“Yeah?” I challenged.
“That”—she pointed at the cage and the sparkling geode—“is a time trap. It calls to us. If it takes us in, broken as it is now, it becomes a weapon. If it detonates, the explosion will wipe out most of New Orleans. You can deactivate it while in a bubble of time.”
“What?” I said. “How? It comes with an instruction manual?”
Soul didn’t even smile. “It isn’t difficult. It is vibrational, a drumming magic.”
Which I had never heard of. Drumming magic? “Why not you? Or him?” I pointed at Gee, who dropped to a knee at the side of Louis.
“All other time-benders will be imprisoned,” she said. “Only you have the skills and the ability to move through time that is neither arcenciel time nor Anzu time. But you must hurry.”
“Well, crap. Of course I have to deactivate a bomb that’s going to wipe out the city. Why not?” I leaned to her and snarled, “I don’t believe you. I think you just want me to destroy a trap that scares you silly.” Soul didn’t blink, but Little Girl Blue twitched. Gotcha.
“Yeah. That’s what I thought,” I said. “There’s problems at HQ. I’ll deactivate your bomb. But in return, the arcenciels, all of you, will agree to support Leo and the city against the rest of the European vampires. You will make a fast parley, agree to terms within one hour of the onset of negotiations, to begin at dawn, and you will support him and us against them.”
“Done,” Soul said. “Bomb first.”
“Whatever.”
Soul gave me instructions. I shoulda refused.
CHAPTER 20
Your Faith Has Waned and All but Disappeared
First, I bubbled time, which was a lot easier than once before. I wasn’t sure if that was a good thing or a bad thing, but I pulled in the Gray Between and folded it around me like a cloak. No nausea. Weird. But then, the Glob in my pocket seemed to warm even more, as if the lightning had activated it this time. Maybe a lot of the changes in my magic were the result of its power.
I took a single, solid sterling silver stake and entered the silvered gate, stepping over the vamp. Sat on the floor near the sparkling geode, not touching it, not bringing it into the bubble of time with me. I crossed my legs like a yoga position. My feet were pawed, big as dinner plates with retractile claws, so it wasn’t graceful. I hadn’t even noticed that I’d been barefooted. Bare-pawed? Whatever. The puma pads were resistant to the cold and the rough surfaces. I began to tap on the geode’s coarse outside. Soul had said to tap on the stone with a specific beat, a rhythm that reminded me of one of Aggie’s drums. Soul had said, “This is a ceremony, outside of time, in the midst of battle. But it is a ceremony that has no rules, one that you must feel your way through, as you feel your way through a dance, each step the result of the previous.” What she meant was that I’d be flying by the seat of my pants. As always.
I tapped, a slow steady pace. The sound waves, initiated in the Gray Between, entered the geode in regular time, supposedly setting up a vibration. What would have been long minutes, outside the time bubble, passed. The sparklies inside the geode didn’t alter. More time passed. I settled into the rhythm: hard, soft, soft, soft. Hard, soft, soft, soft. A tribal drumming.
I crossed my legs, relaxing into it. TAP, tap, tap, tap. TAP, tap, tap, tap. TAP, tap, tap, tap. My heart rate settled into the beat, old as tribe. Old as time. The beat slowed. TAP, tap, tap, tap. . . . TAP, tap, tap, tap. . . . TAP, tap, tap, tap. And slowed again.
The magics gathered in the geode began to mutate. To form a single throb in counterpoint. To spark in time to the tapping, to quiver outside the pulsation. I softened the beat. Tap, tap, tap, tap . . . tap, tap, tap, tap . . . tap, tap, tap, tap . . . The magics in the crystals, a soft, glowing, golden light, dropped from the mouth of the cut stone, ragged and tempestuous, and climbed up to twist around my stake, like a snake made of glowing barbed wire. Up the stake. Around my fingers. My hand. Wrist. My arm. Prickling and faintly stabbing. Across my body with a spiteful, tingling sensation like electrified water and heated metal. And down to the Glob in my pocket. The Glob absorbed it. Absorbed it all.
The weapon lay hot against my blistered leg. It contained so much energy that it glowed through the cloth of my pants. And still I tapped, though the rhythm was so slow, so soft, that my wrist barely felt the drop and bounce of the silver stake. The geode glowed palely, the energies sliding elsewhere. Or maybe elsewhen. The crystals grew darker, vacant.
In the corner of the parking area, I saw motes of power dancing, the motes moving in time with my own rhythm. Then growing closer together. In the halted sleet, a pale glow began to coalesce. Brightening. Tap, tap, tap, tap . . . tap, tap, tap, tap . . . tap, tap, tap, tap . . .
A man stepped out of the glow. A man with wings. I knew him. Hayyel. Angie Baby’s angel. I had seen him before, for an instant that was seared into my brain. He had changed everything and everyone around him in that instant of time . . .
But no. Time wasn’t a factor or a boundary for whatever this being might choose to do. I wasn’t sure if he had any boundaries. Did any angel, beyond the will of God?
Hayyel ducked under the partially open garage door, and I smiled at the thought of him having to duck beneath anything merely matter, merely physical. This was the first time I had seen Hayyel in person for more than just an eye blink of time. He was beautiful, his skin darker than Eli’s, and glowing from within. Wings he folded as he moved, all in teal and charcoal and iridescent black. And who knew angels wore jeans and T-shirts?
Hayyel wove his way through the room, pausing a moment to look into the faces of Soul and Blue Girl—Cerulean. Then down to me, where I sat on the floor of the cage, tapping. He said, “You have disturbed the direction of time. The texture of time. The intent of time.”
“How does time have intent?” I asked. “Does that mean it has free will? Or that it’s bound to the will of another?” Tap, tap, tap, tap . . . Tap, tap, tap, tap . . . Tap, tap, tap, tap . . .
Hayyel didn’t reply. “You have saved lives,” he said, as if finishing a monologue.
“Yeah? How many?” I looked around the room. “Counting the humans outside and the vamps inside, maybe twenty? That many are dead at my hands in the last few days.”