by Karen Chance
The older guard shrugged. “You know vampires. They’re all crazy—”
“Give it to me,” the taller man said, coming closer. I still couldn’t see him well, but there was something familiar about the voice. Something not from my mind, but from my twin’s. Something I couldn’t place, because he was yelling. “The Basarab girl! You fool!”
I quickly sent the creature an image of the ward over the tank, strong and thick. It hadn’t so much as wavered under Fairfax’s relentless attack, and the avatar I was riding was human. Even assuming he was a mage, and that I could force an assault, he didn’t have the power to break through. Wards like that were made to withstand a prolonged siege by numerous mages, and I could ride but one at a time.
How? I showed her an image of the wall breaking, over and over. How, how, how?
I felt the question fly through the link, saw the female’s excitement when she finally understood, heard the answer forming in her mind—
The tablet hit Curly on his bald head, sending him staggering back. The older guard just stood there, looking back and forth between the two men, obviously not sure what to do. And then not having to worry about it when the taller man grabbed him. “Kill her!”
“What?” Curly grabbed the guard, too, before the man could move, and whirled on his partner. “Are you crazy?”
“She’s a danger—”
“So is killing a senator under my roof! You have any idea how much hell that would rain down on me? And I need her—”
“She’s on the task force designed to shut you down!”
“So was Geminus! And she’s willing to deal. I have it on good authority—”
“She lied! I’ve dealt with this bitch before.” He turned to the guard. “Kill her! Take everyone you have—”
“Remember who pays your salary,” Curly snapped.
“If you need protection, you come to me,” the taller man said, bending over Curly menacingly. “We have a deal—”
“No!” The little fat man had clearly had enough. “I had a deal with Geminus. One I stupidly agreed to continue with that albino bastard, because he said he was in charge after the big guy’s death. But he kept screwing with the deal, and now you—who the hell are you?”
“The one in charge.”
“Not here! This is my place, and I don’t need you anymore. I made a deal for a new protector, and one better connected than you! I don’t need any—”
The tall man’s arm moved, as quick as a vampire’s, and the next second Curly was hitting the wall on the other side of the room, unconscious or worse.
The guards just stood there, their eyes huge.
“I said kill her!” the man hissed. “Or you’re next!”
They ran.
Chapter Twenty-five
I woke up to find myself in Olga’s box, wrestling a Mormon for his bicycle.
I wrenched the thing away from a pleasant-looking older man with a kindly, concerned face and angry little troll eyes that glittered at me from behind the mask. Then swung it toward the stage like a puppet on a string, with no intention of doing any such thing. But I couldn’t seem to control my actions, like I couldn’t seem to see properly. The theatre slurred along with me, a wash of brilliant reds, gleaming golds, and glittering jewel tones from the women’s clothes, interspersed with more somber smears of the men’s.
Somber smears that were suddenly running for the exits, climbing over people, and elbowing others out of the way, chivalry be damned, because spell fire and gunfire had just erupted from below.
People started screaming, which didn’t help my head, and neither did the bullets strafing the box. Everyone ducked, including me, although I hadn’t told myself to do so. But I hit the floor anyway, cursing silently because I also couldn’t seem to speak!
Dorina, I thought furiously. What are you doing?
No response.
Give me my body back!
The lack-of-response thing continued, and I remained flopped on the ground, unable to move. But I could hear: people screaming, glass shattering, bullets firing in the distance, or striking like hammer blows against the wooden front of the box. And I could smell: spilled alcohol from someone’s glass, acrid gunpowder as the trolls began firing back, and buttery popcorn that had been trampled underfoot.
I could even see a little better, down in the gloom, and realized that my eyesight problems were from double vision: I was seeing both here in the box and wherever Dorina was, some dim room with strange, underwater light crawling up the walls. That other room kept throwing shadows over this one, distorting it, but it couldn’t cast shadows on the dark. And then somebody shot out a sconce by the door, which made things even better.
Enough that I could see Olga’s jewelry jump off her neck and onto a guard’s face, like something out of Alien, sending him staggering back—
Into a dozen more, headed through the door.
Curly’s boys were mages, and a few even seemed to be pretty good ones. But the fey have a partial resistance to human magic, and the guards didn’t look like their hearts were in the fight. Especially after a few Hulk smashes around the box by some of the larger trolls. Had it been just them, they’d have run in seconds.
But it wasn’t just them.
“The fuck?” Ray yelled, as a vampire leapt over the front of his box and tried to wrench his head off.
He and his attacker disappeared from view, hidden by the wall that separated the two boxes, but only for a moment. A mage was getting choked out on this side and started wildly throwing spells. One set the curtains on fire, another hit a couple vampires that had been leaping for us from the theatre floor, sending them flipping backward into darkness, and a third slammed through the partition, obliterating most of it.
That left Louis-Cesare staring at me through the burning wreckage, a vampire under each arm and his hair alight.
“You’re on fire!” I yelled, because vamps had the flammability of kerosene-soaked rags.
And then I realized that I’d just said that aloud.
