by Karen Chance
Start the biggest free-for-all in the world, over who would replace her? Completely derail the war effort into a bunch of next-level power plays? Cause ambitious senators in other courts to try and take down their leaders as well? All of the above?
Because, with two consuls suddenly dead, and a major war looming, anything could happen, anything at all.
And none of it good.
"You have to have operatives here," I said.
"Yes, but not enough. The consul is allied with Anthony. We depend on his people when we have business here—"
"And his people are dirty as fuck."
"At least some of them—"
"But maybe not all of them! Can you—"
But Marlowe was already shaking his head. "Anthony surrounded himself with sycophants and yes-men—and women. Anyone with the power to challenge him, he used Louis-Cesare to intimidate and sideline."
"And now it's catching up with him."
Marlowe nodded. "The senators Heinrich—damn his eyes!—hasn’t suborned, he's doubtless controlled, or he wouldn’t risk this. And they’re too damned weak to help us in any case."
"But you must have somebody! The time for an undercover op is long past, Marlowe!"
"You think I don’t know that?" he glared at me. "I have people coming from our office in Brussels—it’s closest. And others from London and Frankfurt. But by the time they get here—"
"Louis-Cesare will be dead." Because no way did they kill Anthony and keep him alive. I didn’t know why he wasn't dead already. But the painful ridges on my flesh testified to his continued existence.
Maybe they wanted the spectacle of killing Anthony with his old protector at his side, I thought. Rub in the enormity of his defeat. Or maybe Louis-Cesare had racked up a few enemies of his own over the years, keeping his bastard of a consul in power. Damn it, if they didn’t kill Anthony, I was going to do it myself!
If I could find him.
"Radu thinks they may be in the basement," Marlowe said, his brow furrowing as Radu re-established contact. "They're not letting anybody down there, and despite the search for us, they just added more guards to the vestibule." His mouth twisted grimly. "And the door. And the stairs."
"Thank you, Heinrich," I said, and unshouldered my pack.
Marlowe grabbed my arm. "He's an idiot. That doesn’t mean he isn’t dangerous."
"So am I."
"Not for long. You didn’t have Claude take off the spell—"
"No."
"Why?"
I looked up at him, because I couldn't see why he cared. If we didn't get to them by midnight, this was over anyway. "I couldn’t know if Louis-Cesare was here or being held somewhere nearby, and the spell gets stronger the closer we get. I needed it."
"But if Louis-Cesare dies at midnight, so do you!"
"He isn’t going to die," I said, and opened my pack. Because unlike Marlowe and every freaking other person in my life, I don’t have sparkly master powers. What I do have is serious firepower and a lot of dirty tricks. And the experience to use them.
Marlowe looked in the bag, and his mouth twisted. But this time, it looked grimly amused. "Finally, some goddamned Basarab ruthlessness."
"They threw a party," I told him, pulling out a Glock. "So let's party."
Chapter Fourteen
Present Day, Dory
Various levels of Amour, Paris
There are many ways of getting to the lowest level of a building. Elevators, stairs, or perhaps a leisurely stroll outside, to see if there's a basement entrance.
Or, you know, you could do it our way.
"Shiiiiiiiit!" Marlowe yelled, as we fell through the hole that my acid bomb had just burned into the floor, and promptly hit another. Floor, that is. With our faces. And then had to immediately flip to either side, because somebody was shooting at us through the newly made hole above.
I returned fire, while trying to avoid the acid that was still burning around the edges of the piece of flooring we'd ridden down on top of. And which was now eating through to the next floor as well. Which turned out to be a good thing, because a knot of guards had just run in the door.
And fell through the newly made hole.
We jumped through after them a second later, because our erstwhile family had caught up with us, and they didn’t look happy.
"Auggghhh!" That was me, falling on top of Marlowe, who had fallen on top of some of the guards.
I rolled off just before some more hit down and made a Marlowe sandwich. And then grabbed my gun and fired up into the hole, where a bunch of Razzanti family members were trying to fire back, only they kept getting in the way of my bullets.
Some more guards ran in from the hall, a larger number this time. Too large, so I hit 'em with a love bomb. Which made them stop fighting and start doing other things momentarily, which was fun but not all that helpful. Because I didn't have another for the Razzantis.
So I reloaded a clip, emptied that one too, and then scrambled back onto the train—
And practically bit through my tongue when we hit down on floor number three.
Fortunately, Marlowe had dispatched the men who had ended up as the bread to his sandwich. Unfortunately, that didn’t help much, because we'd just slammed into the main floor. At least, I assumed that was why the drop had been so damned long—the ballroom had triple-height ceilings, an expansive dance floor and an IMEX-sized screen showing another party.
And a crowd of wanna-be cool kids, who were mostly interested in getting out of our way.
Good for them, I thought.
And not so good for us, because it left a clear path for approximately five hundred guards to stampede our way.
"Why did it stop?" Marlowe asked, smacking the terrazzo flooring. And, I assumed, talking about the bomb residue.
"It didn’t," I told him. "Terrazzo's just hard!"
