Curse the Dawn

Chapter Ten

I woke up to find myself lying in a backseat, draped over a couple of smelly red men. Tremaine and Caleb looked like the Blue Man Group would if they'd suddenly changed their color scheme—completely coated in a thick red paste from head to foot. Dust and sweat, I realized as my eyes managed to fully focus. And I was in no better shape myself.

My lungs felt caked with about an inch of desert and I was having trouble breathing. I managed to cough, and that was both good and bad, because it opened my airway a little more, but then I couldn't stop. I coughed and hacked and gagged and coughed some more until I was sure I was going to bring my lungs up.

It would have helped to have had some water, but there wasn't any. Because we weren't out of the woods yet. I slid into the modest gap between the two mages and peered over the seat. A red man who I vaguely recognized as Rafe was at the wheel. The speedometer said eighty-six despite the fact that the narrow red tunnel we were hurtling down couldn't have been more than half an inch away from the car on either side.

Pritkin was riding shotgun, but he didn't turn around to look at me. I sat back and tried not to stare at the almost hypnotic tunnel arrowing out in front of us. I heard a distant thud and the walls shook. No one said anything, but Tremaine's hand gripped the door handle tight enough to crack his coating of mud.

"What was that?" I asked when the shaking finally stopped.

"Another level collapsing on top of us," Tremaine answered, sounding a little choked.

"We had to go down a freight elevator to a lower level to avoid being crushed," Caleb added. His voice was expressionless, but his hands kept clenching and unclenching on his thighs.

"Only the Senate level is below us now," Rafe chimed in. He sounded the same as always, although I noticed he had a pretty good grip on the wheel. "And it is completely flooded. I am afraid this is as far down as we can go."

Pritkin still didn't say anything.

We were in some kind of bulbous mid-century car, huge and gray and probably made of solid steel. Too bad that wouldn't hold against a few thousand tons of rock. "How many levels are still on top of us?" I asked, not sure I wanted to know.

"That was the last before ours," Tremaine said, and a small giggle escaped his lips before he clamped them shut.

"Can you shift?" Pritkin suddenly asked me, his voice harsh in the stillness.

"Why?"

"You told Caleb you can shift. Was it true?" I licked my lips and saw him watching me in the driver's mirror. "You lied."

Tremaine looked slightly shocked, as if surprised that a Pythia would do such a thing. He obviously hadn't known Agnes. Caleb put a hand to his head."I should have knocked you out and shoved you in a car."

"Yes! You should have!" Pritkin snapped.

Rafe merely sighed. "You shouldn't tell lies, mia stella," he reproached, and floored it.

The car leapt ahead, its gas-guzzling engine tearing through the tunnels at what the speedometer now reported was in excess of one hundred miles an hour. I decided not to look at it anymore. I only hoped it was going to be enough.

At that speed, even vampire reflexes aren't perfect, not to mention that I'm not entirely certain that the tunnel was actually wide enough in places for the car. Dirt and rocks went flying, along with the two side mirrors and part of the back bumper. The rest of it trailed along behind us, hitting enough sparks off the stone floor to have started a fire if there had been anything to burn.

Then something hit the panel behind my seat hard enough to bruise my lower back. I sat up and twisted around to find a man's fist poking through the upholstery. "Who is that?" I demanded, sliding lower to get a look.

"The man the commander was forced to shoot," Tremaine told me as the mysterious hand wrapped around my throat.

Caleb took out a gun and smashed the butt down on the man's wrist. I heard a howl, and the hand was withdrawn. I sat up, careful to stay well away from the back of the seat. "I thought he was dead," I said.

"Not yet," Caleb replied.

"So you put him in the trunk?"

He shrugged. "This was the last car."

We hit a particularly narrow patch, and everyone slid to the center of the seats as the doors on either side buckled like a soda can in a giant's fist. "Who designed this tunnel anyway?!" I screamed, as the side windows shattered.

"It hasn't been in use in years," Rafe said. He burned rubber and we shot out into a slightly broader area in a burst of rubble and glass.

"Why not?"

"It was shut down in the thirties after Lake Mead was created. The lake bisected the old route."

