybe because hunting was something he knew a bit about. “They’ve lost the scent—”
“Not them.”
“—and there must be easier prey—”
“They don’t want easier prey,” Pritkin said flatly. “They want to test themselves against the strongest. It’s in their nature.”
But ?subrand was shaking his head. “Animals don’t think like that—they don’t think at all—”
“These aren’t animals!”
“Then what else would you call them? Filthy, hideous, corrupted beasts who—”
He cut off, perhaps belatedly remembering that he was talking to someone who was half demon himself. And currently looking like it. But Pritkin didn’t press the point.
“They’ll be coming,” was all he said.
“Yeah, and Cassie’s power don’t work!” Alphonse seemed hung up on that fact. “So how do we get back? Because this ain’t our time—”
“We don’t know when it is—”
“Well, we know it’s not right!” And okay, that had been a little shrill. Which was not a sound I’d ever heard from Alphonse. But looking around the tight, dirt-filled tunnel into blackness, I understood.
“You heard her,” Pritkin said. “We wait for the portal to come around again.”
“And if it doesn’t? If it can’t ?”
“Then we wait some more.”
Alphonse didn’t like that answer. But before he had a chance to explain, in detail, exactly why he didn’t, Bodil intervened. “I can make it work.”
Alphonse turned on her as if glad to have somebody new to yell at, as neither Pritkin nor I were giving him much. “It may not be a case of flipping a switch! If the portal is in the same shape as the rest of this place, we’re boned —”
“Get yourself together, vampire,” Bodil snapped.
“Get my—” Alphonse stared at her. “I’m the only one talking sense! We’re stuck in a horror movie with monsters chasing us. And I’m hanging around with the goddamned blonde!”
“What is wrong with that?” ?subrand asked, looking confused, perhaps because I wasn’t the only one with that hair color.
“It means half of you are red shirts, and I’m starting to wonder about me!”
“Red . . . shirts?”
“Never mind,” Pritkin said, standing up. “Lady Bodil will get the portal running, and Cassie will get us home.”
“How the hell do you know that?” Alphonse demanded.
“My people and I created the damned thing,” Bodil said, rising back to her full height from the crouch she’d been using to talk to me. Which left her eyeball to eyeball with Alphonse, even when he straightened up. “Now get a grip, vampire, as your people say, or I’ll do it for you.”
“I’d like to see you try!”
“Right now, so would I,” she said grimly and swept down the tunnel.
And that ended that.