Curse the Dawn (Cassandra Palmer 4)

“You believe?”

“The wards are reporting that area as safe. However . . .”

“However, what?”

“They may not be completely reliable. Not with this level of damage.”

I stared at him. “Not completely reliable means I could shift into the middle of a rockfall, Marlowe! No guesses—this is going to be hard enough as it is. I have to know!”

He just looked at me, but Rafe’s eyes slid to the right to an area still swathed in utter darkness. A hissing sigh came out of the gloom, and a moment later, the Consul appeared so suddenly that it was almost as if she’d shifted in. I knew better—she’d probably been there all the time, but she’d been so still I hadn’t noticed her. And considering that she was dressed in her everyday outfit of live, writhing snakes, it was a good trick.

Ancient, kohl-rimmed eyes sized me up, and as usual, they didn’t look as if they liked what they saw. “I will tell you exactly, Pythia,” she informed me. “And then you will do as we have bid.”

It wasn’t a request. She swept regally out the door and Rafe, Marlowe and I followed. Rafe went downstairs to round up Pritkin and Caleb, while Marlowe and I ran up two flights after the Consul.

The dust became thicker as we ascended, and small siftings of sand were starting to trickle down the walls every time there was a mini-quake. “What happens when the wards go?” I asked as we reached a tumbled mass of stone and dirt at the top of the second flight of steps.

“The levels above this one have solidified into a solid mass,” Marlowe told me. “Without the support of the wards, their weight will crush anything below it.”

“So, no pressure, then.” I stared at the passageway to the left, which, as Marlowe had said, was totally blocked. Red sandstone from the lower levels had mixed with deep yellow from the upper, forming a jumbled mass that didn’t appear to have even a small gap at the top. It was like the corridor had been reabsorbed by the rocks around it.

“We believe that it is blocked almost to the cells themselves, which have an independent ward system for added security,” Marlowe told me quickly.

“I need more than a good guess,” I reminded him.

“You shall have it,” he said, steering me back down a few steps.

We both looked up at the Consul, who remained at the top. “You never saw this,” she ordered.

“Saw what?” I asked, bewildered. She was just standing there, a slim figure who, I suddenly realized, was only about my height. Funny; she’d always seemed taller.

Marlowe’s arm curved around my waist, moving me back even farther right as there was an abrupt burst of motion. Suddenly there were snakes everywhere—a thick mass of black, squirming shapes that boiled up around the Consul’s feet and legs. They swarmed up her body, twined around her neck, flowed over her face and twisted into her hair. A particularly fat one forced its way past her lips and started down her throat, distending the flesh on either side of her neck as it undulated.

“Marlowe! Do something!” I cried, horrified.

He didn’t say anything, but his grip tightened as more snakes appeared and began to cleave her flesh, their black bodies sheathed in red as they forced their way inside her. I could see them moving in writhing patterns under her skin, the small ones pulsing like overfilled veins, larger ones distending her form in ghastly ways as they tunneled inside, seeming determined to consume her. There was a sound like a ripe fruit bursting, and suddenly there was no woman at all. Only a corridor filled with slick, gleaming creatures writhing in a puddle of bloody goo.

“Oh, God!” I stumbled backward and would have fallen without Marlowe’s arm around my waist. I stood transfixed by shock and revulsion as the truth slowly dawned. The Consul was still there; she’d just changed form.

The snakes found holes in the rockfall through which a human could never have fit. We watched them wriggle away, slipping into the earth as easily as water, until they had all disappeared. Then Marlowe slowly lowered me into a seated position.

“Are you going to be sick?”

I shook my head. I was too freaked out to be sick. “I’d heard stories. . . .”

He sat on the step next to me, facing the darkness below, and stretched his legs comfortably out in front of him. “About us turning into mist or wolves or bats?”

“Yes. But I didn’t believe. . . . I thought they were myths.”

“For the most part, they are. There are very few of us who live long enough to acquire the sort of power needed for bodily transformation.” His voice was admiring, as if the Consul had done a particularly nifty parlor trick.“I’ve heard stories that Parendra—the Consul’s Indian counterpart—can do it, too. They say he becomes a cobra.”

I didn’t say anything. I was too busy trying to swallow the lump that had risen in my throat. It felt like I might be sick after all, and then I wondered how the Consul would take that, if she’d be offended when she got back, all hundred pieces of her. . . .

I swallowed the lump back down.

“It can be a little . . . disturbing . . . the first time you witness it,” Marlowe said, glancing at me. “I recall being somewhat taken aback myself.”

Taken aback. Yeah. That covered it.