Shatter the Earth (Cassandra Palmer 10)

It was Romania again, of course. But not back at the torture palace, as I’d half expected. Instead, I materialized in a thick wood in what appeared to be the middle of the night, because I couldn’t see a damned thing!

Which was why I immediately tripped over a tree root.

I caught myself before I broke a nose, adding a few new bruises to the collection, then stood back up and looked around. My eyes slowly adjusted, which didn’t help much, then flicked over to VampVision, which did. But even then, all I saw was a gibbous moon combing silver fingers through the forest, but highlighting nothing of interest because there was nothing to see.

Smell, on the other hand, was a completely different story.

A wave of scent hit my nose, all at once, that was almost overwhelming. I staggered back against a tree trunk and held on, because the sensory overload was making me dizzy. Or something worse, I thought, not sure what was happening.

My enhanced eyes could clearly see the little glade I’d landed in, with motes of moonlight filtering down like falling stars. In fact, vamp eyesight picked up all kids of little details that even night vision goggles would have missed: a rabbit surprised by a hawk, judging by the tracks that stopped abruptly in the dirt, and borne aloft, but leaving traces of warm blood behind that I could read like a book; a spider’s web strung with dew or rain, glittering like a diamond necklace between two trees; the tiny, gleaming eyes of a bird, peering at me out of its nest, its yellow plumage so bright that it was startling. But my nose—my nose was detecting . . . more.

It was almost like having a second set of eyes, I realized. I could literally see the scent trails left by animals and birds as they scurried through the underbrush, or darted across the open spaces, eager to get back under cover. And not just as vague clouds of mist.

I watched a ghost deer slowly pick its way out of the undergrowth, a shimmering silver stag with horns that I could see as easily as I could the dark leaves on the bushes behind it. It looked like it was made out of moonlight, and disappeared in the areas where the moonbeams striped its body. Only to reappear on the other side, as if birthed anew.

And it wasn’t the only ghostly presence.

The little glade was teeming with life, everything from translucent caterpillars crawling along a branch, to ethereal squirrels chasing each other around a tree; from spectral birds swooping through the air, what looked like hundreds of them as the ones in the nest came and went, over and over to feed their baby, creating a starburst of silver striations in the air, to a pale snake slithering right under my feet. I pulled back, but of course, it wasn’t there. It hadn’t been there for—

A week, I thought, realizing that my new nose could “see” through time. The dimmer shapes in the glade were scent shadows of things that had come by longer ago, their outlines like fading ghosts. The brighter ones had passed more recently, including a set of footprints that glowed so brightly they were practically neon, because their owner had just been here.

Mircea, I thought, staring at them, and wondering why he was barefoot.

But I still didn’t move. Too many weird things had been happening lately, courtesy of my new blended senses, and this was a step too far. I needed a moment to process, to understand, but I didn’t understand, not anything!

I watched the ghost deer, caught up in wonder—and no little confusion. How was it here? Yes, maybe Mircea’s nose could pick up its scent, but I’d never heard of vampires seeing ghostly images of past events! The closest that I had heard of were people known as Hounds, vampires with super sensitive noses who could almost move around with their eyes closed.

It was said that they also carried a catalogue in their heads, the smells of thousands of things, maybe tens of thousands. And that they could kind of “see” backwards in time, some a week, the most gifted maybe two or more, detecting past events from tiny motes of scent left behind. But Mircea wasn’t a Hound—and neither was I!

I didn’t know what a deer smelled like. Or a snake or a bird, for that matter. I doubted that there was an animal on Earth that I could identify by scent alone. Okay, maybe a skunk, but that was it. So even if Mircea’s abilities were boosting mine, it shouldn’t matter: I shouldn’t know what I was smelling!

Yet I did.

The silver footprints were glowing on the ground, clear and bright, yet I still didn’t follow them. Gertie had figured out that Mircea and I were not just borrowing abilities but blending them, even before I had, but what if it didn’t end there? Because Mircea was a master vampire, meaning that he controlled a large family of other vamps, both the ones he had Sired and the ones he’d acquired from other masters.

And some of them were Hounds.

Was I drawing from their abilities, too? I didn’t know, because I didn’t know anything, and I doubted that anybody else did. Other Pythias didn’t do this kind of thing! They stayed in their lane, learned their craft, and kept the Pythian power in line at the same time!

But I hadn’t done that. Not deliberately; in fact, I hadn’t done a damned thing. But when Mircea put that spell on me . . . yeah. He probably did open up, not just his own abilities for my power to play with, but those of everyone else connected to him as well.

Mircea might only be able to draw power from his family, not abilities, but the Pythian power—who knew what it could do? It had originally belonged to a god, before Apollo shaved it off and gave to the Pythias at Delphi. And, over time, it had developed its own personality, its own unique way of looking at things.

And, right now, it was at freaking Disneyland!

I closed my eyes, concentrated, and gave my power a stern talking to, although I doubted that it understood. We had a hard time communicating, since it didn’t seem to think at all like a human and I didn’t think at all like a god. And nothing I’d learned over the last month had helped with that, since the other Pythias didn’t understand it, either.

But when I opened my eyes, things did seem a little better. The vision animals were still there, but blurred and less distinct. I mentally stuffed my new abilities back into a trunk and slammed the lid, and it got a lot better. I still glimpsed things occasionally, out of the side of my eyes, but for the most part, the forest was dark again.

I breathed a sincere sigh of relief, and finally started off after Mircea, not only because I had to get him out of here before he trashed the timeline, but also because he was the only one who could end this! He needed to get this spell off me, right now, before my power learned any new fun little tricks. And blew my mind, possibly literally, in the process!

But finding him was easier said than done, not least because I was barefoot, too.

Of course, I was, I thought savagely. I was supposed to be in bed! Not picking my way through a damned prickly forest, stumbling over roots and stubbing my toes on fallen logs, not that I’d be able to feel my bruised digits for too much longer since it was also freezing!

I finally figured out to step on top of his larger footprints to avoid any more pitfalls, and started making good time. Enough

that it was only a couple of minutes before the forest gave way to a large clearing, with a segment of dirt road passing from tree line to tree line along one side of a small village. The houses were small, log-cabin-like things with white plastered walls, rough wooden doors, and high thatched roofs, almost like they were wearing a version of the local nobility’s tall, fur hats.