by Karen Chance
Slava and I were heading straight for a hard ribbon of sidewalk snaking through the park when something caught me. For a second I thought the charm had suddenly reengaged, until the force of being jerked skyward again almost bisected me, and caused me to lose my grip on the frozen bullet. Which continued on our former trajectory, plowing through the air and then—
“No!” I yelled, but it was too late. Slava hit the ground at something like eighty miles an hour, with a sound like a gun going off. And he didn’t shatter like the other vamp so much as disintegrate. Some larger pieces hit the ground here and there, but a good third of the body went up in a cloud of sparkling, icy particles that melted on the hot August breeze, shimmering away into nothingness as I watched.
I cursed silently, too out of breath for anything else, but someone heard.
“You’re welcome,” a rich voice said behind me.
My feet gently touched down on springy grass a moment later, and I whirled drunkenly around to see Slava’s floor show standing in front of me. He looked a little different, with those huge wings outspread, blocking half the sky. Until they folded up against his back again, somehow managing not to tangle in the long black hair.
The eyes were the same color, darker than mine, to the point that they didn’t seem to have a pupil as they regarded me quizzically. “For such a small creature, you cause a lot of trouble.”
“So people…keep telling me,” I said, dizzy and weaponless, and wondering what this new hell was.
But hell wasn’t looking particularly threatening. If anything, hell looked vaguely amused. “Those people would be correct. But you are, if you’ll forgive me, playing a tad outside your league.”
“And what league…would that be?”
But he just shook his head. “This is more dangerous than you can handle, dhampir.”
“I can handle a lot.”
“And that goes for your people, as well.” He smiled at me gently. “Tell them to leave it to us.”
“Who is us?” I yelled—at no one. Because he was suddenly airborne again, his massive wings beating the night hard enough to knock me down. And by the time I got back to my—very shaky—feet, he was gone.
Leaving me with a dead vamp, a bunch of bruises and no answers.
Chapter Twenty-four
“Okay, very funny. Now let me in!”
Nothing. I might as well have been talking to the brick wall instead of the speaker set into it. And it did not make me happy.
It was raining, Verrell’s omelet was long gone, and I had a dead vampire in my trunk. And considering that the damned Senate were the ones who had wanted him so freaking bad, the least they could do was open the door. I pushed the button again, a long, sustained buzz that I really hoped gave somebody in there a headache, but the result was the same.
Great.
I got out, leaving my car blocking the entrance to the garage, and skirted the building. The East Coast Office of the North American Vampire Senate, Central Manhattan Branch, aka Central, was located in a mansion built around the turn of the century by some robber baron with more cash than taste. