Siren's Song (Cassandra Palmer Series)

by Karen Chance

  He wasn’t sure he was managing that so well. Worms of power squirmed over his skin, his eyes felt like they were melting in his skull, and the arm holding the wand had gone completely numb. He couldn’t feel it anymore, and only knew that it hadn’t been burnt off yet because he was looking at it.

  And then bringing it down, his magic screaming as he lashed it to the river of wild power that had accumulated over top of him, and pulled. And to his shock, it came. All of it, all at once, leaving him no chance to scream a warning to the people below, who were right in its path.

  Chapter Thirty-Six

  J ohn threw a shield downward, in a desperate attempt to protect the group below. He didn’t know if he’d gotten them all; he didn’t know if he’d gotten any. He was thrown backward by the shockwave, hitting the roof and rolling off, before catching himself at the last second by a hand he could no longer feel.

  Leaving him dangling off the edge of the building above a hostile army.

  Rain, runoff and the massive explosion happening above blinded him, a wave of searing heat washed over him, and for a heart stopping moment, he couldn’t even breathe. The world started to gray out, as he fought to get air back into his flattened lungs, and felt himself slipping toward the rain-washed streets below. Until someone down there noticed him, and a spell detonated against the back of his coat, hot as a firebolt and hard as Dagon’s fist.

  And threw him back onto whatever was left of the roof.

  He hugged the rain slick tiles as several more spells flew by, not sure that his tattered coat would absorb much more. It wasn’t designed as a shield, but rather as a second line of defense for anything that got through a shield. John wondered how much had gotten through the one he’d thrown, but right then, he had no way to tell.

  He couldn’t see, the afterimage of the blast casting a solid red scrim over his vision. He couldn’t hear, the detonation still clanging in his ears. And he couldn’t move, because every time he tried, searing heat met his hand.

  It felt like the whole rooftop was burning!

  After a second, his vision cleared, at least enough to show him what appeared to be a field of blazing lanterns, dotting the skies above. They reminded him of the ones the Chinese sometimes set off in festivals, brightly colored things with messages of hope on the sides and a small candle within. Drifting up into the night like glowing stars . . .

  Only these weren’t stars. They weren’t lanterns, either. But they were burning, he realized, as they started raining back down, thousands of them, the flaming pieces of what had been half the pharmacy and was now a vast field of speeding projectiles.

  “Gah!” John huffed out, and rolled over, getting his spelled coat between him and the missiles.

  The only good thing was that his shield had held, putting a solid blue field around Zheng and Ray and—where was the damned dhampir? John looked around, but didn’t see her. Of course, it was a little hard to see anything whilst dodging huge pieces of masonry and falling, flaming wood!

  But they were preferable to the mass of vampires suddenly boiling up out of the ruined roof.

  John had been trained—and trained well—to keep his concentration under the most trying of circumstances. But even he had trouble deciding what problem to address first. Fortunately, the fiery debris did some of it for him.

  A burning vamp lunged at him out of the dark, only to be crushed underneath a slab of charred wall. Another had crawled up the side of the building behind him, but was speared by a falling piece of metal before John could react. And then three more leapt at him from the other direction, all at once.

  And were pelted with fiery wreckage that lit them up like Roman candles.

  John stumbled back, little better off than the vamps, although for a different reason. Magic writhed over his skin, almost as thick as before the blast, the remnants of that terrible spell. His hands shook, his eyes burned, his skin crawled as if the electric worms he’d felt earlier were running underneath the surface now, as if he was a creature of power and magic and light. But one who couldn’t concentrate well enough to use it, or to keep it from eating him from the inside out!

  Not that that would be a problem for long, if he didn’t get moving.

  He hunched under his coat, threw the hood over his head, and bolted.

  On every side, vampires burned. Some were still mobile enough to come after him, forcing him to fend them off, including one who stabbed him with a spelled blade. It should have gutted him—John’s reflexes were shot to hell—but the knife caught in the shield he’d thrown around his waist like a bandage. And ripped it off.

  That didn’t do his ribs any good, but it did save his life. And cost the vamp his. John’s boot caught the creature in the ribs when he came back for another pass, sending him flying into a pile of burning wreckage. He must have been a younger sort, because his body went up between one second and the next, leaving only the ashen shape of a man behind.

  One that another vampire knocked into a second later, causing the blackened mass to puff away on the wind.

  Some of it flew into John’s face, making him want to retch. The feeling intensified when he finally took note of the roof around him, where dozens of vampires were squirming against the tiles, held there by sizzling fat or melted clothing. Except for those at the epicenter of the blast, where something else had happened.

  Something worse.

  For a second, John tasted bile. Because the huge energy bolt he’d sent had caught a host of vampires, too numerous to count, coming out of the ruined roof. But instead of disintegrating them as true lightning would have, the wild magic had welded them into a huge ball of writhing flesh, melting them into a single organism with one, unfortunate vamp as the head.

  John knew he was playing that role, since he was the one screaming.

  And then somebody grabbed him.

