“What...?”
“Blue!” spat Miranda. The big vampire could see in the dark as well as she could, and he had something of Tolly’s ability to vanish from sight. Where was Matt, then? Probably safely in the light where he could see. She cursed herself. She should have guessed that if Solomon suspected any kind of attack out of the tunnels, he would have posted the vampires there! Matt had probably heard their quiet whispers with his heightened senses and sent Blue to investigate.
The second attack came from almost in front of her. Blue was suddenly there, as if he had just been waiting for her to look at him. His arm was already lashing forward with deadly speed. Miranda blocked it desperately. Blue’s other arm came in low. Miranda let go of Tango’s hand to snatch at Blue’s wrist.
It was barely a thought for her to crush the man’s bones. Blue vanished with a shocked and angry howl. Miranda grabbed for Tango’s hand again, afraid that the big vampire might try to separate them. Blue’s blood was wet in their grasp. Tango hissed.
“It’s his,” Miranda said quickly.
“He’s attacking you because he knows I can’t see in the dark. You’re the danger right now.” Tango tugged her forward, toward the light.
“Matt’s there!”
“Better the devil you can see than the one you can’t. Blue’s just going to keep picking at us.”
“Not if he can’t see us either,” Miranda murmured grimly. She drew on the shadows, spinning them out as thick as she could, darker and darker until even she was blind. She found Tango’s lips in the darkness and pressed a finger to them. Quiet. Wait. She had taken away Blue’s advantage, but at the cost of their own. They were all equal in the shadows. If they could just reach the subway platforms of Union Station alive, they’d both be able to see. It would be Matt and Blue against her and Tango, but at least the changeling would be able to fight there. After a moment, Miranda drew Tango forward silently. She walked carefully, always feeling for each railway tie with her feet, then stepping on it at right angles. She hoped Tango had the sense to do the same thing.
It was a tedious, nerve-wracking way to move, but somewhere off to one side was the electrified third rail. If they stayed on a straight line down the middle of the tracks, they should be safe.
Blue was somewhere in the darkness as well. If they bumped into him, they wouldn’t have any choice but to fight. If they were lucky, Blue would have already retreated back to wait with Matt in the light and to heal his shattered wrist. Miranda wasn’t counting on that, though.
Neither, apparently, was Tango. She tugged on Miranda’s arm, stopping her, then crouched down to the ground. Miranda wasn’t sure what the changeling was doing, but she crouched along with her. Tango felt along the ground. Whatever she was looking for, she found it. Her arm came up. She threw something back into the shadows behind them, just hard enough to make a quiet skittering. A skittering that might lure Blue away from them. They waited breathlessly. Tango tossed something else into the darkness, a little farther away this time.
A moment later, they heard a third faint sound from that direction. A footfall. It had worked. The two women rose. They had barely taken two silent steps toward the unseen platform when a sudden flash shot through the darkness and a high-pitched, short-lived whine broke the silence. Something large fell heavily. The stench of ozone and burned flesh brushed against Miranda’s nostrils.
Blue had found the third rail.
Shocked breath whispered from Tango’s mouth. “I didn’t mean for that to happen!” she murmured. The changeling sounded aghast. Miranda could feel her halfturn back to where the big vampire would be. She stopped her.
“Well, it did.” She felt stunned herself, but jt was a lucky break for them. She dispelled the blinding shadows. Blue’s body lay about thirty feet away, smoke drifting from him, his face locked in a horrible, exaggerated snarl. It was impossible to be sure if he was alive or dead. Miranda pulled Tango silently onward, more quickly. If Matt was waiting on the subway platform, he would have heard the sound of Blue’s encounter with the third rail. If he was smart, he would have gone to warn Solomon.
Miranda knew Matt better than that, though. His pride wouldn’t let him admit to Solomon that he had failed. He would stay. But he would know now that they were coming, and he would be alert. Blinding shadows wouldn’t blot out his other senses.
Tango’s hand squeezed down suddenly on hers, and the changeling shuddered. Miranda glanced back at her. “What is it?” she asked in concern.
