Death's Dancer Page 2

  Isela’s stomach lurched. It had been all over the feeds. The eyes had continually moved—pupils opening and closing—for days. A guard had been assigned to the door to ensure they weren’t tampered with. What had become of the rest of the man was a mystery.

  Even when the allegiance united to put the pieces of the world back together—keeping the fallout of the godswar from becoming a full-scale apocalypse—some of the individual necromancers proved to be tyrants to their own people.

  “They have hired dancers for intercessions before,” Isela went on, bent on talking herself out of panic. “Look at Leonora. She was able to retire after dancing for the Sur American necro. This could be my ticket.”

  To where, she had no idea. What was there for her outside the Academy? But her hip was failing. If the doctors were right, she should worry less about the future of her career than her ability to walk when it was over. How much longer did she have?

  “Leonora danced in the ring.” Divya’s words came slowly.

  That was it. The thing that was making the older woman nervous. No, Isela corrected, scared.

  “He wants me to dance. . . where?”

  Divya spread her hands. “At his discretion. It’s an unusual request these days, but it has been done before. Once. I suppose it’s a matter of security. You know how zealously they guard information about themselves.”

  Divya shook her head, catapulting herself from her chair with uncharacteristic violence. “You’re not going to take it.” She paced a small circuit near the bookcase, her hands clenched at her sides. “I didn’t bring you here and train you to become fodder for a necromancer. We have a network, from the old days. It’s rusty, but we protect our own. I can get you and your family out of here today.”

  And go where? There was no place on Earth she could go where the allegiance would not find her. What would he do to her, or her family, when he did? She thought about her parents. They were much older than when they had left the United States. And her brothers had families of their own now. What of the Academy? It wouldn’t take Azrael long to figure out Divya had helped her. How many would pay the price because she ran away?

  If anything, she was the expendable one. All she had was a philodendron slowly taking over her apartment. The knowledge didn’t stop her throat from choking with despair. Her passion, her skill, her life—the one she had worked so hard to shape for herself—was now being offered up. And she would have to hold the platter.

  If it meant protecting everyone she loved, she would do it. “I won’t run.”

  Divya sank into her chair, and Isela saw her age in the slump of her shoulders and the deep lines carved by her frown. Isela folded herself onto the floor beside her mentor. She reached out tentatively and laid her fingertips on the older woman’s hand. The skin was soft and paper-thin.

  She could feel Divya’s pulse racing. The faintest twinge of sweat and fear came through her usual scent of spicy peppers and warm chocolate.

  “Hey, I’m the best, remember?” Isela forced cheer into her tone that sounded maniacal to her own ear. “Of course he wants me.”

  Divya’s haunted eyes stared at her. “When you were eleven, I promised your mother that this life, the Academy, was a way of giving you security.”

  “And you have,” Isela said firmly. “You gave me. . . everything. Now let me use it.”

  She was a performer. She made herself smile.

  Divya collected herself. “He asked for you. Make it your advantage.”

  “Oh, I can be a diva.” Isela waved her hand with a stilted laugh. “I better be getting paid for this.”

  Divya looked almost her old self again when the corner of her mouth twitched faintly. “My dear, the paycheck alone makes Leonora’s wealth a pittance.”

  The godsdance was a job, a way to provide for herself and take care of her family in a troubled world. A job that would one day—sooner rather than later, in her case—end. She stared into the fire as her eyes blurred. One big job would set her family up for life.

  “He would like to meet with you this afternoon,” Divya said. “To discuss the choreography.”

  “And the petition?”

  “You’ll have to talk to him about that,” Divya said, a hint of annoyance in her voice. “I am not permitted to know.”

  Closing her eyes, Isela took a breath. She held it, sipped a bit more air, and exhaled. When she opened her eyes, Divya was waiting.

  “I’m going to shower and change.” Isela rose from her chair. She was proud of how steady her voice sounded. Casual, even. “Then I’ll just run over to the castle.”

  Like that was something she did every day.

  “Niles will take you.”

  The gesture touched Isela more than she expected. “He’ll never—”

  “He insisted.” Divya interrupted, her voice coarse with emotion. “I insist. I’m still in charge.”

  Isela collected her bag and rose from her chair. Niles held the door as she passed, deferring her gratitude for the tea as though it was any other day.

  “We all have a job to do, Miss Vogel.”

  CHAPTER TWO

  A monument to Art Nouveau design and Czech pride, the Municipal House had served as a center for Prague’s community, culture, and gathering since the beginning of the twentieth century. Recognized as being state of the art for its day, it had seen countless concerts, balls, and been the backdrop for history-making events—none so important as the necromancer’s claim to Prague as the capital of his territory.

  Left in shambles after the wars, the restoration of the Municipal House was his gift to the Praha Dance Academy. Great pains had been taken to preserve the original interiors and decor. These days, only the first floor and front halls, housing a museum and a few of the old ballrooms, were open to the public. The students and faculty of the Academy occupied the rest.

  Isela barely remembered life before Prague. Once she began training, the Academy became home. When she graduated and accepted the offer to become an Academy principal, the only thing she had insisted on in her contract was it be as a resident principal dancer.

