Cold Reign (Jane Yellowrock #11)(110)

“Whatever. This is not a good time,” I said, sheathing vamp-killers and pulling weapons of more modern heritage, working both slides as I did. “Grégoire.” I pointed both barrels at him. “Stop. I’ll fill you with silver if you don’t.”

“Putain de merde, t’étais où, bordel?” he snarled at me. “On attendaient que tu arrives, pendant qu’ils nous torturaient!”

I wasn’t sure what I had done, but it sounded awful. The blue woman spun to him, insubstantial gauzy skirts billowing out. “No! Not her!” She pointed to me. “The message you received was not from this one! It was a ruse.”

Soul held up a hand and Grégoire stopped. Blue Girl took Soul’s gauzy skirts in her hands and slipped close, wrapping the skirts around her legs, as if sliding under a wing. Her bright blue eyes were on me. Soul said, “Cerulean tells me that you are betrayed. By one you do not expect.”

Grégoire stopped his crawl. Got to his feet. “Put away your weapons,” he said to me, as if they were toys not to be bothered with. To Soul he said, “Who has betrayed us?”

Soul turned to me instead of answering him. “You have a problem that we might solve.”

“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.