And then my searching hand came up with a shiny, shiny dislocator. Which I held up, and the stampede slammed to a halt—or maybe a pile would be more precise. Because the ones in back hit the ones in front, who had just stopped dead and who thus ended up sprawled on the floor. And stayed there, because they liked their body parts where they were, instead of distributed randomly around their persons.
Or onto other persons who might be near them; the spell was versatile.
Like the well-armed guests, who were suddenly dropping champagne glasses for weapons.
"Why isn’t it working?" Marlowe yelled, stomping on the floor.
And I guess he stomped hard. Because a second later, it fell out from under us, just as a bunch of bullets and knives flew over us. And I made the juddering acquaintance of floor number four.
I'd gotten knocked on my ass by the fall, and I laid there for half a sec, looking back up into the hole. And wondering if the guests were taking into account the fact that we'd just been standing in the middle of the floor. Meaning that, once we left, they were basically shooting at each other.
Guess not, I thought, hearing Armageddon break out upstairs.
Of course, things weren't looking so much better down here.
Because we’d come in behind the stairway full of guards, who luckily were all facing the other way. Of course, said luck only bought us a second or so, because a large amount of terrazzo flooring collapsing behind you isn’t silent. Shit, I thought, and opened fire.
The problem with vamps and guns, however, is that they basically don’t care. Not that it doesn’t hurt, but it hurts the way a bee sting hurts a human: unpleasant, but it doesn’t really put you on your ass. But that did, I thought, as Marlowe used his super special master power to explode a few heads.
That might have been enough to make the guys behind the leaders rethink their lives, except for the unfortunate fact that everybody now knew where we were. Which meant that the entire staircase full of vamps was trying to push their way into the room, forcing the guys in front to stumble out at us. Which worked okay for a second or so, since the people now shooting at
us through the hole hit them instead.
And they must have been using some high-powered ammo, because, yeah.
I guess "bee sting" wasn't really the word, I thought, looking at a guy with a suddenly split face—and head.
It had been cleaved straight down the middle, but it wasn't stopping him. Because he was a vamp, and there's only so many ways to actually kill one of them. But it screwed the hell out of his peripheral vision, which was probably why the bullets he was spraying hit a lamp, a pool table and a sofa, but managed to avoid hitting me.
Mostly, I thought, as one of them tore through my calf.
I was a little too busy to do anything about it, however, other than to stick a knife in his least floppy eye once he ran out of ammo, because I was busy looking for something. Or, to be more precise, someone. Only that wasn't working out too well.
"Where the hell are they?" I yelled at Marlowe, who was sending power blasts through the hole in the ceiling and at the staircase, alternately.
That didn’t look like it was fun, judging by the bulging neck veins and red face he turned on me. "How the hell should I know?"
Great.
"Midas Touch!" I yelled at the stair guys. Who had started to get organized into a stampede of their own, but who suddenly started turning and fighting back at the guys behind them. And they were fighting hard.
I almost hated to do it to them, not least because the damned potion bomb was super expensive. But you had to love craftsmanship, I thought as it exploded over some guys in the middle of the staircase. Who were trying to divest themselves of spare change, but weren’t fast enough.
And a narrow stairwell is no place to be caught with suddenly animated money that starts whizzing around at about a thousand miles per hour.
Of course, it tore a lot of small holes in the walls, but it tore even more in the tightly packed vamps, the coins ricocheting over and over and over and over, and the vamps cursing and yelling and then screaming as they began to look more and more like Swiss cheese. It wouldn’t kill them, of course—coins aren’t made out of wood—but it cut down on the eagerness of the pursuit by, oh, a whole lot.
But there'd be others, and Marlowe was getting visibly tired. Even worse, there were no doors out of here. Which made no sense, because the buildings above were huge! There should have been an equally huge basement, not this one little room. So our people had to be here somewhere, but I didn't see—
"Goddamnit!" I swore, as something that felt like a knife tore into my arm.
Because it was a knife, I realized, but not one wielded by an attacker. Small, shallow letters were appearing along my unmarked forearm. Which might not have been legible except for the blood welling up, coloring them before it flooded them, so I had to read fast.
And then turn and scramble for the wall opposite the stairs, and run my hands over the plaster, but not find anything. And then try to punch through, which only got me a pair of bloody knuckles, and views of the hard bricks behind the pretty covering. And then somebody started carving up my ass.
"Really?" I yelled at the wall, because I had other body parts available. And I couldn't read my own ass.
"What are you doing?" Marlowe yelled.
"Read my ass!"
"What?"
"Just do it!" I stuck it out at him, "What does it say?"
He threw another invisible blow up the hole in the ceiling, where people were trying to crawl in now. And bent over. "They're behind a ward—"
"I know they're behind a ward!"
"The trigger is . . . I can’t see." He wiped some blood.
"Marlowe, I swear to God—"
"It's in a lamp. A lamp!"
We both looked wildly around for a lamp. But most of the lights were recessed, and built into the ceiling. Except for a hanging thing above the pool table, which did nothing, and a standing light near a chair, which did nothing, and a small thing on a built-in bookshelf that did nothing except serve as a cudgel for a vamp, because they were in the room now. And Marlowe was literally fighting for our lives and couldn’t help, and I was about to be, too, and then—
And then I stepped on something that crunched under my heel, and hurt like a bitch.
