Oh, God.” Sara stared at him wide-eyed, her face ashen. “That’s what he wanted all along. That’s it. Eeeuw! The son of a bitch! He couldn’t risk wasting this opportunity. He had to make sure I was fertile!” She shuddered. “And I was. But he didn’t want me to have that child.”
Her eyes welled, and she dashed the moisture away. “As if I’d ever let him put his hands on me, let alone any-freaking-thing else!” She rubbed her cheeks. “It’s all tied in with the approach of the comet. It isn’t a coincidence that Grant moved us to San Cristóbal, right near the cave. He must’ve been planning this for—holy crap. He waited thirty years.”
“He’s waited three thousand years for this moment,” Duncan Edge pointed out. “For an Omnivatic to rise in the ranks of the Erebus, he must amass power. What greater power than being the only member capable of fathering a child? The powerful magic and magnetic pull of the comet must activate something in an Omnivatic.”
“The comet has passed before,” Lark pointed out, “and there’s never been a child born to an Omnivatic other than Sara. And she’s only half.”
“True.” Jack didn’t feel any better about this than Edge and the Council. Worse. “So Ophidian’s comet must—hell. That’s it! We know he becomes more powerful with the advent of the comet; but what if the strength he derives from its passage makes him incredibly potent? For a brief time, the infertility is gone, and he can impregnate—”
“Speculate on the whys and wherefores later.” Sara grabbed his hand in a death grip. She looked as though she wanted to vomit. Jack felt the same way. But for her … Jesus, for her it was so much worse.
“Edge. Will wizard magic work?”
“Let’s find out, shall we?”
“What did you do?” Jack demanded. Because everything in the chamber looked exactly the same.
“Sent my people to the cave to see how far they can get in.”
Jack felt a glimmer of relief. If Edge’s people got as far as the portal and their magic, unlike his own, worked, Sara would be safe.
A few minutes later, a man materialized before Edge’s desk. “I don’t fucking get it. The cave is small, tiny really. But we couldn’t do any magic and only got as far as a solid rock wall a few hundred feet inside.” He vanished.
Edge’s eyes met Jack’s. “You have your answer.”
“Fucking shitty answer.” Jack’s voice was grim. “I have to go back to San Cristóbal, take another look at the portal we thought we blew up. There might be another entrance. I’ll follow it, find the nest, and destroy it from the inside.” And Baltzer with it. He’d reduce the twisted snake-dick to very small pieces.
“Your powers don’t work in the portal, Jack,” Sara reminded him through bloodless lips. “I’ll have to go in with you—”
“Not just no, but hell to the tenth power, no.”
“There is another way in.” Sara stood, ignoring him. “If Grant wants me—for whatever reason—he’ll have to take me inside his nest.”
Jack jumped up. “No! There’s no way you’re going through some portal to God knows where.”
Sara placed a gentle hand on his arm, and he took it tightly in his. “It’s the only way, Jack. We’ve run out of time. We all know that. He’ll take me to the nest. You can follow.”
Jack gritted his teeth. “What if I can’t? Are you thinking of that, Sara? The two of us couldn’t proceed more than two hundred feet inside that fucking cave without hitting a wall. What if I can’t get to you?”
Sara took a deep breath. “Then I’m on my own, and I’ll have to kill him myself.”
“I won’t let you do it. There’s got to be another way. We just have to find it.” He turned to Duncan. “What about that team you were ready to use, huh? You were going to replace us. Do it!”
“We can’t. Wizard magic, even Aequitas magic, doesn’t work inside the portal, as we’ve proven. Not to mention, even if we could breach his stronghold, Baltzer would trace us before any of us could get close enough to do any damage. None of us can get anywhere near it. Sara is our Hail Mary pass.”
“Don’t go there,” Jack cautioned, his voice tight. “Do not fucking go there, Edge.”
Duncan ignored the angry outburst. “Someone has to be inside the nest to destroy it, and Baltzer with it. That portal has to be closed for eternity.” He looked at Sara, then pointedly at the monitor he’d summoned that showed the progress of Ophidian’s comet as it approached the Earth. “Five hours before the natural disasters start. Cataclysmic events, Slater.”
“I’m well aware of the ramifications as well as the time limit, Edge.”
“If the portal is destroyed, what will happen when the comet passes?” Sara demanded.
Edge’s eyes glinted. “The events won’t be as cataclysmic. Bad, but not irreparable.”
Sara sucked in a deep breath. “I’ll do it.”
Jack spun to face her. “What the fuck do you mean, you’ll do it!”
“It’s the only way, and we all know it.”
“We’ll find another way.”
Her eyes, soft brown velvet, held his. “In five hours, Jack?”
He took Sara’s hands. “Don’t do this. Please.”
“I have to, Jack.” Determination etched her stark features. “I’m the perfect weapon of mass destruction.” Her lips twitched, but her eyes were very, very serious. “I’m half Omnivatic. My powers work there. Grant wants me inside his nest. We have no other options. I’m the only one who can do this.”