I jumped back to my feet, staring around in confusion, because I was suddenly back in charge of my body and I didn’t know why.
Then I noticed: those few vamps had been merely the vanguard—of a legion. They were leaping up from the floor of the theatre, despite the fact that we were two stories high, and crawling over the fronts of the boxes like humanoid spiders. Dozens of them.
The first group had mostly avoided our box because of the crazed mage. But he’d gotten thrown over the side, and now they had a clear field. And even trolls couldn’t fight with no blood in their bodies.
As several demonstrated almost before I’d finished the thought, huge living boulders suddenly falling to their knees. And to drain a fey that fast, we weren’t talking rank and file here. We were talking—
“Masters!” Ray screamed.
Shit.
The only good thing was that the destroyed wall had left a mass of flaming bits lying around. Shards and splinters of old hardwood, still burning merrily, including on a sheet of paneling directly in front of me. And then in the air after I picked it up and flung it with everything I had at the approaching lineup.
The weight of the slab knocked several of them off the box, the burning shrapnel set more alight and one piece caught a guy straight through the heart. He wouldn’t die—his head was intact—but he was out for the count. Unlike several others, including one blond-haired master who I danced with all across the box, weaving in and out of the battle going on inside, and stabbing him three different times while he tried to drain me.
But you need line of sight for that, and I kept dodging behind trolls. I finally saw an opening, slashed hard across his throat then stabbed directly downward. I was using a wooden shard, not a knife, so that should have been it. But he dodged at the last second, so the blow missed the heart. And then, with a
n elegant somersault backward into the darkness, he was gone.
I leaned over the edge of the box, panting and light-headed, with a snarl on my lips, because I don’t let prey walk away! But he was nowhere to be seen. But something else was. I realized I was wreathed in a faint yellowish green glow, spreading out from where the master had just been.
Geminus’ family aura, Louis-Cesare confirmed, before I could ask. I was still getting used to seeing auras, the power signatures all vamps gave off that told their family histories at a glance. They’d been invisible before the wall fell in my head, because the skill for seeing them was on Dorina’s side of the brain. But now I could—
And this one made no sense at all.
Why? Louis-Cesare asked. Geminus’ family was huge. The Senate thought they killed all of his masters who were involved with the smuggling trade, but it’s reasonable that they missed a few.
This isn’t a few! And Curly just said—
But I didn’t have time to go into what Curly had said. Because the next wave was about to hit, with mages as well as vamps. And these didn’t look like the pansy-ass guards.
The mages couldn’t jump two stories like the vamps, but that didn’t seem to be slowing them down any. They threw glimmering strands of magic at the top of Louis-Cesare’s box, where they clung like Spidey’s web—and acted like it, too. A ripple of white light tore through them, they abruptly tightened, and the mages went flying through the air like they were riding huge rubber bands.
Allowing them to hit Louis-Cesare with half a dozen spells, all at once.
I felt my heart stop, because even a master could go down under something like that. But the spells didn’t seem to work. They hit, but he didn’t so much as flinch, and nothing happened.
Except that the wounds he’d been healing suddenly started seeping again.
That included a large gash across his stomach that he’d closed so fast it hadn’t even had time to stain his shirt. It was staining it now, in a bright red flood that made my heart clench, even before I started to run. And found that my legs had other ideas.
No! Damn it, let me go! But Dorina didn’t listen. Instead, she threw me back at the wall, where the bicycle was propped up on its little kickstand, the shiny blue and silver paint job reflecting the fighting and the fire and my desperate face.
Because antihealing spells were a bitch. They’d make a human bleed like a hemophiliac until he bled out, and even for a vamp, they could be deadly. They wouldn’t kill you themselves, but they’d slow your healing down enough that an obliging enemy could do it for them. I didn’t know how badly they’d affect a first-level master, but it was safe to say that the field had just gotten a lot more level.
But I couldn’t do anything about it, because I was busy playing with the damned bike!
My hands moved expertly over it, without any input from me, while Louis-Cesare began ripping chairs from the floor and throwing them and everything else he could find at the mages. It seemed to be working. Half of them were knocked over the side, with several getting tangled in their own safety nets, like butterflies trapped in cocoons. And the rest couldn’t seem to dodge and also concentrate well enough to throw a spell. But it left him unable to help Ray.
Who looked like he needed it.
A high-level master was holding Ray’s hands immobilized over his head with one of his own. He’d forced the smaller vamp to his knees with a little smirk, but hadn’t thought to turn him around. Probably assuming that Ray was too weak to bother with such precautions, because most guys at his level would have been.
Ray wasn’t most guys.
He didn’t bother trying to break the hold, which probably wouldn’t have worked anyway. He just popped some fang and went straight for something below the guy’s belt. And a vamp’s bite is kind of like a crocodile’s; getting one to release when he doesn’t want to is no freaking joke.
Which probably explains why the guy turned purple and threw up. And why Ray was able to break his hold, rip his throat open, and then flip him over the balcony. He saw me looking and spread his hands.
“Huh? Huh?”
