by Karen Chance
James. I felt my lips form the word, but no sound came out. It was okay; there was nothing of the man I knew in those eyes anyway.
But there was surprise when I tossed the crate to Olga, grabbed the ball with one hand and him with the other, and jerked him over the balcony.
“I have the controller,” the thing that wasn’t James snarled. “What do you think this is going to do?”
“This.”
I used my feet to push off from the railing, as hard as I could, sending us speeding back into the thick of the fight—and straight into the path of one of Cthulhu’s thrashing limbs.
The next thing I knew, I was eating stone on the other side of the room.
Chapter Fifty-nine
I don’t know how fast we were going when we hit the wall, but it was officially too damned fast. I felt myself peel away and fall heavily to the floor, the slo-mo vamp senses that were supposed to protect me kicking in a split second too late. They didn’t help with the blow, but did make it feel like I took a long time to crash down, giving me a chance to notice an imprint of my made-up face that had been left behind on the plaster.
Huh.
And then James was on me.
He must have somehow gotten a shield up in the maybe two seconds he’d had, because he wasn’t looking all that affected. Or maybe you didn’t with a vargr riding you. After all, they didn’t care how much damage they caused their avatar, but I did. Which would have left me at a disadvantage if I’d been planning to fight him, but I wasn’t.
I wasn’t planning to break his nose, either, but my senses were screwy, and my aim was off.
“Sorry!” I said insanely, and heard it echo in the distortion of the slo-mo, while his head kicked back, allowing me to get a leg around him and bring him down. I was also fumbling for the wrist of the hand he was raising to curse me with, but I didn’t get it. Not because he was too fast—human reflexes in slo-mo are ridiculously sluggish—but because I was seeing double or maybe triple, and couldn’t figure out which one it was.
But the next second he went limp anyway, which had my heart hammering until I noticed Rufus standing over him, syringe in hand. I lay back against the carpet, panting and thanking Cthulhu. And wondering where all the vamps had gone, because nobody else seemed to be attacking me.
“Louis-Cesare,” Ray said, when I asked.
His voice was distorted and echoey, because I couldn’t seem to snap out of slo-mo. Like I couldn’t seem to stand up properly, even when Ray levered James off me. I smacked the side of my head a couple times, but it hurt so I stopped. And looked around for Louis-Cesare, but didn’t see him.
“Where is he?” I asked Ray. He was covered in blood, but I got the impression that it was mostly other people’s.
“Don’t know.” He tried to put an arm around me for some reason, but I batted him away. “He showed up, cleared the balcony, then ran off chasing some vamps. Now let’s get out of here!”
“We can’t get out. We only did half the job.”
I’d been on the way to my feet, but they got confused and I abruptly sat down again.
Ow.
Ray crouched down in front of me, while Rufus rigged up one of those floating stretchers for James. The guy really had thought of everything. I watched him sloooowly roll his son’s body onto it, until Ray turned my cheek back to face him.
“Listen to me. We got what we got, okay? We’re not gonna find the rest of those weapons, not in this. And you’re not at your best—”
“I’m fine—”
“You just took a hit that woulda leveled a troll. You are not fine!”
I scowled at him. And then tried to push his finger out of my face, although I couldn’t seem to catch it. “Stop moving.”
“I’m not moving. And you’re done.”
“You don’t get to tell me that!”
“Well, somebody needs to!”
I scowled at him. “You’re supposed to be what? My Second?”
He looked surprised for what seemed like a long moment, but was probably just a flash across his face. Maybe because a Second was a master’s leading servant, and kind of a big deal. But since the only vamps I had were Ray’s, it seemed appropriate.
But I guess he hadn’t stopped to think about it before.
“Yeah,” he told me. “I guess so.”
“Well, a vampire’s Second does what he’s told!”
Ray snorted. “You must not have known many Seconds.”
“What does that mean?”
“It means that they do a lot of different jobs, depending on what the family needs. But their main one is to tell the master what he don’t want to hear.”
“To be a pain in the ass, in other words.”
“A useful pain in the ass.”
“Then you’re perfect for the job.”
“Thank you,” Ray said, and pulled me back up again.
I grabbed the railing, not that I needed it, and looked around. Olga must have realized what I’d flung at her, because it looked like the battle was evening out. But that could change, really fast, and I hated the idea of just abandoning her. Plus, I couldn’t shake the feeling that I was missing something.
I had the weirdest impression that, not only were the rest of the weapons here, but I was staring right at them. It was maddening. And if Marlowe came into this mess with no clue where they were . . .
Ding!
I started at the sound and looked around. But it hadn’t come from another weird magical device, or from the drowning slots, which had been spazzing out this whole time. But from something behind me.
And, for once, it was something benign.
It looked like nobody had turned off whatever system controlled the fights, because the doorway behind us had just lit up, announcing a new one. A ring of little green crabs decorated the stone all around the opening, like the orange squid had on the other door. I guess they meant something to the regulars, maybe some clue to the venue or the type of combatants? I wondered if Cthulhu’s door had red octopuses. . . .
