Damali lowered her Isis and released a white-light energy pulse that hit the water like a depth charge. A great white shark, four times its natural size, pirouetted out of the water like a marlin and slammed into the surface, creating a massive wave.
"Stop time!" Marlene shouted to Damali. "The crabs, fish, and barnacles in that wave are carrying contagion from the cruise ships. Don't let it onto the boat!"
Damali flung her arms open wide, her eyes glazed over, and suddenly she felt her body snatched through a rip between time and space where everything slowed down. She could hear Marlene shouting to Monty to bless the water . . . him arguing that he wasn't a priest. Then Marlene grabbed him by both arms as she entered the pilothouse and made Berkfield take the helm.
"Ship captains can perform clerical duties," Marlene said, her voice slow and muddied in Damali's ears as she clutched Monty's arm.
She watched Monty make the sign of the cross before the slowly rolling, incoming wave . . . saw his mouth move, and then watched tiny blinking lights go off within the translucent, blue water as though a million mermaid paparazzi had gone insane.
Pops and crackles and white-light explosions cleaned the water. Shabazz and Dan were poised, hands craned, biceps bulging, trying to reverse the momentum of the incoming wave and send it away from the yacht. Then suddenly time snapped back to real time and a fifth blast made Damali lose her footing, but aerial mastery and a good wingspan kept her aloft.
The team hit the deck again, but this time they had three more dirty members that tumbled to the surface of it with them. Carlos and Yonnie jumped up, both pulling Rider's arms to get him up. Val dashed down the rail as Damali flew over the starboard side of the craft.
"Yo, man," Shabazz shouted, laughing as he saw Carlos. "What the hell was that? You coulda warned somebody before you started World War III!"
Elizabeth smiled as Sebastian stroked her arm. Darkness in the Carpathians always made her nostalgic ... if only it were Vlad and not the sallow-skinned little weasel, who was unfortunately gifted with superior spell-casting.
"This is what I do best," Sebastian murmured seductively, trying to kiss her, but she turned her head to give him her cheek.
"Let me see, first," she murmured in Dananu with a false smile. "Then, if I'm impressed . . . who knows, I might become aroused."
"I promise you will be," Sebastian said excitedly. "Watch."
He licked his fangs and settled himself, opening his arms wide .1 that his robes billowed in the unnatural breeze. Elizabeth glimpsed up at the full moon and then down at the Ibloody pentagram he'd drawn on the ground. She would again J'Watch and learn. Sebastian was such a fool. The thing that in-� "trigued her most was that she never knew what elements or el-j1 ementals he added to his black cauldron to bring it to life, to 1 make it spit and hiss and do his bidding. However, one day, if I she were careful, she would.
She watched him draw a long, onyx wand into his hand that held a crystallized human skull on the end of it. He drove it into the cauldron and began to stir, muttering words beneath his breath so that she couldn't hear. Her gaze narrowed . . . the little worm had learned something after all. No matter. The larger goal was at hand.
Then without warning he flung a handful of teeth and bones into the center of the pentagram, along with a Viking helmet and a German war horn.
"Arise!" Sebastian commanded, making the wind howl and the barren trees quake. "Awake and come to me, mad for conquest, lusting for battle, and I shall fulfill your desires for victory! Do my bidding and you will again war!"
Fascinated, she could not conceal her excitement as the teeth and bones drew together, and then the helmet and war horn melted with them into the earth.
"It didn't work," she said smugly after a few minutes. Everything had gone still. "I'm bored. I'm going back to--"
"Wait," Sebastian hissed, his black glowing eyes filled with anticipation. "All good spells take a setting time. Vlad cannot offer you this."
She didn't move when Sebastian's talon grazed her cheek. All she offered was a slight nod in response.
"And once I've raised them, let you see ... what is my reward?"
He'd spoken to her in Dananu, but he was so eager that he didn't really need to say anything at all. She considered his small erection and the small beads of perspiration beginning to form on his pocked face. The fact that he was struggling to hold back the finale of his spell so he could bargain with her truly made her smile.
"I didn't come here for an evening parlor trick, Sebastian," Elizabeth coolly remarked.
He hissed and lunged at her, holding her throat in a threat. "Raising the dead of this magnitude and of this age is no easy feat!"
"All right," she murmured. "I'll grant you that. It is rather spectacular . . . but I was hoping you'd share them a little with me--maybe just a small retinue, since Vlad doesn't really believe in my ability to lead a small army."
"He is arrogant and pigheaded," Sebastian crooned. "Don't forget, we led some of his demon warriors together before he was reanimated."
"How could I forget," she murmured, stroking his fist in a very suggestive way.
But he closed his grip tighter on her throat. "And how could I forget the very fact that it was you who double-crossed me and raised him?"
She swallowed hard, feeling his claws dig into her flesh and an icy current of blood begin to seep down her throat.
"You owe me," he said quietly, and then took her mouth. "Not the other way around."