by Karen Chance
“Silence!” the other vamp hissed, and there must have been some power behind it, because Ray made a little hiccuping sound and shut up.
“I wish I knew how to do that,” I told the vamp honestly.
He smiled, and it was surprisingly attractive. Or not so surprisingly. Most vamps could turn on the charm when they wanted something.
Only I couldn’t figure out what he wanted with Ray.
“So what do you want with Ray?” I asked, because what the hell. “He’s already coughed up everything he knows about your operation. The Senate wouldn’t have released him otherwise.”
“Perhaps we wish to repay him for that,” the vamp said, baring some teeth. Which had all been filed to wicked-looking points.
Okay, then. That was one way to hide fangs, I guessed.
“Not to call you a liar,” I said, “but bullshit. I don’t doubt your boss wants revenge, but this bad? Five senior masters and a tank, after…after Ray?” I amended, because if the guy was about to get shredded, no need to insult him first.
“Perhaps we knew he was with you.”
“Thanks for the compliment, but bullshit again. I didn’t know he was going to be with me. You couldn’t have guessed it before you came out looking for him. So how about the truth?” Preferably quickly, considering that Zheng was making some not-so-dead noises behind the fixture.
They must have distracted the vamp, too, because Ray suddenly regained the power of speech. And boy, did he use it. “They want me to hack a portal for them, only I can’t. I told them I can’t ’cause the Senate said one more thing, you know, just one more thing and they were gonna stake me for sure. And I told Lord Cheung and he said—”
“He said that you are a sniveling, worthless, waste of flesh and he regrets the day he took you on!” the vamp snapped, talking about his and Zheng’s boss.
“Tough shit,” Ray told him. Which would have been more impressive if he hadn’t dodged back behind me. “’Cause I’m here now.”
“Not for long.”
“Yeah, well. Dory might have something to say about that!”
“Do you?” the vamp asked, arching a thin white eyebrow at me.
“Of course she does!” Ray said, poking me in the back.
I didn’t say anything. Because something interesting had just been mentioned—for the second time. And, finally, my energy-starved brain had managed to latch onto it.
Olga had been tapping into the ley line sink that powered the house’s spells to make it easier for her people to get around. Most species can pass for human with a cheap glamourie, but that gets harder when you’re a walking mountain. There are still spells that work, of course, but they’re expensive, and they add up after a while. Whereas a portal powered by a ley line sink that nobody knew about was free.
And, of course, one of the first places Olga had linked to was her place of business.
Her place of business in the back room of this store.
“All you have to do is stand aside,” the vamp murmured, putting power behind it. He probably thought he was influencing me, which he wasn’t nearly strong enough to do. I don’t know if my resistance comes from my nature or from dealing with Mircea’s shit for so long, but I’m not that easy to manipulate.
But I guess Ray must have thought otherwise, because he stomped on my instep. “What the hell?” I yelped.
“Don’t listen to him! He’s trying to—”
“I know what he’s trying to do!” I said, resisting the urge to cut a bitch. Damn, that had hurt.
“Give him to us!” the albino told me, and a wave of suggestion hit me like a club. Or, more accurately, like a hundred barbs trying to sink into my brain. I shook them off, snarling.
“Bite me!”
“I think I shall let Master Zheng do that,” he said sweetly, as his buddy lurched out from behind a mangled fixture.
How he was on his feet, I don’t know. His hair was on fire, his face was a blackened mess, and one eye was hanging down his mostly missing left cheek. But at least the name fit again, I thought hysterically, as Ray’s fingers dug into my wrist.
“Oh, shit,” he said, very, very quietly.
“Run,” I told him.
“What?”
“Run!”
“Where? They’re guarding the rear, too. I already checked!”
“Portal,” I said, shoving him as Scarface grabbed my jacket.
From about twelve feet away.
The fuck?
“Portal?” Ray said, like he’d never heard of such a thing.