"What do you mean, bisected?" I didn't get an answer, because there was a rumbling and a groaning behind us and another billowing wave of dust. And suddenly we were flying out into dazzling sunlight.

The ride immediately became incredibly smooth, with no traction at all other than the wind whistling through the missing windows. I realized why when I wrenched my neck around to look behind us and saw a small cloud poofing out of the pale side of a cliff. The cliff we'd just fallen out of.

"Oh, shit."

We fell more than fifteen feet before nose-diving into a boulder the size of a VW Bug, cartwheeling over and finally hitting a shining expanse of water. The car was built circa 1955, which meant that it had no air bags, and I wasn't even wearing a seat belt. We should have been dead. But Tremaine somehow managed to get a rudimentary shield around us, which popped shortly after encountering the boulder, but spared us the worst.

We survived; the car wasn't so lucky. But at least it sank slowly enough for us to slither through the windows and for Caleb to drag Red out of the trunk. He accomplished that by kicking out the partition between it and the backseat, and I think he might have kicked Red a few times, too. Either that or the guy couldn't swim, because he didn't give us too much trouble on the way to shore.

Cell phones don't work all that great after being drowned, leaving us with little choice but to hike around the side of Lake Mead. In one direction, heat shimmered off miles of dusty earth, scrub brush and distant purple hills. In the other were towering clay-red cliffs with a stark white mineral line striping them near the water's edge. There was little vegetation to soften the austere canyon, giving the place an oddly alien vibe: a big body of water in an almost bare landscape, like a lake on the moon. But with the cobalt sky and the deep azure of the river, it was undeniably striking.

I trudged through the shallower water near the shore, the high heels that were miraculously still strapped to my feet catching on underwater rocks and threatening to trip me. I didn't care. I just kept gazing around in something like awe. Everything was blisteringly hot and breathtakingly beautiful.

It took me a few moments to notice that everyone was looking at me oddly. I just laughed, almost giddy. We'd made it—dust-covered, red-faced and dripping wet, but alive. Rafe grinned with me, and a second later, even Caleb had cracked a smile.

We eventually came to a small trailer park. Most of the plots marked off by white stripes of paint were empty except for some windblown gravel. It was summer, and few people thought that 120-degree heat equaled a fun vacation.

I watched dust devils blow across the sand like miniature cyclones while the guys broke into one of the trailers that stayed there all year round. It looked like it came from the same era as the car, miniscule and vaguely round, with white aluminum sides and a small covered patio. A bedraggled honeysuckle vine was trying its best to decorate the latter, along with a wind chime made out of old forks.

They rattled in the strong breeze coming off the lake as the door opened and Rafe came out. "No phone," he told me. I shrugged. I hadn't really expected one. He had a large yellow and white bottle in his hand that turned out to be sunscreen. "I left some money on the counter," he told me, as if worried that I might think less of him for stealing.

"Blocks eighty percent of UV rays," I read. I looked at him skeptically. "Think this is going to help?"

"At this point, I am willing to try anything," he said, slathering the milky stuff all over his face and hands. Despite the fact that most of the dust had washed off on the way here, Rafe was still bright red. Noonday sun is hell on vampires.

"Here." Pritkin poked his head out of the trailer and handed me a bottle of warm water. Since I'd already swallowed half a gallon on the swim to shore, I passed it to Red, who was looking a little shaky. Pritkin's shot might not have been fatal, but the guy had lost a lot of blood. He needed medical help and we all needed to get out of the heat.

Tremaine emerged a minute later, carrying some plastic deck chairs. "I'm going to hike up the road to the ticket office, see if they have a working phone," he announced.

"You going with him?" Caleb asked Pritkin as Rafe and I got Red off the concrete and into a chair.

"Hadn't planned on it. Why?"

"He's a convict. None of this changes that."

"Cassie and I also have warrants out for our arrest," Pritkin pointed out. "Are you planning to turn us in as well?"

"I'm planning to do my job," Caleb retorted. "Or do you think I should let this one go, too?" He nudged Red with his knee. Red spit out a mouthful of water and started looking slightly hopeful. "Where do we draw the line, John?"

"You know what he did."

"And I know what they say you did."

"And I thought you knew me better than to believe it." The two men stared at each other for a long minute while Red and I watched and Rafe smeared himself with more SPF 80.

