Random Acts of Sorcery (29 page)

Eventually, he started to smell apples, and realized he had reached the make-believe area in the Adirondacks that he associated with Cassie. He focused on the sounds and the smells, the crispness of the fall breeze and the blue/grey sky, and felt her warmth flowing into him once again. He drank it in, greedily, only to realize that the area around him was fading; he was taking too much, and this little corner of her essence was collapsing on itself. He backed off, hoping it wasn’t too late, and focused on the immediate sensations around him, like the feel of the hard tile below his shoes and Bennet’s quick intake of breath.

When he opened his eyes, he felt like he had just taken the most refreshing nap of his life; he felt ready to take on the world.

“She’s with me. Let’s do this,” he said.

When Cassie came to, she was on a baby-changing table; only, instead of being a chintzy piece of plastic, this one was made of dark wood.

“Whuuuh?”

“You collapsed. I dragged you here,” said Helen, sitting cross-legged on a small couch nearby.

Carefully, Cassie got up off the changing table; her legs felt shaky, and she quickly found a chair. They were sitting in a makeup room; one of those useless little rooms that sometimes accompanied bathrooms in upscale hotels.

She massaged her temples with her fingers; she had a feeling she was going to have a wicked headache in about five minutes.

“Why did I collapse though? What happened?” she murmured. She had a vision of Sam, standing near her favorite Adirondack chair at her grandparent’s old house upstate, then shook her head; how could that be possible? Sam couldn’t tap into her magic unless they were touching, and right now, he was very far away….

Before Helen could respond, the door opened, and Cassie winced and closed her eyes as a loud sound took her by surprise. When she opened them again, Helen was falling facedown on the couch, a bullet hole in her back.

“No!” Cassie yelled, and jumped toward Helen’s body.

She can’t be dead, she can’t be.

“I wouldn’t worry about her, if I were you,” said Andrea. Cassie looked up at her with hatred.

“You’re the Seraph.”

“So?” said Andrea. Then the blond woman aimed her handgun at Helen’s prone form and shot her in the back, again.

“Stop it!” Cassie yelled, but something strange was happening; the body seemed to be melting, clothes and all. Cassie blinked her eyes in disbelief, then heard Andrea make a furious growl.

“That stinking bitch!
She was never here in the first place!”

With Andrea’s attention on the rapidly dissolving body, Cassie grabbed a vase off the table and threw it at the woman’s head. When Andrea ducked, Cassie grabbed for the gun in the corpse’s waistband; it was sticky, from whatever material Helen’s body-double was, but she wasn’t about to be choosy. Before
Andrea could get in position again, she pointed the gun at the other witch and pulled the trigger.

The gun made a hollow clicking sound. Cassie pulled the trigger again, and the noise repeated. The gun was empty; it had never held any bullets, charmed or otherwise.

Andrea started to laugh, but her laughter cut off abruptly when Cassie threw the empty gun at her forehead. As the witch cried out in pain, Cassie made for the door, leaving the bathroom and running through the hotel at a sprint. She passed the circus-themed décor, and threw herself out the front door of the building.

When she was back on the sidewalk, she paused; the crowds were much thicker than they had been just a little while ago. The Laguna must have been evacuated, at least partially, because the Strip was full to bursting with people, some of whom were wearing the hotel’s sea-green regalia.

As long as I’m completely surrounded by people, Andrea can’t kill me. All I need to do now is just stay in the crowd.

She tried to calm herself, slowly making her way back towards the fountain she had passed with Helen earlier. This fighting-to-stay-alive business was new to her; usually, when people were after her, they really wanted her alive. She vastly preferred that scenario.

She sat down on the edge of the fountain, panting. In addition to having to run, whatever had caused her to pass out was still weighing heavily on her; she felt like she had no energy left in her body.

The crowd continued, unabated; she took comfort from the seemingly hundreds of people who passed nearby, like a human sea. Eventually though, she sensed two people who were even closer to her than usual, and looked up to see two men leering at her.

“Can we take you somewhere, sweetheart?” said the taller one.