“Nothing.” Tango shook her head. Her jaw was tightly clenched as if she were trying to avoid being sick. “Keep going.”
“No. Something’s wrong. Tell me.” Miranda’s eyes narrowed. “Is it...?”
“Shiv,” Tango choked. “This is all too much like it used to be. The stalking, the...” she shuddered again, “the kill. I thought I could handle it.”
“Riley doesn’t know, does he?” Tango shook her head. Miranda grimaced. “How were you going to stop
Solomon, then?”
“Knock him out. Disrupt the summoning. That’s what matters.” Tango pushed a hand through her hair. “I wasn’t expecting that we would have to deal with Matt and Blue, too.”
“Blue wasn’t your fault. It was an accident.”
“And how are we going to deal with Matt?” Miranda stomped on the railway tie under her feet. The black wood was too heavy and chemical-soaked to chop easily against the grain, but it might be possible, she thought, to split off a long, tough splinter.
* * * .
Miranda slid along the inner wall of the tunnel between the northbound and southbound tracks, edging closer and closer to the platforms of Union Station. There was no sign of Matt. She slipped a little closer, watching for him intently. Still nothing. Another step...
“Don’t move.” Matt stepped out of a thin, shadowy gap between two big concrete pillars. There was a pistol in his hand. Miranda looked at it contemptuously. Matt shook his head. “It might not kill you, Miri, but it would hurt like hell.” He glanced back up the way she had come. “Where’s the changeling?”
“You saw the flash?”
“Yeah.”
“That was her.”
Matt raised one eyebrow skeptically. “Then where’s Blue?”
“He pushed her onto the third rail.” Miranda bared her fangs. “I killed him.”
“Bullshit. I would have heard something.”
“He died fast.”
That spooked Matt, though he tried hard not to show it. His hand shook slightly, however, as he gestured for her to step away from the wall and back out onto the tracks. “Solomon wondered if someone might try sneaking in this way. He’s going to be happy to have you again.” The other vampire leered at her. “He’s playing a game with you, Matt.”
Matt laughed. “I know! You think I didn’t learn from what happened to you? As long as 1 keep Solomon happy, I’m sitting pretty.”
“How long do you think that will last? He’s going to get tired of you.”
“I don’t think so. Didn’t I always say I was better than you, Miranda? I meant better in every way—”
His voice cut off suddenly as Tango lunged through the gap behind him, from the other set of tracks, and stabbed him in the back. Matt’s face twisted. He jerked half-around to sneer at her — her and the broken wooden splinter in her hand. The vampire wore his leather jacket for more than ornamentation, it seemed. Matt favored her with a sneer as he grabbed at her with his free hand. “Stupid bitch!”
“Dumb bastard,” Miranda snarled at him. Deftly, she stepped up close to him, flipped back the front of his jacket — and thrust a second stake through his chest from the front. Propelled by her strength, the wood pierced his heart. Matt shuddered once. The pistol dropped out of his grip. For a moment, his weight hung off the stake in Miranda’s grasp, then she let the stake go. Matt crumpled to the ground.
Tango climbed through the gap to join her. “Good work.” She heaved Matt’s inert body into t
he gap, tucking his arms and legs in until he might have been mistaken for a bundle of rags. He would remain there until someone found him and pulled out the stake. Miranda pitied the poor person who did that.
They left the tunnels and scrambled onto the platform. There were more big metal doors in place at the top of the stairs leading up into Union Station, but Matt and Blue had left them open. Tango and Miranda slipped through. They paused at the base of another set of stairs. Chanting drifted down to them. Miranda recognized some of the words. It was a full obedience being chanted in a round. The effect was eerie.
“Well?” she asked Tango. “Now what?”
Tango frowned. “Something’s not right. The summoning is still going on.” She glanced at her watch. “It’s eleven-thirty.”
“Do you think Tolly and Riley failed? The Ride didn’t break up the riots?”
