by Karen Chance
But not because of a lack of light. The battleground had started off gloomy, with a little moonlight above and some scattered torches below, but it hadn’t stayed that way. As soon as the fun began, the flashlights turned on—masses of them. And started waving around everywhere like a thousand tiny spotlights, because everyone seemed to have one. It reminded me of people holding up lighters at a concert, only these lighters were extra powerful and were glinting off everything: ruined metal and broken glass and tiny, angry troll eyes, whose owners were probably pissed that they had to fight half-blind.
Which was why they were going on movement, Dory!
I finally realized why I was drawing so much attention swinging around on my little rope, probably looking like a flying fist even as I tried to avoid them—and the bottles and bricks and unidentifiable junk the crowd was pelting us with.
Until I got smart and jumped for a piece of somebody’s living room, draped with fallen shag carpeting that gave me a decent handhold. At least, it did until I pulled an ancient TV off the edge. It was built in a cabinet like a piece of furniture and would have taken me out or at least down, only a nearby troll grabbed it first. And flung it at an opponent’s head, catching my rope in the process, and sending me hurtling across the gap—
Straight at a bunch of humans crowding somebody’s bathtub.
Oh, thank God, I thought, reaching for them gratefully.
Only to have them shove me right back out again, waving beer bottles and cheering.
“Assholes!” I yelled, but nobody heard.
On the bright side, the shove sent me spinning across the void toward another possible perch: a broken piece of hallway that nobody had claimed, maybe because it was no longer connected to anything on either side. But I wasn’t coming from the side; I was coming head-on, and I managed to catch it.
With my stomach.
It hurt like a bitch, but so am I, and I snarled and clambered on top. And then just lay there, breathing hard, because it felt like I’d broken a rib. It still did when I rolled over a moment later and peered past the edge, trying to take stock.
It wasn’t easy.
The fight had already spread out, with two fallen colossi in the now-mostly-vacated lobby, and two more battling it out on the floor around them, throwing up huge drifts of soot in the process. Everybody else was tearing through the various stories, raining down bricks and dust and debris, which, with the strobe lighting from the damned flashlights, made it hard to see anything. But I nonetheless managed to glimpse a smear of pink, far below.
And then Louis-Cesare, on one side of the lobby. He had a torch in one hand and a piece of rebar in the other, and was holding off an even dozen vamps while still draped in three grinning sidekicks. Because it looked like Bitch Girl hadn’t come alone.
It also looked like her backup was a little worried about the bears. Like why Louis-Cesare hadn’t felt it necessary to set them down. Or maybe they’d heard rumors of the crazy swordsman with the old-world manners who would apologize if he stepped on your foot in a fight right before he gutted you. But it was more likely going to be the other way around this time, because he was distracted, his eyes flickering constantly upward.
Looking for me, I realized.
“I’m okay!” I yelled, waving both arms, and saw a brief flash of teeth.
Right before he was swamped by the whole crew at once, who weren’t politely waiting to duel him one at a time, like in the movies.
They never do.
Crap.
I started looking for a landing spot that my rope might reach, only to realize that it wasn’t a rope. I’d grabbed for one, but in the darkness I’d found something else. Something that spit and sizzled, like a downed electric cable.
Maybe because it was a downed electric cable.
“Shit!”
And then Purple Hair popped up over the side of my impossible-to-reach perch, like freaking Spider-Man.
I blinked at her.
“How the hell did you get up here?” I demanded.
“Miss me?” She flashed some fang.
“No,” I said, and stuck the cable to her chest.
Okay, that worked better than expected, I thought, watching her slam back into the void, like she’d been hit by a giant fist.
And then get smashed between two of them, when she sailed straight into the middle of a troll fight.
I winced.
That had to hurt.
And then the cable suddenly coiled around and hissed at me, like some huge black snake. An image that was only reinforced when it started striking down, sparking off brick and plaster and part of a twisted girder, as I ducked and dodged and cursed vampire master powers, the fun stuff they get with advanced age but which I’d managed to miss out on.
At least I know how she managed that throw, I thought, wrestling with the damned thing. And finally managing to loop it around a girder. And tie it off in half a dozen knots until it just stayed there, flailing helplessly.
Like me, when a roundhouse kick came out of nowhere and sent me sailing.
Son of a bitch!
I landed in a rug-burn-inducing slide in a soot-covered apartment somewhere below. One stuffed to the gills with ogres who didn’t appreciate the intrusion. Between the pots and pans and somebody’s floor lamp they started pelting me with, it took me a second to notice that my assailant’s hair was now blond and short, and that she seemed to have changed sexes.
“Who the hell are you?” I asked, staring up at the new guy.
“A dead man,” he told me, which was accurate considering the fangs, but weird.
Or maybe not, I thought, as he suddenly staggered backward into the abyss, and I realized that he hadn’t been the one speaking.
“Competition?” I guessed, as Purple Hair grinned at me some more.
“Competition,” she agreed.
And then she lunged.
But I’d expected it, and got a frying pan up in time, slamming it into her pretty face. It didn’t cave it in, exactly, but I had the impression that her features might be a lot flatter once it came off. I decided not to find out and kicked her over the edge.
