Reap the Wind (Cassandra Palmer 7)

But Gertie wasn’t listening. Gertie was flinging out a hand.

“Please! I don’t have any more Tears! I can’t come back again!”

“Good,” she told me, and threw.

And the next thing I knew, I was hitting the polished floor of my suite’s atrium, feeling like I’d been shot out of a cannon. And skidding and rolling and slamming into the wall as if I had been, too. And then landing on the floor, where I sprawled in a battered heap, dazed and disbelieving.

But not as much as when I looked up.

And saw the blond acolyte step out of nothing to stare at me, burn marks still fresh on her skin.

“Let’s try this again,” she told me viciously, and stabbed something into my thigh.

I had a second to hear the wards blare a warning, to see shadows coalesce in the corners of the room, to see them descend on her and to see her fall, screaming and clutching her head. And then the room tilted and reeled and darkness closed over my own head, so absolute it felt like there would never be light again.

Chapter Fifty-two

“Cassie! Cassie!”

Someone was yelling my name, and someone else was shaking me. Or maybe they were one and the same. I couldn’t tell. I also couldn’t seem to move, except very sluggishly. And when I did, I hurt, all over.

My joints felt like rust had formed around them, old, thick, caked-on rust. My head was pounding, like a happy lunatic with a jackhammer had gotten in there and decided to redecorate. Yet it was managing to whirl around at the same time, despite the fact that I was already lying down with my eyes closed. How do you pass out lying down? I wondered. How do you—

Somebody slapped me.

And damn, that was getting old.

I opened my eyes to see a frantic face hovering over mine that was nothing but a blur, because my eyes weren’t working right, either. But I didn’t need them. A mixture of perfume and hair oil and cookies hit me before Tami’s frantic face swam into view.

Along with the living room, because I was lying on the sofa, in the midst of utter chaos. There were mages everywhere, dark-coated, heavy-booted guys with grim faces, busy freaking out the crying children they had by the hand or in their arms. Jonas was by the door, arguing with a red-faced Rhea; the blond acolyte was in a chair, guarded by no fewer than four mages, and my bodyguards—

Were everywhere.

But not facing off with the Circle. It was a fact that should have made me happy, except that they weren’t doing anything else, either. Including standing.

Marco was slumped on the couch beside me. I was having trouble seeing properly, but even I could tell he wasn’t moving, wasn’t blinking. His eyes were open, but, like mine a minute ago, they weren’t focused on anything.

I struggled over and slid a hand inside the latest terrible golf shirt. But while his skin was warm under its coating of fur, there was no heartbeat, no movement of the chest up and down, no anything. And that . . .

Didn’t happen.

Vamps didn’t go unconscious like humans. They were up and mobile, or they were in a healing trance, or they were dead. Those were pretty much the only options. And yet Marco wasn’t up, and he wasn’t dead. And if this was a healing trance, whatever had hit him must have hit everyone else, too, because the others weren’t any better off.

Rico was slumped in a corner, like a lifeless doll. Roy was lying in a heap by the bar, highball glass still in hand. Half a dozen others were scattered around, looking like they had simply dropped on the spot, or been towed out of the way of traffic and left sprawled in odd positions, like puppets with their strings cut.

“What happened?” I asked, hearing my own voice slur in my ears.

“What didn’t happen?” Tami said frantically. “You were out for hours! You got drugged, and the vamps fell out—everyone except for Fred, who ran off like a scared chicken! And Jonas showed up and then he called for his men and—”

“Wait,” I told her, trying to keep up while my vision pulsed in and out.

But my life doesn’t wait.

“Lady!” Rhea had noticed me awake and strode over, Jonas behind her.

“What’s he doing here?” I asked groggily. Because I might be out of it, but I was pretty sure he was not on the guest list.

“I let him in!” she told me, looking no better off than Tami. “I’m sorry, but you were unconscious and Lizzie was here and I didn’t know what else to do—”