Page 96 of Hijack the Seas: Seismic

But I went nowhere except staggering forward a few feet from the pain, as if I’d sprained my whole body.

So I began doing what everyone else was, not that I had much choice. The crowd was suddenly on the move and sweeping me along with it, right across the people who had been here all night, judging from the makeshift encampments scattered around the stairs. But their seats were getting overrun, with fights breaking out on all sides, orders that no one could hear being shouted across the crowd by the authorities, and people getting trampled if they weren’t impolite enough to climb over everyone else the way I was. The only good thing was that the crowd was impeding the royal guard, too, who were lashing out, beating everyone around them with clubs and fists and trying to throw them out of the way.

I was getting battered, too, only not by them. The crowd was doing that well enough on its own, and with so many tall people surrounding me that even looking down from a height wasn’t helping anymore. I couldn’t see Pritkin; I couldn’t see anything!

And then I felt the Pythian power leave me, not that it mattered since I couldn’t use it anyway. I’d used up my part of the pilfered power on the way here. Only . . . it didn’t just vanish.

It spiraled overhead instead, a glittering golden scarf that only I could see, shimmering against the vivid blue sky like a stray sunbeam. I didn’t know what it was doing, but it hadn’t been cut off. The portal was wide open and pointed at Earth, giving it all the power it needed.

But to do what?

I followed it across the sky, as difficult as that was as I was being carried down the hill now as everyone rushed toward the pool where something was about to happen. But through the forest of heads, I saw it circle overhead once, twice, three times, and then dive—straight at Alphonse. Who I’d almost forgotten about, but of course, he’d be here—it looked like the whole city was.

Only he wasn’t fighting the crowd along with me. He had found a perch on top of another outcropping of rock, this one in the middle of the stands, leaving him a couple of stories above everything else with an excellent view. But he wasn’t looking at the racers.

He was scanning the crowd instead, and he had someone with him.

“Radu?” I said aloud, and the handsome brunette, who looked so like his brother Mircea that it broke my heart, jerked his head.

Impossible, I thought, staring. He couldn’t have heard that. I couldn’t even hear it.

But then, I wasn’t a second-level master vamp, either. Radu wasn’t as powerful as his brother, but he wasn’t the weakling he liked to play, either, the inoffensive, eccentric, somewhat flamboyant Basarab that you didn’t need to worry about.

You worried about all of them if you were smart, but many people weren’t. Even people hundreds of years old who ought to know better. For myself, I’d learned a while ago never to underestimate that family.

“Radu!” I screamed and saw his head whip around and those dark eyes get closer, but they were still sweeping over me because—

Because I had the damned hood up!

I tore it off and screamed again, at the top of my lungs this time, to the point that I could feel my vocal cords being stripped raw, but I didn’t care. And it worked. A second later, Radu’s eyes met mine across the crowd, and he gripped Alphonse’s arm and pointed.

And then they were jumping down, I assumed to come this way, although I couldn’t see them anymore. And no, no, no, I didn’t need them here! I didn’t want them here!

“Go to Pritkin!” I screamed loudly enough that a fey beside me gave me a dirty look. Although why his eardrums weren’t already ruptured, I didn’t know because mine were. And now I was being swept off course!

Pritkin’s ride had been bobbing gently in a stall to the far right of the pool, but the crowd was carrying me to the left. There was more room to maneuver there because it was a little too close to the drop-off into the surrounding sea than most people were comfortable with. And that included me!

But people had busted past the safety ropes and were surging ever closer to the edge, pulling the crowd that way. And I couldn’t change direction because my feet weren’t touching the ground but maybe half the time. I was shoulder to shoulder with everyone else and being dragged along by their momentum, and if I tried to change that, I was afraid that I’d disappear into the human tide and possibly get crushed to death.

And then those damned trumpets sounded again.

The blast was the same as before, but the reaction from the crowd was even more intense. They all but leaped forward and, in doing so, shook me free. I hit the ground then, whether I liked it or not, and was immediately battered on all sides as the whole mountainside made a push to reach the pool.

It looked and felt like a fleshy avalanche. I screamed because someone had just kicked me in the ribs, then had it cut off abruptly when the same thing happened to my head. Or maybe I took an elbow there; I couldn’t tell, but the whole world went swimmy.

And then somebody grabbed me.

I looked up, fearing a guard because I’d been less than subtle, yelling my head off. But when my eyesight cleared, I realized he was far too pretty for a guard, even a fey one. Radu, I thought, as he lifted and carried me through the crowd, the people almost magically getting out of his way.

Or maybe that was because of Alphonse, up ahead, beating the heck out of anyone dumb enough to provide an obstacle.

I watched him lay waste with what looked like one of the guard’s clubs, which made sense as he also wore one of their uniforms. This was likely why nobody was making a fuss about the beatings they were taking. Radu was wearing one, too, I realized, a purple and gold tabard over a shiny set of armor he didn’t need because vampire.

I didn’t know what those two had been up to, but it looked like they’d been having their own adventures. Only I couldn’t ask because I couldn’t hear myself think! But I could suddenly hear Radu doing so straight into my head.

—from Mircea, he was saying when I managed to focus.

“What?” I yelled, and he winced slightly.

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