For anyone else, that would have been it, but anyone else would have already been dead from electrocution. So it wasn’t entirely a surprise to see some purple-tipped talons grasp the edge of the floor a couple seconds later, although how their owner managed that I didn’t know unless she jackknifed in space. But at least she was looking a little worse for the wear, with her hair a crackling nimbus around her perfectly made-up and now-blood-smeared face.
Not that it seemed to be slowing her down.
I’d gotten back to my feet, but before I could blink, my ankle was caught, my butt hit the floor, and the only reason I didn’t go over the edge was the couple of large ogres I’d managed to grab on the way down.
And the fact that I was slamming my boot into her head as hard as I could.
“Out of curiosity,” I panted, while one of the ogres’ friends started wailing on me with a toaster, “is there a reason you and Blondie both showed up tonight?”
She spat blood. “You’re a hard person to find. You get appointed to the Senate, then immediately get sent out of the country.”
And, yeah, the Senate had had a couple errands for me, one of which had resulted in my current, less-than-optimal state. But I didn’t see what that had to do with her. “So?”
“So we didn’t know where you went, and had to wait for you to get back, and now there’s only a week left.”
“Until what?”
“Until the swearing in,” she said, getting smacked by a determined little guy with a broom handle. “Once you’re confirmed . . . no one can touch you . . . until after the war. And by then . . . you’ll have made alliances.”
I vaguely remembered somebody telling me that duels between sen
ators had been outlawed until after the war, to cut down on the chaos. And because I guess the consul felt like she’d lost enough Senate members already. But we newbies weren’t technically senators yet, were we?
“So this is gonna be an all-week thing?” I guessed.
“Oh, trust me.” The annoying smirk was back. “It won’t take nearly that long.”
I was beginning to think she might be right. Because she was somehow managing to drag me, the two ogres I’d latched onto, and what appeared to be their whole clan—all of whom were now holding on to them, with some even bracing in the doorway—toward the precipice. And that was while I did my utmost to punch a hole through that stupid grin.
And I wasn’t the only one.
“Die, bitch,” Blondie said, coming to the rescue despite having her stake still sticking out of his chest.
“How are you guys getting up here?” I asked, but didn’t get an answer. Because a passing troll fight swept them and a third of the room away, and would have dragged me off, too, if the ogres hadn’t jerked their relatives back just in time. And taken me with them.
“Hey, thanks,” I said sincerely, staggering back to my feet.
And had the whole room charge at me at once.
I had a split second to spot a rope, or end up plunging through space without one. But between the fighting and the dust and the disco-ball-on-acid effect of the flashlights, that wasn’t easy. But I thought I glimpsed something off to the left and leapt for it, hoping it wasn’t another live wire.
I never found out.
However, I did find out how the vamps were all but levitating around, when I went rocketing toward the roof. It took me a second to realize that I’d landed on the broad back of a troll, who was too busy chasing a blue team member up the wall to notice. And judging by the level of enthusiasm, I really didn’t want to be there when he caught him.
Not that that was likely to be a problem, I realized, when somebody jumped off another passing titan and grabbed me.
“Would you get a life?” I gritted, watching Purple Hair wrestle with my boot.
“Trying to,” she told me indistinctly, while I slammed my heel into her face some more.
I am not a weakling, and I was motivated. But it didn’t seem to be making much of an impression. Of course I could be wrong, I thought, as a side table, a keyboard, and a La-Z-Boy came flying out of the apartments we were passing, as if pulled by a string.
Or by a determined master vampire who wanted to give me something else to think about.
And she wasn’t short on ammo. A bunch of tumbled bricks came streaming at me a second later, like a machine gun spewing huge, rough-edged bullets—half of which were hitting my freaking ribs. Even worse, the barrage seemed to have given my ride’s opponent an idea, because we were suddenly being pelted by a ton of stuff from above, as he tried to slow us down. Including the burnt-out remains of a fridge he’d grabbed out of somebody’s kitchen and was about to—
Okay, yeah.
I stopped pummeling and twisted, hanging off Troll Boy’s bandanna by one arm, getting ready. And, to her credit, Purple Hair wasn’t stupid. I saw her eyes widen and her hands fumble for weapons she’d so far ignored, right before my leg muscles bunched and my knee snapped and she was thrown into the path of the fridge, still flailing.
People can say all they want about Babe Ruth, but that troll was the real MVP, wielding that thing like a bat and sending her up, up, and all the way out, through the nonexistent roof and into the moonlit sky beyond.
Hitting a home run if ever I saw one.
“Heh,” I said, because it was funny.
And because I never learn.
Suddenly, I had a very unhappy troll’s face in mine, a chair-sized hand snatching me off his back, and a wall coming at me too fast to do anything about. This time, the flyswatter connected. A moment later, I was bleary-eyed and barely conscious, scrambling to find a handhold on the rough old bricks.
And I did. I found plenty. Because the wall had been seriously charred here, which left it jagged and broken, with any number of potential grips. Unfortunately, it also left it soft and brittle, and pieces of it kept breaking off under my hands.
