Frost had quit smiling.
“It’s like that bit in The Princess Bride,” I told him. “When Vizzini says, ‘You fell victim to one of the classic blunders.’ Never go in against an ancient Italian vampire when death is on the line.”
Stefan laughed. I think he might have been the only one who had watched the movie. Or no one else thought I was funny.
“I have brought an audience for us,” Frost said, ignoring me entirely. “So the display will not be ruined.”
He clapped his hands, and the upper edge of the north side of the shell of the basement of the winery was suddenly lined with the shapes of people—like Indians on the ridgetop in one of those old Westerns. It should have looked hokey—and it did, sort of—but it was also worrisome. Then, in a simultaneous motion that raised every hair on my body, they all jumped into the basement. They were so close in sync that they made one sound when they landed. I’d seen vampires do that kind of thing before, responding to the dictates of their master or mistress. But repetition didn’t make it seem less wrong.
A black cloud formed around their feet and rose as far as their knees before the ash settled back down on the ground. Maybe a little more rain would be a good thing—but the water that was coming down so far was still just a drop here and there.
“These are mine,” Frost told Marsilia, raising one arm theatrically. “I have bound them to me in such a way that if I die tonight, they will all die. I thought it only fitting that they witness this.”
He looked around again. “So it is you and the Soldier who will fight me, then? Who is your third?”
Marsilia just smiled at him—and I realized we were missing someone. I tried to remember when I had last seen Hao, and it was a long while ago. Long before Frost had done his sudden-appearance act. The sharp smell of the burnt building, so much more sour than true woodsmoke, made it impossible to pick out one vampire from so many. If Hao was somewhere nearby, I couldn’t find him. I wanted to turn around to look, but controlled the impulse. If he had disappeared, it was for a reason. The broken-cement remnants of walls stuck up waist high in places. Maybe he was hiding behind one of those.
Frost laughed again, and all of his people laughed in unison. They all had exactly the same expression as he did on their faces.
Unable to help myself, I snarled. Frost looked at me with a sudden intentness that told me he’d been paying attention to me all along.
“Don’t tell me that you’re going to pull the coyote girl into this? What exactly is she supposed to do—besides die?” The words were a chorus spoken by all of his vampires in time with his lips. I could tell from Stefan’s careful expression that I wasn’t the only one who was getting creeped out by it.
“I’ve been good about not dying so far,” I said. “You should quit concerning yourself with my health.”
I didn’t say it very loudly, and the vampires were too busy talking to each other to pay attention to me. But Asil frowned at me and made a motion with his hand. I recognized the soundless instructions because Adam used the same ones with our pack. Asil thought we should leave.
But I had a feeling that leaving was not an option. For some reason, Marsilia had wanted me here.
“I have heard about you, Frost,” said Marsilia, sounding bored. “I had disregarded it as vindictive gossip, but I see that it is true. You are a show-off who wastes resources making himself look impressive. You talk and talk, and it is empty talk. You will bring in a new era of vampire freedom and power, and blah blah blah. And yet you have only puppets. When their strings are cut, you have nothing.”
The other vampire’s lips flattened, and he said silkily, “Marsilia, raise your right hand.”
Her lips tightened and both of her hands fisted.
Pay attention, coyote, whispered a voice in my ear. Can you see what he is doing? How he is doing it?
Stefan, to whom the voice belonged, was several feet away. My stomach clenched. He wasn’t supposed to be able to do that anymore. The blood bond between us had been broken when Adam brought me into the pack.
Stefan glared at me and tilted his chin toward Marsilia.
“Marsilia,” said Frost again, focusing his attention on her. “Raise your right hand.”
I felt it then, the thread of power he used—it was sort of like the power of Adam’s voice when he’d roll it over the pack and bring them to heel. I could almost see … I squinted at Frost and tried to look, as I’d learned to see pack bonds without meditation. I had used that method to see Peter. But this needed some of the part of me that ran on instinct. The same part of me that ran on four paws gave me a little push and left me using coyote’s eyes while still my human self.
And I could see magic.
Frost pushed his power at Marsilia. To me, his magic appeared to be a black spiderweb of nastiness that tried to stick to her. Greasy threads of power slithered from him to his puppet vampires. I wondered how much of the way I viewed his magic had been dictated by Marsilia’s comment about puppets, because Frost’s vampires had strings of his will tied around each hand and foot and a whole slender web around their heads. Or maybe Marsilia could see his magic, too. The vampires weren’t the only thing he was controlling. Fainter threads of power dripped from his hands to the ground, glistening faintly where they snaked across the floor and climbed the walls surrounding us, disappearing over the edges.
Frost was a Puppet Master. I actually thought the name in capital letters, which meant I’d been hanging around the vampires too long. Marsilia had called him the Necromancer, and that was worse than Puppet Master. Names have power and I refused to give him any more than he already had. “Frost” would do, “Gauntlet Boy” if he got really scary. I looked at the threads trying to crawl up Marsilia’s body and thought that I might be able to destroy them the same way I had the ones that ensnared Peter. And as if she read my mind, Marsilia’s brilliant red eyes met mine. She jerked her hands and the Puppet Master—the Gauntlet Boy—stumbled forward. The strings with which he’d tried to capture Marsilia were broken on the ground in front of him, and they faded to nothing after a few seconds.