Caleb swore. "You have to go in. You have to end this. If there's been a mistake and she really is legit, people need to know."

"Then tell them," Pritkin snapped. "Not vague rumors or memos from higher-ups, but what you heard, what you saw, what you experienced. But don't be surprised if you end up in a prison cell for your trouble."

He and Tremaine took off without another word, and Caleb settled against the trailer, arms crossed and a dark frown on his face, watching his prisoner. I don't know why. It's not like any of us were going anywhere.

Rafe went back inside and emerged a few minutes later with a couple of white sheets that he proceeded to wrap around himself. With his riotous brown curls and easy smile, he looked like a particularly charming bedouin. A bedouin with a face full of sunscreen and a pair of designer sunglasses.

"Where'd you get the shades?" I asked.

"Rome. They're Gucci."

"Very nice." I glanced at Red. "Vampires have coagulants in their saliva that aid in healing. If you're still bleeding, Rafe could stop it."

Red gave Caleb a panicked look. "You keep that thing away from me! I know my rights! You can't let him feed!"

"He's offering to help you," Caleb said mildly.

"Yeah, help me out of a few pints! I know how they are!"

"I believe the bleeding has stopped, mia stella," Rafe said wryly. "And I do not normally feed from, ah, that particular region."

"What region?"

"Pritkin shot him in the ass," Caleb said bluntly.

I looked at Red with more sympathy. I could relate.

A small gust of wind blew some sand in our faces, making me cough and settling onto everyone's hair, turning it vaguely pink. I lifted my sweaty hair off my neck and wished for a headband. God, it was hot.

Fortunately, it wasn't long before Pritkin was back, along with an older man in a golf cart. He seemed to be under the impression that we'd been in a boating accident and needed transport back to Vegas. He had already called us a cab.

"Where's Tremaine?" Caleb demanded.

"Waiting for the cab," Pritkin said blandly.

Caleb scowled, but he kept his comments to himself in front of the norm. He and Red got into the back of the golf cart, and Pritkin got in front. Leaving me and Rafe to follow on foot.

"That wasn't very gentlemanly," Rafe noted, watching them drive off.

I didn't say anything.

It took us five minutes to make it out of the campground, up a small hill and down the road to the ticket booth. We found Pritkin outside, leaning against the booth. Caleb and Red were in the golf cart, taking a short nap. The ticket taker was inside, apparently fascinated by his shoelaces, which he'd knotted into some pretty intricate shapes. Tremaine was nowhere in sight.

"Do I want to know?" I asked.

"We have perhaps half an hour before they wake up," Pritkin informed me. "Peter has gone to the highway to arrange transportation."

"I thought a cab was coming."

"We can't afford to wait that long. McCullough is wearing a tracker; all prisoners do as a precaution. The Corps is preoccupied at the moment, which doubtless explains why a team has yet to arrive to pick him up. But with our luck, they will be here any moment."

The Corps was the military arm of the Circle; i.e., war mage central. I was definitely in favor of moving on before any more of Pritkin's old buddies showed up. But something else he'd said caught my attention.

"A tracker?" I blinked dust out of my eyes. "You mean, if he goes anywhere, they know it?"

"Essentially."

"I don't see it on him."

"It's a spell, not a physical device," Pritkin said impatiently. "Is there a reason for your interest?"

"Yes. Can you check to see if I have one?"

He handed me a bottle of water from the ticket taker's fridge and splashed his face with another. "You have three." He started down the road at a fast enough clip that Rafe and I had to hurry to keep up.

"Wait a minute. How do you know?"

"One of them is mine."

"You bugged me?"

"It isn't a listening device, Miss Palmer. It merely records your location. Which, considering how many people wish to kidnap and/or murder you, is a reasonable precaution."

"If it's so reasonable, why didn't you mention it?" Water and perspiration had turned his usually pale eyelashes dark and clumpy, emphasizing the color of his eyes as he rolled them. "Because I wanted it to work! Something it would not have done had you persuaded the witch to remove it."

"Her name is Francoise and you're damn right she'd have removed it!"

"Which is why I didn't mention it."

