by Karen Chance
This wasn’t going to work.
But I knew something that would.
Get out! I sent mentally to the other two, and saw their heads jerk around in shock.
My twin couldn’t do that, or give them a mental push forceful enough to stagger the dark-haired one when they just stood there. And I doubted I could do it again, under the circumstances. Fortunately, the dark-haired master recovered quickly, grabbed a fallen vampire, and jumped for the nearest window.
I picked up the silver ball the strange-haired girl had dropped when she fell. It was warm and thrumming with power it shouldn’t have had. Like the mages themselves, full of stolen magic.
Not for long.
The powerful one was a bloody mess, and fighting alone now. But the room was clear, the last of our people slipping away while he ducked and dodged and drew heavy fire, and I yelled: “Go! Now!”
I couldn’t tell if he obeyed or even heard. Spell fire obscured my vision, the mages turned on me, and I was out of time. But so were they.
We’d been fighting on the fringes, trying to protect the weaker ones while they scrambled to get away. And thus the mages had ended up largely in the middle of the room, around the plastic containers they were trying to retrieve. Most of those had been taken already, but one was still in place.
And if it contained what I suspected, one was enough.
I threw the silver ball on the fly, while running for the nearest window. I didn’t hear the explosion; didn’t hear anything; couldn’t see. Light was suddenly everywhere, like being in the heart of the sun. All I knew was the feel of a mage’s body slamming into mine, and the floor falling out from under me, and falling—
* * *
* * *
“Aughhhh!”
I sat bolt upright, screaming. That felt familiar. And other things that weren’t so good, I thought, as the room slurred violently around me.
Only it wasn’t a room. It was a van, or maybe an ambulance. It wasn’t the usual, boxy shape, but it was kitted out with a lot of medical gear, much of which seemed to be attached to me.
I stared at it, but didn’t take it loose. Not because I was being a good patient, but because my brain had finally caught up and was making connections to things. Things that had seemed random, but were suddenly coming together into a picture.
One I really didn’t like.
And then somebody grabbed me, and I lost my train of thought.
It was Marlowe, who was still there and still yelling, maybe because the van had swerved when I screamed and clipped a line of cars. It righted itself, briefly going up on two wheels in the process, and then we were off again. And Marlowe was in my face, furious brown eyes glaring into mine.
“How did you know that would happen?” he demanded, shaking me. “How did you know?”
“Let her go!” Somebody was tugging ineffectually on his arm. “Damn it, if you pull out the IV—”
“I’ll let her go when she answers the question!”
“You’ll let her go now.” That was Louis-Cesare. He was propped in a corner, among half a dozen other vamps, none of whom appeared to be conscious.
Kit sneered at him. “You’re in no position to give orders—or condition, either, after all that!”
“But by tomorrow, I’ll be back to normal.”
Louis-Cesare didn’t reference the butt kicking.
I guess he thought it was memorable.
And, apparently, Kit agreed, releasing me with one of those cat noises he likes to make.
I fell back against a very inadequate pillow, which I wasn’t complaining about right now. And noticed that I did have a needle in my arm; I guess I’d lost a little too much blood. Might account for why it took energy to breathe.
It didn’t explain what had happened to the rest of them, though.
“What happened to them?” I panted, looking at the piled-up vamps.
“Spell,” Radu said, from somewhere behind me. “They’re all right. They’re just stunned.”
“It wasn’t a spell!” That was Kit again. “There’s no spell that can do that, not to us!”
“That’s all very well for you to say. It didn’t hit you.”
They continued arguing while I concentrated on breathing. It wasn’t going well. “Oh God.”
“No, it’s Kathy.”
I stared up into the pleasant face bending over me, and thought it looked slightly—
Oh.
“Crown Royal.”
“No, Kathy.”
“Well, I could use . . . a drink, Kathy.”
She patted my arm. “Couldn’t we all?”
“—well, obviously, they were adjusted.” Radu was still talking, and now he sounded pissed.
“Adjusted?” That was Kit. “You’re talking about goddamned toys. They’re supposed to be harmless!”
“Mostly harmless.”
“What?”
“As Douglas Adams would say.”
“What?”
“Read a book sometime, you philistine.”
“Radu,” Louis-Cesare said. His head was leaned back against the van’s side now, and his eyes were closed. He looked wiped.
“Very well. My point is, these toys, as you call them, aren’t toys at all. They’re low-grade weapons made for personal defense—”
“PPDs,” Kathy said.
“What?”
“That’s what they’re called in the trade. Personal protection devices.”
“Thank you.” Radu looked like he was making a note of it. “In any case, the only difference between these . . . PPDs . . . and whatever we encountered tonight is the amount of magic they hold. The spells are the same—”
“Bollocks!” Marlowe snapped. “Those damned things killed some of us!”
Radu paused. I could almost hear him reminding himself that some of the dead had belonged to Kit.
