Scorched

would know how to handle a newbie vamp, right?

“How retro?” Holly’s curiosity oozed from the receiver. “Is this for your fair lady in the Castle?”

Mac grinned, enjoying the moment. “She’s into these old fashion magazines from the thirties and forties. Kinda Greta Garbo. If I could find something up to date but with that feel...”

“Do you know her size?”

“Not the manufacturer’s size, but I could figure it out.”

“That’s what all men say, and they can’t. Their fantasy lives interfere.”

“I have a good memory for spatial relationships.” “Mac!”

“I’m just saying...”

“Put yourself in my hands.”

“Caravelli would have my head.”

“Let me rephrase. Put your shopping experience in my hands. I’m a woman, and I’m a witch. When do you need this for?”

“I’ll let you know. Right now I have to go see a sorcerer about a Castle.”

Chapter 18

Lore had given Mac directions to Atreus’s chambers. Mac peered around the corner into a big square hall. He was still hoping for a polite Q and A, but didn’t have high hopes. He’d left the sword at home—if Atreus was unbalanced, showing up armed could cause more problems than it solved—but he wasn’t about to wander into the lion’s den completely helpless. He had a well-hidden boot knife, and he’d worn the flannel shirt like a jacket to cover his gun.

He’d come alone. He wasn’t going to risk Connie. Not with so much chance of ugliness.

Mac slipped into the room, concealing himself behind one of the massive, fluted pillars dotting the room. He did a quick visual sweep. It was a huge space with upward-thrusting stone ribs, and he found his gaze drawn higher and higher. Banners hung from the vaulted ceiling like falling leaves, the jagged, rotting edges of the bright silk trailing cobwebs fringed with dust. A breeze made them stir, like they were eerily alive.

He circled the pillar to the right, trying to get a better view of the room itself. There wasn’t much furniture. Chests and chairs, mostly. In the middle of the hall was a carved wooden throne. It was empty.

He was about to give up when he heard a noise, the bar est shudder of an indrawn breath. Instinct made him draw the Sig Sauer and cock it, the harsh sound echoing like a bouncing ball. He paused, wondering whom it would alert.

Nothing stirred. Had he imagined that breath?

The noise had come from the far corner, behind the throne. Mac crouched and glided with demon silence to the next pillar, getting closer. And waited.

Nothing.

He straightened and turned, holding his weapon lightly, focusing on everything and nothing, every sense peeled. In an instant, he found what he was looking for. There was a tall man standing with his back to Mac, so still that it would have been easy to mistake him for part of the room.

Mac barely got an impression of blue robes and dark hair before his attention swerved to the thing the man seemed to be staring at: Ashe Carver, in all her biker-leather glory, hanging on the wall like a weird modern sculpture.

Holy crap! A jolt of adrenaline thumped his pulse into high gear. Mac stared for a long moment, not sure if she was even alive. Arms spread above her head, legs dangling, she was utterly still. There was no blood, no weapon poking out of her. What was keeping her up there?

Then her eyes slowly moved to meet his. Cold filled him from the bottom up, rising like a foul tide. He could see her breathing now, short, shallow pants, sucking in mere mouthfuls of air. She was choking to death.

Her bright green eyes glittered with knife-edged terror.

“You,” Mac barked, raising the gun. “Back away from her.”

The robed man took a step backward, turning just enough that Mac could see his face. Not an old guy with a big white beard and magic wand, but a much younger-looking man—hooked nose, high cheekbones, and long raven hair. The man held one hand up, fingers spread, like he was holding an invisible sheet of paper against an invisible wall.

He had to be holding Ashe by magic. The sorcerer. “Identify yourself.”

The man looked mildly surprised. “I am Atreus of Muria, of course.”

That figured. This so wasn’t the way Mac had wanted this conversation to go. He needed information from this guy. He couldn’t just blow his head off. What had Ashe done to put this disaster into action?

Still, he couldn’t let Atreus squish her to death. He’d made a promise to Holly.

“Let her go.”

The man dropped his arm. Ashe fell to the floor with an unceremonious thud, rolling once to land on her side. Mac let his eyes flicker away from Atreus for only a second. How am I going to get her out of here?

“She’s very rude,” Atreus said. “She tried to poke me with a stick.”

So you tried to stake a sorcerer. Good job, Ashe. “That is rude.”

“I assume that’s a weapon you’re holding.”

“Yup.”

“That’s also rude.”

Before Mac could react, the semi slipped from his hand and sailed across the room, landing at Atreus’s feet. It spun, miring itself in the hem of the sorcerer’s robes. Atreus bent and picked it up, studying it with obvious curiosity. “Such toys humans invent.”

He closed his hand around the gun, fondling the smooth finish a moment before a twitch of his fingers crushed it to dust. There was no muttering of spells, no flash of spectral light. This was sorcery so smooth it was damn near invisible.

Mac felt his jaw fall open, surprise clearing a path for fear.

The sorcerer’s black gaze speared him. “You’re like her, demon. You lack respect.”

Atreus’s gesture seemed to fold the air around Mac, hard pressure forcing him to his knees. “Bow before me!”

Mac was flattened until his forehead bumped the cold, gritty floor. He bit his tongue, the sudden tangy taste of blood filling his mouth.

Mac turned his head just enough to see Ashe’s face. She was deathly pale, eyes closed, her skin shining with sweat. She was still breathing in quick, sharp pants. Ashe needed doctors and an ambulance. She wasn’t going to get that here.

Mac couldn’t dust out and leave her. He couldn’t move, period. Claustrophobia prowled through him, almost exotic in its intensity.

Atreus was pacing the room in long strides. His robes followed him like something alive, twisting and flowing with Cecil B. DeMille dramatics. He picked up a long staff, adding to the effect. “My territories stretched through entire city-states. This was all my land. You have all forgotten the nine that made this place.”

Keep it together, Mac. One breath at a time.

“Were you one of the nine?” Mac asked. He was in so much trouble, asking a question wasn’t likely to make it any worse.

“I was. I put the sun in this sky.”

And had he noticed it was missing? “When was that?”

Atreus took three long strides and thumped the staff down on Mac’s back, pushing the end hard between his shoulder blades. “Before the light went from the world, you fool. And now the world itself falls away. The Castle has crumbled for sixteen years.”

An electric, tingling flood spewed from the staff, shooting through Mac’s nerves in white-hot jolts.