If I'd been less exhausted, I'd have been livid. As it was, the best I could manage was disgusted. "When I was growing up at Tony's, I was followed everywhere," I told him. "By bodyguards, by my governess, by someone all the time. I had zero privacy. But even Tony didn't go so far as to put a spell on me!"

"He doubtless didn't have anyone competent enough to cast it," Pritkin said, striding ahead.

I shouted after him. "You said one was yours. It doesn't worry you that two other groups are tracking me?"

Rafe cleared his throat. "Ah, Cassie. ."

"Mircea bugged me?" I guessed.

"And Marlowe, I believe."

"Why? Was he afraid Mircea might not tell him everything?"

Rafe looked shocked. "We all have the same desire, mia stella: to keep you safe. And a new version of the spell was recently perfected. It is much harder to detect, even by mages."

"Then why not remove the old one?"

"We were not aware that the mage was also planning to cast one on you. And if someone did abduct you, they would expect to find such a spell."

"So the original was left to give them something to remove, in the hopes that they wouldn't look any further."

"Exactly!" Rafe seemed pleased that I'd grasped his point so easily. Yet he managed to totally miss mine. Sometimes I forgot that Rafe, who had taken to modern clothes and cars, music and art, almost better than any vamp I knew, had been born in the same century as Mircea. No wonder he didn't understand why I'd object to having my every movement followed. The women back then had probably enjoyed it.

Pritkin met my eyes. He got it; he just didn't care.

"You could have asked me," I pointed out, keeping my temper because I was too tired for anything else.

"You admitted that you would have had it removed."

"If you had explained that you'd done it for my safety—"

"Yes, because safety is so important to you!" He rounded on me. "So important, in fact, that you deliberately lied in order to stay in a situation you knew was perilous. For no reason!"

"No reason?" I felt my face flush with more than sunburn. "I had the impression that you needed my help!"

"Until the prisoners were freed, yes. Afterward, there was nothing more you could do and no reason for you to remain. You should have left when I instructed you to do so!"

"Partners don't abandon each other to die."

"If the alternative is to stay and die with them? Yes! They do!" His words were angry, but his face was oddly still, strained and pale.

I tried again. "I am concerned with safety. But I can't always do my job and—"

"That was not your job. Rescuing those prisoners had nothing to do with the time line! Had I guessed that you were foolish enough to almost get killed over them, I would never have agreed to help you!"

"It might not have been my job, but it was my doing. If I hadn't gone to that meeting—"

"Then we wouldn't know that there is a problem with the lines."

I frowned. "What are you talking about? The battle—"

"Should have had no effect. If the lines were that unstable, they would be useless to us. Someone or something must have weakened the structural integrity of that line before the battle."

"Someone? You think this was deliberate?"

"I don't know. But I've never heard of anything of the kind occurring naturally, and the fact that the breach targeted MAGIC is highly suspect."

I thought about the incredible power of a ley line, all those acres and acres of jumping, brilliant energy, and didn't believe it. "But how?"

"I can't explain it. No one has that kind of power. Not the dark, not even us."

"Apollo does."And if anyone had reason to want MAGIC destroyed, it was him.

But Pritkin didn't seem to think much of that idea. "If he could send that amount of energy to his supporters, he would have done so long ago and destroyed the Circle at the outset. Thankfully, you possess the only remnants of his power on Earth."

The conversation had to pause at that point because we'd reached Tremaine and, just beyond him, his idea of a ride. He shot us an apologetic glance. "It seems that any food that doesn't make it into tourists' stomachs is made into high-quality pig feed," he explained. "And Mr. Ellis here hauls leftovers from several casinos to a recycler. He's kindly agreed to drop us at Dante's on his way back for another load."

"It's on my way," the old man repeated cheerfully. "Now settle yourselves any old where. The drums are empty; you won't hurt anything."

Empty, as it turns out, is a relative term. The buffet sludge leaking over the sides of a half dozen black plastic drums was joined by several weeks' worth of dried flotsam rattling around the truck bed. It was also about one hundred degrees with no shade, causing Rafe to hunker down with the sheets pulled up over his head.

"Are you all right?" I asked him, worried. Rafe was a master, but only fourth level. The sun didn't merely drain someone like him of power; it could hurt or even kill him in sufficient quantities.

