I caught myself on the slick beam. Felt Sabina stroke and kick as she swam away into the dark. Coughing, I stared around at the small space, placing where I was in relation to the light. I tucked the piece of metal into my waistband and pulled off my heavy, water-filled boots. Dropping them into the water, I grabbed the pinkish globe of light and ducked under the surface, using the light to determine which way was out. While under there, I searched for the bag of relics but found nothing on the block floor except a little sludge and my former fancy boots. I broke the surface. Treading hard in the too-heavy water, I took and expelled several breaths. Then I started swimming back the way I had been dragged, the globe lighting the way. Every stroke was harder than it should have been, as if I was swimming through oil.
The tunnel wasn’t nearly as long as I thought when I had been choked. And—literally—there was a light at the end of the tunnel where I had broken through. I kicked harder.
The globe went out.
Darkness hit me, cold and shocking. The water, so heavy only a moment before, went liquid and soft, and I flailed before my limbs caught up with the difference. Breath tight, I kept swimming for the light. A huge splash altered the brightness ahead, and bubbles darkened the hole as someone jumped in, shone a light around, and focused on me.
Too-bright light blinded me.Bruiser. His body movements both strong and frantic, he swam toward me.
He was at me, one arm going around my throat in a drowning-swimmer save. I wanted to shout,Stupid man!But I’d have to take a breath, and there was only water. He pulled me up into the light, and I breathed in clean air. Wrassler reached down and heaved me out of the water, still Wrassler-TV-strong even with the prosthetic leg and other damage.
“You’re half-form-shaped,” Wrassler said, midsaving yank. “How—”
“I talked to Sabina,” I interrupted. “I shifted. There’s an air pocket.” I landed on squishy ground. Icky water flowed out of my clothes.
“No,” Bruiser said from the water. Wrassler pulled him up too. Water went everywhere, cascading off of him. “I jumped in immediately after you.”
“No way. I—” I stopped. Remembering the feel of the heavy, thick water. Remembering how hard it had been to swim until the small light in the globe went out. The way the water seemed to change, growing lighter, easier to move. I looked at the globe. Inside was a small pink stone. I twisted and slammed the globe on the foundation wall. It shattered. The pink stone fell out and hit the mud. I picked it up. Instantly I knew what it was. What it had to be.
It was a piece of the original chunk of rough, uncut, blood diamond, the stone that had been used to gather the death energies of the witch children sacrificed to bring the long-chained to sanity. Part of the same stone that made up the Glob.
“Jane?” Bruiser asked.
I held up a finger, not wanting to lose this thought, remembering the magic I had felt when Sabina grabbed me, that sensation of thick water as she swam. Sabina had been warping time with this amulet. With this, she had created a time bubble. I had to make sure it didn’t get close to the Glob. No telling what would happen.
I pulled the metal thing Sabina had given me from my waistband. I had thought it was iron, but it was made of gold and other metals, long and slender and curvy. It was a tiny dragon creature with wings partially furled. Like a metal replica miniature arcenciel. A cold chill raced through me. I tilted the amulet to the sunlight and saw all sorts of tiny things embedded all over the dragon: small dull dark gray metal disks, tiny shimmery somethings tinged red, andsome with little bubbles beneath. They were placed so the amulet looked striped and so it shimmered when the light hit it, just like a real arcenciel would. I turned the amulet back and forth, and the bubbles moved. Whatever was beneath the shimmery discs was liquid.
“Why would anyone put...” I stopped.
“Janie?” Wrassler asked.
Gently I touched a fingertip to a single metal disc. Power met my touch. I touched one of the reddish, iridescent, transparent things. It had a sheen to it, and magic tingled beneath it too, the touch sensation oddly, similarly iridescent.
Little bits of things I knew, had seen, or had heard about came together.
I knew what I was seeing, what I was feeling. The imbedded metal was from the remnants of the iron Spike of Golgotha. The shimmery things were bits of arcenciel scales. Beneath each scale was a single drop of arcenciel blood, which—the one time I had seen their blood—looked like molten glass.
I peeled down the waistband of my soaked pants and looked at my skin where it had rested while I swam. My flesh was dimpled and red in the shape of a flying lizard. I touched my skin. I didn’t feel any foreign energies. Didn’t feel as if anything had been done to me. But still...
“Holy crap,” I murmured.
“Jane?” Bruiser asked.
“It’s an arcenciel-based magic amulet.” I held it up for him to see. The sunlight hit the scales, and it was obvious that most were red. Red scales. In stripes...
It looked a lot like Longfellow, Gee’s lizard. The one he had taken from a dead vamp, whose blood it had been sipping for who knew how long. Under Gee’s care, it had grown wings and gotten much bigger. It was as big as a thirty-pound dog now. Was there a connection? Coincidence? Me reading into it something that wasn’t there at all?
Holy crap.Did arcenciels hatch small and wingless and grow bigger? Did they develop wings as they aged? Had sipping vampire blood brought on Longfellow’s transformation?Holy crap.Was Longfellow a miniature or baby arcenciel? But that timeline didn’t work. So maybeLongfellow was a species related to the rainbow dragons, in the way that burros were related to horses, or wolves were related to dogs?
Gee had called me little goddess. It was a similar title to the name he called the arcenciels, who could timewalk. I had once been able to timewalk. No way was I time-traveling again.
But maybe I was supposed to be able to use this some way? To do something? And the diamond in the globe of water?
“Holy crap,” I griped again. “Why don’t these things ever come with an instruction manual?”
I could feel the power in the metallic lizard—the same kind of energy that emanated from a crystal containing a trapped arcenciel. The kind that vamps used to time-jump, to bend time, to travel back or forward in time and remake history. I was betting that it could be used to assist in a time-jump, the way vamps did it. The spike was said to be able to control vampires. The blood diamond was powerful no matter what kind of energies it was used for. No wonder Sabina could bubble time, or time-jump. Remembering the bracelet with the jangly charms she had worn, I had to wonder what other trinkets and relics she had taken with her when she went to ground. I raised my eyes to Bruiser’s and then out over the sloppy foundation and pointed to the far corner she had mentioned.
I turned on my Queenie voice, my tones stolen from Leo. “We dig there. By hand. No big equipment except to suck up water. We’re looking for a burned gray bag about this big.” I showed the dimensions with my hands. “If you find it, stop digging and call me. It’s probably dangerous. But we need to find it before the Firestarter does.”
