by Karen Chance
The fearsome injury Zheng had given him, which had swollen his jaw to the point that it had made speech difficult and had turned his nose into a cauliflower, was simply gone. The cut above his right eye, which had probably come from the bastard’s ring, and which had been cascading blood down his face with the enthusiasm of all head wounds, was a faint pink mark. And his busted lip, which had made him feel like a society matron with one too many fillers, was back to its usual, humorless line.
And it wasn’t just his face. His muscles now moved freely, with barely a twinge, whereas he should have been hobbling about like a pensioner. And although his head was still a bit light, that was likely due to the abruptness of his awakening rather than to blood loss, because his breathing wasn’t labored and he felt strong and healthy.
What have you done? he thought, shock eating its way through his system. What have you done?
There was no answer from the thing inside him, not that he needed one. Not with the memory of the body swap still fresh in his mind, along with the emotion it had triggered. Emotion that he’d been unable to repress, no matter how hard he’d tried. Emotion that, even in memory, had allowed his demon to tap into Cassie’s power through the conduit between them, which had never been closed after Wales.
And steal a feed that John didn’t want and she couldn’t afford!
“Did you kill her?” he yelled, staring at the sky because he had no way to look inward. “Goddamnit, did you kill her?”
“Er,” Zheng said, as John waited for a reply, for information, for anything.
Nothing came.
His heart lurched, to the point that he thought he might pass out again. He grabbed hold of the dirty bricks beside him, digging his fingers into the stone, trying to ground himself. Because, for a moment, he didn’t know where he was: a rainy alley smelling of kimchi and wood smoke, or a darkened bedroom in a farmhouse outside Stratford, clutching a dead woman in his arms.
Someone was saying something, but he couldn’t understand, didn’t care. This couldn’t be happening again. It couldn’t!
But the power singing in his veins said otherwise.
And it wasn’t because his demon had used its own power to heal him. The way his strange, hybrid body worked, his demon could amass power but only John could decide when or if to use it. So, this hadn’t come from his creature.
Which left only the one possibility.
He turned from staring upwards to pummeling the hell out of the brick wall beside him, because he couldn’t pummel the thing he so despised. And because it was either that or lose his goddamned mind! His hand was shielded, and the wall was relatively soft and crumbly. But it was the sheer, overwhelming rage ripping through him that allowed him to literally punch his way through the side of a building.
And to keep on doing it, driving into the brick, feeling it give way like broken bones, over and over and over and over—
“Did you kill her? Did you kill her? Goddamnit, tell me you didn’t fucking kill—”
His fist was caught by a giant-sized hand.
He was about to protest—memorably—when he came back to himself a little. Enough to notice the circle of staring vampires, the tiny old woman with a bun and a broom, peering out of the wreckage of what John belatedly realized was her home, and the massive vamp with a crease between his eyes holding him back. John stared at Zheng, but it all seemed unreal, irrelevant.
Everything did, next to the thought of what he might have just done to Cassie.
And was still doing, he realized, as he felt another tiny surge of power pulse through the bond. The last fucking one, he thought savagely, shutting down the connection so abruptly that it staggered him, and then severing the link. He immediately felt the loss: isolation where there had been companionship, cold where there had been warmth . . .
Warmth. His desperate mind snatched at the thought like a drowning man grasping a life line. She had felt warm.
Perhaps he hadn’t killed her, after all.
For some reason, that thought hit him even harder than the first, sending him stumbling back against what remained of the wall. Because he knew exactly what that felt like. The horror of what he had done to his wife had warred with the strength and vitality surging through him that night, leaving him feeling physically perfect for days afterward, almost like a teenager again.
And allowing him to experience the mental anguish of what he’d done with vivid clarity.
This . . . was not the same. He felt healed, but like a battery that had run down and needed recharging. As if his demon had taken enough life energy to sustain him, but had been stopped before it could finish the job.
But there was only one way to know for certain.
He caught sight of a phone in Kong’s back pocket and went for it, but the damned creature moved too fast.
“Give it to me!”
“Go to hell!”
“Which one?”
“Okay, let’s slow this down,” Zheng said, right before being clobbered by battle granny with the broom.
He sighed. Took the broom away. Waved progressively larger sums of cash in front of the wizened old face until she finally grabbed it and went back inside, muttering across her newly cut threshold.
Then he turned his attention to John, who by then had acquired Kong’s phone.
“How did you do that?” Zheng asked, confused, probably because he still had John’s left hand imprisoned in his fist.
John didn’t answer, being too busy trying to place a call. He was frantic to check on Cassie, but the damned phone didn’t work. “What’s wrong with it?” he demanded, but the owner did not appear cooperative.
Perhaps because he was still levitating upside down, courtesy of the shake down spell John had cast.
