Touch The Dark

She gave a small shrug. "Your point would be?"

I stared at her. Her gall was unbelievable. "Forget it, lady. Pick another seer."

Agnes put small fists on her narrow hips and glared at me. "The more I talk with you, the more I'm convinced that you'll either be the best of us all, or the very worst. If I had another choice, believe me, I would take it. But I don't. The power wants to come to you. Take some advice and make it an easy transition. The more you fight it, the more trouble it will give you."

"Like hell." Thank God I had an ace in the hole. "Your power can't go to a virgin. And technically, I'm still pure and untouched."

She looked at me for a second, apparently speechless. Then she collapsed into a fit of giggles. She finally got her breath back and managed to gasp out, "Says who? Don't tell me you've been listening to the mages! Please!"

"Wait a minute. The vamps believe it, too. Everyone does."

Agnes shook her head and tried to stifle a grin. It didn't work and she finally gave up. "God, you're naive. Who do you think told them that? One of the ancient Pythias got tired of the code that said a priestess had to be 'pure and untouched, to use your phrase. So she told the priests at Delphi that she'd had a vision. The power would be much stronger if it came to an experienced woman. They bought it, and she got her lover. But it doesn't make a difference. Well, not about obtaining the power, at least."

"What does that mean?"

She laughed again and did a little twirl around the room, passing through a couple of mages on the way. They shuddered slightly but didn't wake up. "It means that I suggest you complete the ritual as soon as possible if you expect to control the gift instead of vice versa." She gri

I was pretty damn a

"Perfect. Then at least I move on knowing you aren't insane." She stopped her little ballerina impression so abruptly that her skirts swirled about her legs. "I didn't want it, either, you know. I alone among the sybils of my generation would have been very happy not to have been picked. It is a great honor, but it's a heavy burden, too. Plus, you have to put up with the Silver Circle and, believe me, that's no one's idea of fun."

Her expression was suddenly somber. "For what it's worth, Cassie, I'm sorry. There hasn't been a Pythia since the first one that has had to take on the job completely untrained. But then, with your abilities, you're likely to rewrite the rule book anyway. For example, did you know that you're currently inhabiting the same time twice? Your spirit is struggling along with that girl you rescued, through the streets outside, while you're in here talking to me. I can't do that. Plus, most of our adepts take years to learn what you've managed to teach yourself in only a few days. Really, taking another spirit along with you! That's impressive."

I felt like screaming. "Will you stop talking and listen to me? I. Am. Not. The. Pythia!"

She crossed to me quickly and kissed my cheek. "You are now," she said, and disappeared. That same second, I got hit with something that felt like a Mack truck had mowed me down. There's no way to adequately describe it, so I won't even try. The closest thing I'd ever felt was when I was in Tomas' body and his heightened senses proved so distracting. Only the senses that were sharpened this time weren't smell or sight, but that awareness of other worlds, different but meshing with ours, that I'd always had a little of when I spoke with ghosts. Now I had a lot of it, and the sights and sounds around me were so distracting that I didn't even notice that time had started back up. Not, that is, until someone stabbed me in the foot.

I looked down to see that the rogue sybil had got me after all, although not in the way she'd pla

"Okay, I changed my mind. Eat her."

A group of ghosts broke off from the main cloud and dove for her, but Rasputin moved with vamp quickness and got there first. He grabbed her about the waist and they disappeared, along with the few of his vamps who had escaped the ghostly attack. The mages saw their ally run for it and immediately followed suit. My little knives got overly excited and chased them out the door and up the stairs and I let them go to it. Killing off a few more dark mages might alter the timeline, but at that moment I was too tired and fed up to care.

I sat down and tugged off the slipper. Damn it! The crazy bitch had almost severed a toe. Mircea handed me a handkerchief from the pocket of his robe, and I bound up the wound as best I could. I didn't think she'd lose it, unless it got infected. But considering the state of the dungeon, that seemed at least possible. Great.

I looked up to see my ghostly army hovering there, an unspoken demand in their eyes. I knew what they wanted, and there was no point trying to talk them out of it. The energy they'd stolen from Rasputin's vamps might sustain them for years, but who wanted to exist someplace like this?! They had only one interest, and I had promised, but there were going to be a few conditions.

"No townspeople and no i

Immediately, a swirling maelstrom of spirits rose up, like a multihued blizzard around my head. It was so thick that it blotted out the room for an instant and so full of pent-up rage that their collective wails sounded like a freight train. Then, in the blink of an eye, they were gone. I didn't try to follow them with my senses; that was one party I preferred not to see.

I took my hands away from my ears to find Mircea watching me, a cautious look in his eyes. I sighed. I did not want to have this conversation, wanted it less, in fact, than facing Rasputin again. But there was no way out. "I think we did it," I told him. "Did you explain things to Radu?"

He nodded slowly. "Yes. He has agreed to bring Louis-César over and to leave him to develop alone as happened before. Radu will escape but avoid contact with anyone for a century, until the time I rescued him from the Bastille. And even after that, he will keep a low profile, as you would say. Will that do?"

I thought about it for a minute. It wasn't perfect, but barring locking him in a room for three and a half centuries, I didn't see an alternative. And I somehow doubted that Mircea would go along with that. "Yeah, it ought to, as long as he doesn't make any vamps until our time. Somehow Rasputin is already making unregistered vamps, and we don't need two people doing it. Oh, and tell Radu about Françoise. I get this feeling that some of the mages might try to recoup some of their losses with her tonight."

It was a measure of just how close to the edge Mircea was that he didn't question what I meant. "As you like."

I gestured around. "How much of that could you see?"

"Very little, but I received the impression from our being alive that we won."