I didn’t say anything, because I couldn’t, and because somebody on this side was trying to stab me in the eye. Only to find something suddenly sticking out of his own. The mage fell over, a shocked look on what was left of his face, and I stared upward—at Olga, wrenching a long, skinny blade out of his head, in order to whirl around and slash it through the belly of someone else.
Red splattered and she roared, standing over me with a bloodied sword like a modern-day Boudicca. The sound was echoed by the trolls still in the box and the ones in the corridor outside, where a major battle had broken out. And then everybody went running for the door, because our box was temporarily clear.
Everybody except me.
I looked down to see that the bike’s wheels and handlebars had been taken off, along with various other bits. But the strangely thick center piece was still there, now a fat tube bigger than any bike could possibly need for support. And with a little scope that popped up from the base.
Shit. I tried to cry out, to tell someone that something very bad was about to happen, but my tongue refused to form the words. And even if it hadn’t, I doubted I’d have been heard over the screaming, which had reached highest-hill-on-the-roller-coaster levels, and the continued gunfire, and the bam, bam, crunch of a troll smacking somebody against the floor and walls and possibly ceiling outside.
Meanwhile, I was getting back to my feet and moving to a central position in the box. And resting the no-longer-bicycle on my shoulder, aiming for the bright gold crest over top of the stage. And screaming in my head, because I still didn’t know why.
Redundant system. Got a control upstairs as well as down, echoed in my thoughts.
Shit, shit, shit!
The only good thing was that the former bicycle was damned hard to steady, with the whole theatre now in mass-exodus mode, with enough pounding feet below to shake the box up above.
Or maybe that was the shaft of orange light that suddenly speared upward, shattering the boards in front of me and throwing me back against the wall. Along with the remaining chairs, the mountain of debris, and the cute baby chandelier that had been glittering overhead. And was now in pieces raining down everywhere.
I wasn’t in pieces, but I hit hard. Hard enough to force all the breath out of my lungs, and to leave me gasping like a beached fish. Hard enough to ruin Radu’s couture with wooden splinters, some as big as knitting needles, suddenly sticking out of it. Almost hard enough to knock the bazooka from my suddenly numb hands.
Almost.
I snarled and lurched back to my feet, and swung the RPG launcher up at the same time. Louis-Cesare was throwing three more vamps off the balcony and elbowing a mage in the face without even turning around. Because he was looking at me.
He opened his mouth to say something, probably to ask, What the hell?—which yeah. Let me know when you find out, I thought. But then he caught something out of the corner of his eye, and his expression changed.
“Get down!” he yelled. “Get—”
What looked like a bunch of fifty-caliber rounds cut him off, strafing us from a box on the other side of the theatre. They ripped through the old hardwood like it was nothing, tore through the shoulder of a troll in the doorway, sending him staggering back into the hall. And would have torn through me—
Except that Louis-Cesare had just leapt from the neighboring box, taking a whole line of tank-killing rounds while knocking me out of the way.
I hit the floor with him on top, the once-perfect body a mangled piece of red flesh and white bone and—
I tried to scream, horror washing over me along with his blood. But my voice wasn’t under my control any more than my body. My head was already turning back toward the stage, my hands were pulling the bloody weapon out from under him, and
my eyes were fixing back on target.
What are you doing? I yelled at Dorina. What the fuck—
“That.”
I felt my lips form the word, but nobody heard. Including me, because I’d just fired a rocket launcher, and didn’t have hearing protection. The resulting sound was so loud that, for a second, everything went absolutely quiet and almost still.
I could see blood droplets, flaming splinters, and a lone crystal from the chandelier, thrown back into space by the impact of the bullets, lazily turning. I could feel the sparks that edged the shell as it blasted out of the end of the weapon, glittering brightly in the gloom. I could trace the thin trail of smoke as it tore across the room—
Just as a magical grenade was palmed and primed and thrown downstairs, all in one swift gesture by another pair of hands.
Two explosions ripped across my vision; two redundant systems failed simultaneously. And the beautiful crystalline creatures dove as one, so fast that I barely saw them move before they were gone. Down, down, down to a flooding room lit by a spiral of light, where a portal’s maw had opened, spearing bright yellow beams through the floating debris.
I watched them through Dorina’s eyes as they poured through the portal, moving like quicksilver, visible only because of the silhouettes they cast against the light. And they weren’t the only things. The huge tank was emptying after them, its contents falling down the portal’s maw like water down a drain. Along with the body of the older guard, the floating crates, and the now-empty table, just a square of darkness against the portal’s light before it was swept away on a rushing tide of water.
But not enough of it.
Because it wasn’t just the wards below that had been taken out. I stared through drifting smoke at the great energy field over the stage, which a second ago had been hard as a rock and slick as glass. And which was now bucking and bowing and shimmering and—
“Get back!” I yelled—uselessly.
Because the next second, the ward shuddered and shook and broke, loosing the entire wall of water to come crashing down, all at once. And it looked like it had gone up higher than the curtains as well as deeper, because the heavy red velvet pieces went shooting off into the flood, ripped away by the force of the tsunami that had just been unleashed, right on top of us.
