Kate Daniels 02 - Magic Burns

the top of the throat-tunnel, dripping more liquid. Hopefully it wasn’t acid. It didn’t smell any different from the ordinary pond water, a touch fishy. I pulled a throwing knife, stretched and dipped the tip into the water. No discoloration. I touched the wet blade. My finger didn’t melt. Very well.
    I stepped into water, slipped, and landed on my butt. Why me?
    The vampire scuttled past me, throwing me a look over its shoulder. “As always, a picture of refined grace.”
    â€œShut up.”
    My boots were full of tortoise throat spit.
    The vamp took a step and vanished under the water.
    I scrambled to my feet.
    The vamp’s head reappeared. “A bit deep through here,” Ghastek warned.
    Ha! Served him right.
    The water came up to my waist. I waded through the tunnel in the gloom, the quiet splashing of the vampire ahead the only guide as to direction. Derek’s sneezing finally stopped.
    The tunnel turned. I splashed through and stopped.
    I stood in a shallow pool, among a dense blanket of lily pads. Cream-colored lilies glowed on the water.
    An enormous dome lay before me. High above, at its very top, the carapace became transparent, and pale light filtered through, highlighting the translucent ridges of the tortoise shell. The walls darkened gradually, clear at the top, then green with the colors of the grasses and kudzu sheathing the shell from the outside, and finally deep black and green marble. Large rectangles had been cut within the walls, each with its own glyph etched in gold leaf and a name. The arrangement was strikingly familiar, but so unexpected, it took my brain a moment to recognize it.
    I stood in a crypt.
    A small noise made me turn. The pool ended a few feet in front of me, and beyond it, across the expanse of tortoise shell floor, just past the edge of light, rose a rectangular platform. On the platform waited three women.
    The woman on the right could’ve easily qualified for a center spot in a five-generation family portrait: withered, gaunt, frail. She had seen seventy some time ago. Her thin hair surrounded her head like a nimbus of fine cotton. The black silk of her gown served only to accentuate her age. But her eyes stabbed me with sharp, predatory intelligence. She sat ramrod straight, poised on a heavy chair that was more a throne than a common seat. Like an aging raptor, old but ready to strike at the first hint of blood.
    The woman next to her was barely older than Julie. She reclined on a small Roman-style sofa. Black silk streamed from her in folds and curves, so much of it that the fabric threatened to drown her. Sallow, almost translucent against that silk, she rested her head on her bent arm. Her cheekbones stood out. Her neck was barely thicker than my wrist. By contrast her blond hair fell from her head in twin braids, luxurious and thick.
    The last woman sat in a rocking chair, knitting an unidentifiable garment from brownish yarn. She looked like she had sucked up all of the flesh the other two lacked. Plump, healthy, with her thick brown hair braided, she watched her knitting with a knowing half smile.
    Maiden, mother, and crone. How classic. Double, double, toil and trouble?
    I looked above them, to where a large mural darkened the wall. A tall woman towered above the platform, drawn in a simple but sharp style, the kind a genius child artist might employ. Three arms rose from her body: the first held a knife, the second a torch, and the third a chalice with a tiny snake winding about it. To the left of her sat a black cat and a toad. To the right lay a key and a broom.
    Before the woman sat a huge cauldron, positioned on the intersection of three roads. Black hounds ran across the walls in both directions, all facing the cauldron.
    The Oracle worshipped Hekate, the Queen of the Night, the Mother of all Witches. Although known by her Greek name, she was much older. Her worship stretched through two millennia, its roots buried in the fertile folkloric soil of Turkey and Asia. The Greeks had too much respect to ignore her ancient heritage and her seductive power. They made her the only Titan Zeus had permitted into his pantheon, partially because he had fallen in love with her. She was the goddess of choice, of victory and defeat, of knowledge magical and medicinal, the guardian of the boundary between spiritual and mundane, and the witness to all crimes against women and children.
    Underestimating her Oracle would prove extremely