I rematerialized in time to see a row of lockers collapse in on themselves, the metal eaten away by age, the contents now dust. And nothing else. I couldn’t tell if I’d destroyed the assassin, but I doubted it. If I’d hit him, the illusion should have aged out of existence, too, and there should be a body on the ground.
But there wasn’t.
I scanned the room, but despite my best efforts, not even a vampire could see through this illusion. Nothing rippled; nothing moved. Damn, he was good!
But so was Mircea.
And I discovered something that I’d never truly understood before: vampires didn’t need eyes. In fact, right now, they were just a distraction. I kept straining to see when what I needed was to trust my other senses.
I closed my eyes, and dimly noticed somebody beating on something nearby. Pritkin. I’d seen him and a large group of what I guessed were his students, trapped behind the ward when I came in. But I hadn’t noticed until now that he was angry—no, he was furious—and shouting at somebody to get the damned ward down. Get it down now! But somebody else was telling him that it would be a minute, maybe two, and that was enough.
That was plenty.
This time, when the wave of scent rushed at me, I was ready. And I didn’t bother disintegrating any lockers. I waited until the fey was almost on top of me, until my nerves were screaming for me to go, go, go, until I could almost feel the edge of another blade biting into my skin—
And then I proved that my trainer’s time and energy hadn’t been wasted.
“Astara,” I whispered, and immediately heard a scream, high pitched and terrible, and a blade clattering against the hard-packed earth.
I just stood there with my eyes closed for another moment, knowing what had just happened. And not wanting to see a pentagram of light opening up inside a body, one that I doubted a glamourie, however potent, could hide. Not when said body was getting ripped apart, with the arms, legs, and torso each being sent, not to a different place, but to a different time.
Very different.
The screaming abruptly stopped and the spell closed down. I risked a peek, and saw nothing but a pool of blood on the ground and a shocked looking bunch of war mages peering in the door. And Pritkin, his arms still lifted from where he’d been hammering on the shield, halfway across the room, his eyes huge, but his face blank.
Chapter Eleven
“Here it is,” Jonas said, hefting a large book off a shelf. “It should be in here somewhere.”
He paused, probably from seeing my face, which glamouried or not was likely green. The adrenaline of the chase had kept me going long enough to reach his office, but it was starting to wear off now. What the hell had I been thinking?
“What the hell were you thinking?” Pritkin demanded. He’d been pacing around like a caged lion, but now he whirled on me.
“Now, now,” Jonas said. “Let’s give her a moment, shall we?”
“She’s Pythia! She has all the moments she wants!” He glared at me. “Which is the bloody point! You could have
shifted back in time and warned us about what was waiting in my room. You didn’t have to chase it through half the facility and almost get yourself killed!”
That was exactly what I’d been telling myself, but having it thrown at me like that pissed me off.
“Then let’s go back right now,” I challenged. “We can capture him—"
He rounded on me. “And if he had help? Help that guts you as soon as we show up?”
“I didn’t see any help—”
“You didn’t see anything! And you aren’t going anywhere near that room!”
I felt a retort jump to my lips, but forced myself to swallow it. Having been trapped behind a ward while I hunted a fey warrior right in front of him didn’t appear to have done his blood pressure any good. And I didn’t want to contribute to my boyfriend’s aneurysm.
“You could have shifted out of the training salle,” Pritkin went on, his voice cold as ice. “The wards had that creature trapped; he was effectively immobilized as soon as he went in that room. He could have been dealt with easily and swiftly by men trained to do so, but what do you do instead? You shift in there with him!”
Okay, point, I thought.
“I didn’t intend to put myself in jeopardy,” I said. “But it’s a little hard to think straight when an invisible man is trying to gut you.”
But Pritkin wasn’t having it. Pritkin wasn’t having anything. “Bollocks! I’ve trained you better than that! You know how to think under pressure, how to make the right call—”