Jack dropped his hands. “Come over here.” He walked about twenty feet, taking Sara with him, because he was damned if he was letting her go, even to cross the room.
He summoned the psionic safe, then whispered the words; a second later, the door popped open, emitting a spiral of acid green vapor. Jack removed the crystal dagger, then sent the safe away.
They returned to face the Council, still hand in hand. “I’m stating on record that I adamantly oppose what you’re doing.” Jack held the sparkling dagger out to Sara. “I’ll rip that goddamned cave apart to find you. Take this.”
Sara reached out, but before her fingers touched the dagger, she stiffened in surprise, “He’s here—”
She vanished.
SARA WAS SURPRISED to find herself not in the cave or some terrifying “nest,” but in the hanging cage in Grant’s suite at the hacienda. Haydn swelled through hidden speakers, some violin concerto number, something that Grant favored.
She looked around. She was alone. For now.
She let out a shaky breath, then did her best to control the in-breath. For a moment, she was back in a meditation class she’d taken years ago, hearing the teacher’s instructions: “Concentrate on the breath. Breathe in; pause. Breathe out; pause. In those spaces, you’ll find your center, your balance.” She hoped like hell he was right. She needed all the balance she could get.
Her life was going to depend on keeping her cool, no matter what happened.
Was Jack now tracing her?
He could find her here but that wasn’t enough. The problem was, she had to be in the nest to kill Grant and close the portal.
She ran her fingers over the cool bars of the wrought-iron cage in which she was locked—magically repaired after Antonio had destroyed the room what felt like a lifetime ago. She swallowed hard as the cage swung several feet off the floor. It took every ounce of self-control not to use magic to turn the opulent, creepy room into a freaking bonfire.
Her lungs inflated uncomfortably as she dragged in another ragged breath. The teleportation used to steal her from the Council chambers wasn’t normal wizard magic, and she felt slightly nauseated. The light sway of the cage, combined with the heavy spicy smell of the incense smoke hanging in the still air, didn’t help. The room was unbearably steamy hot. She needed no reminders that snakes liked heat.
Clearly the air-conditioning was off, and it felt as though the heat had been turned to high as well. She stripped off the red linen jacket, glad now she’d put it back on for the trip to the Council. The color couldn’t be missed. She tossed it on the floor of the cage with a jangle of bracelets. On second thought … Crouching, she squeezed the fabric through the bars until it dropped soundlessly to the carpet below. Even on the busy black-and-red oriental carpet, Jack would see it.
Standing, she quickly touched each earlobe to make sure the sunstones were with her. Satisfied that she would be able to amp her powers when necessary, Sara slid her fingers into her back pocket. Removing the thin leather cord with the crystallized snakeskin amulet that Inez had given her, she slipped it around her neck. Tucking the crystal into the neckline of her T-shirt, she gave it a pat for luck. She wished she’d been able to accept the crystal dagger from Jack before she’d been teleported.
“Where are you, you son of a bitch? Why did you teleport me here? Why not to your freaky nest?” As scared as she was to confront Grant, the anticipation of what was to come was far worse.
Stretching both arms, she touched the bars on either side of her. Seven feet across. The arched “roof” was another arm’s length overhead.
Where was he? What was he? Would he appear as Grant or Sarulu? She wasn’t sure which terrified her more.
Crap, it was hot in here.
The music ended, and there was a brief pause before the piece started again. Haydn had never been one of her favorites. She liked his work even less now. If nothing else, her location confirmed that Grant was the Omnivatic. Faced with all the evidence, it was impossible not to believe it. But she’d harbored a tiny grain of hope that the evidence had been wrongly interpreted. That Grant was just Grant. Her guardian. Her protector. A man who’d loved her like a favorite niece for years.
Knowing that she’d trusted him almost all her life, trusted and loved him, and that he’d deceived her from day one was devastating. The music was getting on her last, extremely stretched nerve. Magically, she turned it off in mid-swell. The silence was such a relief she almost wept.
Even though the intricate bars surrounding her were only an inch in diameter, they were precisely spaced six inches apart. Thank God he hadn’t attached the wrist and ankle straps hanging from the domed roof and protruding from the grid floor, because then she would be screaming her head off. She untucked her T-shirt and fanned her belly with the hem. Hey, Jack? I’m melting here. As open as her birdcage prison was, she was overwhelmed with an intense feeling of claustrophobia.
I still have the free will to teleport the hell out of here, she reminded herself, striving to contain her rising panic. The reality was, she was afraid to attempt any major magic. Turning off the stereo wasn’t in the same league as a full-body teleport. If she tried and wasn’t able to use her full powers, she’d start babbling in terror. Sometimes, ignorance was bliss.
Which brought her back to wondering why Jack’s powers didn’t work in the Omnivatic cave. They probably wouldn’t work in Grant’s quarters either, now that she thought of it. And the only way Jack and the Wizard Council were going to be able to defeat the Omnivatics was if she went to the nest and helped them find a way in.
