Karen Chance: Hunt the Moon

The face lowered until I could feel the hot breath on my face, warm—too warm—to be human. Not that there was any chance of that with those eyes staring directly into mine. I stared back at them, paralyzed less by fear than by sheer disbelief.

This wasn’t happening. This wasn’t happening. This wasn’t—

“Having the ability to be resurrected by one’s brothers does not mean one does not feel pain in the dying, ” he hissed. “I bled, my brothers bled, over and over again. For nothing . Until a month ago, when that idiot Saunders came to me, wanting a little favor. It seems the vampires have a golden girl, a shiny new Pythia, whose name he would like me to blacken. Oh, and by the way, you’ll never guess who her mother was .”

That last was a scream, but I didn’t even flinch. I was way too far gone for that.

“Must have been a shock,” I said blankly.

“It was ridiculous! That one stupid little girl could be so much trouble. Before you came on the scene, Myra was well on her way to destroying the Senate. Our allies among the vampires were posed to take over what was left. Our people had infiltrated the Circle, removing Marsden and substituting a greedy, duplicitous idiot in his place, who could be manipulated and blackmailed at will. Weakened on all fronts, with no allies and nowhere to turn, the Circle would have fallen to our forces in a matter of weeks, and Artemis’s damned spell along with it.

“But at the ninth hour, what happens? A stupid, bumbling, ridiculous child stumbles onto the scene and ruins everything. In a matter of a few months, you destroyed Myra, reinstated Marsden and are on the brink of uniting the vampires! Oh yes, we know what they’re really doing up there,” he said, gesturing at the house. “But that isn’t going to happen, Pythia. You’re going to repair the damage you’ve done. This ends now.”

He jerked me to my feet, and I finally realized what he’d been waiting for. The house lights had extinguished, leaving the once glowing ballroom dark and silent. I couldn’t see very well, but from what I could make out, a solid wall of people stretched across the glass opening, their heads blacking out the lighter walls beyond, their jewels occasionally catching the light.

It’s like stadium seating, I thought blankly. Only what they were watching tonight wasn’t the latest football game. It was an execution.

“They can’t help you,” he told me. “But they can watch—as all their plans and schemes and useless alliances go up in smoke. You die, the spell fails and my father returns. And the last legacy of that traitor is gone forever.”

I didn’t answer, mainly because he backhanded me and I went sprawling. But then, I didn’t have to. Because the darkness suddenly faded, the trees whispering to one another as the pale smudge of a moon, like a coy lady, glided up over a hill. And immediately, everything changed.

The dark sky flooded the color of polished silver, the wet grass sparkled like diamonds, the hills and the trees and everything around us was bathed in a brilliant white light. It reflected in the puddle I’d landed in, a luminous, wavering orb like the one Deino had offered me, but that I hadn’t understood. I’d never seen anything so beautiful.

Not since the look of mingled joy and pain and disbelief on my mother’s face as she gazed at me.

My mother, who, if the Spartoi hadn’t hounded her, wouldn’t have had to flee, wouldn’t have ended up with Tony, wouldn’t have died. They may as well have killed her. They’d driven her into the hands of the one who had.

But they hadn’t killed her. They hadn’t been able to kill her. She might have lost her power over the centuries, but she’d never lost her courage. She’d taken on four of these things twice over and won. And she’d done it all while drawing from the same well of power I did, power that was hers by right of birth.

As it was mine.

My power wasn’t some alien thing, I thought, watching the sky in wonder. It wasn’t borrowed from another or stolen from a better candidate. There was no better candidate; there never would be. It had flowed away from Myra as soon as it saw me, like the tide when the moon comes out. Because it was mine—it was mine; it knew it was mine.

I was the one who had taken a little time to catch up.

I rolled over on all fours, gathering strength to stand. I was a little wobbly, and my wrist felt like it might just be on fire. But I got into a crouch on the balls of my feet.

The Spartoi looked me over. “You would duel me?” he asked, amused.

“That’s the idea.”

“To what end? Even were you somehow to win, my kind are immortal. My brothers would simply resurrect me.”

“You know,” I told him. “I wouldn’t count on that.”

“And why is that?”

“You sent them a sixth time after my mother, didn’t you? To hedge your bets.”

“Yes?”

“It didn’t go well,” I said, and threw out a hand.

A time wave flowed across the grass, churning up the dirt as it flowed toward him. He transformed in an instant, surging up from the ground on a rush of air that almost knocked me down as the wave flowed underneath. A group of trees behind where he’d been standing suddenly shot up, ten and twelve feet in seconds, but he was twice that high, huge wings blocking out the light as he banked and turned and dove—

The ground around me exploded in fire even as I shifted. I landed in a nearby copse of small trees, hoping for cover. But he must have anticipated that. Because almost immediately I had to shift again, as the trees burst into flame, flooding the landscape with garish light and sending strange shadows writhing over the ground.

I could see them from the other side of the hill, where I’d landed behind a rocky outcropping. They backlit the huge form of the transformed Spartoi, which was hovering in the air, powerful wings churning up the air. His back was to me because he was still facing the trees. But I couldn’t stay where I was. He was already spiraling up to get a better look. Any moment now, he’d spot me—

A wave of fire came my way, before I’d finished the thought. And it wasn’t a narrow stream that I might have been able to dodge. It was a wall of flame that blistered the air, like a tidal wave, if they came in crimson and gold.

I shifted again because I had no choice, but I couldn’t keep doing that. I had my mother’s power, but not her stamina. I was already panting—that time wave had been a bitch—and another few shifts would have me close to exhaustion. I had to make the shifts I had left count. Which is why, when I shifted again, it was back in time.

Normally, I wasn’t good at judging short time shifts. A day I could do, or even twelve hours or so, but anything less was tricky. Sometimes it worked; sometimes it didn’t. Okay, most of the time it didn’t. So I was pretty surprised to land on the right side of the Spartoi at roughly the same moment that it set the trees on fire.

But not as surprised as having a second dragon pop out of the air right over my head.

I froze, hiding in the shade cast by my pursuer’s own body. I guessed I knew what that quicksilver feeling had been earlier. He must have put the same spell on me they’d used on my mother.

Which meant that I couldn’t time shift, or I’d take the asshole with me.

Perfect.

The only thing that saved me was that he’d been looking outward instead of straight down and didn’t immediately spot me. Maybe because he was too busy screaming a warning to his former self. I didn’t know what language they used, but if he told him where I was about to shift to, former me would soon be dead. Meaning present me would be dead. Shit!