“Dory? We’re ready.”
It was Ray, but I barely heard him over the ding, ding, ding, only this time, it wasn’t the door chiming.
It was my head.
“Dory? You up to taking point, or you wanna bring up the rear?”
I didn’t answer. Instead, I turned around and stared at all the porthole-looking doorways, each of which had a different symbol around it. Only there was so much smoke and potion residue drifting around that I couldn’t make most of them out. But if I could have . . .
“Dory.” A touch on my shoulder. “You okay?”
Yeah, I thought. Yeah! I whirled around, got dizzy, straightened up, and grabbed Rufus. “Can you do a reveal spell?”
“What?”
“Can you?”
“Y-yes, of course.” He blinked at me. “On what?”
“On them.” I gestured outward. “Can you make the little symbols on the doorways light up?”
Rufus looked like he was about to ask why, then seemed to decide it would be quicker just to oblige. And, all of a sudden, every door in the place was ringed in a circle of brilliant symbols, glowing brightly against all that white: blue swordfish, pink hammerheads, teal mermen, some weird black snakelike things—
“What are you doing?” Ray demanded.
—gray whales, yellow sea lions, and some purple three-tailed creature that ought to be on a coffee cup—
“Dory!”
“I’m looking for fish!”
“What? Why?”
“Because fish, tracks, door!”
Ray looked at me worriedly. “You do know you’re not making sense, right?”
“There!” And there they were, aqua-colored fish tracking around a door on the fourth balcony up, all the way in the corner. “That’s i
t! Ray, I think that’s it!”
“That’s what? What are you—”
He broke off abruptly. I was still staring at the door, so it took me a second to wonder why. And then I turned around.
And didn’t have to wonder.
Ray was still standing there, but I wasn’t sure how. Because somebody had just punched all the way through his middle, leaving me looking at a gory fist and Ray’s shocked eyes. And then the fist was jerked back out again—
Along with his spine.
But that wasn’t what had me frozen in shock.
No, that was because of who had done it.
“Louis-Cesare,” I said blankly.
And then Dorina threw us over the railing.
* * *
—
The vampire was fast—I’d give him that. As I sailed into space I felt his fingertips brush me, warm against the skin of my arm. And then I was gone, grabbing one of the camera balls that had been speeding past and reaching for my phone to alert the one they call Marlowe.
And having it knocked from my fingers.
Because Louis-Cesare was already there, a split second behind me, dangling by one hand from the camera James had been using, leaving him plenty of options for attack. But there was something different this time, between Dory and me. Because she was still awake, leaving us with more options, too.
I took the offense, slipping my foot under the handgrip for the camera, because these things were designed to be used more than one way. And grabbed the controller a reporter tossed me as I passed, using it to somersault under the vampire, grab a club from a troll, come up behind him, and bash him in the back of the head. It felt like hitting a brick wall and did no observable damage.
Of course, I wasn’t done yet.
But we went spinning away before I could try again, because Dory had the controller and was screaming at me: “Don’t kill him!”
Same head, I reminded her shortly, because he was already coming back this way. Don’t yell.
Then answer me!
I didn’t answer, because she didn’t need it. The best way to lose a fight was to use half measures against an opponent using full ones. Especially this one, I thought, watching as he duplicated my movement, only he didn’t grab a troll’s club.
He grabbed the troll.
It was a smaller one, which I dodged easily. But he sent two more my way just afterward, and was moving fast enough to be annoying. I decided to drop into the mental state vampires used in battle, the one that made everyone else seem to slow down, just to be on the safe side.
Only to realize: I was already there.
That would explain why people in the flood were looking around with startled expressions. To them, it must have seemed as if their allies or opponents had simply disappeared, plucked up and tossed like living boulders across the room. It must have seemed like that to the creatures as well: I saw one’s ferocious expression change to bewilderment as he sailed past, especially after I pulled his sword from his hands.
And just managed to get it up in time to meet the one slashing down at me.
The vampire was also strong, I discovered, surprisingly so. He’d fought my twin before, but he’d apparently been pulling his punches. He wasn’t pulling them now, or to be more precise, the creature controlling him wasn’t. If we’d been on the ground, he might have done some serious damage.
But we weren’t on the ground.
We were flying above the battle, balancing on a couple of speeding camera balls, while dodging the spells being flung at us from the ground and a few balconies.
And it looked like he didn’t know how to fight this way.
I smiled, showing fang, as our swords rang together and as Dory took us down at the same moment, ruining his momentum as we dipped underneath and then zipped away. But he learned fast. Because the next time, he didn’t come for us.
He came for the ball.
And it seemed that I had been wrong: he wasn’t fast; he was quicksilver. He was lightning, flashing across the sky. He was faster than the spells we were dodging, which boiled by almost leisurely in comparison.