“He’s right.” That was Kathy. “My uncle has said for years that there ought to be more regulations on PPDs. There are plenty of guys flagged by the Circle so they can’t buy real weapons, who get some of the low-grade stuff, add a bunch of extra magic, and go to town.”
“And who the hell are you?” Kit demanded.
“I already told you. I’m one of the night docs for the Brooklyn on-call service—”
“I know that! It doesn’t mean you know anything about weapons!”
“I don’t,” she agreed placidly. “My uncle does. Why do you think I was at your party?”
Marlowe didn’t look like he cared. “You should have left with the rest!”
“I have a patient to look after, and you’re not the boss of me.” Kit blinked at her, his expression somewhere between angry and surprised. Like a lion being lectured by a mouse. “Anyway, my uncle is Aaron Samuelson,” she continued.
Nothing.
“Of Samuelson & Todd?”
I’d never seen Marlowe go from asshole to angel that fast. “Ms. Samuelson!” An attempt was made at a smile. “My apologies. It’s been a difficult night for all of us—”
“Oh, I don’t know. I think it’s been kind of stimulating.” She smiled back. “You have a nice butt.”
And, for the second time in one night, I saw Marlowe at a loss for words.
“This is what I think happened,” Radu said. “Our opponents needed a large number of weapons, but were having difficulty acquiring enough from their own sources. The Black Circle is formidable, but weapons manufacturing is a specialized field. Just because you’re a mage doesn’t mean you’ll be any good at it.”
“People train for years,” Kathy agreed. “There’s an apprenticeship and everything.”
“Exactly. It isn’t merely casting a spell; the ones designed for weapons have to last, have to be bound to something portable, and have to be stable enough not to blo
w up in your face. The Black Circle likely has spellbinders working for them, but not enough for a major war. They needed outside sources.”
Kathy nodded. “Somebody must have figured out that the PPDs use the same spells as the more powerful stuff, so you don’t need a spellbinder. You just need the magic to . . . plump them up.”
“It all makes sense,” Radu agreed.
“It makes no kind of sense!” That, of course, was Marlowe. “Those weapons weren’t merely ‘plumped up’! They were like nothing I’ve ever seen. Each spell felt like it had the combined force of a hundred mages behind it—and there were cases of them! No one has that much magic—not the Black Circle, and certainly not a bunch of slavers. So how the devil are they doing it?”
Nobody said anything.
But I suddenly remembered what I’d realized earlier, in that brief moment of clarity. Dorina had shown me that vampire remains could be hugely powerful, but it was almost impossible to get them anymore. But there was another magical creature that was dying in quantity, and that nobody seemed to care about.
“They’re using fey bones,” I told them, and passed out.
Chapter Forty-four
Something was wrong.
I awoke in a strange bed, with a strange vampire. I had a hand on his throat before I recognized him: the powerful master from the fight. The one my twin liked.
He was in a healing trance, his many wounds bandaged but still radiating heat. Yet he was not insensate. His kind retain a low level of awareness in that state, so he knew I was there.
Yet he never so much as stirred, even with my nails digging into his flesh.
I slowly removed them; he wasn’t the source of the danger.
But something was.
I glanced around.
There was no one else here, but there had been. The room was full of scent puddles, some distant in time, days old. Servants, likely, in to clean and then out again, quickly enough that their presence barely registered. Others were brighter. Like my Sire’s, his scent unmistakable: dark, rich, and deep. Part of it clung to my hairline, where he’d pushed some damp strands away. It was an hour old, perhaps two.
I sat up.
The brightest scent in the room was around a chair beside the bed. A woman—a healer, judging by the faint traces of herbs and tinctures—had sat there for some time, and possibly fallen asleep watching over her charges. She’d definitely been the one to bandage the vampire; none of his kind would have bothered. He couldn’t get infections, and he’d heal himself soon enough, something I supposed she hadn’t known.
She’d bandaged me, as well.
Too well.
Mummy, I thought, glimpsing myself in a mirror. The comment came from my still-asleep twin. She thought we looked amusing, like a bikini-wearing mummy, the undergarments almost obscured by bandages and tape.
I didn’t care what we looked like.
I cared about the niggle at the back of my mind. Something familiar, but that I couldn’t quite place. Something wrong.
There was a door across from the bed. I walked over and opened it. No one was outside, not a single guard, which seemed unwise. Did no one here know what I was, what I could do?
But all I saw was an empty hall, and all I smelled was woodsmoke and alcohol. I followed the scents down the corridor, to where it let out into a sitting area. It was mahogany paneled and dimly lit, mostly by the flickering light of a low-burning fire. A small group had gathered around it, including two humans. I automatically synced my heartbeat with that of one of them, but may as well not have bothered. They were too caught up in their conversation to pay me any attention.
And too secure.
Because this place . . . what was this place?
