He sidestepped and dragged the heavy trunk over to the window, earning him a brief glance of approval. “I don’t see what good this is going to do,” he pointed out, as they finished cramming the barrel full of the trunk’s contents. “The fight is halfway across the courtyard—”
“As this is about to be.” The witch started to climb out of the window, on to the overstuffed cask, when a spell came sizzling through the air. Kit jerked her back and it exploded against the stone, leaving a blackened scar on the tower’s side.
“God’s Bones, woman!” he cursed, fighting an urge to shake her.
“It wasn’t meant to happen this way,” she said, staring blankly at the window. “I planned to have the weapons out before anyone noticed.”
“They appear to have noticed,” Kit said grimly, looking for other options. Unfortunately, there didn’t seem to be any. The room was small and wedge-shaped, with but one door and window, both of which the Circle was now guarding.
She rounded on him. “You should have stayed out of it! If you hadn’t jumped on board they might not have spotted me!”
“If I had stayed out of it, madam, you would be dead,” he snapped. “And I was not the one sending us careening about like a drunken hummingbird.”
“Neither was I!” Grey eyes flashed like lightning. “Winnie thought you were attacking me. She was trying to shake you off.”
“Winnie would be the demented dwarf?”
“She isn’t either,” the witch said heatedly. “And say that sometime in her hearing!”
“I will, should I live so long,” he replied, as the door shuddered again.
The witch stared at it, and then back at the barrel. And then she snatched a wand from the chest and aimed it at the fully-loaded cask.
“What are you doing?” he demanded, grabbing for her arm. But the stun had made him clumsy and before he could knock it aside, their only way out of this death trap went flying off like a bullet.
“Giving us a fighting chance.”
“That was our chance!”
The witch shook her head violently. “None of us has a prayer if they don’t get that gate open!”
“And now what?”
“Now this.” She rotated her wrist and far away the barrel followed the motion, spewing its contents across the smoke-blackened scene.
“That wasn’t what I meant!” Kit said, giving into temptation and shaking her. “How do you plan to get out of here?”
She licked her lips. “We fight.”
“With what? You’ve just sent our only weapons to the other side of the castle!”
“Not all of them,” she protested, glancing at the pieces that lay scattered across a nearby table. “As long as it’s only guards, we should be—”
The sound of a heavy fist, pounding on the door, cut her off. “Open in the name of the queen!”
“She isn’t my queen!” the witch yelled.
There was a pause, and then another voice spoke. “Then open in the name of the Circle.”
Gillian stared at the vampire, who looked blankly back. She didn’t have to ask if he had any ideas. His face was as pale and tight as hers felt.
Outside, someone’s spell smashed the barrel into a thousand pieces, but too late. There was a huge shout from the crowd as the witches realized what had just rained down on them like manna from Heaven. And then the fighting resumed, far more viciously than before.
It was what she’d wanted, what she’d worked for. There was no way of getting Elinor out of here if the gate stayed closed, and no chance to break through without weapons. But the plan had been to ride the barrel back down before sending it off into the fray. Not to get trapped five storeys off the ground with the Circle on either exit.
“Master Marlowe,” the mage’s voice came again. “We know you are in there with the witch. Send her out and you may leave peacefully.”
“Peacefully?” The vampire snorted. “Your men attacked me!”
“Because you were protecting the woman. Cease to do so and we will have no quarrel with you. We promised your lady safe passage and we will honour that agreement.”
Gillian braced herself, sure he would take them up on the offer. She had friends who would have abandoned her in such a situation, and she wouldn’t have blamed them. And this man owed her nothing.
But he surprised her. “I have need of the witch,” he said, gripping her arm possessively.
“Then you can petition the council.”
“Would that be the same council that sentenced her to death?” he asked cynically.
“Send her out, or we shall come in and take her.”
The menace in the man’s voice made Gillian shiver, but the vampire just looked puzzled. “Why?” he demanded. “Why risk anything for a common cutpurse? She is of no value to you, while my lady would reward you handsomely—”
The mage laughed. “I am sure she would! Do not think to deceive us. A common cutpurse she may have been, but the guards saw what the old woman did. We know what she is!”
The vampire looked at her, a frown creasing his forehead. “What are you?” he asked softly.
Gillian shook her head, equally bewildered. “Nobody. I. . nobody.”
“They appear to feel otherwise,” he said dryly. Sharp dark eyes moved to the table. “I don’t suppose any of those weapons—”
“Magical weapons are like any other kind,” Gillian told him, swallowing. “Someone has to use them.”
“And I’m not a mage.”
“It wouldn’t matter. Two of us against how many of them? No weapon would be enough to even the odds, much less—”
A heavy fist hit the door. Gillian jumped and the vampire’s hand tightened reflexively on her arm. It shouldn’t have been painful, but his fingers closed right over the burn the Eldest had given her. She cried out and he abruptly let go, as the mage spoke once more.
“Master Marlowe! I will not ask again!”
“Promises, promises,” the vampire muttered.
Gillian didn’t say anything. She’d pushed up her sleeve to get the fabric off the burn, but no raw, red flesh met her gaze. Instead, she found herself staring in confusion at an ancient, graceful design etched on to her inner wrist.
Her fingers traced the pattern slowly, reverently. It wasn’t finished, with only two of the three spirals showing dark blue against her skin. But there was no doubt what it was. “The triskelion,” she whispered.
“The what?” the vampire asked.
She looked in the direction of his voice, and found him sprawled on the floor, his curly head pressed against the dusty boards. Her own head was spinning too much to even wonder why.
His eyes narrowed. “A moment ago, you claimed to be of no importance, and now you tell me you’re a coven leader?”
“But that’s just it, I’m not! At least. .” Gillian had a sudden flash of memory, of the Great Mother’s hand gripping her arm, of how she had refused to let go even in death — and of the ease with which the elements had come to her aid thereafter. She had put it down to the staff magnifying her magic. But no amount of power should have allowed her to call an element that was not hers.
“At least what?” he asked, getting up with a frustrated look on his face.
“I think there’s a chance that the Great Mother. . that she may have—” she stopped, because it sounded absurd to say it out loud — to even think it. But what other explanation was there? “I think she may have passed her position on to me.”
She expected shock, awe, disbelief, all the things she was feeling. But the vampire’s expression didn’t change, except to look slightly confused. And then his head tilted at the sound of some muttering outside. It was too low for her ears to make out, but he didn’t appear to have that problem.