Cassie was conf
used for a fraction of a second, then remembered what she looked like; her green dress was soaked and torn, and she was so exposed she may as well have been wearing a bikini. If she took anymore clothing damage, she was going to be downright indecent.

“Uh, sorry.
Not for sale,” she said.

Was there some more subtle way I was supposed to say that? I don’t really get how this sort of thing works.

“You sure look like you are,” said the other, who was blatantly undressing her with his eyes; granted, in her current get-up, that wasn’t hard to do.

“Well, I’m not,” she said standing up,
then started when a large hand grabbed her arm.

The taller man put his face close to hers; the alcohol on his breath made her nose twitch.

“Listen, I think you should come with us for a little while, okay? We’ll go somewhere nice, have a good time.” He tightened his grip on her wrist.

Cassie looked at the men, and realized that she was feeling a total absence of fear. Normally she would
have been afraid, but tonight—with demons and witches trying to kill her, and the jump from the balcony, and the way her body felt strangely empty right now (in a way it never had before), and Helen’s body double turning into mush right before her eyes—two would-be date rapists just didn’t seem to matter.

“You think I’m scared of you?” she said, looking from one to the other. They were both fairly handsome, which strangely made it funnier to her. “You think I’m scared of YOU?” Then she laughed.

At first it was a soft giggle, and the men looked at her in bafflement. Then something dark seemed to well up inside her, and she let loose with a maniacal laugh, throwing her head back with glee. All around them, tourists stopped to look at her in confusion and no small amount of fear. She looked at her attackers again, still laughing like a hyena, and whatever they saw in her eyes must have scared them, because they both turned and ran as fast as they could through the crowd.

But Cassie couldn’t stop laughing; somehow, everything had just become so hilarious. The place deep in her stomach where she normally felt the reassuring warmth of her magic was empty, and the painful, gnawing emptiness seemed to make everything even funnier. She felt as though something was filing that hole, something strange and wet and slimy, but she couldn’t be sure; she was laughing too hard.

All around her, people had backed away, clearly afraid of what the certifiably insane woman was going to do next. But it was too crowded, and they couldn’t back away very far. As she let loose with more peals of now-hysterical laughter, there were screams as the fountain exploded.

Or rather, it didn’t quite explode; it just felt that way, when jets of water rose up and covered everyone in a 100-foot radius in a sudden, brutal deluge. Cassie screamed in delight as the water covered her.

Of course I’m soaking wet again! Of course!

Finally she coughed and her laughter came to a stop, and she realized that she was strangely alone; everyone was trying to put as much distance between themselves and the fountain as possible. She looked at the retreating, screaming tourists, puzzled.

What are they so afraid of? It’s only a little—?

Then she heard a strange roar, like a lion crossed with the call of a humpback whale, and turned around.

“What are you doing here? Down, boy!” said Cassie, motioning for the creature to dive back under the water.

How did the Leviathan get here? We’re nowhere near Helen’s pond. Did I summon it?

The first time she had seen the creature, it had ignored her, only having eyes for Aeka. This time though, it seemed to be paying attention; maybe now that Aeka had cut off her wings, she was the closest thing to a pure angel left. It put its weathered, pockmarked face next to her and made a mournful sound; Cassie would have been soaked with its saliva, except she was so soaked already that she couldn’t really tell the difference.

“Please! Get DOWN!” Cassie yelled, hearing sirens in the distance. To her surprise, the creature gave her one more sad-eyed glance and then dived, disappearing.

Cassie took off from the destroyed fountain, knowing she had to leave. Without the protection of the crowds, she wasn’t safe outside; besides, she knew where she wanted to go now. She was exhausted, but the water seemed to fill her with a second strength.

I know now why Aeka jumped in the shark tank. Water is our element, it protects us.

Some people were still being evacuated from The Laguna, and they gave her a strange look as she ran past them in the other direction. Barely even feeling the pain of her bare feet pounding on the sidewalk anymore, she ran through the front of the hotel, cut through the side of Op/Dec, and made her way to the feeding area she had discovered with Aeka yesterday.

When she was surrounded by metal scaffolding and the smell of fish and brine, she collapsed below one of the feeding platforms. She was exhausted, wired, terrified, bruised, and elated.

