Brave the Tempest (Cassie Palme) - Karen Chance Page 0,6

controls—”

“I was born into a world the vampires control,” I corrected her, because I hadn’t been one of the clairvoyants identified early and popped into the Pythian Court for training. Instead, a greedy mob boss of a vampire had co-opted me into his shabby little court and used my gift as a way to make him more of the money he craved.

It hadn’t been a fun life for a kid.

Of course, it hadn’t been a fun life for anyone else, either.

Tony was a dick.

“That’s rather like an agnostic saying they were born into a secular family when they live in the United States,” Hilde said, because she’d never met an argument she didn’t like. “Perhaps their parents didn’t take them to church, but the culture of Christianity pervaded their upbringing whether they realized it or not. Everything from the holidays they celebrate to the curse words they use revolves around the Judeo-Christian religions.”

“I’m not sure I get the point,” I told her. I also wasn’t sure we’d come to the right place, and sweat was starting to drip down my back.

“The point,” she told me, “is that the Circle won their war with the covens centuries ago and have been able to shape the overall magical culture ever since. And while I’m sure the effect was less pervasive at a vampire’s court, if it had to do with magic, it was likely still done the Circle’s way.”

Saffy nodded angrily. “They did their best to erase coven practices, like they tried to erase the covens themselves. But it didn’t work!”

“I know that—”

She cut me off. “No, you think you know. Now you really do.”

And before I could ask what she meant, reality bent around us, the desert colors all slurred together, and the heat was replaced by a wash of cool air, deep and dark and mountain-chilled.

Maybe because we were suddenly standing in what looked a lot like the inside of a mountain. A huge, hollowed-out one, leaving a sprawling, cave-like area with dark, reddish brown walls rising up to a massive dome far overhead, like a mighty stone cathedral. It should have been impressive; it should have been breathtaking.

But my breath was already being stolen by something else.

“What . . . is this?” I asked, spinning slowly around.

I was looking in all directions, because we’d just materialized inside a huge circle of portals.

Some were on the ground nearby, thrum thrum thrumming hard enough to make my whole body shake. Others hovered in midair or overhead, forming a spotted dome half the size of a football field and multiple stories high. One through which people—and things, and things that might be people—were hurrying, and sometimes flying, at an alarming rate.

Something came at me in a rush of huge, bat-like wings, but Saffy jerked me to the side before I saw it clearly. And before I ended up as road kill, although I barely noticed. I was too busy gawping like a tourist, because I’d seen portals before, and even been in a few. But nothing like this.

Nothing even close to this.

It was the Grand Central Station of portals, I thought, in awe.

They were all different colors: one electric blue; another neon green; one pink enough to rival Hilde’s handbag; another a brilliant, sunny yellow; there was a purple so rich it looked like it was laced with glitter, a white so bright it hurt my eyes, and an ebony so dark that no light seemed to escape it at all, like a black hole had opened up inside the room.

There had to be thirty of them, maybe more. I couldn’t tell because, while some were at least two stories tall, others were as small as my doubled fists, just tiny things, and hard to spot in all the moving light. It cascaded down from the largest as if through stained glass, increasing the cathedral-like feel of the place. And throwing a moving, watery rainbow onto the crowd, while the combined energy field vibrated the rock beneath our feet.

But the fact that the portals were literally powerful enough to move a mountain wasn’t the most impressive thing about them. That would be the fact that they were fritzing and sparking with tiny, lightning-like filaments, sometimes fighting with each other, and occasionally arcing away to blow off this person’s hat or to shock that person’s backside. The wind generated by all that energy was also blowing people’s hair and stuff around, causing them to clutch their belongings tightly as they plowed ahead.

I could