“Rumor is, they find you,” Marco said, sounding amused.
I waited.
Because Marco wasn’t stupid, especially about war. He’d started out as a kid in ancient Rome, where it had literally been deified, then been a soldier for a while, and finally a gladiator. And as a vamp he’d mostly been a bodyguard for his various masters for the last two thousand years, fighting their stupid squabbles until he’d been adopted into Mircea’s crazy clan.
And ended up with me.
So yeah, Marco knew war. In all its guises and permutations. Which was why I wasn’t surprised to hear him continue after a moment. “Yet they attack us in broad daylight, when they had to know they’d be photographed a couple hundred times before they left the casino.”
“The power of modern surveillance.”
He shot me a look. “Did they start out wearing glamouries?”
“Yeah, but they dropped them before the battle started. Not wanting the power drain, I guess.”
“Better that than having every Circle roughneck in town on your tail an hour later! Unless they planned to level this place, and thought it didn’t matter.”
“Or unless it wasn’t their idea.”
Sharp, dark eyes narrowed on my face. “They looked pretty enthusiastic to me. We tried to get to you through the lobby before safecracking the hard way, but it wasn’t happening. They were everywhere. And throwing spells that forced the witches to waste most of their energy shielding, or we’d have all been puddles of flesh on the floor. Those weren’t flunkies, Cassie. They had some power behind them.”
“They were Black Circle, yes, but they were foot soldiers. They weren’t leading this.”
Marco studied me for a moment, frowning. “I know I’m gonna regret asking this—”
“Ares.”
The frown tipped over into a scowl. “I know you got him on the brain. After everything that’s happened lately, I don’t blame you. But Ares isn’t here—”
“Not in the flesh.”
“As opposed to?”
I hesitated, because Marco didn’t like hearing about some of my . . . weirder . . . abilities. None of the vamps did. They liked thinking of me as the master’s little human girlfriend who just had really bad luck sometimes, rather than facing what was actually going on.
Couldn’t say I blamed them.
But I also couldn’t explain this without getting a little spooky. Luckily, Marco dealt with that sort of thing better than most of the guys. Marco dealt
with everything better than most of the guys.
“I tried to possess a dark mage,” I told him. “The one in charge.”
“You what?”
“I was out of power and we were about to be overrun. I thought, if I could take control of the leader, I could make him order the attack to stop—”
“And you thought they’d listen? A bunch of overpowered nutjobs hopped up on dark magic who were about to win?”
“And who were about to be overrun by the Circle.” I saw his expression. “I know, but that’s what I planned to tell them. That the Circle had gotten here faster than expected, and they had about a minute before they showed up in force. I hoped they’d scatter—some of them, maybe all of them—and by the time they realized it was a lie, maybe it wouldn’t be.”
Marco just looked at me.
“It wasn’t like I had a lot of options!”
He looked like he was going to say something, but changed his mind at the last minute. “But you didn’t get in.”
“No, I got in. But it didn’t help, because someone had beaten me to it.”