He was able to control every move of his vampires with very little effort, but he couldn’t get Marsilia to move one hand. It was true that she fought him, and his minions had given up, but he still had thirty vampires dancing to his tune. That Marsilia had resisted showed everyone here that Marsilia wasn’t just the Mistress of the City—she was a Power.
And the way she’d met my eyes made me think that she could have put a stop to it earlier. She had wanted to give me a chance to see what his magic looked like.
Marsilia knew more about walkers than I did. When she’d come to this country, banished from Milan, there had been no Europeans here. I wasn’t sure how long she’d been in this area, but it was a couple of centuries. She’d seen walkers kill other vampires, lots of vampires.
This summer, on my honeymoon, I’d met other walkers for the first time. I’d been exchanging e-mails with them ever since, trying to learn more about what I was. They knew more than I did, but they still suffered from the same problem I had. Too many walkers had died before they could pass on their knowledge to their heirs, and much of it was lost.
She’d had Stefan contact me deliberately. He’d never have shown me he could still talk in my head because he knew I would hate it. So did she. She hated that Stefan and I were still friends. She was teaching me what I could do to fight a necromancer—and doing her best to drive me away from him. I thought that she was wasting her time with that last, because Frost had been right.
She was going to pick me to fight with her. I was pretty sure that Frost was right about my chances of survival, too. She wouldn’t have to worry about Stefan being my friend because I was going to be dead.
Frost was worried about fighting Marsilia, the vampires had told me. That’s why he’d chosen a challenge of three. He didn’t like the odds of going against her by herself, but he thought he could come up with two other vampires stron
ger than hers. Likely he was right—so she’d chosen a different way.
If Adam had come with me, maybe she would have used him instead. He was a werewolf, and necromancy would have no effect on him. But she would work with what she had.
“Yours is the challenge and the manner of challenge,” Marsilia said coolly, as if she hadn’t just jerked his chain. “You chose now, and a three-way challenge. My choice is the place and the official. I choose here. It is large enough and remote.” She smiled at him. “Since it is in my territory but owned by you, I thought it appropriate.”
Owned by Frost. That made sense if he was the money man.
Marsilia paused for a moment and looked around. “Almost symbolic since one of my colleagues destroyed it yesterday.”
Adam would be surprised to find out he was her “colleague.” But I kept my face still.
“And for the officials, as the Master of Ceremonies tonight, I call upon Stefan Uccello, also known as the Soldier.”
One of Frost’s vampires said, “That is unacceptable. He is yours. The Master of Ceremonies cannot be yours.”
I’d quit looking at the magic threads that bound Frost to his vampires. It produced an eye strain, like those bizarre patterns that showed a 3?D picture when observed through unfocused eyes. I couldn’t tell if Frost was making the vampire talk or if the vampire in question was doing it on his own.
“I am not Marsilia’s,” said Stefan. “I do not belong to her seethe.”
“He speaks truthfully,” Frost told his people. “I witnessed this myself. Marsilia treated him so shamefully that he left her seethe, and she was too weak to prevent him. A real man, a real soldier, would never serve such a one. We can accept him—in all ways.”
Rat bastard. He was right, but that didn’t make him any less of a rat bastard. I could see, even if no one else did, that those words had hurt Stefan. Here he was, helping her again as if his menagerie mattered not at all to him.
“It is my place to remind you of the rules,” Stefan said, his voice even. “You, William Frost, have chosen three against three. Two fighters, with you as the captain of yours, and Marsilia as the captain of hers, with the other two participants on either side yet to be chosen. The fight is to the death of the captains.”
“Excuse me,” I said diffidently. “But both the captains are already dead.”
Everyone looked at me. The vampires with cold, unfriendly gazes, and Honey as if I were crazy. That was okay—because I was utterly crazy. I knew Marsilia was planning on making me fight a bug-nuts vampire. The more scared I get, the faster my mouth moves. I was a smart-ass because I was terrified.
Asil smiled. He was supposed to know all about crazy.
“The fight,” said Stefan gently, because he knew me that well, “is to the permanent elimination of one captain or the other. Does that satisfy you, Mercy? As soon as that elimination takes place, the other members of the teams may quit fighting—or not, as they choose.
“The captains can call upon anyone to be on their team and those persons cannot refuse. The only stipulation is that they must be present—which for our purposes means within five minutes—of this room. Though I caution you both that an unwilling team member will not fight for you as well as one who chooses to fight. After the teams are chosen, you will each retreat to the farthest corner opposite each other and take five minutes to confer before the battle begins.”
Asil caught my eye and quite boldly repeated his earlier gesture. Five minutes away was doable, I knew it as well as he did. Especially if Honey and Asil worked to slow down the vampires.
