The Isis Collar Read online

  Harris had been right that I wasn’t qualified to do anything about the … whatever it was in front of me. But I remember from college that any spell that required a physical casing to keep the caster safe was a nasty piece of work, so in my mind it was a bomb. The best thing I could do now was to call this in to the bomb squad and get the rest of the people out of the building.

  I turned my attention to Harris, who had not only gotten the caster into the ties, but had also dialed for the bomb squad on his cell phone and was explaining about the masking spell. I waited for him to hang up the line and asked, “Do you need me to stay here, or should I go back and help the others?” I really, really hoped he’d say no. Yeah, I had come down to investigate, and I’d stay and help if I had to. But I have my limits. I’ll fight me some monsters, face bad guys with guns. I’ll even face demons. But bombs?

  The prisoner was now sitting sullenly against the wall, ankles and wrists both bound tight. It would make it impossible for him to walk, let alone run or fight. I put my Colt back in its holster.

  Harris smiled while the other man glowered. “Nah. Nathan and I are old friends, aren’t we? He won’t try to escape and embarrass himself. Besides,” Harris assured me, “the ties are spelled higher than he’ll ever get out of. He’s not going to get away. Let me get him in a fireman’s carry and I’ll go up with you. He nodded at the machine. “We’ll leave this to the experts.”

  Fine by me. More than fine. Really. I turned to go through the door, as he bent to grab the prisoner, but the moment I reached the threshold, things … changed.

  A subtle whisper of will pushed at me. It was magic all right, but not the brute force of the two men we’d encountered thus far. This was something entirely different. It eased through the protection of my charms like water seeping through microscopic cracks in rock.

  Touch it …

  What the…? I could swear I heard a woman’s voice, a warm alto that beckoned to me. I grabbed the doorjamb to steady myself. “Harris? Something’s wrong.”

  His voice was breathy and panicked when he responded. “I know. I hear her too. We need to get out of here. Now!”

  Nathan was smiling slightly, apparently listening to the voice. But he wasn’t able to respond and I knew that I certainly had no plan to do what she was telling me.

  And yet I found my head turning, until I felt like an owl, with my face pointed so I could nearly look down at my backside. The muscles in my neck and shoulders began to protest; a throbbing rose in my left temple. But these minor pains were no distraction from the words that hounded me.

  Touch it.…

  My fingers started moving without conscious thought, trying to reach for the glowing aura that raked along my skin.

  “Don’t do it, Graves!” Harris was apparently fighting his own battle against the voice, because my glance revealed he’d moved as far away from the machine as the room would allow and was now sitting on his own hands.

  “I don’t want to. Do something, Harris. You’re the mage. Haven’t you got anything in your bag of tricks to make us both deaf or something?”

  He let out a laugh that was part sarcasm and part fear. “I wish it was that easy. It’s in our heads, not our ears. I could knock us both unconscious, but then nobody will find the bomb before it blows, and they’ll have more people in the building searching for us.”

  He was right. Bomb teams usually have a mage, a straight human, and a psychic. If the psychic foresees that the bomb will go off before it can be disarmed the squad simply evacuates everyone and puts a containment field on the area but doesn’t go in. Standard practice, which is why the psychic is usually the team leader.

  Touch it.…

  The cracks in my protection were widening. I could feel the muscles in my arm tingling. My hand was beginning to disobey my command to grip the jamb. I tightened my grasp with what felt like my last ounce of free will. The wood splintered under my fingers as my knuckles grew white and the tendons of my hand locked into position.

  But I had two hands … and while I’d put all my energy into keeping my left hand still, my right had developed a mind of its own. When my right arm began to rise and reach backward, I started to panic. It wouldn’t be easy for me to touch the shield with that hand, but if the voice could make my body contort or dislocate, it would be possible. The pain in my head had grown from an ache to blinding agony. Muscles aren’t intended to be stretched to their limit and kept there—even vampire muscles that heal constantly. “Harris, you’ve got to do something! This is magic … you’re magic; do something. Freeze me in place if you have to, or knock me out or make me start screaming so people can find us.” Because now I was part of the problem. I just knew that if the voice wanted me to touch the shield, that touch would either set off the bomb or cause other things to happen that I wouldn’t like. I could feel it in my bones.

