Queen's Gambit

by Karen Chance

  Tomas looked at Ev. “What about you?”

  “I did not see him,” Ev said.

  Tomas looked at me. “How about you, Miss—”

  “Basarab,” Louis-Cesare said. “Lord Mircea’s daughter.”

  “Bullshit.” Tomas sneered. “Mircea doesn’t have a daughter, much less a dirty—”

  Louis-Cesare slammed him against the wall of a house, causing a bunch of ash to come raining down from the roof. “And my wife.”

  “Your what?” Tomas looked in shock at Louis-Cesare for a moment, looked back at me, and then at Louis-Cesare again—

  And burst out laughing.

  That had about the result you’d expect, but Sarah had clearly had enough. “Cut it out!” she yelled, getting in between them. And barely missing having Tomas put a fist through her face.

  He pulled back with a curse, and starting yelling at her, but she wasn’t having that, either. “I wouldn’t have been in danger if you would control your temper! I know you don’t like him, but insulting his wife is a low blow.”

  “That is not his—”

  “How would you like it if someone insulted me? People don’t exactly like jinxes, either—”

  “That’s completely diff—”

  “It is not completely different. Jinxes are outlawed. I’m supposed to be locked up in some cell somewhere, living out my life staring at a wall like a good little freak of nature. And I probably will be if the Circle ever catches up with me. How would you like it if Louis-Cesare called me—”

  “He calls you anything, and I cut his damned head off!” Tomas said fiercely.

  Louis-Cesare started to comment, probably about how likely that was, but I beat him to it. “Louis-Cesare doesn’t have to worry about that,” I said. “He doesn’t go around insulting women.”

  Tomas had the grace to blush, although it didn’t last long.

  “You’re not a woman; you’re a dhampir. And you aren’t his wife—”

  “What makes you so sure?”

  “Because he’s all but married to a bitch named Christine!”

  Louis-Cesare started to say something, but I held up a hand and he backed off gracefully. He looked like he wanted to see this, too. I got in Tomas’s space, not abruptly, but slowly, almost sinuously. I brushed my hand down the side of his pretty hair, to turn his face toward me. It had healed, and he was back to the show-stopper I’d first encountered.

  I raised up on tiptoes so I could whisper directly into his ear. “I killed Christine. I blew her into a thousand pieces. From what I understand, they never even found them all.”

  Tomas stared at me, and for a moment, I thought I saw a flash of fear in his eyes. But then a wash of anger took its place. He abruptly stepped back. “You are insane!”

  “Homicidal,” I agreed. “Which is why you and my husband are going to stop antagonizing each other. It’s bad enough that we’re fighting a bunch of monsters; we don’t have to fight each other, too.”

  “Or leave each other,” Sarah said pointedly. “We have to find Ranbir.”

  We did not find Ranbir, although that was not our choice. We suddenly didn’t have a choice. Because the whole damned street was coming alive.

  The little road had a long brick wall on one side and a row of shuttered shops on the other. The one thing they had in common was graffiti: it covered the corrugated tin of the shutters, scrawled across the road, and had turned the long expanse of brick into an art gallery. One that was suddenly lighting up.

  “What’s . . . going on?” Jason asked.

  “They usually do that before they attack,” Ev said helpfully.

  “I know that!”

  “Then why did you ask?”

  “It was a rhetorical question!”

  “Really?” Ev looked surprised. “This does not seem to be the time.”

  “Uh, retreat?” Sarah said.

  “Retreat,” I agreed, and turned around, only to find that there was nowhere to go. There was graffiti in the other direction, too, and on the street behind us—

  “What the hell is this?” Sarah said, catching an eyeful of the mob headed our way.

  I didn’t answer, because I had no idea. For the last hour or so, we’d encountered problems, but we’d also avoided a lot of them. We’d opted for side streets and dodged anything we saw coming. I’d assumed that, once we found the mage, we’d reach our destination fairly quickly.

  After all, we were learning how things worked around here.