"Well enough," he told me, but he didn't sound good. Thankfully, it was only about twenty-five miles into town.

"I don't get it," I told Pritkin, who shook his head before I could even frame a question.

"Not here."

"I don't think he's listening," I said, nodding at the driver. The radio was blaring Johnny Cash at ear-ringing decibels, and that was from where we were sitting. The sound in the cab had to be deafening.

Pritkin just looked at me, so I turned to the nice war mage. "I don't understand what stopped that thing. Once there was a tear in the fabric between worlds, why didn't it continue all the way to the end of the line? Like ripping a seam when the thread's cut?"

Tremaine looked nervously at Pritkin, who muttered something but answered the question. "My best guess would be that the ley line sink at MAGIC had enough energy to seal the breach. In your analogy, it would be like encountering a knot in the thread."

"But what if that hadn't been enough? What would have happened?"

"The tear would have continued until reaching a vortex big enough to counter it."

"And that would be where?" I asked, getting a very bad feeling.

"The line where the eruption occurred runs from MAGIC straight to Chaco Canyon, where there is a great vortex—a crossing of more than two dozen lines. It is one of the most powerful in this hemisphere."

"Chaco Canyon?"

Pritkin grimaced. "New Mexico."

I stared at him for a moment, sure I'd heard wrong. "New Mexico? You're saying that thing could have continued for hundreds of miles?"

"Leveling every magical edifice across three states," he agreed tightly.

"And a lot of nonmagical ones," Tremaine added, looking horrified. "Even some norms can pick up on the kind of energy a powerful ley line throws off. Traditionally, a lot of human structures have been built around the lines, even when the builders didn't know why."

Pritkin nodded. "If someone has found a way to disrupt the lines, it could be disastrous. Both for us and for the human population."

I thought about the seared plain, the death and the destruction we'd left behind. "I think it already has been," I said quietly.

At least I didn't have to worry about any war mages who might still be prowling around the casino. By the time we made it back, our closest friends wouldn't have recognized us. Or wanted to get within ten feet of us.

I picked a desiccated wonton wrapper out of my hair, thanked the driver and skirted a long line of cabs to the front entrance. Despite the fact that we were covered in garbage and leaving a trail of dust that would have done Pig-Pen proud, no one gave us a second glance. The place was a madhouse.

Hundreds of tourists had crowded around the reception desk, yelling and waving papers at the usually suave Dante's employees, who were looking a little stressed. Luggage was piled in heaps on the floor and on overflowing carts as harried bellhops ran back and forth, trying to keep up with the demand. Children were crying and threatening to fall in the Styx. An overtaxed air-conditioning system was straining to lower the temperature to maybe ninety degrees. And a bevy of new, life-challenged guests were clogging the lobby bar.

For a minute, I saw a double scene, the ruined bar from my vision transposed over the real thing. Then I shook my head and it cleared, leaving me looking at a muscle-bound type who had one of the fetish-clad waitresses by the waist. She was kicking and screaming and not with pleasure, but the senator didn't seem to care. He'd been born in ancient Rome, where the manners relating to bar wenches had been a little different. Fortunately, the southern belle by his side wasn't in a good mood. She cut her eyes up at him, frowned and nailed his hand to the table with a swizzle stick. He eyed her unfavorably as he pried it loose, but he did let go of the waitress.

"What is the Senate doing here?" I asked Rafe, only to discover that he'd disappeared. I glanced around but didn't see him in the uproar. "Where did Rafe go?" I asked Pritkin.

"He left as soon as we arrived," he told me, eyeing the dozen vamps, luggage in hand, who were waiting by an elevator.

None were Rafe. "Did he say where he was going?"

"No. But he probably went to check in. It appears that the Senate and its servants were instructed to rendezvous here."

"It looks more like they're moving in."

"They are," Casanova said, hurrying over. "And ruining me in the process. I have three conventions booked for this week and two more for next, and I've been ordered to cancel them all! Oh, and you're being moved out of the penthouse. The Consul outranks you."

"Since when?" I demanded.

"Since this is a vampire-run property and she's head of the Senate."

"There are other hotels! Why does she have to stay here?"