  I heard voices outside now, but they seemed too far away, given the size of the building. Maybe that’s how we were able to sneak up on Nathan in the first place—sound dampening on the room kept him focused on his task.

  I was beginning to think he wasn’t the bomb’s creator. He was likely just a hired hand brought in to make sure nobody got to it before it blew. Maybe he was the intended trigger—the one the voice we were hearing was meant to control.

  Another sharp pain stabbed through me. My right arm was struggling to touch the glowing sphere, even as I fought to keep a grip on the doorjamb and keep my feet planted firmly on the floor. I was not going to take even a piece of a step back toward that thing. If my body was going to betray me, it was damned well going to have to work at it.

  So why not make the problem part of the solution? “Harris? Can you cast at all?”

  His voice was breathy when he started to reply but strengthened as he talked. “Little bit. Nothing too complicated.”

  Thankfully, what I hoped for wasn’t complicated at all. But it was only going to work if Nathan wasn’t in here with us or just outside. By now, I didn’t think that either of the mages Harris had caught was the creator of our little problem. This magic felt … feminine somehow. And I was the only woman here to my knowledge.

  “I need you to make a trip wire. Cast a spell so that if the voice does make me touch the bomb, the second spell will go off.”

  “And what’s the second spell?” Harris sounded skeptical, probably because he realized I was admitting we might fail here. I was going to fail pretty soon. He was right.

  “Set the bomb to implode. We contain the blast in this room and force the bomb in on itself.”

  His voice was flat now and sounded hollow. “That would kill us.”

  I forced my eyes to the right as far as they would go so I could at least meet his wide brown eyes. “But the kids won’t die, and the building won’t be turned into little pieces that will punch through the neighbors’ roofs.” I paused long enough to pull on my shrinking reserves, keeping my body from obeying the powerful force that was turning me into a puppet.

  I stated the reality for the first time, and I hated saying it. “Face it. We’re probably going to die today, Harris. Let’s make it have some meaning, huh?”

  He was silent long enough that I wasn’t sure if he’d heard me. But then his voice came, sturdy and resolute. “Okay. For my little girl upstairs, I’ll do it.”

  2

  Crap, he was a father of a kid in this school? No wonder he was nearby. “Jeez, Harris. I didn’t know.”

  He shook his head as I yanked my hand back once more. “That’s why I was here instead of at work. I was supposed to take her for testing.” He shook his head, as if to clear it. “We don’t know what this thing is going to do. If we don’t keep it in this room, there’s no telling what’ll happen. Willow might have to go through life with only one parent, but she’ll be alive. If it has to be a choice, I choose her.”

  I did my best to blink back the tears that formed in my eyes. “Willow’s a pretty name. What grade?”

  “First,” he s
aid, sounding distracted. “She wants to be a ballerina when she grows up. Now shut up. I have to concentrate if I’m going to pull this off. You just keep your hands to yourself and away from that freaking bomb.”

  Touch it … now!

  My whole body jerked with the command and I had to struggle with everything I had left not to obey. I didn’t know if the caster of this particular spell was listening and realizing what we were doing or if it was just a timed command for whoever was in the room to count down to the event. But either way, the new order was more urgent and my skin was twitching in earnest now, my fingers stretching while my arm shook with the strain of keeping from reaching those last few inches. I still had command of my feet, and as long as I kept them pointed toward the door, anatomical limits would keep me in check.

  Relax … let your mind drift.

  Oh, crap. While the caster might not be in the room, this new command made me realize she knew Harris and I were here. She was reacting to my plan. Oh, crap. I felt tension seep out of my body, the same way the magic had crept in. If my leg muscles relaxed, I’d fall right over onto the bomb. My heart was beating like a jackhammer even as my eyelids were drooping, like I was trying to stay awake when I’d been driving too long. “You need to speed it up, Harris. The voice is trying to make me go to sleep, so I fall over and set off the bomb.”