My head jerked about, looking for alternatives. But all I saw were ominous cracks racing off for yards in every direction. And the concrete slab of the lobby floor, way too far away to be survivable. And Louis-Cesare looking up, surrounded by a circle of bodies, fear and horror dawning on his face.
And a lump in my pocket that one of my flailing hands brushed against, and that I vaguely realized was the gold he’d given me.
Gold.
A moment later, the whole section of wall crumbled to pieces. And I fell into wind and light and noise, with no ropes, no jutting bits of hallway, and no passing giants to the rescue. Just a glittering line of coins racing ahead of me, pattering down on the floor below like golden rain. And a flood of small somethings surging out of the dark, scrabbling for them greedily before looking up—
And seeing me speeding at them like a dhampir-shaped bullet.
Suddenly, the whole, echoing tower of crazy sounded like the world’s biggest popcorn popper going off.
Which is why I hit down, not on a hard concrete subfloor, but on a sea of rubbery, bouncy, inflatable somethings, most of which were still trying to spot the coins in the soot. And battering me this way and that, sending me bouncing around like a drunk chick in a ball pit. One whose boyfriend came to grab her out of the air a second later, and drag her against his chest, yelling something inaudible because the room had suddenly gone crazy.
But not because of us.
“Well, shit,” I said distinctly, staring upward.
Right before we were buried under a couple thousand pounds of falling muscle.
Damn, I knew that was going to happen, I thought.
And passed out.
Chapter Five
Not surprisingly, I dreamed of trolls.
Not big ones, but normal sized, even a little puny, watching me with tiny eyes blown wide with fear as I tore past, raking backhoe amounts of bricks out of walls and carving the old building into my personal ladder. I couldn’t see well, just smears of light that sometimes dazzled, sometimes blinded, when they shone directly into my eyes. And I could barely hear, the surrounding walls reflecting back every sound, from my hoarse breathing to the deafening cheers of the crowd.
Didn’t matter.
I could sense my prey ahead, could smell him—an oil slick of a scent, partly the result of whatever he used on his hair, partly him. A little man. A frightened man. A bully, as slavers always were.
This would be easy.
I smelled the others, as well, the ones I’d come with, racing up what remained of the stairs nearby. Because they’d spotted him, too. They were faster than I’d expected, these ponderous-looking creatures, but they had to throw the people blocking the stairs out of the way, and deal with the man’s servants, whom he’d left behind to slow their pursuit.
I didn’t. And while he might be fast enough to avoid them, he was no match for me. A fact he seemed to realize when we reached the roof, him bursting out of a stairwell and me vaulting through the tattered opening the fire had provided, at almost the same time.
He was panicked; I could smell it in his sweat, hear it in the labored breaths he was taking, glimpse it in those pale eyes. But not enough. Not like one who has seen his death and has no way to avoid it.
That look I was intimately familiar with, the pallor of the skin, the slump of shoulders, the resignation that sets in, seconds before any damage is done, because they know it’s coming.
It was absent this time.
There was something wrong.
I glanced around, but with the limitations of this borrowed body, it was difficult to tell if he had reinforcements. It was dark, with most of the light below us now
, a moving lattice etching the night that did little to dispel the gloom this far up. And there was nothing in the air that I could scent, except soot and smog and exhaust, the acrid burn of asphalt still warm from the day, and a soothing gleam of rain behind.
And his weapons, a metallic taste on my tongue that shouted a warning, not that it mattered.
His toys couldn’t hurt me.
But something else might.
I threw myself to the side, hitting concrete a second before a wall of energy spiraled out of nowhere, tearing across the roofline right where I’d been standing.
It would have been exhilarating in my old body, a roaring finger of power spearing the night, right overhead. But in this one . . . it was a problem. The electric flood from the portal had frightened my avatar as the battle had not, the strange light searing his small eyes, the strange smell filling his nostrils. It wasn’t fey, it wasn’t human, it wasn’t anything he knew, and it was everywhere, leaving him scent- as well as sight-blind, with no senses he could trust.
It made the huge body huddle and cringe, and swamped the mind with panic, always the hardest emotion to see through. He began fighting me, desperate to get away, to get anywhere that felt familiar. And in the few seconds it took for me to reassure him, the slaver—
Was gone.
The portal winked out of existence as quickly as it had come, allowing the blue-black darkness of the city to close over our head again. I pulled us back to our feet, reeling from the troll’s surging emotions, and the fury of my own. Because the slaver could be anywhere now. From another point on Earth, perhaps thousands of miles away, to another realm altogether, if this portal connected to Faerie. I had failed.
So why could I still smell him?
I growled, a low thread of anger that matched the troll’s changing feelings. His fear was receding as rage took its place, that the creature he so hated had made him cower and cringe once again—and gotten away. To a place where he’d do it to others, the way he always did, the way he always had.
I had a sudden flood of memories, not mine, but vivid just the same: the hulk I was inhabiting once small and frightened, his young wrists scarred from shackles he couldn’t break, his child ribs showing through the scraps of clothing he wore, yet being forced to fight nonetheless. Because if he did not, the rod came, the tip of which felt like fire. It hurt; it burned. And, eventually, if used enough, it killed.