I didn’t answer. I was too busy absorbing the sight of the hugely elongated arm that, Gumby-like, had just snaked across the room. It had all the usual arm parts, including muscle, judging by the grip it had on the front of my jacket. But it was…well, it was just stupid. Like being jerked across the shop by something that couldn’t be real but obviously was. Like the cast-iron fist that waited for me if I didn’t manage to—
I twisted in midair, unable to stop but just able to get my feet up. So that I hit him with steel-tipped boots instead of my face. Which would have worked better if the bastard had lost his grip.
“What portal?” Ray yelled.
“Olga’s—in the back!” I gasped, trying to break free and getting hauled back by my jacket.
“Oh. She has—oh!” He turned and fled. And I got a hand on one of my dozen or so zippers, which weren’t so much a fashion statement as a save-my-neck statement, as demonstrated when I pulled the one on the right shoulder down and the whole sleeve came off. It left Scarface holding leather and me burning it as I scrambled away.
For about a second, until something wrapped around my waist like a particularly hairy python.
I didn’t try to shake it off; it probably wouldn’t have worked anyway, and besides, there was no time. Because the son of a bitch was draining me, healing himself by sapping whatever energy I had left, and if I didn’t get away now, now, right freaking now, it was going to all be over. So I kept going, dragging the elastic snake of an arm with me, around a pillar and over some shelves, then hitting the main aisle and running hell-bent for leather for the back door.
Along the way, I got a glimpse of the vamps outside. They had dropped the cool poses in order to press their noses to the glass in the front of the store, their faces in turn eager and astonished and worried as I just. Kept. Going. And then pulsing in and out along with my heartbeat as the room started to gray out and the door seemed to recede into the distance and it began to feel like maybe some bastard had snuck up and somehow encased my feet in cement, and—
And then Scarface let go.
But not of me.
I don’t know if it was on purpose, or if the tension that had been building up had just gotten too much. But whatever the reason, a six-foot-five, two-hundred-sixty-pound vampire makes a hell of a projectile when he suddenly comes shooting at you. As the pole found out when he burst through it, taking down a good section of the ceiling. And then went pinballing between some heavy fixtures. And then whipped around a second pole and—
Whummmp!
I didn’t have time to brace myself, didn’t have time to do anything before he hit me, hard enough to knock the breath out of my lungs and send both of us careening through the air and past the swinging door and down a short hall and through another door that Ray had thankfully left open because otherwise I’d have been a small smear on the wood. But he had and I wasn’t and a second later the portal caught me, just a big gold swirl on a scuffed white wall that had never looked more welcoming.
At least it did until I slammed into something halfway through.
The opening to a portal doesn’t just give access to the no-space between worlds. It also violently propels you through it, grabbing you and giving you a heck of a push as soon as you break the surface. I’d always assumed that was so you didn’t end up trapped halfway, with nothing to provide enough traction to get you to your destination. That was still the theory, but it obviously didn’t
work all the time.
Because the something I’d just run into turned out to be somebody.
But the violence of the push I’d received was fresh and not particularly bothered by a little thing like picking up a two-hundred-pound passenger. The midportal collision was only a hiccup on the journey; it didn’t even slow me down. I had a half second to glimpse a stranger’s slack-jawed face, and then he and I were bursting out the other side, straight into the almost-dark of the twins’ basement bedroom.
Ray was there, staring at me with blue eyes made neon bright by the reflected light of the portal. But the twins weren’t. Which was a shame, since I could really have used an anchor right about then.
Because the stubborn SOB behind me wasn’t letting go.
Scarface must have grabbed something—maybe one of the hair dryers along the wall, maybe the wall itself, I didn’t know, but something solid—back in the salon. Because instead of tumbling to the ground along with the hitchhiker I’d locked desperate legs around, I bulleted out of the golden swirl, stared at Ray for half a second, and was then jerked backward with enough force to give me whiplash.
