When I didn’t answer, the hand on my butt tightened painfully. “It’s camouflaged as the third set of shelves to the right,” I said resentfully. “You’ll feel a tingle as soon as you get close.”
Mages skim along the top of ley lines all the time, using them like their personal superhighway for fast, unobstructed travel. But portals are a little trickier. They actually permeate the ley line itself, forming an energy sink that propels the user into the no-man’s-land between realities before spitting them out the other side. Sometimes that’s a few yards away; sometimes it’s in another world. Because they take so much power, portals are pretty rare, and most people are a little nervous about entering one. Assuming he’d need to work up his courage, I’d planned to escape as soon as Louis-Cesare put me down. But the damned vamp dove in headfirst.
For a second, I was caught up in a maelstrom of activity—energy hummed inside my bones, sound roared in my ears and a swirl of colors flashed before my eyes too swiftly to sort out. Then I was bouncing on something soft and damp and odorous, bits of which clung wetly to my fingers. Once the world stopped spinning, I identified it as the sauerkraut I’d just cleaned out of the fridge. Damn—I’d forgotten that Claire had started a compost heap.
Before I’d even gotten my feet under me, a couple of Fey were rounding the house like silver blurs. My face was forced into the kraut by a strong hand, so I felt rather than saw the curse fly overhead. It burst against the trunk of an oak a yard behind us, causing it to catch fire and explode outward. One of the burning bits of bark set a tuft of compost in front of my nose alight.
Louis-Cesare released me, and I bounced up with a snarl. “OK. That’s it.” I grabbed a very illegal weapon from my jacket, but didn’t get a chance to use it. An arm circled my waist and suddenly we were airborne. It took a moment to realize that he had actually jumped the six-foot fence separating Claire’s house from the one next door. We landed in Mr. Basso’s flower bed, Louis-Cesare hitting the ground first and rolling to take the impact.
“You have my word that the Senate will reimburse your friend for any damage,” he hissed in my ear as I struggled to my feet. “Now, must I carry you from here?”
A Fey appeared on top of the fence, and another jumped over it with the easy grace of a leaping deer. Neither was the leader, and either they didn’t speak English or they weren’t feeling chatty. I silently opened a palm to show them the small black orb I carried.
Louis-Cesare had drawn his sword and begun backing toward the Senate’s car, a BMW four-door. The driver must have figured out that something was wrong, because I heard the engine crank to life behind us. The Fey didn’t so much as glance at Louis-Cesare’s nice, shiny rapier. Their eyes never left the dislocator in my hand.
We reached the car and Louis-Cesare stuffed me in ahead of him. He hadn’t even shut the door before the driver was tearing away from the curb, tires screaming. I twisted around in time to see the leader join the other two. Our eyes met, and his seemed to have darkened. They looked almost inky now, black as the deepest part of the sea, and as pitiless.
His power flowed after us, filling the air like a clammy fog. It took the form of a human hand, shimmering with the gases that formed it like a glittering shroud. I got the definite impression that it would be a very bad thing if it caught us. It wasn’t even at the car yet, but I could feel the coldness of it, a chill that reached all the way to my bones. I could sense its intent—to search, to find, to kill. It flowed over a flowering shrub, frost furling the leaves like autumn had come in a moment. And when it passed on, there was nothing left behind but dried sticks and fallen petals.
One insubstantial finger barely touched the bumper of the car, and I was suddenly engulfed by a chill so great I would have thrown myself into a fire had one been available. In a heartbeat, it made me certain that warmth would never come again, that I would never do anything but shiver and watch ice creep farther along my bones. So cold.
Strong hands seized me, jerking me across the seat, and lips pressed to mine. Warmth suffused my mouth and began to spread, pushing against the chill shuddering through my body. I came back to myself with a jolt, looking into Louis-Cesare’s worried face, as the driver floored the gas pedal. We rocketed through Claire’s normally quiet neighborhood like all the hounds of hell were after us, outracing ancient magic with a lot of modern German engineering. I clutched Louis-Cesare’s shoulders and shuddered with just the memory of that deadly touch. What had I gotten myself into now?
Chapter Four