Page 10 of Time's Fool

No matter what my companion thought.

“Do not concern yourself,” Mircea murmured. “It will work.”

“Are you in my head?”

“No. I don’t have to be.”

I scowled. “What the hell does that—”

I broke off, because something was happening.

Something very big.

God’s teeth, I thought, stepping back slightly as a battery of spells lit up the night, almost as brightly as day.

“Is that . . . ours?” A vamp asked, sounding unsure.

“No.” And, for the first time, I saw the unflappable master vampire somewhat flapped. “But your job is the same. Do not lose them.”

“But . . . I believe that their fellow witches are attempting to—”

“Yes, they are! Now go. Go quickly!”

They went, streaming like a black tide across the suddenly brilliantly lit night, toward the building which had just had a large hole blown into it. But the assault hadn’t come from us, but from the crowd of dark clad figures on a hill about a quarter of a mile off. I shouldn’t have been able to see them through the dark and rain, but the spells they were throwing were lighting them up with a rainbow of color.

And causing our guys to suddenly start dropping like flies.

Mircea cursed and went dim, a vampiric trait for merging with the shadows. Only he wasn’t hiding in the forest. He was—

“What are you doing?” I said, running after him and grabbing his arm.

“Change of plan. Get under cover and stay there. I will find you later.”

“And what are you going to do?”

“Find that bloody witch!”

And then he was gone, helped in his escape by a spell thrown at us, which missed since it had had to come a quarter mile. But it didn’t miss by much. The energy wave from the impact was enough to blow a hole the size of a small pond in the muddy grass in front of me, and to send me flying backward.

Get to the trees! The vamp said again, this time in my head, as I hit down yards from where I’d been standing.

I rolled, explosions going off all around me, and tried my best—to remember how to breathe, to find cover, and then just to get to my feet and run. I failed at all of it. I collapsed back against the ground instead, with the world slinging wildly around me, because there was a slight chance that the spell hadn’t entirely missed, after all.

So, I lay there and watched women with wild, matted hair stream out of the hole in the jail, instead. It was a memorable sight, with the Circle’s mages now in the field and battling the attackers, with bright spell-light flying across the scene from all directions, with the shield that was supposed to protect the facility going up and down and up and down. And finally bisecting a witch and mage both, who had been rolling around on the ground, battling it out, before the fritzing ward solved the issue by slicing them in two.

I blinked, having never seen that before, as a group of escaping witches washed up against the newly raised shield. I had a second to see their desperate faces, to see the Circle’s men grab them and pull them back, to see one of them get a hand loose, tear off her gag and land a spell that sent a mage staggering with a face full of blood. And then I didn’t see anything, when another huge, combined spell hit, lighting up the whole shield dome in a wash of deadly fire.

It momentarily blinded me and I turned my head away. And when I looked again, I didn’t see the battlefield. I saw a witch, standing over me, her cape flapping in the wind and her unbound tresses blowing wildly around her laughing eyes.

Her very blue eyes, which went well with the dark color of those tresses.

Well, I’m dead, I thought, as she squatted down beside me, her skirts in the mud. They were as blue as her eyes. And as the spell that was boiling in her fist.

“Looking for me?” she asked, grinning.

“I’m just the hired help.”

She laughed and it was pretty, too. “Then tell your master: let it go. The disturbances he’s worried about will be over soon. As long as the vampires stay out of it, we’ll leave them alone.”

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