  “I’m hurrying. I’m hurrying. Just hang on for a few more seconds and I’ll wrap the spell all the way around you.”

  I yawned, then shook my head, wanting nothing more than to curl up and rest, like a cat in a sunbeam.

  Wait. A sunbeam. That’s exactly what I needed. Moments before, a tree’s shadow had lain across the basement window, casting the room into darkness. Now the sun had moved on and bright sunlight streamed into the room. The sunbeams flowed through the spell with only a slight change of color before hitting the wall right next to me.

  Sunlight was no longer my friend. But the enemy of mine enemy was acceptable today.

  I leaned sideways as far as I could, letting my relaxed muscles work in my favor. I kept my hand on the doorknob to limit the swing of my body, but soon my face was square in the warm sun.

  Imagine being in a tanning bed set on high or standing in front of a blast furnace with your eyes wide open. The heat was intense and immediate and made me hiss in pain. That was good because it awakened the vampire inside. Normally, the supernatural part of me isn’t an issue except near sunset. But I wanted that part of me to feel the burn right now. The witch was playing games, trying to beat down a weak, human foe. But I’m not human, and she wasn’t going to win against me.

  I hissed again and then roared from the pain. Reflexes snapped my neck around, taking me out of the sun. I turned toward Harris, seeing him with the most extreme version of vampire hypervision—that registered people only as colored auras that smelled of … food. Thankfully, I’d had a nutrition shake before coming to the school, so I wasn’t particularly hungry. But I had no doubt that I was glowing lightly, and my eyes were probably red, because Nathan, the hired wand, straightened abruptly and started to kick away from me. His eyes were wide and the pulse in his exposed neck was racing, the thundering of his pulse making me aware of his fear.

  Relax … touch it.

  I turned and snarled at the bomb, “Go to hell, bitch.”

  Harris didn’t seem worried, but mostly I think that was because he wasn’t really looking at me. He was concentrating on the runes he was drawing on the tile with his wand. They shone gold as he wrote, as if the wand was a glow-in-the-dark marker. “Keep your head together, Graves. Think about the kids.”

  While I needed the predator’s strength of purpose, I also needed my humanity and compassion. That balance was something I worked on daily; I always want to know that I could bring myself back from the brink in a crisis. “I’m okay. Just keep working.” My voice was low and snarls lurked at the edges of my words. They made Harris look at me for the first time.

  “Aah!” He jerked back and half-crawled away from me, smudging one of the runes in the process. “Jeez, Graves. They weren’t kidding about you down at the station house.”

  I’d opened my mouth for a scathing reply when the colors surrounding the bomb began to flicker. I didn’t know what it meant, but I was betting it wasn’t good. “Can you see that?”

  He nodded. “I’m on it. I just need to mark down this last rune.” He held the wand like an artist’s brush and stared at the circle of glowing symbols, preparing to write the final rune. The weird thing was that even though I didn’t recognize more than three of the sigils, the ones I did know didn’t have any business being in the same spell. Harris was either doing something really creative or making things worse … intentionally.

  Wasn’t he sitting on his hands earlier? What changed?

  A specialized charm slid into my right hand almost without thought and I used that hand to motion to the floor. “Seems like shaping the blast to channel up is sort of counterproductive to keeping it in the room, don’t you think?”

  Harris froze, his wand hovering over the tiles. “What?” His voice was a throaty whisper that sounded more alto than baritone. It was just what I was afraid of. It had gotten too easy to move in the past few seconds. The witch’s attention was somewhere else, and now I knew where. She’d gotten inside Harris’s head and was about to make him do her dirty work. If he survived, he’d at least lose his job for failure to shield and might go to jail as an accessory.