  As she crossed the threshold of the attic turned apartment in the southwest wing, her body relaxed out of habit. The spacious, breezy room with slanted ceilings and windows overlooking the city was her sanctuary. Only there did she allow herself to sag against the wall beside the door and succumb to tears.

  She wiped them away quickly. Years of hard work had given her little appreciation for self-pity.

  It was almost noon. Her hip had begun to ache, a dull throb that spiked as she climbed the five stairs into the main floor of the apartment. She had rushed to the ring this morning, leaving the place a mess. Training taught her the value of routine, so she threw herself into an abbreviated version of her post-dance cleaning ritual to steady her mind.

  She tidied as she went, plumping the ample cushions on the couch facing the view of Old Town and folding a throw blanket into a neat square on the arm of the reading chair next to the antique bookshelf.

  In the living room, she drew the drapes away from the floor-to-ceiling windows; cloud-diffused light filled the space. It had rained earlier, but the clouds were lighter now, and forecasts called for snow before the end of the week. She longed to stretch out on the long mat by the window, but moving through sun salutations would have to wait.

  She ordered the dance theory books stacked haphazardly on the nightstand and scooped up scattered earrings, depositing them on a framed screen atop the dresser where she kept all her jewelry neatly hung. By the time she finished making the bed, she almost felt calm.

  At the end of the long room, she paused to strip before the glass-walled shower surrounding the tiled depression in the floor. Beside it, the massive claw-foot tub hunkered closer to the window with a view of the city roofs. The apartment ended in the walled-off water closet with its own separate sink and vanity.

  Isela adored how her room felt expansive without interior walls. The philodendron’s ten
drils crawling across the entire length of the windowed wall seemed to agree.

  Under the flow of hot water, she took her time working conditioner from the roots to the tips of her sweat-snarled curls. Detangled, she gathered the mass of her hair on the top of her head, then soaped and scrubbed her face. A final rinse and she shut off the water. She wrapped her hair in an old T-shirt, squeezing the moisture carefully out to keep the curls smooth as she contemplated how to present herself for her new patron.

  Most new patron meetings took place in Divya’s public office at the Academy. Presentation was part of the performance: she’d dress to emphasize her dancer’s body. Curvy as it was, there was no arguing she was at her physical peak. As she gained fame, there was less need to show off. Most patrons were repeats or booked her on reputation alone.

  However, the thought of facing one of the most powerful necromancers in the world made her want to camouflage herself. She dressed modestly in a rose-colored wrap dress that cascaded off her hips to swirl around her calves. She wrangled her curls into twin braids, pinning them to the crown of her head. Tiny ringlets around her brow and neck sprang free defiantly. She hung teardrop-shaped silver hoops from her earlobes and kept her makeup subdued.

  As an afterthought, she buckled a low-profile holster to her thigh. What good a pair of knives would do against an immortal, she had no idea, but they made her feel better. She wound a scarf around her neck and cast one final glance over her treasured space.

  There was no time to waste. She had a date with death.

  Niles met her outside as she passed through the glass doors. Her eyes went to the elaborate stained-glass canopy that had always been her favorite part of the building’s exterior. Greens and peaches colored the muted light refracting through the glass. Niles unfurled a crimson umbrella edged with gold in anticipation of her leaving the shelter of the building. The colors the Academy shared with its home city bloomed against the rain-sodden day, and a small gasp went up among the passersby as they recognized her.

  He guided her toward the idling Tesla sedan. His arms spread wide, providing a physical barrier between her and the curious onlookers. No one dared approach. He opened the rear door before she could reach for the handle. With her hand on the doorframe, she paused to fill her lungs with the petrichor that followed fresh rain and slid into the car.

  The door shut behind her with the solid vacuum-sealed sound of a space shuttle cockpit, tinted windows obscuring the light. She leaned back onto the eggshell leather seats—only the best for Director Sauvageau.

  “All right then, Miss Vogel?” Niles glanced over his shoulder at her.

  “Ready as I’ll ever be.”

  The car pulled away from the curb in eerie silence, triggering memories of the scents and sounds of the gasoline-powered cars of her youth. Under strict regulation by the allegiance, combustion-driven engines were rare these days.

  The suspension muted the jarring effect of the cobblestone streets, and for that, she was grateful. She was so busy replaying her conversation with Divya for clues to what lay in store it took her a moment to notice the speed of travel. This late in the afternoon, the traffic in the heart of Old Town should have been monstrous. They breezed through another green light.

  Isela met Niles’s eyes in the rearview mirror. “VIP treatment?”

  “It appears so.”

  The car crossed the Mánes Bridge and climbed the hill toward the castle that dominated the city skyline. Never needing to stop for a light, she watched the traffic part ahead of them. Did the necromancer do it himself, she wondered, or did he have underlings to redirect traffic?

  Gallows humor will get you nowhere, she thought with a smile as the car pulled off the main road and descended to the castle gates. Especially if they really could read minds.

  Her phone buzzed in her purse. She checked the caller ID and grimaced at the image of the familiar smiling face, cheek to cheek with her own. “Kyle.”