"Other hotels aren't a well-warded property with a portal to Faerie. Welcome to MAGIC Two," he said in disgust.

"Sorry," I told him, because he seemed to expect me to say something.

"I need a little more than that, like the key card to the penthouse. Our machine's busted." He caught my expression. "You aren't going to make a scene about this, right?"

"I'm kind of in the mood for a scene," I admitted. Casanova said something in Italian that I won't repeat. "And that's not going to help you any."

He gave me a speculative look. "Then how about this? I was planning to evict those deadbeat kids you foisted off on me—"

"They're orphans!" I said, outraged.

"Not all of them."

"They don't have anywhere else to go!"

"I'm weeping on the inside."

I sighed. "What do you want?"

"I told you. Move out of the penthouse nice and quiet, and I'll find somewhere to put the kids."

"I'll move out of the penthouse nice and quiet, and you'll leave them where they are," I countered. I was too tired for this, but if I didn't didn't spell things out, Casanova would have them sleeping in the Dumpsters out back. And it wasn't like I could get them rooms somewhere else.

The kids in question called themselves the Misfits because their magic had chosen to manifest abnormally, ensuring that they would never fit into the mainstream supernatural community. The ones with more dangerous powers had been confined to a series of «schools» the Circle had set up, where they were supposed to be taught to control their often dangerous powers. But most would never evidence enough control to suit the Circle's standards, meaning that they would never graduate. Or leave.

Tamika Hodges, a friend of mine and one of the Misfits' mothers, had tried to get her son released by legal means. When that failed, she'd taken a more direct approach and broken him out. She'd released some of his friends at the same time, thereby landing her at the top of the Circle's most wanted list right alongside me. With the help of the Senate, I'd recently cut a deal that got her out of trouble for her various crimes. But the deal hadn't included the kids, which was why they'd been hiding at Dante's until I made nice with the Circle. At the rate things were going, they were going to be here awhile. Assuming Casanova didn't throw them into the street.

"They're occupying two very nice suites!" he protested.

"There are eight of them—nine if you count the baby! What were you planning to do, stuff them in a broom closet?" He looked shifty. "They stay where they are or no deal," I said flatly.

"All right! But you owe me."

Before I could give the reply that comment deserved, my eyes locked with those of a tall, exquisite creature across the lobby. And the poor, shredded, dirt-and-garbage-covered remains of my dress suddenly began screeching like an air horn. It was loud enough to draw every eye in the place.

"Shut it off!" Pritkin yelled.

"How?!"

He tried some kind of spell, but it had no noticeable effect. "The Corps is probably still here!" he informed me, as if I could do anything about that.

And then it got worse. "Murderer!" Augustine shrieked, raising an arm to point at me.And thereby drawing whatever eyes hadn't already been turned my way. "Murderer!"

"Take it off!" Pritkin told me, grabbing the hem.

"Corps or no, I'm not streaking through the damn lobby!"

"Here." Tremaine shucked the standard-issue war mage topcoat he was wearing and passed it over. It was midcalf length on him, which meant it dragged the floor on me, but I didn't feel like complaining. I pulled it on, trying not to think about the audience I'd suddenly acquired.

"Two teams just came in the front door," Tremaine warned.

"Give it to me,"

Pritkin ordered. I unbuttoned the shrieking dress with shaking fingers and dropped it around my feet, feeling like a flasher. Pritkin grabbed it, and he and Tremaine took off, waving it above the heads of the crowd and drawing the war mages' attention—for the moment.

I clutched the coat around me and ran in the other direction, toward the employee dressing room. Luckily, I'd worked at the casino for almost a month now, so I had a locker all of my own. Unluckily, its sole contents were a sequined bustier and a pair of three-inch heels.

I slammed it shut, one eye on the doorway, and chewed a nail. Several employees stopped to stare at me, taking in my sunburned face, tangled hair, and filthy, topcoat-clad body. I really needed a shower, but taking one here was out of the question. The only thing worse than getting caught by the Circle was getting caught by the Circle naked. I needed somewhere to recharge, somewhere I could get a change of clothes and a bath, somewhere safe. And only one place came to mind.

Sometimes, it really helps to have a witch for a friend.