by Karen Chance
“I’m a dhampir,” I said tightly. “We can’t reproduce.”
“Well, that’s all right, then.” Radu waved it away.
“I’m going to spread some rumors about our destination in Vegas,” I said, changing the subject before I was tempted to strangle him and save Drac the trouble. “They’ll probably take a while to get around, but there’re no guarantees. Be careful on the way there. I’ll give you a few hours to get under way before I mention anything.”
“Kit has arranged an escort for us.” He glanced back to where the boys were talking. “Try not to bait Louis-Cesare, Dory. He is… somewhat confused at the moment.”
“That would make two of us.” Mircea was going to have some explaining to do, the next time I saw him.
“Try to understand, my dear. He doesn’t know where you fit in. You’re a dhampir, which rather puts you beyond the pale in his way of thinking, but you’re also Mircea’s daughter and therefore someone to whom he owes a degree of esteem. He doesn’t understand that you aren’t serious when you tease him. He interprets it as a lack of respect.”
“Then he’s right on the money,” I said, and floored it.
“I don’t think you understand my position,” I said, signaling the bartender for another drink. The guy was human, yet he didn’t so much as blink at the fact that I was talking to a three-foot-tall gnome with a foot-long nose, beady purple eyes and ears that were growing a forest of bushy white hair long enough to braid. It matched his eyebrows and the snowy mop on his head, but the real stunner was the beard. It was pure silver and almost as long as he was tall. I’d seen him tuck it into his belt before, to keep from tripping, but tonight it flowed free, like a river down his chest. It was an oddly beautiful feature on an otherwise unprepossessing body, and always made me smile.
Benny was a fairly standard Skogstroll, or forest troll, and this was Vegas, land of the strange. But I was still surprised at the total lack of interest everyone was showing. Things had changed a bit since I’d been here.
We weren’t in a demon bar tucked away on a backstreet, but in a poolside lounge at Caesars. I’d been told at his shop that I’d find Benny here, and sure enough, he’d been belting back margaritas for a while, judging by the bleary-eyed look he turned on me. “I get it, all right?” he said, holding up a gnarled hand to keep me from repeating myself. “You got a tough assignment and you need something with more kick than the law allows. But I’m telling you, I got nothing.”
“You always say that.” I wasn’t about to take no for an answer. I needed to restock, and it didn’t seem likely that the Senate was going to help me out. Especially since Mircea wanted Drac trapped, not dead, and none of the things I had in mind were the type you walked away from.
“Only this time, it ain’t no bargaining tactic. There’s this war happening, you know? My inventory was raided by the Senate—they said to confiscate contraband.” Benny accepted another drink from a waiter, whose eyes never quite managed to focus, and licked the rim. “And right after that, the damn black mages hit me for what was left. Don’t nobody understand the concept of paying for nothing no more.”
“Come on, Benny. I know you. You never have everything at the shop.”
“And now I ain’t got nothing nowhere else, neither.” He sighed and patted my hand. “You been a good customer, Dory, and you know me. I’ve always played straight with you, right? But it’s the times we’re living in. Word is, the Senate is vulnerable and its control is slipping. Who knows what’s coming? Nobody, that’s who. So they all want protection, don’t they? A little something extra in case things start to implode. Truth is, my inventory was getting pretty thin even before the raids. And now… ” He shook his head. “I got nothing.”
A harassed-looking mother walked by the bar, little girl in tow with a sno-cone clutched tightly in one fist. The girl’s bright blue lips shaped a startled “oh” of astonishment as she caught sight of Benny, who dropped her a friendly wink. “Mommy! Look at the elf!”
“Don’t stare, Melissa! And don’t call people names!”
I looked at Benny as the little girl was towed away, still protesting that she wanted to say hello to the “nice elf.” “I wouldn’t call an Occultus charm nothing, Benny,” I observed mildly. They were expensive items used to ensure that anyone who didn’t already know what someone looked like would see only a projected image. The exception was young children, whose brains hadn’t yet formed the preconceived ideas about the way the world ought to work that the charm exploited.