The terrible fog in my head caused by the stun spell had cleared, allowing me to access my abilities again. But what they were telling me seemed impossible. I tried to contact my twin’s mind, but she was too deeply asleep, and batted away the request. It didn’t matter; I was already reaching out, in something like awe, my mind encountering what felt like every vampire on Earth. I brushed mind after mind, all crowded into one place, like a working anthill. And at the center of it all—
The queen.
I could see her in my mind’s eye, not here but somewhere close, seated on a dais in the midst of a crowd of her creatures. Silks fluttered, satins gleamed, vampires talked and laughed and moved around her, but I barely saw. Didn’t care.
How can you see the stars when the sun is out?
“—no bloody idea!” That was one of the people around the fire. There were five in all: Radu, a woman in a glittery blouse, the dark-haired master from the fight, another master vampire I didn’t know, and the human man who’d spoken. They seemed to be arguing.
“Then take a guess!” The dark-haired master appeared agitated. He was the only one standing, with an arm on the mantel when he wasn’t striding around the room. He was strong enough to sense my presence, even with precautions, but too distracted to care.
“I can’t!” the man spat. “It’s absurd!”
He was a mage; I could smell the magic on him. His voice boomed around the room as he sat forward, arguing animatedly with a creature who could silence him between one heartbeat and the next. But he wouldn’t.
The vampire wanted something.
“Don’t lie to me!” He was bending over the man now. “I know what you do, in those labs of yours. You experiment on everything! You’re telling me you’ve never—”
“That is what I’m telling you. And get out of my face, vampire!”
“Uncle . . .” That was the glittery woman. She was the healer I’d detected in the bedroom. I could just discern her scent over the smell of the fire, and the cologne her relative wore. He was still in dirty clothes, fine evening wear smeared with dust. He had been at the fight, too, then.
“Don’t ‘uncle’ me,” he told her. “I came here for you, even after everything, and now I’m being bullied!”
“No one can bully you.”
“Well he’s damned well trying!”
I was following their conversation, but it was almost background noise. I was more interested in the queen, or more accurately, in her power. It was astonishing—and strange. The strangest I’d ever encountered.
Most masters have a constant level of power. They can call up more in an emergency, from their own reserves or those of their Children. But normally, they display an average that allows you to guess at their abilities.
Not this one.
I watched the aura around her shrink and expand, shrink and expand, but not like breathing. It was wild, uneven, capricious. Instead of being smooth, it spiked and dipped, ebbed and flowed, in a pulsing, jittering rhythm. At its height, I could not have touched her. I doubted anyone could. But at its depth . . .
At its depth, I could have her.
Our eyes met, and a small smile flirted with her lips. “It would be . . . unwise . . .” she informed me, lighting a cigarette.
And, suddenly, I was back in my head, panting and confused, from what felt like a mental slap.
“—wanted to, how would we obtain any?” The mage was asking. “We’ve experimented with fey flora, now and again—even use some of it on the regular. They have a root that’s a damned good stabilizing agent, better than anything we had before. But their bones? Are you mad?”
“You’re saying you can’t get them?” The dark-haired master sounded skeptical.
“I’m saying I haven’t tried! I’m not a murderer—or an idiot. The Light Fey—”
“I didn’t say anything about the Light Fey. I don’t expect you to go hunting the highborn, but some of the Dark? The type nobody would miss? You’re telling me—”
“I’m through telling you anything!” The man was on his feet now, and furious. I felt his heart rate spike, saw the flex of his fing
ers at his waistline. They must have taken his weapons before letting him in here.
Probably just as well.
“Uncle, please—” That was the glittery woman, who had put down her drink to jump up and grab his arm.
“Perhaps I should summon Lord Mircea?” the other vampire asked.
“I don’t need Mircea!” the dark-haired master snapped. “I need answers—and I will have them!”
“What you’ll have is nothing if you don’t shut up!” That was the woman, putting herself between her family member and the dark-haired master. She looked at her uncle. “Forget about him. Will you answer a few questions for me?”
He scowled, but after a moment he relented. “Make it fast. Your aunt was still in hysterics when I left, after that damned farce tonight. You’re lucky we got shields up in time, vampire!”
“I would hope you could manage that much,” the dark-haired master sneered. “When we were saving your lives upstairs from some of your own kind!”
“That’s it.” The man’s fury had coalesced into grim resolve. “I won’t stay here and be compared to a bunch of damned black magic users—”
“You think that’s what they were?” the woman asked.
“What the hell else would they be? Normal mages don’t go around experimenting with ground-up bits of fey!”
“Just ground-up bits of vampire,” the dark-haired master said, showing some fang.
“Damn it, man! That was hundreds of years ago!”
“Officially, maybe.” That was the other master, commenting in a smooth, unruffled tone. He sounded like a bureaucrat, and had some sort of device he kept checking. “The traffic continues, in small amounts—”
“Maybe among the Black Circle—”
“That’s always the excuse!” The dark-haired master flushed. “Every time we catch you lot in anything. ‘Oh, it wasn’t us—it was the bad type of mages!’”