Tango shook her head. “No. I imagine Solomon is trying to compensate for that somehow. What surprises me is that we just met two of the High Circle downstairs. If that’s the case, I suspect Solomon is using other members of the High Circle as guards elsewhere.” “He’s nervous. He probably knows the court is working against him.”
“That’s not it. At the Bandog ceremony, it sounded like the High Circle was his right hand. That the Bandog are weak when it’s not complete.” She glanced at Miranda. “I’ve been around enough mages to know that a summoning rite is no easy thing. Even summoning a minor demon — or something like a demon’s voice, I would imagine — is tricky. It has to be done just right. And minor demons don’t require that a whole city be thrown into chaos just so they can perform a little ventriloquism.” Tango paused. “Miranda?”
The vampire barely heard her. It sounded as if Tango were calling to her along the length of a subway tunnel. Her voice was echoing and distant. The whole world seemed distant. Disjointed.
There was a pressure on her mind, as if something were trying to worm its way inside.
Just moving her eyes seemed like an effort, but she forced her gaze up to the top of the stairs behind Tango. A figure stood there, looking down at them. A tall figure, wearing black pants, but no shirt. A dog-face mask was in one hand, a small knife in the other. David.
Tango followed her gaze around. Miranda saw her eyes go wide. “No!” she breathed.
* # *
Another mage? For a fraction of a second, Tango froze; then she was throwing herself up the stairs at the blond doorman from Solomon’s. There would be time to think later. She could feel the touch of human magick on her mind, presumably the same magick that had captured Miranda. She fought it back and lunged at the blond man. Startled at her resistance, he parried her knife with the mask in his hand. His knife flicked out, just nicking her arm near the wrist. The wound was barely enough to draw1 blood. A single bright bead welled up against her skin.
Apparently, though, that was enough. Magick poured into her body through that tiny wound, coursing through her veins like a cold wind. She drew her arm back for another thrust. If she could break the mage’s concentration.... Her arm didn’t come back down. His magick had paralyzed her.
The blond man looked at her with a frown. Tucking the knife into his belt, he picked her up with one arm and carried her back down the stairs to stand beside Miranda. “Solomon,” he said into the air. “I think you should come see this. I have Miranda and Tango.”
The chanting from above faltered for a moment, then caught itself and carried on. A few moments later, Solomon appeared at the top of the stairs. He was dressed just as he had been for the Bandog ceremony in his house — black vest over bare chest. A triumphant grin lit his face. “Yes!” He came down the stairs and went over to caress Miranda’s unmoving face. “You poor, sweet fool,” he murmured. “Thought you could get away?”
“Stop that.” The blond man slapped Solomon’s hand away. “I warned you that this obsession of yours was going to lead to trouble.”
“It was your idea to bring the Vampires and that changeling into the Bandog, David.”
“But not as sex toys.”
Solomon glared angrily at the other mage. David looked back at him calmly, with no more expression than Tango had seen him display in opening Solomon’s front door. She was more shocked by the implications of David’s words. She knew that Miranda had been Solomon’s lover, but Riley as well? Finally, Solomon looked away from David. “All right, I think we can talk about this later. We might still be able to salvage things tonight. Where are Matt and Blue? And Tolly?”
David drew his knife and pointed it at Miranda. The vampire’s eyes went wide for a moment. Tango couldn’t move even that much. She wasn’t even breathing — somehow David’s magick must be sustaining her. She supposed that she was lucky he had set her down facing Miranda. At least she could see what was happening. “Down in the subway,” David said somewhat distantly. “They managed to put a stake through Matt and hide his body. Blue may be dead. Electrocuted.” He scowled, then blinked and lowered the knife. “Damn. You’re not going to like this: Tolly was Riley’s partner.”
“What?” snarled Solomon. “Where is he now?” “With the changeling procession, apparently. Do you want to have Matt brought up for the rite?”
“No. The High Circle is going to have holes as it is. I’ll just tell the Bandog something about the High Circle being out making sure that everything goes smoothly. Warding off attacks.” Solomon nodded to himself. “I like that.”