I’m losing my mind, I know I am. But if I have to lose my mind, I’d rather be here.

Somehow, the air that had seemed stale and suffocating yesterday seemed like an intoxicating perfume today. She didn’t know how long she lay there, prone under the platform, inhaling the smell of metal and fish and concrete and feeling strangely at peace.

A familiar voice brought her back to reality.

“Cassie?” The voice sounded scared.

Hunter? Here? Why?

She got to her feet and ran out from under the platform, freezing when she saw Andrea dragging her little brother beside her. The witch, who now had a spectacular bruise on her forehead, had her gun pointed at his temple.

“Let him go. He’s just a kid,” Cassie said.

Andrea smiled an ugly smile. “No, I think he might be handy to have around. With him, maybe instead of shooting you myself, I can make you jump into the shark tank.” She lowered her face toward Hunter, her tone mocking. “Wouldn’t that be fun?
To see your sister eaten alive by sharks?”

Hunter spat in her face,
then stamped on her sandaled foot as hard as he could. Andrea cried out and swatted him, then when he continued struggling, she clocked him over the head with the gun. Hunter crumpled to the floor, and Cassie felt her belly fill with cold fury.

I’m barely a witch. I can’t cast any spells. And she has a gun. But I am going to kill her.

“What a violent little boy. Your whole family is white trash,” Andrea said. Then she pointed her gun at Cassie’s head, smiling.

Cassie took a deep breath; Andrea wasn’t going to shoot her, at least not yet. Arrigio had stalled on killing her because he really hadn’t wanted to do it; Andrea would stall because she wanted to drag it out as long as possible. The woman didn’t just want to kill her, she wanted her to suffer.

“Why do you hate me? What did I ever do to you?” Cassie said, trying to make her voice sound as despondent and panicky as possible. It was a cover for the fact that her insides had gone cold.

Andrea laughed. “You have to ask? As soon as they’re satisfied with you, they’ll send me to the glue factory. I won’t be dumped for the newer model, not now and not ever again,” she said through gritted teeth. “I won’t be pushed aside, and certainly not by a chubby little whore like you!”

Cassie closed her eyes and reached out with her thoughts, and was surprised to find that Sam was nearby; she would have noticed earlier if she hadn’t been going out of her mind.

Sam, Andrea is the Seraph. You remember her, the witch that had the hots for you? Well, she’s here, near the shark tank, and she really, really hates me.

“It’s over for you,” Cassie said evenly. “Your plan to bomb the place failed, and they know who you are now. You should just give up now, and maybe they’ll let you live.”

Andrea snorted. “I’ll be on a plane to London before they even sort out what happened in there.”

“I don’t think so,” said Cassie, taking a step forward.

Andrea licked her lips nervously. “Are you really this stupid? You think you can intimidate me?”

There was a loud banging, and Cassie dared a glance at the shark tank above; one of the sharks was banging its body against the glass. Within seconds, the other sharks were in on it too, and the whole tank shook. A red ribbon of blood ran through the water before dissipating into a pink mist.

Whatever roused the Leviathan, they feel it too.

Andrea looked at the sharks behind Cassie, her face pale. “What the—”

Cassie took the opportunity to charge her. Normally, she never would have tried it; she wouldn’t have trusted herself to do it right. But she’d been drunk on adrenaline for hours, and that, combined with the cold fury in her belly, somehow made it easy. Andrea shot once, but Cassie didn’t feel it; only when she connected, and her shoulder took the other witch right below her rib cage, did she feel any pain.

Yes, that’s how Aeka would have done it. I did it right.

Andrea gasped, the breath knocked out of her, but she struggled to try to point her gun at Cassie. Somehow, Cassie managed to twist Andrea’s arm with both of hers until the gun popped out. Then, she took the gun and put the barrel under Andrea’s chin.

This time, when she pulled the trigger, the gun wasn’t empty.

There was a bloody mess where Andrea’s face had been, but then Cassie thought of Hunter, and it didn’t seem like enough. She took the gun and put the barrel to Andrea’s chest, pulling the trigger again and again.