  Only apparently not. Because, suddenly, every creature in the place seemed to be focused on us. And if there were any benign ones in the crowd, I didn’t see them.

  “Incoming!” Ev yelled, and fired the rocket launcher at something screaming at us from overhead.

  I didn’t see what it was, but a second later, I was covered in blue goo, and so was everyone else. It wasn’t sticky like the squid’s had been, but it was gross. Not that I had time to worry about it.

  A large, pink pig with anime character eyes jumped off a wall and charged, its tusks threatening to gut us before Louis-Cesare grabbed them and launched it over a nearby building. A huge graffitied statue of David swept an arm out of a wall and sent a wave of garbage crashing into us, spilling us off our feet. And an equally giant fish came alive, its tail flicking acid instead of water and setting the trash alight.

  But not for long. Because a great eye, big enough to have belonged to Sauron himself, turned to look at us from the side of a nearby shop. Its pupil was as large as my whole face, and it had just pushed three-foot lashes out of the corrugated metal, which was strange enough. But then it began to cry, gushing with water like an open fire hydrant, and flooding the street a foot deep in seconds.

  I stared at it, genuine panic rising in my throat. We’d stumbled into a supernatural obstacle course, filled with soldiers who couldn’t die, and I didn’t know how to fight this way! And neither did anybody else, the whole group stuck in indecision for a second, not knowing which way to turn.

  Until Jason solved it for us.

  “Pick a damned direction!” he screamed, and then let off a barrage at the crap headed our way down the alley, before running to the right.

  “I guess we’re going right,” Louis-Cesare said dryly. But it wasn’t any better or worse than the other options.

  Of course, I could have been wrong about that, I thought, a moment later.

  We had started pelting ahead with the two vamps on either side, to beat off attacks from the wall and shops; the two gunslingers in the back, to slow down the army; and me and Sarah in the middle, guns out, trying to pick off what we could of whatever was coming up in front. It was going pretty well until we approached a mural of a beautiful Chinese woman, who was reclining along the whole length of a building. She didn’t bother to get up and chase us like half the city was doing, but then, she didn’t need to. She had a child’s bubble making toy, and was blowing iridescent spheres the size of beach balls that looked harmlessly ethereal until they floated into something solid.

  And exploded like so many percussion grenades.

  The street ahead was suddenly filled with explosions, which didn’t rain shrapnel, but which did flash so brightly as to white out the landscape, and bang so loudly as to finish deafening us. They also played havoc with my sense of balance, sending me stumbling around like an old drunk, lurching from one explosion to the other. I ran into the side of the wall, almost broke my nose, staggered back and vaguely realized that . . .

  It was coming with me.

  I couldn’t see shit, but I could feel, and that . . . wasn’t brick. What felt like massive scales slid under my hands, thick and hard and smooth. A running river of them, but not snake-like. I’d felt something like them before, and the sensation was as visceral as it was memorable, chilling the blood in my veins and freezing my limbs, just when I needed them to move, damn it! Because that wasn’t a snake, that was a—

  “Dragon!” Tomas bellowed, right in my face, his vampire eyesight faring
better than mine.

  Along with his vampire reflexes. I was suddenly flying down the street, his arm around my waist and my feet barely touching the road. While, just behind us, something hit the ground, something like a giant foot followed by a colossal body, heavy enough to threaten to crack the road bed—

  And, okay, I decided.

  It was officially fuck it time.

  “Get them to me,” I told Tomas breathlessly. “Get the team!”

  I couldn’t even hear the words I was speaking, but he obviously could. Because a moment later, I felt bodies crowding me close, and while I couldn’t see them or hear their breathing, the motion around me was indicative of panting or fear. Or, you know, both.

  My hand found my bag, and the device holding pride of place in the biggest pocket of them all. I grabbed it, activating a personal shield worth the price of a house, and not a small one. I could never have afforded the Cadillac of shields, but then, I hadn’t bought it.

  I’d stolen it, from the consul’s personal stash.

  Here’s hoping she spent more on herself than she did on others, I thought, right before a burst of fire blasted us like we’d been caught in a volcanic eruption.