Which I guess had been the point, but what with the holey sternum and the half-missing face and the Gumby impression, my opponent wasn’t able to seize the moment. At least, I don’t think it was his plan to still be in place when me and whoever I’d picked up came barreling back through the tunnel. And hit the other side. And trampolined off a membrane of elastic vampire flesh before abruptly reversing course again.
I was getting a little seasick and more than a little dizzy, but I managed to get disentangled from my passenger before I shot out into the twins’ room again. That left me emerging butt first, which wasn’t ideal as far as landing, but it was good enough to allow Ray to get an improvised lasso around one of my ankles. Only I wasn’t sure if that was a good thing or not when I ended up jerked back into the vortex, where a half-crazed vampire was lying in wait.
And judging by the expression on his rapidly healing face, I thought he might be reevaluating that whole letting-me-live thing. But then he got a look at my former passenger, who the current had wafted back to us from somewhere above. I knew it was the current, because this guy clearly wasn’t going anywhere under his own steam ever again.
Shoulder-length black hair drifted around a dead white face, its eyes given the illusion of life by the portal’s glowing bands of psychedelic light. But illusion was all it was, judging from the slash of black across his throat. It was crusty and he was either bled out or so close it made no difference, so I was assuming this wasn’t recent. Also, either he was a vampire or somebody had decided to be thorough, because there was a stake buried hilt-deep in his chest.
He looked vaguely familiar, but I couldn’t place him. Something that obviously wasn’t true for Scarface. “Shit,” he croaked.
And then “Varus.”
And then he let me go.
Chapter Thirteen
“You are certain he said ‘Varus’?” Marlowe demanded, and then stuck his head into the portal before I could say anything.
Not that I’d been planning on it. I’d already answered that question, and a bunch of others, the best I could. Yes, I thought that’s what Scarface had said. No, I wasn’t one hundred percent sure. Yes, the dead guy had resembled the briefing pic I’d been given the night before. No, I couldn’t positively ID. I’d had all of a second to look at him, and he hadn’t exactly been at his best.
And for that matter, neither was I.
I was slumped at the bottom of the basement stairs, clutching a glass of whiskey and wishing it were stronger—or something else entirely. Yeah, something else would have been good, because even decent Bushmills was pretty much useless against whole-body whiplash. Every joint I had felt like it had been pulled out of place by a vengeful giant and then popped back in—more or less—to the point that just sitting hurt like a bitch.
Much less sitting and having to listen to Marlowe.
But I didn’t have much choice, since he and a couple of his servants had shown up right on the heels of the excitement, so soon that they must have been on their way here anyway. That wasn’t much of a surprise—I hadn’t really thought he was through with the Senate’s only eyewitness. But I had to admit to curiosity on one point.
I rotated my body to keep from having to move my neck, and looked at Claire, who was standing on the step above me. “I thought you weren’t letting him back in.”
She didn’t answer. She just looked at me, eyes wide and shocked, the way they’d been ever since I’d gotten back. Claire didn’t appear to find me funny right now.
That was okay; I wasn’t finding me too funny, either.
Or maybe she just couldn’t understand me. My voice sounded perfectly clear in my head, but what had come out of my mouth was a lot closer to the wah-wah-wah sound Peanuts characters hear when an adult is speaking. That probably had something to do with the crack my jaw had taken when Ray hauled me out of the portal’s gravity, which was pretty much nonexistent, and back into ours, which dislikes hovering humans for some reason.
My body had hit a pile of the twins’ dirty laundry, but my jaw had hit concrete. So along with whiplash I was now impersonating Popeye on the right-hand side. That wouldn’t have been so bad, given what could have happened tonight, except that it ensured that I still couldn’t eat. So in addition to weakness from the blood loss and generalized oww through every joint, I also had the bonus of clawing stomach pains.
So I wasn’t real thrilled when Marlowe pulled back inside and glared at me. “Describe him!”