  John threw a punch and almost had his fist crushed, but not by a vamp. Well, not by one of those vamps. It was Zheng holding onto him, because in his open-mouthed horror, John had stumbled through his own shields. Synched to his body, they’d let him inside, where Ray and Zheng were still standing and still fine, as far as he could tell.

  Only they were screaming, too.

  John’s ears were ringing from the blast, so loud that he couldn’t hear anything they were saying. But he could follow their pointing fingers, although they didn’t show him much. Just acres of burning bodies on this and the surrounding rooftops, some still mobile and scrabbling at his shields, while some—

  What the devil?

  John stared across a medieval hellscape at a modern conveyance—one of the flying rickshaws—that was swooping around this way. A man was unceremoniously kicked out a second later, landing on a nearby roof, which luckily for him was one of the few unoccupied by fanged horrors. Although John wasn’t sure that the new driver cared.

  Because it was the little dhampir!

  “How the hell did she get over there?” John demanded, and heard nothing back. But this time, it wasn’t his ears’ fault. His companions had suddenly fallen silent, maybe because the dhampir had just floored it.

  Straight at them.

  “Fuuuuuuck!” Zheng yelled, loud enough for even John to hear, as she plowed into the side of his shield—and the mountain of vampires crawling all over it.

  The shield didn’t break—somehow—but it wobbled dangerously as she scraped across the top. And then tore ahead, viciously elbowing a female vampire off the side of her craft, before slinging back around. Almost as if she planned to—

  “Fuuuuuuck!” This time, it was John who yelled, because the madness that dhampirs were known for had clearly taken hold. She was headed back at them, tearing through the skies like a missile, and he wasn’t sure his shield could take another—

  Annnnnd it couldn’t.

  The shield broke, the tiny craft jerked to a stop almost on top of them, and his two companions immediately climbed on board.

  And so did a few dozen vamps. For a sec
ond, John lost the plot, staring from Ray, who had grabbed the dhampir around the neck and was yelling something at her, to Zheng, who was throwing off stowaways and stomping them in the face like a bloody madman, to the dhampir, who was gesturing at the remaining vamps from her choke hold and glaring at John. Who finally shook off the events of the last minute or so, which was all it had been since the explosion, and got with the program.

  And started stomping faces, too.

  He and Zheng must have stomped enough. Because the tiny craft started to lurch forward in fits and starts, prompting him to clamber on board despite not having any room. But he got a boot on the floorboard and a hand on the side, right before the tiny thing swooped off the roof. And plunged headlong into darkness.

  John screamed again, and he wasn’t the only one. The rickshaw was obviously over its weight limit, by one hell of a lot. He had a second to see the ground rushing up at them, all hard concrete and reaching, jumping vamps, before the levitation charm caught. And they went speeding back up—

  Until the same thing happened again. And again. And again. To the point that John was grateful he hadn’t had any dinner or he would have lost it by now. But landing this thing before the charm gave out was not on the table.

  They were being followed.

  John stared behind them at the hundreds, maybe thousands of vampires, filling the streets below and running across rooftops and bridges and suspended junkpiles above, trying to keep up with the wildly bobbing rickshaw. The whole city seemed to be following them—and gaining. If this was a race, it wasn’t one they could win.

  Partly because of a vamp who’d been clinging to the bottom of their ride, weighing them down!

  John kicked it off, right before the dhampir grabbed his shoulder. “You have to go!”

  John just stared at her. Was she expecting him to take a dive onto one of the passing rooftops? Because that would be suicide. He couldn’t fight off thousands of vampires on his own!

  But then, neither could the rest of them, and he was the one the army wanted.

  She pointed at the trash hung street they’d come in on, and which she’d just flung them around to face. “I’m going to crash through there! When we get under cover, you two jump out and I’ll lead the assholes away!”

  “It could work,” Zheng said. “As long as they don’t see us bail.”

  “They won’t,” she promised, although John couldn’t see how. Their pursuers were right on their tail.

  Ray didn’t look any happier. “No! No!” he yelled, loud enough to be heard over the straining engine and John’s ringing ears. “This thing’s a hunk of junk, and that guy,” he hiked an angry thumb at John, “blew up all our stuff! We don’t even have weapons!”

  The dhampir held up the item she’d risked her neck for, back in the pharmacy. “What about this?”

  “That?” Ray looked furious. “That’s not a weapon!”

  No, John thought, but maybe it could be.

  The shotgun shaped device didn’t shoot bullets but rather gobs of paint, the kind that created the magical advertisements that were a hallmark of supernatural Hong Kong. Usually, they were mere nuisances, jumping off walls and billboards to follow a person down the street, yelling enticements. But thanks to the little dancer, John had discovered that—given enough magic—they could be much more.

  And right now, he had magic to burn.

  He grabbed the paint gun and sent the overflow from the blast into it, with enough of his magic as a buffer so that it didn’t blow the damned thing up. He only stopped when it became too hot to hold comfortably, and tossed it back to the dhampir. “It is now.”

  “It is not!” Ray said furiously, but John barely heard. Because the dhampir had headed straight for the mass of junk over top of the street.