  Or by an angry dragon.

  “Auggghhhh!” Somebody screamed, as the transparent bubble of the shield showed a rain of flame that just kept coming and coming, even while the grenades’ after effects jumped across my vision, leaving me half blind. But I had just enough eyesight left to read the shield’s indicator bracelet wrapped around my wrist, and—

  Shit.

  “How much time do we have?” Louis-Cesare yelled.

  “It was supposed to be half an hour,” I babbled, thumping the thing because it had to be faulty. “But that was based on protecting twelve. With only six of us, it should last longer, although it depends on the level of power that it has to expend—”

  “Damn it, how much?”

  “Two minutes—”

  “Two minutes? We have two minutes before we die?”

  “One minute fifty seconds.”

  Louis-Cesare said a bad word in French, and looked at Tomas.

  He didn’t say anything out loud, but then, master vamps didn’t have to. They were probably speaking mind to mind, and for once, they seemed to be in agreement. Because the next moment—

  “I don’t think it’s supposed to be portable,” I said breathlessly, as they picked up the shield and started to take off with it.

  Only me, I thought, shell shocked. Only I could get stuck in a failing shield while being chased by a dragon. It . . . boggled the mind.

  And it wasn’t even a good chase, because the shield wasn’t designed to be used while in motion. But when you pay the kind of money that the consul probably had, you get added features. Instead of staying put, and causing all of us to slam into it when we tried to run, it recalibrated as we moved, the way it had probably been designed to do in case somebody crashed into the thing and made it wobble.

  But it didn’t recalibrate fast. So, I had another odd experience to add to my collection: slowly shambling down a street from inside what felt like a giant balloon, while being whacked on by a pack of modern day Chinese soldiers, who might have looked real if they weren’t twelve feet tall; by a group of abstract, Dali-esque monsters in neon colors; by a very un-pacifistic Buddha; by some video game characters I didn’t recognize; by a couple of massive sumo wrestlers who kept trying to crush us with their huge bellies; and by a dragon. And a rainbow-colored rooster the size of a bus, who showed up out of nowhere and tried to peck our heads, only to have its beak slide off the shield and stab the dragon instead.

  That did not please the dragon, who I could now tell was blue and snake-like, with a head that looked more like a lion than the typical western depiction. But the fire breathing attributes were right on point, and were abruptly turned on its attacker. Which took the heat off of us—literally—for a moment.

  And that was enough.

  Down a cross street just ahead, moving slowly to avoid the biggest trash heaps, rumbled an old, World War II era cargo truck with a cloth canopy and way more wheels than it needed. I had no idea who would be crazy enough to be driving around down here, and for a moment wondered if we were about to be targeted by the triad along with everything else. But then I saw what popped out of the cloth covered back.

  “Bertha?”

  I honestly wasn’t sure if I was seeing things; it had been that kind of a day. But, yes, there they were, in all their glory, Bertha’s massive assets, draped over with a couple dozen bandoliers of bullets. Somebody appeared to be using her as an ammunition mule, and I only knew one person alive who would think of something like that.

  And then a head poked out of the passenger side window, and I was sure of it.

  “Zheng!” I screamed, never so happy to see anyone in my life.

  I saw his eyes widen and his mouth form a very bad word, and then I grabbed Louis-Cesare’s arm and pointed. The truck didn’t stop because it was already going fairly slow, and in fact, seemed to pick up speed as we tried to catch it, maybe because the driver had just spotted what was in the street behind us. But it didn’t work. We shambled that way, but we shambled fast.

  “Slow down, you bastards!” Tomas yelled, and half a dozen dark heads poked out of the cab to blink at us. Zheng’s guys, I assumed. And then a dozen hands followed, trying to pull us on board.

  And suddenly, we were having another reunion.

  “Hello,” Bahram said.

  “You’re not ditching us that easily,” Rashid snarled.

  “Oh, trust me,” Louis-Cesare replied. “It hasn’t been easy.”