She was damned if she did and damned if she didn’t.
Alert for Grant’s arrival, she took a deep breath of hot, heavily perfumed air and surveyed the bedroom—a room she’d seen only once after she’d made the original decorating selections a year ago. It hadn’t improved with time, she thought, disgusted and repelled. But the destruction caused by Alberto wasn’t evident now. Only a wizard could have restored everything to its pristine state this quickly.
How had he created and sustained such a perfect illusion for so long? An illusion perpetrated on her for most of her life?
The fussy room, done in blood-red wallpaper and ornate light fixtures, was filled with sex toys. The big pieces—including the cage she was in and several large machines she’d rather not investigate too closely—took up a lot of floor space. The mammoth four-poster canopy bed, draped in red-and-gold silk and covered with satin pillows, took up a large footprint as well. Now she realized the bed had been converted to support a pulley and strap system that didn’t even bear thinking about.
Breathe in; pause. Breathe out; pause.
If she was this freaked out before anything actually happened, what was she going to do when Grant dragged her through that portal and into his nest?
The far wall held various ankle and leg straps, face and body harnesses, and assorted paraphernalia to imprison his victims. The faint sound of a footfall on the carpet made her turn around too fast. The cage swayed. She braced her feet and clung to the bars to maintain her balance. She sucked in a startled breath when a dark head appeared instead of Grant’s golden one.
“Just where I left you,” William said smugly. “Hello, baby.” His topaz eyes gleamed with amusement.
Sara’s fingers tightened on the bars as a ridiculous sense of relief washed through her. William. Not Grant. Thank God. Grant wouldn’t let William do anything to her, and William knew it. Besides, they were in Grant’s room, where Grant could walk in at any moment. She hoped he would. Now would be good.
“Why am I here? Where’s Grant?” Shit. Had William killed Grant?
In an instant, he was by her side. Lord. He’d just shimmered. Impossible. He seemed bigger and more imposing, and frankly, more threatening than he had over their lunch in Lima yesterday.
The floor of the cage was just below his eye level, and he reached in through the bars and stroked a cold hand up her bare shin. The tattoo on his forearm almost looked as if it was slithering a few inches higher. Sara yanked her foot away. The cage swung to and fro for several seconds before he put a hand out to stop it. “Tsk, tsk. What can Grant do for you that I can’t?” he asked smoothly, rubbing the pad of his thumb suggestively back and forth across his bottom lip.
The movement caught her attention. She’d seen that before—exactly the same slow motion, with the same hand. Grant. Grant did that when he was contemplating a victory over a competing hotelier. Her fingers tightened around the bars until her knuckles went white. “Did you bring me here, or did Grant?”
In a flicker of movement, his smirking expression started to crinkle. No—Sara blinked sweat out of her eyes—his skin was buckling—oh, hell—peeling. His entire face was peeling off his skull in long strips, taking hair, flesh, and expression with it. No blood. No gore. Just strips of skin that crystallized as they dropped to the carpet. His clothing fell in a heap around his feet, leaving him naked. Naked and shedding his skin.
She backed up until her spine pressed against the bars behind her. OhGodohGodohGod. Disbelief and fascination kept her gaze glued to the transformation. Beneath the mess of William’s shedding skin appeared the fair hair and pale blue eyes she’d known most of her life. Her stomach twisted with revulsion. Sweat ran down her temples and stung her eyes as a fresh-faced Grant emerged.
Every atom of her body urged her to teleport out of there. Now. Now, while he was in the process of his metamorphosis.
Erebus Novem two are one to infinity if not stopped.
Two are one to infinity.
William and Grant were one. He was the immortal Omnivatic.
JACK VAULTED OVER THE wide desk before Edge knew what hit him. Grabbing the Head of Council by the throat, he lifted the other man six inches off the floor, his viselike hold tightening around the other wizard’s throat. “Bring her back, you bastard!”
Instantly, searing flames ate their way up Jack’s arms and licked at his face. He was incensed enough, and scared enough for Sara, not to feel the heat. “Bring.” He shook Edge. “Her.” Shake. “Back.”
Edge broke his hold, sending Jack crashing into the desk behind him. An explosive whoosh of flames soared high, then swirled around Edge’s body in crackling orange, red, and blue sparks. “I’ll give you a pass on that, Slater. One fucking pass, because I understand where you’re coming from. Do that again, however, and I’ll burn your ass to ash. Sara’s disappearance had nothing to do with the Council.”
Jack was on his feet, squinting against the intense heat. “Bullshit.” When he went in to grab Duncan again, Edge turned up the flames. Jack’s skin sizzled, and the moisture in his eyes dried painfully; he was forced to retreat.
“Admit it—you sent her through that fucking portal before she was ready. Before I had a chance to …” Prepare her. Tell her I love her. Not say good-bye.
Edge shook his head and waved off the other Council members, who were on their feet. He rubbed his throat, where bruises were already beginning to develop, and said exactly what Jack didn’t want to hear.
“The Omnivatic took her.”