He was faster than me.
Not by much, just a fraction of a second, but sometimes, that’s all you need. There followed a blur of motion, a strange aerial ballet across the room, each of us standing on a speeding camera, swirling and ducking and somersaulting, and silent except for the staccato ring of swords clashing together almost too fast to see, even for me. It was heady, exhilarating; I’d never known anything like it, as each of us tried to find an advantage, and each of us failed.
Until that split second came into play.
I saw the blur of the blade coming for my mechanical platform, but wasn’t fast enough to dodge it. So I jumped, straight up, just as the blade turned the camera I’d been using into so many flying parts. And I flipped, landing on the vamp in a judo hold, one leg around his neck, a stake in my hand—
Only to have Dory throw off my aim. And before I could recover, a wave of static hit me like a fist. Like a thousand fists, boiling behind my eyes. I heard myself scream, felt Dory convulse but somehow manage to grab the vampire’s controller, felt us spring away. But if she’d planned to send Louis-Cesare careening off while we recovered, it didn’t work.
Because he kicked the camera out from under him, sending it shattering into a thousand pieces against the wall, and fell as we did. And I learned that static could be used in more than one way. It cut out abruptly, either deliberately or because he’d just splashed down, disrupting the creature’s thoughts. And either way, the shock caused me to do the unthinkable.
It caused me to trip.
I landed on a troll’s back, wet with water and blood. But instead of using him as a platform to jump to the nearby balcony and get away, I slipped off his shoulder, heading for the water ten feet below. And hit something else on my way down.
The vampire already had his blade back up, and it pierced our leg, a sharp, biting pain that became agony when it hit bone. And kept on going. The blade was so razor-sharp and was wielded with such force that it took me a moment to realize we’d just lost a leg. The part below the knee spun off into the fight, lost to view, and we fell backward into water over our head, that was immediately fogged with red.
The pain was stunning; the blood loss even more so. I prepared to dive, in the vain hope that I could beat the vampire to the bottom, and lose him in the thrashing, battling pairs all around. Or at least get enough water between us that it would blunt the next blow and save our lives. Instead he lunged for us, in a move almost too fast to see, even in slo-mo.
And jerked us back up.
“Louis-Cesare! Please!” That was Dory.
I could hear her pain, her anguish. Not only for us, but for him, what this would do to him when that thing let him go. And something of that must have gotten through, because for a split second, I saw him falter.
But the creature was too strong, and reasserted control almost at once. The blue eyes, confused and horrified one second, were suddenly resolute once more. And the sword was being raised and we were out of options.
But somebody else wasn’t.
Louis-Cesare was swarmed by a bunch of flying cameras, perhaps twenty or more, all hitting him at the same time. One smashed into the back of his head; another punched the side of his jaw. And then more and more at various angles, until the little things had kamikazied their guts out, like big, black, wildly swinging fists.
They didn’t hurt him, but the surprise bought us a second to tear away, and I didn’t hesitate. I landed back in the frothing water, disoriented and desperate. And somehow grabbed a shield.
It was a long wooden thing, heavy and unwieldy. A fact not helped by the depth of the water, which was now over my head. My foot couldn’t reach the bottom of this newly formed lake, and I was off-balance and rapidly losing blo
od from the leg. I nonetheless managed to get the shield up, and block the next strike of the blade. Only to have the wicked, curved steel sink deeply enough that it caught in the wood, allowing the vampire to use the sword as a handle.
And rip our only protection away.
Dory! I yelled mentally. Help me!
One second!
She was doing something with the hand under her control. Then she dunked us underwater, swimming for the bottom, and how was that supposed to help? I didn’t get an answer, and the next second we were jerked back out of the tide. I’d been expecting it, and closed my hand on the wrist holding the sword as it slashed down. But even though I was putting everything I had into the fight, the blade kept coming closer and closer, a relentless, deadly weight, until the shiny surface reflected my strained face and startled, disbelieving eyes—
And something else.
I had half a second to see a giant mass of muscle, fur, and fury leaping for us, before it was gone—and Louis-Cesare along with it. For a split second, I watched him being dragged through the fight by a were the size of a car, and then the view was obscured as the rest of Roberto’s creatures appeared, a river of fur parting the water and immediately taking the fight to a new level.
But not for long.
Not where the vampire was concerned.
I saw him across the fray, battling the were, and knew we had seconds at best. Not enough time to get away, not enough time to do anything. He was relentless.
But so was Dory. She’d found the controller the vampire had dropped, and apparently it went with the fritzing, sparking wreck of a camera ball speeding toward us. The thing could barely fly, and was listing hard to one side, but when the up button was pressed on the controller, that’s where it took us, straining and fighting, but unerringly UP.
Toward the weapons, I realized.
And then we shot through the doorway and into a vortex of light and sound that grabbed us like a fist, jerked us through, and spit us out . . .
Somewhere else.
Chapter Sixty