“Leave her alone! Can’t you see she’s hurt?” Claire said, putting a hand on my shoulder. Which would have been more comforting if not for all the bruises.
“Ow,” I said indistinctly, and she snatched it back.
Marlowe was still looking at me, and he didn’t look much better than I did. At a guess, he’d been up for something like forty-eight hours, and unlike most vamps, he wasn’t bothering to hide it. His clothes were rumpled, his shoes were covered in caked mud, and his usually curly mop was sticking up in a way that would have been comical if not for the fierce white face below. He looked like he might have been leading the search for Varus ever since he’d left here, and now I was telling him that the guy had been dead the whole time.
But I couldn’t help that.
“I’ve already told you everything I know,” I said, as clearly as I could manage. “If you don’t believe—”
“I believe you,” he snarled. “That’s the problem.”
“Come again?”
“You aren’t the first person to find a body today,” he told me, trying to pace. But the twins hadn’t quite grasped the concept of housecleaning, and he almost immediately ran into another pile of random stuff. Which he kicked violently against a wall. “They’ve been turning up like flotsam in portals all over the city!”
“What?”
“I opened one at my own flat not two hours ago, only to find a corpse plastered against the security shield. Like a bloody bug on a windshield!”
I blinked. “Who was it?”
“One of Varus’s chief competitors. As were the others. We’ve retrieved members from three different families so far—that we know of.” His lips twisted. “The owners of the illegal portals have yet to report in.”
I frowned. “So you’re saying what? That Varus was cleaning house? Attacking us last night and then going after—”
“That was the initial theory, yes. It was thought that he was taking advantage of the Senate’s preoccupation with the war to set himself up as the undisputed leader of the smuggling world. And that the…calling cards…he shoved into the portal system were his way of announcing that fact.”
My frown grew. “How does that work? Even if the Senate ignored a slap in the face like last night—”
“That was not a slap. It was a direct challenge, and it will be answered!”
“But that’s the point. Did he thin
k you would just let him get away with—”
“We don’t know what he was thinking,” Marlowe said, sweetly vicious. “We intended to ask him, but somehow, I do not think he will be answering many questions now!”
No, I guessed not. I also guessed that I knew what Olga had wanted to talk to me about earlier. Probably wondering who the dead body was that I’d tossed into the portal.
“So what’s the theory?” I asked. “That there’s a new game in town? Or that one of his subordinates—”
Marlowe’s eyes flashed. “Thanks to you, we don’t have a theory!”
I started to point out that Varus’s death was hardly my fault, but I didn’t. Because Marlowe had thrown out a hand as if to punctuate his sentence, and something hit the wall like a shot. I jumped and Claire yelped, and then we both watched a two-inch crack run up and down, floor to ceiling, from an impact point the size of a cannonball made by absolutely nothing because nothing was there.
I stared at it blankly. The cellar had been built back when people took that shit seriously, and the walls were at least two feet thick. I knew that because that’s how far the impression into the bricks went.
Allllll righty then.
My mouth closed with a little pop. My jaw hurt like a bitch, anyway, and hey, I could ask questions later. But apparently someone else wasn’t feeling quite as intimidated.
“I want to know what you’re going to do about those men who attacked Dory!” Claire said hotly.
“They weren’t men,” Marlowe corrected, crossing his arms. Probably so he wouldn’t finish demolishing the house.
“Vampires, then!”
“Senior masters.”
“And that means what?”
“That means you have your answer.”
“Like hell I do!” she said, leaving the stairs to get in his face.
“Um, Claire…” I said, only to be completely ignored.
“You have witnesses!”
I started to get up, because Marlowe was in a scary mood. But to my surprise, his eyes softened slightly at the sight of the infuriated redhead invading his personal space, and his shoulders unclenched a trifle. “Your loyalty to your friend does you credit,” he told her shortly. “But it does not alter the facts.”