  “Shit!” he yelled, as they slammed into one of the suspended junk piles, hard enough to almost knock him off his precarious perch. Bamboo poles battered them, pieces of sheet metal threatened to decapitate them, and odds and ends flew everywhere. And it wasn’t getting better because they weren’t flying back out again, nor headed to the street below. They were plowing straight through the middle of the vast trash pile.

  Right at what appeared to be part of an old, propeller driven airplane, which had its missing ass in the air.

  “Pull up!” John yelled, grabbing the dhampir’s shoulder.

  “Not yet.”

  “What do you mean, not yet!” They were about to crash straight into the thing!

  But he didn’t get so much as a side eye. Until he tried grabbing the leather straps she was using to steer with, which were looped around the poles of the rickshaw like reins on a horse. That got her attention all right.

  And John an elbow to his already cracked ribs. “You try that again, and I swear—”

  “Look where you’re going!” he gasped, because she’d actually turned around to threaten him.

  “Get as close as you can,” Ray contradicted, whilst searching inside his coat.

  The dhampir looked confused until he came out with a wallet. And then her eyes lit up. “Follow the kids,” she told John, pointing at something he couldn’t see, because who could see anything in this?

  But then he noticed two small, curious faces watching their approach through the glass side of a gun turret. “They’ll lead you out!” she yelled.

  John had no idea what she was talking about, but Zheng seemed better informed. “Good one,” he told her, and clapped her on the back, almost causing her to go flying.

  Which might be a good idea for all of them, John thought, as the plane’s open backside loomed large.

  “Now!” the dhampir yelled, and pulled up on the reins, causing the tiny craft to strain and smoke, and then to buzz up and over top of the plane.

  Ray threw his wallet into the open back end, the tykes caught it and took off, and Zheng dragged John over the side and into the darkness below, right on their tails.

  Chapter Thirty-Seven

  W ait. Where’d they go?” John asked, staring around and panting a little.

  He and Zheng had just completed a headlong run through a maze of tunnels in the junk, which their diminutive guides had navigated expertly. John, being bigger, hadn’t fared so well. He didn’t know about his companion, but he’d been hit on the head repeatedly by low hanging pots and pans, and scraped and scratched by rough edged trash. To top it all off, the kids had scampered into the night as soon as they hit the ground, and he had no idea where he was.

  But it wasn’t in the clear.

  “Probably off . . . to pick . . . someone else’s pocket,” Zheng said, hands on his knees. “Little bastards infest this area . . . ‘cause of all the tourists.”

  John didn’t think he’d ever seen a vamp winded before, since they didn’t technically need to breathe. But maybe some gestures carried over. Like some problems, he thought, hugging a wall.

  He could hear large numbers of feet stampeding across the rooftops all around, and even see an arc of bodies jumping a thirty-foot gap between buildings up ahead. It seemed that the dhampir was leading the vamps on a merry chase. John just wished she’d do it in a single direction!

  “We can’t . . . stay here,” Zheng said, pointing out the obvious.

  “I’m open to suggestions,” John shot back. “But if we run into one of those bigger groups, we’re—” he broke off, finally noticing that his partner was not okay. “What’s wrong?”

  The big vamp’s face broke into a pained smile, and he gestured around. “Seriously?”

  “I meant with you.”

  “Got hit. It’s no big deal.”

  “Got hit with what?” John demanded, right before lightning lit up the sky above their heads, allowing him to see the seeping wounds all over Zheng’s skin. “Shit!”

  “I’m fine,” the large idiot said.

  “You’re covered in blood. You are not fine!”

  “Better than I’m gonna be if we don’t get out of here.”

  He
had a point. But he wasn’t going anywhere if he bled out, and John needed the backup! “Hold still,” he said.

  “You giving orders, mage?”

  John ignored that, closed his eyes and concentrated. And saw the black outline of the big vamp clearly against his mental vision. And then, slowly, a black miasma came into view, surrounding Zheng like a cloud. It was moving in and out of his pores, swirling around his wounds, and catching in his throat where it kept trying to choke him. But since he wasn’t human, it was only succeeding in screwing up his speech.

  And stopping him from healing, almost entirely.

  There were bright flares around some of the wounds, like the end of a cigarette when someone took a draw. But as soon as one lit up, with what John assumed was the vamp’s natural healing abilities, the darkness came. And like a candle snuffer, put it out.

  John opened his eyes again, scowling. The spell was similar to the one he had used on Dagon, although it wasn’t fey. In fact, he didn’t know what it was, other than powerful—and deadly. Zheng was pale and clammy, with shaking limbs, hollow cheeks, and clouded eyes. Removing something like this would normally take hours, slowly coaxing it out of the victim while trying to minimize further harm.

  They didn’t have hours.

  John shielded his hand and grabbed a fluttery edge of the spell, which felt like grasping smoke. He poured more magic into the attempt, until it was more like diaphanous cloth sliding over his fingers, so whisper fine that it almost wasn’t there. Like cobwebs if they were barbed and made out of steel wire, designed to sink deep.