He shrugged, unapologetic. Benny was like most of his kind when it came to turning a buck. He’d sell his own mother—who had, after all, tried to eat him—if he thought he’d get a good price. Problem was, he didn’t think I had the funds for the no-doubt completely over-inflated prices he was getting these days. Most of the time, he’d have been right. But not today.
“Well, that’s a shame.” I casually placed my shiny yellow marble on the surface of the bar, next to his collection of colorful paper umbrellas. “You know I’d prefer to deal with you, but I guess I’ll have to go somewhere else.”
His eyes fixed on the small orb and he slowly set his drink back down. “Come to think of it, Dory, I might have a few special items put away.”
A little over half an hour later, we pulled up outside a large warehouse. “A few items?” I asked as we climbed out of the Jag.
Benny shrugged and struggled with a heavy lock on the thick metal door. “I’ve had this place for years. Usually, I keep it at least half-full. Right now, well”—he pulled back the sliding door—“take a look.”
A large, echoing space greeted us. Empty pallets were scattered about, along with a lot of crushed cardboard boxes and a rusty forklift. The overhead lights flickered on reluctantly, and I noticed what looked like a small office in back. “This way,” Benny said, picking a path through the trash. “Got a shipment in a couple days ago, and lucky for you, nobody’s been by to rob me yet.”
“Why don’t you move your inventory somewhere they can’t find it?”
“If I leave some interesting stuff lying around, I stay up and running and don’t get dead.” Benny’s booming voice bounced off the walls. “War isn’t a time to have people start looking at you as expendable. The Senate knows I got contacts they don’t. That’s what comes of trying to put craftsmen out of business for a couple hundred years—they tend not to want to do business when you get yourself in a jam.”
After disarming a few dozen protection wards, Benny flipped on the fluorescents in the claustrophobic office and squeezed around the side of a desk even messier than mine. I stayed back a few feet, in case any of the towering piles decided to fall, and waited. “But I wasn’t shooting you a line earlier. My selection ain’t what it used to be.” Out of his old metal desk he pulled a small briefcase. There was a wait while more spells were disarmed, and then the lock stuck. When he finally got it open, I had a hard time keeping a suitable poker face while eyeing the stuff inside. Benny waggled a shaggy eyebrow at me. “Well, Dory. Can we do business or what?”
I bent over for a better look, making sure a few of the items were what I thought they were, and barely kept from grinning like a fiend. Oh, yeah. I really thought we could.
Ten minutes later, I had four disrupters with the power of about twenty human grenades each, and a top-of-the-line morphing potion. The latter was a yellow glop that performed a glamour even on nonmages like me. Spread it over your face and within minutes you could look like virtually anyone. It tended to break me out, but there were lots worse things than a bad case of acne, and with Drac on my back, I needed all the help I could get.
Benny and I were dickering over whether four or five disorienting spheres—which made you either very dizzy (demons), forget why you were fighting (vamps) or pass out (humans)—should complete the deal when a faint whiff of ozone suddenly replaced the dry tang of the desert. I hit the ground and the next moment, the glass windows that composed the top half of three of the offic
e walls shattered inward, and a wave of force slammed Benny against the metal back wall, reducing his oversized head to so much jelly. I started to move about the same time that the glass shards hit the stained carpet squares.
I grabbed the case from where it had been knocked to the floor by one of Benny’s thrashing arms, and hopped out a now missing window on the far side of the room. I threw an expensive disorienting sphere behind me as I left the office, since I was now in possession of twelve of them, and took a second to glance about. The office had obviously been an afterthought, perched near the back exit by someone who decided that managers should have a little privacy. It was not near enough, however. I dove behind a bunch of empty crates and wondered if my extensive karmic debt was about to be called in. A foot away, several more crates and half the wall exploded as the giant fist that wasn’t there slammed into them.
Have I mentioned that, sometimes, I really hate magic?