  I threw the charm in my hand hard against the floor. The “boomer” is all light and sound, without the energy that might set off the bomb. Still, it packs a wallop to the senses. I was expecting it, so I closed my eyes and accepted going immediately deaf. Harris and Nathan took the effect full on and were stunned into unconsciousness. I only had a few moments if the flashing of the magic shield around the bomb was any indication. As fast as I could I hauled Nathan up in a fireman’s carry and yanked Harris to his feet by hauling up on his wand arm. I swiped my foot across his runes as I passed, just to make sure whatever he’d written wouldn’t make things worse.

  It wasn’t a solution, but it was the best I could do. I was out of the room like a shot, running smack into a band of six officers. Five were in riot gear, two of them with the words BOMB SQUAD in big white block letters on their chests. The sixth didn’t need the lettering. He was in full protective gear, and the runes and sigils that had been drawn on his suit glowed like magnesium in the dim light of the basement hallway.

  I startled them, which was bad enough. Far worse, I was a scary vampire-looking creature dragging a mage officer and carrying another “victim.” It was quite possibly the worst first impression I could make and all guns turned my way and pointed at my chest in a flash.

  My best defense was a good offense. “I’m Celia Graves; I’m a professional bodyguard.” I dropped Nathan to the floor and raised my hands. “The bomb’s in there and it’s about to blow! We need to get the hell out of here!” With the door open, everyone could see the fast-flickering magic and it certainly looked like Harris wasn’t able to walk without help.

  All heads turned to the two officers with BOMB SQUAD printed on their flak jackets. The man on my left nodded, one sharp movement of his head. Or, actually, her head, because the voice was female. Grabbing the transmission button on her radio, she called, “All personnel, clear the area. Now!”

  I heard the thunder of footfalls overhead, and muted shouting in various languages. The cops grabbed Harris and Nathan away from me and hurried toward the stairs at the end of the hall.

  I followed but wound up in the lead going upstairs. They were burdened; I wasn’t. Logically I should have carried the others, but I wasn’t about to protest.

  I called over my shoulder as I reached the landing. “Are all the kids out?”

  The nearest cop cocked his head and stared at me for a long second. Then he nodded and responded in a light tenor, “We think so. The firefighters unlocked the emergency doors in all the classrooms
, so it’s going faster.”

  Thank God. Seriously. I’m not particularly religious, not a true believer like my gran, but at moments like this? Oh yeah. I pounded up the last of the stairs, into the main hallway. It was illuminated by sunlight. The power had been cut, but every door in the place was open. I started to sprint for the main exit when I saw a flash of movement, a bit of color coming out of a doorway on my right.

  A kid. Small and dark skinned, with ribboned pigtails and huge dark eyes. What in the hell was she still doing here?

  I’d done enough running this morning that the bottoms of my hose were trashed, but I still skidded a little when I slowed to scoop her up. I didn’t even think about being in full vamp mode.

  She totally freaked out.

  “Vampire!” she shrieked, kicking and hitting at me. She was tiny, but she was fierce, fighting me for all she was worth. It made it hard to hold on to her without hurting her. I swore as sharp little teeth dug into my forearm. “Let me go! What have you done to my daddy?”

  “Willow?” Harris’s voice behind me sounded stunned, a little groggy, but at least he was talking. The cops dragged him, arm extended backward as if to touch his daughter, past the room at a run, expecting that I would follow.

  “Daddy!”

  “It’s all right, baby. I’m here.”

  It would’ve been touching if I wasn’t bleeding and in pain. Oh, and terrified. Let’s not forget that. Because the bomb was about to blow. I could feel it. The magic had built to a climax, power crawling across my skin in burning waves that literally stole my breath.

  Like all magic, the blast was taking the shortest route to air, straight up. The edges of the floor in front of me began to glow, power misting around the edges of each tile until they began dissolving in front of me. I was going to plummet into the basement carrying a child who wouldn’t survive the fall.

  I ran into the nearest room to escape the collapse, but the tiles were giving out here, too. No doors close enough. There was only one way out and it was going to hurt.