  It looked like I’d been wrong, I thought, as the cloth side of the truck rolled up. There was a couple dozen of Zheng’s guys in there, and they made my team look underdressed. Their hands slid off our shield for a moment, but only for a moment. Then it gave up the ghost, and we were jerked into a truck already stuffed with heavily armed locals.

  And a royally pissed-off master vamp who had the nerve to glare at me through the missing back window of the cab.

  “You’re the jinx!” he told me. “Every time I get involved with you—every time—”

  “Then why are you here?” I asked breathlessly. I didn’t know why I was gasping; I’d been moving—at best—at a brisk walking speed. But then, my usual workouts don’t involve dragons.

  “I didn’t go to all the trouble to get a decent alliance to let it fall apart now! You do not get to die on me!”

  “Okay,” I said happily, as we rumbled off, while our pursuers devolved into a snarling, squealing, and roaring knot, too busy attacking each other to remember us. And blocking the road in the process, creating a natural barricade to anyone else joining in.

  I felt my spine unclench.

  “Where the hell’s Ranbir?” Zheng demanded.

  “We don’t know,” Sarah said. “We got separated—”

  “He’s dead,” Tomas said flatly.

  “You don’t know that!” She turned on him.

  “After what we just went through? Yes, I know that.”

  I was actually kind of with Tomas on this one, but didn’t want to say so. Sarah looked like she might cry. I wondered if she’d ever lost a team member before.

  It didn’t look like it.

  “Well, that’s just great,” Zheng said.

  “It’s worse than you think,” Jason said. “He had the map. Without him—”

  “What map?”

  “The one they made from their past explorations,” Louis-Cesare said smoothly, causing Tomas to do a double take. Probably because he wouldn’t have been able to lie that quickly or that well. “The one to the approximate location of Eternity’s base.”

  “But you know the general locale, right?” Zheng said. “I better not have come all this way for nothing!”

  “I know it,” Sarah said.

  Everybody looked at her.

  “He had it right out there in the open. We all saw it.
”

  Yeah, but none of the rest of us had remembered.

  I smiled at her. “Thanks.”

  She smiled back. “At least, I’m pretty sure—”

  “Pretty sure?” Zheng said. “We can’t roam around, looking for the damned thing! It’s like the apocalypse out there! We get in, we get out, we get—”

  He cut off abruptly, and one glance out of the open side of the truck told me why. Because in our relief at our getaway, we’d forgotten one, tiny thing. Dragons can fly.

  Chapter Forty-Five

  Dory, Hong Kong

  “Shit! Shit! Shit!” Zheng yelled, beating on his driver.

  “Move! Move! Move!” I said, wishing I knew the word in Cantonese.

  I didn’t need it. There are some things that are universal, including having a two-ton dragon come swooping after you. The men screamed, automatic weapon fire tore through the night, and the big truck lurched ahead, driving faster than I’d thought possible from its previous performance. And then more than driving.

  “Hold on,” Zheng said.

  I didn’t have to ask why, because Bertha and the boys were all cramming this way as a huge fan pushed up from the back of the cargo area, and started blowing up a hurricane in our wake. The device looked like the kind used on the local rickshaws, only bigger, although it did not seem to faze our pursuers. But then, that wasn’t the point.

  As demonstrated when the old truck, laden as it was, slowly lifted off the roadbed and into the air.

  I looked down to see the wheels turning flat and retracting beneath the undercarriage, like landing gear on a jet. Only this thing didn’t seem to be nearly as well balanced, because the movement sent us careening across the road. Or maybe that was the driver, or should I say drivers, because three different guys had their hands on the wheel.

  “Zheng!” I yelled, because the dragon was matching our speed—and gaining.

  But he was already on it.

  “Get outta my way! You guys can’t drive worth shit!”

  Zheng took over, but it didn’t seem to help much. The truck, while making considerably better time than it had while bouncing over piles of debris, was not getting away. Probably because the fan-driven contraptions they used around here were built on old rickshaw bodies for a reason: they were light and easily maneuverable. Neither was true for the truck.