Page 103 of Hijack the Seas: Seismic

I had a sudden image of a baby, caught in an intact amniotic sac, staring out at a world it couldn’t touch. Only I could, I would, whether this spell liked it or not. I was Pythia, damn it!

And the spell had a name.

Illusion, I thought, growing furious. Pritkin had said that the water fey were better at them than anyone else, but I’d been trained for this, as a Pythia who couldn’t tell the difference between reality and illusion was a danger to everyone. That was why I’d spent the better part of two weeks stumbling around from one illusion to another as Gertie and company tried their best to trip me up.

And had me screaming in terror when my bed was suddenly floating on a rising tide despite being on the second floor of the London court. Or stopping, dropping, and rolling because my ugly lace gown was abruptly on fire. Or shifting a dozen snarling Weres, who raced into the front hall one night just after I returned from a mission.

Fortunately, I’d been too exhausted to send them far because they’d turned out to be real and were less than happy about their sudden relocation to the roof. Especially since it was night, rain was bucketing down, and lightning hit the rod designed for such things above their heads a moment later, hard enough to make their hair stand on end. And continue to do so while everything was sorted out, leaving them looking like murderous puff balls.

Gertie had been in a long-running feud with one of the local clans, and they’d decided to visit in force without an invitation, which was a no-no. So I didn’t get in trouble. Other than for being unable to tell the difference between illusion and reality.

“But you will,” she’d said, an evil glimmer in her eyes.

And I had, the hard way. Which was how I did everything, it seemed, but hard times make hard women. So no illusion . . . was going to . . . hold me . . . goddamnit!

And it didn’t. One second, I was punching my way through what felt like eighty layers of plastic wrap, feeling like a suffocating mummy drowning in mud. And the next—

I was still drowning in mud because I had somehow buried my face in it.

I came up gasping, expecting to see water, light, and color after shattering the illusion, or at least the shins of the people fighting around me. Instead, I saw . . . nothing. Or nothing different, at least.

It was still dark, the mud was still gritty, and the night was still cold. Except that it suddenly felt more real somehow, more solid, more there than a minute ago. And the suffocating sensation had been replaced by the sweet feeling of air rushing into my lungs, filling them up with an almost heady surge of—

Someone else was there, too.

I froze, all that wonderful oxygen catching in my throat. One of my senses—I couldn’t have said which one—had picked something up, enough to shout a warning. But now there was nothing, just more wind whistling overhead but not hitting my skin as if it was being blocked somehow.

But not by a ward. Most of my stolen power had gone into the race, and what I had left wouldn’t fuel any protection for long. Not against the kind of magic the fey could manifest.

But damn, did I wish it could!

I stared around, not understanding anything. But at least my eyes were adjusting a little, allowing me to see a few scattered stars overhead. And the fact that they were blocked in places by what might have been cliffs. The cliffs were indistinct voids cut out of the starscape, but as I concentrated, the faint, silvery light from above highlighted pieces of their craggy surfaces.

There was nothing farther down, toward what should have been the base of the cliffs, and I slowly realized why. The silvery threads of an almost dried-up waterfall were dribbling into a basin—one that had been a pool a few moments ago but was now a mud pit with its sides blocking the view beyond. Because I hadn’t changed locations, had I?

I’d changed times. And then it all came rushing back, the desperate fight inside the churning pool, the exhilaration of seeing Pritkin defy the odds and cross the finish line first, the glimpse of Tony’s fat face. The time spell that hadn’t been mine but which had caught me anyway—

My head jerked around, hearing the sound of light, running feet in a place that shouldn’t have had them—that couldn’t have them if they were human, as this mud wouldn’t hold one of us up. And then I was floundering more quickly, trying to get to my feet before that son of a bitch finished me off. Only to get taken down a second later—

By an enraged prince of the light fey.

I’d expected Tony for obvious reasons, but the starlight was glimmering off of silver dragonscale, long hair almost the same color, and a beautiful, furious face. Æsubrand—I’d nearly forgotten about him. But the same wasn’t true in reverse, as he demonstrated by flipping around like a monkey and getting me into another headlock.

That would have been it, but I’d had those few seconds of warning thanks to the squelching mud and used them to manifest my whip. Which I flung backward at the bastard imprisoning me because I’d never been all that great at defense. Not that offense worked much better, with my opponent having the reflexes of a cat on steroids.

But so did my whip, and it seemed to have a mind of its own.

He released me after the third time it gouged his pretty armor deep enough to crack it and lunged backward, his breastplate falling off and the glowing tip missing his unprotected chest by millimeters. And then he dodged from side to side as the lethal golden stream slashed out again and again, like the tongue of a massive snake. Anyone else would have run for their lives or at least for cover, but did he take the wise course?

Oh, hell no. He ducked and darted, dodged and zigzagged, and somehow returned to his feet in the middle of all that. And kept.

On.

Coming.

But others were coming now, too, a bunch of them drawn by the sounds of battle and the flashing light that my whip gave off. It was strobing the ugly, muddy scene, highlighting the churned-up soil, the fury on Æsubrand’s face, and the flash of red in the eyes of the woman who took him down, even while glaring daggers at me. Bodil, I realized, wondering why she kept saving me and who else had been sucked into this.

And then somebody grabbed me, vampire quick, only to have Pritkin come out of nowhere and tackle him. The two combatants fell into the mud, beating the hell out of each other, while Æsubrand elbowed Bodil in the gut and tore free. And came straight back at me.

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