It was usually used to frisk subjects who might have lethal traps hidden about their persons, or who were merely too combative to be bothered with. That last described Kong perfectly, who was swearing up a storm whilst the spell shook him vigorously up and down, despite the fact that it had already cleaned him out, raining change, a wallet, several guns, and a wicked looking chopper—a large machete-like knife popular with the triads—onto the ground. Along with the phone that John thrust in his face.
“Unlock it!”
Kong said something that did not sound helpful.
“He say it already unlocked,” the temple dancer informed John. “He also say he going to gut you when you let him down.”
John immediately let him down.
Zheng sighed some more, and grabbed his vampire before he could attempt to make good on his promise. And kept hold of John, so he couldn’t do likewise. He said something to Kong, which did not appear to help, then to several of his other servants, who moved forward to restrain the obviously livid vamp. Zheng finally let go of John’s hand, but only so he could take his arm.
“Walk with me.”
“Let go of me! I have to—”
“None of the phones will work.”
“Won’t work? Why?” he looked at the useless block of metal in his hand. “What are you—”
“I’m about to show you.”
Chapter Thirteen
T he vamp led him down the alley to where it let out onto a wider street. From the shadow of some kind of flowering vine, John could see part of an area of shops and cafes that ran down a slight hill. It should have been an attractive spot, on the cusp between the Japanese and Korean areas of the city, where enclaves of immigrants had created a colorful mishmash of styles: upturned roofs of red and yellow tiles, windows decorated with big-eyed anime figures, and a tiny bibimbap hole-in-the-wall that competed for customers with a squid-on-a-stick cart parked cheekily outside. It was the kind of place where you could easily spend an afternoon shopping, eating and exploring the city.
But not today. Today, chaos reigned. And rained, because the torrent was now pounding down hard enough to turn the small, cobblestone street into a river and to send items spinning away from makeshift storage fac
ilities overhead.
In the skies above, lightning flashed in brilliant bursts, strobing the landscape. Clouds gathered so thick and dark that they turned afternoon into a decent approximation of night. And the wind howled with gusts that threatened to pick up the squid cart and throw it down the hill, adding fuel to the fire that was already consuming a building.
It didn’t succeed, but it did grab a string of orange-red paper lanterns, sending them spiraling upward like an out of control kite.
Yet it wasn’t the landscape that drew John’s eye.
“The hell?”
“What’s the matter?” Zheng asked. “Did you think you got them all?”
John didn’t answer. He was too busy staring down the street, to the point where it crossed a large avenue. And where the battle in the sky was being reflected in the brilliant bolts of energy sizzling between triad members and corpsmen. Hundreds of them.
“You told the tong they’re enthralled,” Zheng said. “Was it true?”
“Of course, it’s true!” John snapped, feeling the tromp, tromp, tromp of all those boots in his skin. “The Corps doesn’t go around attacking civilian cities!”
“Well, they’re attacking this one. The tong had reports that they’ve spread out to every quarter. Question is, what are you going to do about it?”
John stopped staring down the street long enough to stare at the big vampire. “What am I going to do?”
“You’re a war mage.”
“And you’re a senator! You must have resources—”
“Yeah, six of them,” Zheng hiked a thumb back at his men. “And not my best fighters. I brought investigators—”
“For what?”
“Not for this.” It was grim. “I’m here chasing a murderer.”
“A murderer?”
“It’s a long story. Lord Cheung—my old master—lost some vamps in a basement in New York, to some weird ass bullets—”
“Bullets that can kill a vampire?” John frowned. He’d never heard of such a thing.
Zheng scowled, as if he hadn’t intended to mention that. “Doesn’t matter. Anyway, some of the clues led here, so I took a handful of guys to check it out—”
“You did? Shouldn’t that have been Lord Cheung’s job, if they were his vamps?”
“He didn’t have anything to do with this!”
John raised an eyebrow.
He’d never said that he did.
Zheng glowered at him. “Point is, I didn’t know I was stepping into a warzone! I don’t have the men to deal with this—”
A stray spell from the battle shattered a nearby shop window, sending flames leaping up the side of the building. And causing several dozen windchimes inside to toll like funeral bells. How appropriate, John thought, and threw a shield over the end of the alley.
“—and wouldn’t have, even if my whole family was here,” the big vamp continued. “What am I supposed to do about that?”
He gestured at the now merrily burning street, but John didn’t immediately respond. Because Zheng was wrong—he hadn’t thought he’d rescued everyone. He’d seen too many men he didn’t recognize to believe that the Vegas branch was the only one compromised. But this . . .
He hadn’t expected this.
“Call in your senate,” he rasped, despite hating every word. But there was no other choice. “Vampires seem immune to whatever spell is being used. We can use them to round up the Corps—”
“Round them up?” Zheng raised a single eyebrow in a manner that reminded John uncomfortably of another senator he knew. “How exactly do you expect us to round them up? They’re war mages.”
