passport. How on earth was I supposed to get to Vienna?
“I’ll get there if I have to hitchhike the entire way,” I growled as I wrapped the scarf around my waist like a sash, tying the rope on top of it. “Pia and Kristoff will loan me some money for one of those portals, I bet. And maybe I could call—” As I stepped out the door, I had a mental image of Terrin chastising Sally, who gave a little laugh in response before suddenly the floor was yanked out from underneath my feet, and I went tumbling into a black void of nothing.
“Hruh?” The black void was filled with a sharp pain. “Wha’?”
“You did not keep your arms and legs inside the portal at all times,” a brusque male German voice chided me.
I opened my eyes to find myself on a mat in a small room filled with pale sunshine. A spot on my head hurt —obviously I’d conked it on the floor when I . . . memory returned at that moment. “Jesus wept!”
“You were warned to do so. If you are unkempt now, it is not the fault of Portals Elite, Ltd. Please to move off the receiving cushion.”
I got somewhat painfully to my feet, dusting myself off as I limped out of the portal room, saying under my breath, “Thank you, Sally. I don’t know how you did it, but zapping me to Vienna was a very nice thing to do.”
Fifteen minutes later I was navigating the process of making an international collect call to Pia and Kristoff, who were unhappy, but not surprised, to find that Alec had abandoned me in order to take care of the vampires on his own.
“He wishes to protect you from the council, that is all,” Kristoff said at the same time Pia said, “Stupid man. Doesn’t he realize you guys are stronger together than apart?”
I agreed with both statements, and would have moved on to asking for the address of the Moravian Council’s headquarters, when Kristoff’s words struck me.
“What do you mean, Alec wants to protect me from the council? I haven’t done anything to them. They’re mad at Alec, not me. Aren’t they?”
“You had Sally remove them from her palace,” Kristoff said with a pronounced note of regret in his voice. “I’m afraid that means they consider you have directly opposed them in the act of completing their duty.”
“So what?” I snarled into the pay phone, startling an elderly woman standing at a bus stop next to me. I turned my back on her and lowered my voice. “You did the same thing. Defied them, that is.”
“Yes, but the difference is that they don’t know for a fact that we had Alec in our house,” Pia pointed out. “They suspect it, but have no proof beyond seeing us together in France, and I told them that was because of Ulfur.”
I sighed yet again and rubbed my forehead. “Great, so that’s why Alec ran off without me? To keep them from punishing me?”
“It’s what I would do,” Kristoff allowed.
“Well, screw that! I’m not going to sit around and let some damned holier-than-thou group punish Alec or me! Do you hear me? I won’t stand for it!”
“You go, girl,” Pia said with approval. “Boo, maybe we should go to Vienna—”
“No,” he said quickly. “Alec does not wish for our interference. Cora, you must have faith that he will do what is best for you both.”
Faith I had in buckets. It was the man of my dreams—literally—who was missing from my life, and I didn’t intend on letting him martyr himself to save me. “Why won’t he talk to me? Have they done something to him? Something heinous? Oh dear lord, did they already send him back to the Akasha?”
“No, they wouldn’t banish him, not with you still here,” Kristoff answered. “Most likely he has closed you from his mind so he can deal with the situation. It is, again, what I would do.”
“Men!” Pia snorted.
“Agreed. What’s the address of the council?”
Reluctantly, he gave it to me, along with the phone number I requested.
“Cora—”
“I know. Let Alec handle it. The only problem is that’s the man I love in there with all those judgmental vampires, and I’m not going to let them touch so much as one hair on his adorable if sometimes far too stubborn head. Thank you for the information and advice. We’ll give you a call when the dust has settled.”
“Dust? What—”
I hung up the phone, dug around in my pockets to see what sort of change I had there, and resigned myself to making another collect call.
A half hour later I retraced my steps to the portal shop where Sally had dumped me, and greeted the first batch of arrivals.
“You’re sure you want to do this?” Jane asked as she pulled out a cell phone. “It’ll be very expensive having the entire union portalled here.”
“Do it. Alec will just have to foot the bill.”
She took one look at the grim expression on my face, and called her lieutenant to instruct the union members to begin the process of transporting them all from France to Vienna.
“And now the time has come for you to do penance for your attempt at killing Alec,” I said a short time later, grabbing the body that plummeted out of nothing to whomp hard on the receiving-end mats. I jerked Eleanor to her feet before she could even suck in her breath, twisting one of her arms up behind her back. “You’re going to be at the front of the group that storms the vampires’ castle.”
Eleanor sputtered something rude. I jerked her arm upward, causing her to squawk. “You’re going to do this, and then you’re going to get the hell out of our lives forever. You got that?”
“You are not the boss of me—”
“No, but Jane, as the head of the union, is. Jane?”
“I’m sorry,” Jane said, spreading her hands and moving out of the way as the union members started arriving with frequency now, one barely rolling out of the way before another appeared to drop onto the mats. “The donation Cora is offering the union is just too great to ignore, so I am forced to issue you with a direct command to obey Cora in all things.”
“I’m not bound to you,” Eleanor protested. “You can’t command me like that!”
“You are not bound to me personally, but you are bound to the union, and as its leader, you are obligated to follow the rules I put into place. This is one of the rules.”
Eleanor argued, as I knew she would, but I didn’t have the time or patience to put up with it. “Either you agree to do this, or I get hold of Sally and have you sent to the Akasha,” I bluffed, holding up my hand to stop her when she would have protested. “And don’t think I can’t do it, because Sally and I see eye to eye, and besides, I think she’s aching to send someone to the Akasha.”
Eleanor’s lips tightened. “Very well,” she finally said. “But I’m only doing this so I can wash my hands of the pair of you forever.”
It took another thirty-five minutes before the entire union, all 112 members, were assembled. We spilled out of the building into the street, and Jane had to resort to the use of a megaphone before she finally got everyone organized in a long line of liches, three abreast, that snaked around the block and across a pedestrian mall. The walk to the Moravian Council house took another half hour, but at last we had the tall, elegant house in our sights.
“Charge!” I yelled, not waiting for Jane to give the command. To my surprise, the liches did exactly as I ordered—they ran forward, streaming into the house once the door was battered down.
I was at the head of the group as it entered the elegantly furnished hall, and leaped onto a couch to scream, “Alec!”
Noise drifted down the stairs as the liches poured into the house. I pushed past them on the stairs, ignoring a scuffle that had broken out between a couple of vampires and the liches on the landing. “This way!” I yelled, urging them up after me as I ran to two double doors that the vampires had obviously been guarding. I flung open the door, dashing inside, the liches swarming behind me.
“Aha!” I yelled, pausing to point a dramatic finger at the scene before me. “I knew it! I knew you people had Alec!”
There were four men at a long table. Facing them, seated in a chair, was Alec, flanked on either side by the messenger and his buddy.