The problem was that I didn’t have a full warehouse offering plenty of cover—the sad state of Benny’s business had seen to that. Since I doubted my ability to survive a blow from whatever was attacking me, the dozen yards to the back door may as well have been a thousand, especially since I strongly suspected that I’d find a welcoming committee waiting outside. Even if I made it in one piece, I wouldn’t remain that way for long.
And again I smelled it, a faint flicker of ozone, like the first lick of an approaching storm. I told myself I was imagining things. It had rained lately, after all. But, slicked with sweat, I froze in the darkness, muscles locked and singing with strain as icy panic gnawed at my spine.
Another smash of crates, which was close enough to send splinters into my boots, brought up my other small problem: I might not be able to move, but I also couldn’t stay where I was. My usual choice when backed into a corner is to attack everything in sight, but since there was nothing in sight, I decided I might have to try something else. The trashing of Benny’s office had blown out the lights, so the only illumination was the dim starlight filtered through some grimy windows near the ceiling. Acting on the hope that whoever was out there couldn’t see me any better than I could see them, I backed away from the exit toward the forklift I’d noticed earlier.
I kept near to the wall as the area closer to the door was systematically wrecked. One nice thing about all the noise, I didn’t have to bother being quiet. I finally made it to the metal monster and climbed aboard. I was not, of course, going to try to drive it. Forklifts weren’t likely to be able to outrun even a fit human, and if it was mages with magically enhanced speed, weres or vamps after me, I’d really be toast. It would, however, provide a nice distraction if I could get it to work. I put a couple of Benny’s disruptors on the floorboard, emptied the rest of the case’s contents into my new coat’s roomy pockets, started the engine and jumped out of the way.
When the invisible hand smashed the thing to bits a few seconds later, I was already halfway across the floor running full out for the front door. I’m as fast as all but the oldest vamps when I want to be, and knowing what would happen when the disruptors went off gave me the best incentive I’d had in a long time to break speed records. I was still inside the building when the explosion came, but just barely. The blast picked me up and threw me against the sliding door, which buckled and then tore off its track. The crumpled metal sheet and I went for a wild ride across the parking lot, striking sparks off the pavement, skidded past a group of dark figures and careened into an SUV.
I rolled underneath the chassis of the vehicle but didn’t stay there long. A set of powerful hands grabbed me and hauled me out the other side, about the same time that pieces of the warehouse began to rain down all around us. So much for having to worry about disposing of Benny’s body, I thought, as I brought a knee up to connect with my captor’s groin. He let out a curse, which I barely heard, being temporarily deaf from the blast, but a flaming crate landed almost on top of us at the same moment and I got a glimpse of his face. Uh-oh.
“Dor-i-na.” The syllables were like three strokes of a lash. “I have been looking for you.”
I swallowed and gave a sickly smile. Ashes and fire continued falling all around us, like a vision straight out of hell, but I barely noticed. Who cares about the setting when you’re already looking at the devil? “Uncle.”
Chapter Nine
“It is a simple enough bargain, Dorina.” Drac sat in his suite at the Bellagio and smiled at me. It might have been more effective if the expression hadn’t completely missed his cold, dead eyes. “I would expect even you to understand.”
All vampires are technically dead, of course, but most manage not to look like it. Drac didn’t bother. There was no reason at all to forget that the slender body draped comfortably over the armchair was, in fact, stone-cold dead. He didn’t breathe, blink or swallow. His skin was a matte white a geisha might have envied, and his eyes were a flat, opaque green like the glass on a beer bottle, with no spark whatever in their depths. The smile, the only expression on his face, was so completely without meaning that it could as easily have graced a department store mannequin, except it would have made the customers very jumpy. I was feeling a little like that, too.
“What part of the conversation did you not comprehend?” Drac was speaking Romanian, I suppose because he felt like it. Or maybe he didn’t want his goons to overhear. Either way, it wasn’t making me happy. My memories of the old country compose a large percentage of my nightmares, even though I haven’t been back in almost three centuries.
