Shatter the Earth (Cassandra Palmer 10)

I didn’t know how I knew what to do, whether I was borrowing that from Mircea, too, or whether super strength and speed just opened up all kinds of new possibilities. I only knew that there was no hesitation, no doubt in my mind that this would work, even before I did it. And slid underneath the great beast as it lunged, jumped up behind it, grabbed one of its hind quarters and slammed it to the ground.

It didn’t like that, the great head whipping back and forth, the jaws snapping and snarling, and the massive claws trying to shred. But I’d jumped on its back once it was down, and gotten a grip behind the head. My arm was halfway around its neck, which was as far as I could reach, but that was enough.

To pull it back, to bare the huge throat, to—

“Lady!”

I snapped back to myself at Rhea’s voice, my heart racing, my mouth full of flesh that my blunt human teeth couldn’t quite seem to tear through—

Only to see a ring of horrified faces surrounding me.

The group from the chase seemed to have made it back down here, and brought friends. Or maybe they’d been drawn by the sound of the fight. Either way, the big hall had a crowd with more running in every minute: acolytes, mages, people dressed like old fashioned nannies in starched black and white, and children—the current crop of initiates, I guessed—all staring at me with big eyes.

I stared back for a moment, with two sets of instincts—human and vampire—muddling up in confusion. And then a flood of realization hit. I slowly pulled my teeth out of the Were’s flesh, which was harder than it sounds.

A lot harder, because they were buried deep.

Guess I had gotten through the skin, after all, I thought, as blood cascaded down my chin.

Then I heard it: somebody coming down the hall, her little Victorian heels click-clacking on the tiles. A moment later I saw her, the purple curls awry, the round face even redder than usual, and the gimlet-eyed gaze going straight to me. Gertie didn’t look pleased to see me, either.

“I might have known! Lady Cassandra! What the devil do you think you’re doing?”

I tried to answer and found that I couldn’t, until I spat out a gob of Were flesh. It lay on the matted brown fur of the heaving beast, yellow and red veined and hairy topped and horrible. It quivered for a moment, the focus of all eyes, before it fell off with a splat onto the floor.

Okay, I thought sickly.

This . . . really wasn’t my week.

Chapter Eighteen

I threw up again.

The basin I was bent over was full of chicken pot pie, which is what Tami had made for lunch, pieces of peach from the cobbler that had followed, and blood. A lot of it. It splattered the sides of the porcelain receptacle in little flecks, and then dripped back down, making red ribbons that didn’t help my already queasy stomach.

Apparently, I’d nicked an artery in my attack on the Were and had swallowed a bellyful of its blood without even realizing it.

I was realizing it now.

Rhea was holding my hair back from my face and refraining from comment. Any comment. Especially “I told you so,” which I really didn’t need to hear right now.

But I wouldn’t have blamed her. She’d been right about Lover’s Knot, and fortunately so. Mircea’s abilities had come in handy when I was attacked for absolutely no reason, because that had not been my fault.

No matter what Agnes said.

But that meant that the reverse was also true: if I could borrow Mircea’s skills in another time, then he could do the same to me. And go joyriding around the timeline whenever he chose. He didn’t need me to get there or to get back, and probably the only reason he wasn’t doing it right now is because he didn’t know that.

But the problem with an almost six-hundred-year-old master, especially one who hadn’t started out stupid to begin with, was that he figured things out. Fast. I needed to figure some stuff out, too, or I was screwed. Only now didn’t seem like a good time, and not just because I was busy decorating a bowl in new and horrific ways.

But because of that, I thought, wincing.

Next door, something crashed, something else roared, and Gertie’s voice rang out, authoritative and loud, because this was her court and she’d obviously had enough. Of what, I didn’t know, but somebody was getting read the riot act. Since I was probably next, I sympathized.

“Try to take some water, Lady,” Rhea said softly, and attempted to press a glass into my hand.

My stomach roiled, and I pushed it away, even though my throat was on fire. Stomach acid might have accounted for some of it, but it seemed that Were blood had a slightly corrosive effect as well. Vampires probably didn’t care, as they healed almost immediately anyway, but I was feeling rough.

Very rough, I thought sickly.