  He’d probably come by her flat to work on her hip. She wouldn’t be able to lie to him about where she was. He would hear the nerves in her voice. She sent it to voice mail. She met Niles’s eyes briefly in the rearview mirror.

  “He worries.”

  Niles nodded. “Can I give him a message for you?”

  “Just that I’ll be home,” she said, taking a deep breath to steady herself with the promise. “Soon.”

  The Prague Castle was a complex of buildings framing an increasingly narrowing street leading toward the main grounds. While an architectural student might have admired the enormous range of styles represented by the individual palaces, Isela felt like livestock being funneled down a chute.

  As they reached the castle proper, the gates rolled open soundlessly. The car continued between the columns topped with statues of battling Titans. Isela was unable to shake the impression that the two muscle-bound demigods peered hungrily into the car as she passed.

  Niles drove through the first courtyard and into a second, to a door lit subtly by recessed lighting. Positioned at the handle, a man in a dark suit stood, a silk tie knotted expertly at his throat.

  When Niles opened her door, she swung her legs out, flowing to a standing position under the umbrella. She started forward, but his hand on her arm stopped her. She could count the times on one hand Niles had touched her, three of them being helping her up from the sparring floor after a particularly brutal takedown. This was just too much to bear for one day. She faced him, eyes shining.

  “You’ll pardon my forwardness, miss,” he said. “You are the best godsdancer the world has ever seen. Don’t let him forget it.”

  Isela inclined her head, blinking once, and the tears were gone.

  “Wish me luck,” she said with what she hoped was a confident grin.

  “You don’t need it, miss.”

  No, she thought, turning away. I need a miracle.

  CHAPTER THREE

  The man at the door appeared to be a few years Isela’s junior and, up close, looked like a boy playing dress-up in his father’s suit.

  “Miss Vogel, welcome,” he said. “This way, if you would.”

  As he took her coat, she snuck glances at the foyer. The entire complex had been closed to the public since Azrael named the castle as his seat. Renovations and restorations—rumored in the billions—returned it to its former glory after centuries of hard use and little maintenance.

  Contrary to the dark rooms and smoky halls she expected, the façade appeared like something out of an architectural history magazine. The minimalist decor was tasteful, a refined mix of old and new, well suited to this, one of the youngest buildings in the complex. Every angle could have been the backdrop for a publicity photo.

  She half expected armed guards or earpiece-wearing, dark-suited security teams to be prowling the grounds. And where was the mess of obedient zombie servants going about their master’s business? She chastised herself; she had to get the word “zombie” out of her head. Using the derogatory street name for the necromancer’s dead subjects would not earn her any favors.

  Little more than brainless automatons, or an example of what happened when you crossed a necromancer, the undead earned the comparison. It was all much more civilized than flesh-eating and rotting corpses. When the length of the punishment had been served, they were released to die, and their bodies returned to any remaining family for burial.

  The kicker was, some humans, craving the comforts of power after the godswar, offered themselves in servitude under a contract. They retained more of their personalities, serving in more senior roles.

  As far as she could tell, she was alone with her guide. Up close, there was something not quite right about him. He was too pale, his eyes too bright. And he wasn’t breathing. She had never seen a Contract before. This one could have been a young analyst headed to work. He was clearly not a brainless servant.

  “It’s an honor, Miss Vogel,” he said. “I’d never thought I’d meet a godsdancer, especially one of your stature.”r />
  Isela knew she was staring but couldn’t think of anything to say, except, “Thank you.”

  He wasn’t wearing an earpiece, but with the distant facial expression and head tilt, it seemed as if he were listening to someone. When his attention returned, his expression was fixed. She thought she saw the hurt in his eyes like someone, or something, unseen, had chastised him.

  “I apologize for delaying you. Right this way.”

  He moved quickly down the long hall, and Isela was glad she had chosen kitten heels instead of the sexier ones she might have picked for an ordinary client. With any other client, she might not have expected to have to run—or fight—for her life at some point. They clicked across the stone floor with the proper sound of authority though, and she liked that. It was a good reminder, as Niles had said, she wasn’t some human lackey, called to heel at the feet of the necromancer. She was the best damn godsdancing human lackey in the world.

  The long hall led into an even larger space that could have been a museum gallery. It was, in a manner of speaking.

  Isela’s chest constricted as they walked the path laid out between sculptures. She eyed the paintings lining the walls. Each one belonged in a museum. There were no guardrails, plastic boxes, or video cameras. Maybe it all was safer here than it would ever be in the halls of the Louvre or the Met. Part of her mourned as she passed what she was sure was a Rodin. Ordinary people would never again stand in the same room as these treasures. Or, like her, they would be too worried about what lay beyond to give them the proper attention.

  The manservant stopped at the end of the hall beside a pair of enormous wooden doors, which were beginning to open. Isela tried to slow her heartbeat with her breath but couldn’t stop it from racing on.

  Here she was. At the door of the home of the most feared man in Europe, if he could be considered a man at all.

  The undead gestured with an open palm to proceed. Isela started forward and glanced back to find her guide standing still. Apparently, this was where his journey ended. When she looked into the third courtyard beyond, one of the most handsome men she’d ever laid eyes on strode toward her, hands clasped behind his back.