“The same way the triads did! Drain them enough to knock them out until we can determine what’s wrong—”
“Yeah,” big arms crossed over an even bigger chest. “Problem is, while you’re doing that, they aren’t just standing around waiting for you to finish. They’re actively trying to kill you—”
“—which won’t take long. The Lord Protector probably has every researcher in the Corps working on this—”
“—and they’re very good at killing you—”
“Damn it, man! We have to buy him time!"
“To do what?” Zheng demanded. “By the time they come up with anything, you bastards will have burnt down half the city! It took the combined power of three triads to subdue a few hundred of you, and they only managed it because the mages were punch drunk when they first stepped through those portals. They’re like goddamned tanks—"
“Which is why we need your senate!”
“My senate is on the other side of the planet!”
John had his mouth open for a comment, but at that he shut it again. “What?”
Zheng nodded. “I’m on the North American Vampire Senate.”
“Since when?” John thought he knew all those bastards.
“Since about a month ago. They had an opening and I ‘applied.’” He grimaced. “I’m beginning to think that may not have been my best move.”
Yeah, John thought. Titles sounded impressive until you realized the responsibility and danger that often went with them. He’d faced that fact many times since joining the Corps, only most of those times, he hadn’t cared. Live or die; it hadn’t seemed to matter much.
It did now.
It did not improve his mood that it would be exactly like the universe to let him live when he wanted to die, and then to switch that around later on.
Exactly like, he thought, as light began to splash the alleyway.
John turned his head to see a vampire running toward them from the direction they’d come and carrying a crate. It appeared to be one of the old-fashioned wooden kind, the sort vegetables used to come in, from what he could see. Which wasn’t much because it was on fire.
“What the hell?” Zheng said, rearing back.
The vamp carrying it just screamed in reply.
“Put it down, you idiot!”
The vamp did not put it down. John wasn’t sure the creature could think that clearly, over what appeared to be abject terror. Zheng swore and kicked the crate with a boot, sending the contents scattering all over the ground. And his vamp screaming and running into a wall.
Whereupon he got up, screamed some more, and . . . did it again.
These are my allies, John thought blankly.
These are my only allies.
My God, he was fucked.
“Calm down!” Zheng said, grabbing his hysterical vampire. He must have put a little too much power behind the command, because the vamp immediately collapsed and had to be rescued again, having ended up too close to one of the . . . burning . . . items . . .
Damn it!
John expended power he couldn’t spare to put out the flames that were snapping around a pile of leather, and then turned on Zheng. The big vamp was propping his sad excuse for a servant against the wall, making sure that he was out of the danger zone, only to turn around and find himself in another one with John. Who was holding up what looked suspiciously like a war mage coat.
“What is this?”
The eyebrow went back to work. “Consider it a gift, like your life. You’re welcome, by the way.”
“You saved me to help you figure out what is going on and avoid a war with the Circle. I hardly owe you thanks for that! And where did you get this?”
Zheng sighed. “You’re almost immediately unlikeable, did you know that?”
“Where?”
“Cool your jets. We grabbed it from the pile the tong took off your men, before we fled. Along with the other stuff.”
“What other stuff?”
Zheng gestured at the half-burned box and the items it had contained, which were now lying all over the ground, some still smoking. John put them out, too—with the coat this time, which was fireproof—and examined the remains. There wasn’t much.
Some melted potion bombs, now black and bubbling, were seeping into gaps between the stones. A raft of cracked and empty potion bottl
es sparkled in the firelight, the remains of their contents occasionally sparking and turning the flames unusual colors. And some throwing stars, with enough of the enchantment left to spasm against the road like Mexican jumping beans, hopped around what had to be an entire store’s worth of guns.
The latter were useless, with charred stocks and bent frames, but would have been so anyway in comparison to the magic that had been left behind. John’s hand clenched at the thought of what had been passed over, all the next level magical items an army of war mages must have been carrying. But the guns had been taken instead because they were all the vampires understood!
It was so infuriating that, for a moment, he just stood there, trembling. At least he wouldn’t have difficultly warding off the damned enthrallment spell, he thought grimly. It seemed to have problems pushing past fury, and the way he felt right now, he was probably safe for days.
He got himself under control after a moment and sorted through the rest of the detritus. But the only usable items were the coat itself, which John pulled on despite it being too small for his frame, and a couple of personal spell bombs that had been preserved inside a warded pouch. They weren’t from a retailer, but rather something their former owner had made up for himself. John rubbed the blue-black, slightly crumbly surface of one to release the scent, and immediately went swimmy headed again.
Knock out bombs. Useless against the vampires this city was infested with, but which might be of help against humans. He shoved them in a pocket.
And felt something else brush against his hand.
He pulled out a long, smooth, slightly bumpy piece of wood that had been protected from the blaze by the spells woven into the coat. Holly, John’s brain identified automatically, Odin’s wood. Said to be the tree his spear had been made from. A powerful wood that made a powerful weapon, and a challenging one to control . . .
John’s fist closed around it.
He looked up to find Zheng watching him.