Because it was made out of porcelain.
The shattered lamp from earlier! The one Split Face had hit because he couldn’t see straight! I grabbed it, smacked a vamp in the face with it, and then jabbed at him with the jagged ends while trying to find something, anything, that might trigger a ward. But it looked like a plain old lamp to me, just like the others.
And then I realized there might be a reason for that when I spotted a final lamp across the room on a table near the stairs. But there was no way to reach it now, with guys falling through the ceiling all the time, and Marlowe's punches starting to lack oomph. And there's only so many potions you can throw when your assailants are right on top of you.
My back hit brick, after a belt from a fist I never even saw coming, and Marlowe wasn't doing much better. A vamp lunged at me, fangs glistening, and I lashed out with what I had in my hand—the lamp. Which was fairly useless, but I only needed a second to get my hand on a gun.
I didn't get it.
Because the slash across the vamp's face didn’t buy me much time, but it did do something. The lamp started glowing, I guess because the switch had been hit, only no. Because the chord was dangling down by my leg. But it was suddenly getting brighter in here anyway.
Really bright.
Blindingly bright!
And then I fell backwards, onto my abused ass.
Inside the wall.
"Turn it off! Turn it off!" Someone was yelling, which would have been easy, except I was on my back with a vamp in my face. I threw him off—into Marlowe, who had just run through the wall. And who grabbed him and used him as a fleshy club, slamming him over and over and over against the other vamps now trying to pour through the wall.
Because the ward was still open!
I grabbed the lamp, and a vamp grabbed me at the same time. He jerked me back, causing me to lose my bloody grip on the slick porcelain. The lamp went bouncing and I went sliding and then somebody stamped a foot through the guy's brain.
Marlowe.
"Get the damned lamp!"
Blood had splattered into my face; I couldn’t see. But I knew where it was, and after a second that felt like a year, my searching hands found it. And switched it off, my breath coming fast, my heart pounding.
And then pounding some more when it stubbornly continued to glow.
"Turn it off! Turn it off!"
I couldn’t tell who was yelling at me, because I couldn’t see. But right then, I didn’t care. I just cared that flicking that little switch over and over wasn't doing shit!
"Turn it off!"
"It won’t turn off!"
"Then destroy it!"
Okay; that I could do.
I stood up, grabbed a gun, and wiped blood out of my eyes. And let loose. The light flickered and went out, the ward slammed shut, leaving various vamps in various pieces, when they were caught in the suddenly-there-again wall, and somebody grabbed my arm.
Probably because I was still firing.
"Dory!"
"Augggghhhhh!"
"Dory!”
It was Marlowe, I realized, but only when I finished emptying the clip.
"What?" I turned on him. And found him grinning like the freaking madman he is. "What?"
"We're in."
Chapter Fifteen
1457, Mircea/Present Day Dory
Still in the Lagoon, Venice, Italy/Amour
It didn’t feel that way to Mircea, but everything had happened pretty quickly. He knew that because there was only now beginning to be lamps lit in some of the houses on shore, as a sleepy populace awoke to the fact that there might be something wrong. Mircea himself was very aware of that fact, considering he was still in a burning ship, still had a group of vampires searching for him, still had a bunch of witches to round up—and stil
l had no damned idea what was going on!
Until Jerome gave him one.
It wasn't on purpose. Jerome had spoken the truth about being a spy not a soldier. He reacted when someone attacked him, but he didn't engage himself, and seemed to lack even basic awareness of his surroundings. Which is why he hadn’t seen the vampires coming up behind him before, and why he didn’t notice the witch taking aim at him now.
She was on the other end of the ship, on one of the few pieces still protruding from the water, wet, bedraggled, and obviously furious. And had just pulled one of those strange, sticklike weapons from under her equally sodden cloak, obviously intending to blow the small blond to kingdom come. And while Mircea had a defender, she was plastered to his back like a very large, very friendly cat, and the few words she'd spoken weren't in a language he knew.
So he pushed Jerome underwater and threw out a hand, desperately trying to drain the witch, or at least slow her down.
What happened was . . . not that.
One minute, she was painting the air with a whip made out of pure flame, about to send a storm of fire their way. And the next she was flying backwards off her perch, the light dying as she rapidly switched her focus to a shield instead. One that was currently a half-moon of burning orange flames from a spell that hadn't come from her, and that only went out when she hit the water, well beyond the farthest ship.
Mircea looked behind him, expecting to see "his" witch laughing in victory. Instead, she was now attempting to braid his hair, which was disturbing—and was unarmed, which was more so. Because, if she hadn’t spelled that witch, who had?
Mircea scanned the dark sea behind them, but there was no one there. Their ship was on one end of the little cluster of masts, with none behind it. There was nowhere for anyone to hide.
"H-how?" Jerome said, surfacing, spitting water and almost choking, because he was trying to talk at the same time. "H-how?"
"How what?" Mircea said, only half listening. Because his head was reeling and his fingertips . . . felt odd. Very odd. Tingly and strangely heavy, and almost . . . fiery.