“The part about me retaining my ‘miserable life’ in exchange for helping you,” I replied. I spoke in English. If he didn’t like it, good.
“You think I would betray you?”
I shrugged, trying to seem nonchalant. Vamps are like dogs—showing fear only makes it that much more likely they’ll rip you to shreds. “It crossed my mind. I did help to trap you, after all. I doubt I’m on your favorite-people list.”
Drac seemed to find this funny. The eyes didn’t warm up—I had never seen them do so—but the laughter sounded real. “Ah, Dorina. You do flatter yourself.” He sat up slightly and changed expression again. I think it might have been an attempt to look earnest. Mostly, it just looked blank. The newer vampires have that problem sometimes, until they figure out how to get their dead features to form appropriate expressions. Drac had never been real interested in learning.
“Let us be clear, yes? You are a dhampir. A misbegotten creature with no concept of honor, so how can you betray? You acted as you did for two reasons: it is your nature to hunt my kind, and my brother enlisted your aid. I cannot fault you for the first any more than I would a snake for biting me or a scorpion for stinging. I might crush them, under the right circumstances, but blame them? No. As for the second, you could have refused my brother’s order, but you would have been foolish to take such a risk on my behalf. I would not have thanked you for it, and he might well have punished you. In your position, I would have acted the same.”
“Well, if you aren’t carrying a grudge, then I’ll be on my way.” I didn’t bother getting up; it would have been pointless, and the goon behind me looked like he’d appreciate a chance to put me back in my seat. Preferably in little pieces.
I had already calculated the odds of busting out of there, and didn’t like them. Benny’s stash had been stripped off me along with my other weapons, and I’d been knocked unconscious for the trip here. That isn’t easy to do with a dhampir, and my head was feeling like a jackhammer had been at it. When I woke up, it was to find that Drac had a dozen followers in the room, a combo of mages and vamps. Together, they rendered any attempt to run for the door suicide.
I didn’t recognize any of the vamps as being from Drac’s old stable, but none of them were days-old babies, either. The one behind me, for instance, was at least a fourth-level master, and therefore had to be on loan from someone. I was betting Rasputin, the self-appointed leader of the other side in the war. He had plenty of vamps to spare but
had just been given a black eye by the Senate. He must have been over the moon at the chance to unleash Drac on them. He could lie low and lick his wounds while Uncle kept his enemies busy, not to mention depriving them of a powerful member if he got really lucky. The fact that Rasputin was allied with the Black Circle would also explain the mages.
The, vamps were standing around seemingly at random, but enough were near the windows to ensure that even if I decided to attempt the ten-story plunge, I’d never make it. My chance of getting away using force was about the same as that of the suckers downstairs winning at roulette. But unlike for them, a loss for me could be permanent.
Drac continued as if I hadn’t spoken. “Let us say that, at the moment, you are no more to me than any other dhampir. Normally, I kill all of your kind who are foolish enough to cross my path. It is a precaution, like a farmer putting out traps for mice. But under the circumstances, I am willing to make you the offer of a trade. Your life for assistance with my current endeavor.”
“You want me to kill Mircea and Radu for you.”
Drac stared at me for a moment before breaking out into laughter once again. At least I was providing entertainment, even though I still had all my internal organs intact. Would wonders never cease.
“I had forgotten how amusing you can be.” Drac calmed down after a moment, the nonexpression replacing the previous mirth. “I admit to some surprise that no one has yet managed to end your existence, but certainly you overrate your skills if you believe you have a chance of disposing of either of my siblings. Admittedly, Radu is a coward and a weakling, but he is not stupid enough to trust anyone, particularly one such as you. And Mircea… has always been remarkably difficult to kill.”
When he spoke Mircea’s name, Drac’s face finally found an expression—hatred. The depth of his emotion thrummed through the room, like the skull-throbbing sensation of a building storm. And I suddenly realized that maybe I’d been wrong about Drac’s main target. “Yeah,” I agreed slowly. “You’d think he has some sort of guardian angel.”