“Don’t change the rite too much. We want the Bandog to be in awe, not annoyed because the script keeps changing.” David gestured at Miranda, as if the vampire were nothing more than an object. “At least we’ve got her back. The Bandog were looking forward to seeing a traitor sacrificed. And it will do them good to see what happens to the people who cross you.” Solomon stepped over to stand in front of Tango. “What about her? Does she know anything?”
David shook his head. “I don’t know. I can’t control her mind any more than I could Riley’s. It’s as if changelings are half-mad to begin with. It takes a mage with more skill in Mind magick than I have to control one. I had to use Life magick to stop her, or she would have killed me.”
Tango wished that she had been willing to kill the blond mage. She wanted to scream in frustration, but she couldn’t even focus her eyes to glare at Solomon. What was going on? Solomon knew about the Ride, but didn’t seem concerned. He’d casually changed the summoning rite. At least now she understood Miranda’s confusion when Riley said Solomon had tried to search his mind with magick. It must have been David who had done that.
Solomon smiled suddenly. “I think Tango wants to say something. Can you release her face?”
“Why? So you can gloat?” David looked at the other mage disparagingly. “What would we do with her afterward ?”
“Actually,” Solomon said, his smiled growing broader, “I thought we could use her in the sacrifice. We get rid of that girl we have upstairs now, and replace her with both Miranda and Tango as prisoners. We begin the sacrifice using Miranda, then boom!” He slapped his hands together. “Shaftiel’s voice comes out of her mouth before we can kill her. ‘She is my chosen vessel, so that none of my faithful servants will die,’ something like that. Then he demands Tango as a sacrifice. Miranda kills Tango, Shaftiel delivers his message....”
“And Miranda dies.” David considered the idea as though he were considering wallpaper patterns. He nodded sharply. “All right.” He caught Tango’s chin and tilted her face up to look at him. “But let’s make one thing very clear, Tango. If you scream or try to disrupt anything, you are going to die in pain like you’ve never felt before.”
Abruptly, Tango could move her face again. “If I’m going to die anyway,” she spat, “what difference does it make?”
For a very brief moment, her blood felt as if it had turned into venom. The sensation left her gasping in shock. “Does that answer your question?” asked David. Solomon snickered. Tango shot him a hard glance. “What the hell are you doing, you bastard?
” Solomon slapped her sharply. Compared to the pain David had inflicted, it was nothing. “I take exception to that.” Then he smiled demonically. “Hell has nothing to do with what I’m doing.”
Tango stared at him. “What about Shaftiel’s voice? What about chaos in the streets? What about the pacts that the Bandog made?”
“Tango, I think you’re missing the point here.” Solomon drew a finger along the line of her jaw. “You can thank your friend Riley for Shaftiel’s voice and the chaos in the streets. We need to restore the Bandog’s faith in me. He and Tolly shook it badly when they started killing Bandog.” He paused at her sharp breath of surprise. “You didn’t know about that?”
“No. You lie.” Jubilee had told her that Riley had killed a man, and she had had difficulty believing that. But how many Bandog had Miranda said died mysteriously? Three? Riley couldn’t have killed three people.
David shook his head. “It’s true. Solomon was able to track some skin fragments on a bracelet stolen from one of the victims. His magick led us to Riley.”
“No,” Tango said again. “I can’t believe it.”
If it was true, no wonder Riley had avoided telling her why Solomon had had him kidnapped. She felt ill with dismay.
“Believe what you like," said Solomon. “As for the pacts — they’re as worthless as the blood they’re signed in.” He glanced at Miranda and grinned. “Sorry, Miri. I had a wonderful time, though.”
“What?” Tango gasped.
Solomon shrugged casually. “There is no Shaftiel.” Tango just stared in stunned silence. “There is no Great Hound, there is no voice to be summoned. We made it all up.”
“But... but why?” stammered Tango. “Did Riley know about this?”
“I don’t think so.,” said David dryly. “As for the why....” He shrugged as well. “Why do Nephandi pledge their souls to any infernal entity? Why did the Bandog join us?”
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