I looked at William Frost—Gauntlet Boy—and thought about what he planned. All of the bloodshed and chaos, and the people who lost the most would be the humans who lived in those cities. At first. Then those humans would gather their weapons and give battle. Then they would destroy the vampires, the fae, the werewolves—and it would cost them dearly to do it.
I would not, could not allow Frost to do as he planned. I could not let him win. I would do anything I could to stop him. I shook my head at Asil. He gave me a respectful bow.
Stefan walked between Marsilia and Frost, his posture military straight. “For the duration of the fight, the participants may use anything, any power, any weapon that comes to their hand. People who are not participants may not fight. This means that I must caution the audience—and more directly you, William Frost, that no vampire other than those requested by each of the participants, may join the fight. Even if they do not do it of their own free will. Violators will be killed—by me—and if such violation, in my estimation, leads directly to a victory, that victory will be overturned by the Lord of Night.”
“You are drawing a very fine line,” said Frost, but not as if it made him unhappy.
Stefan bowed his head in acknowledgment. “The rules are the Lord of Night’s. My job is to make those rules clear. The first call for comrades belongs to the challenged—Marsilia?”
“I call upon Mercedes Athena Thompson Hauptman, mate of the Alpha of the Columbia Basin Pack,” she said, not unexpectedly.
Beside me, Honey growled, her voice low and threatening. I’m not sure whom she was growling at—possibly me. Asil just stared at me. He knew I’d seen this coming.
“Yes,” I said coolly.
I was no match for a necromancer, though I was beginning to think that I might actually be an asset along those lines. I worried Frost enough that he had tried—twice, if Stefan was right—to eliminate me. Fear like that can be as much of an asset as actual power.
“Mercedes,” said Asil in a cheerful voice. “You are going to get me killed at last. Bran would not do it, but I believe your mate will have no trouble.”
I frowned at him. “I make my own decisions. Adam knows that.”
He smiled at me. “He may know this in his head, Mercedes. But his heart will feel differently. You are a woman, and this is a thing of men.”
“Asil,” I said. “You heard. You want me to turn down this fight?”
He closed his mouth and looked away.
“Touching,” said Frost. “But not germane. She is required. She cannot refuse.”
Honey snarled at him, and he drew back involuntarily. She looked at me and snarled again, louder.
“He hired the man who killed Peter,” I reminded her. She quit growling and looked at him, again, and this time she showed him her very large white fangs. Werewolf fangs are more impressive than vampire fangs. They are more impressive than coyote fangs, too.
“I’ve accepted already,” I told Stefan. “Get on with it.”
He looked at me a long moment. I couldn’t read his face. “Don’t get killed,” he said.
“Awfully late to be worrying about that, vampire,” snapped Asil. “You should have made certain that Adam could be here. He at least would have stood a chance.”
“Werewolves,” said Marsilia, “are specifically forbidden from participating.”
I stared at her. “But you invited Adam, too.”
She smiled at me. “He is not what you are, Mercedes. Do you think that I who beguiled the Marrok’s son would not be able to beguile your mate so that he would allow you to fight?”
She’d caught Samuel, but she’d never have caught Adam. Samuel might be more dominant and a lot older, but Adam was more wary. He’d never have let her trap him in her gaze—and if he had, I could have freed him. But that part she probably didn’t know. Mating bonds are one of the things we didn’t talk to the public about, and they are idiosyncratic.
Mating bond or not, that she was so certain of her ability to incapacitate Adam made me reevaluate her intelligence—and not upward.
“She couldn’t have asked Adam,” Stefan said, meeting my eyes forthrightly. “Werewolves are specifically excluded from this kind of fight for territory.” He wasn’t just repeating the rule Marsilia had already stated. He was telling me he’d known what Marsilia planned and had not warned me.
For a moment I was hurt. But only for a momen
t. If Marsilia was right, that I was useful, more useful than Stefan would be—and I wasn’t forgetting the way she’d misjudged Adam’s vulnerability—then bringing me here had been the right thing to do. Frost had to be stopped.
I gave Stefan a faint nod.
“Your first pick, Frost,” said Stefan in a “let’s get this done” tone of voice.
“Shamus,” Frost announced grandly. “Shamus, former Master of Reno and now my right-hand man.”
We waited, but no one appeared.
“He will be here in plenty of time.” Frost smiled genially. “He has always been a ferocious fighter. Under my tutelage, he has only improved—especially the ferocious part.”
“Marsilia? Your second and last choice.”
“I choose Thomas Hao, Master of San Francisco.”
Out of the shadows, not three feet from Frost, Hao sort of coalesced. “Of course,” he said. “I am delighted to accept the invitation.”
Frost hissed, stumbled back, and for the first time, his eyes flashed ice blue with shock. He recovered himself almost immediately, giving Marsilia a small salute.
“You have been busy, I see. Well then, I have a surprise, too. Let us finish the preliminaries. I call for my last companion—Wulfe. Better known as the Wizard.” He smirked at Marsilia, who was not happy. “Keep your enemies close, Marsilia. You have kept him so close to you all these years—but you failed tonight. You might have called him to your side, but you chose to summon this filthy walker instead.” He spat. On the floor. Toward me.
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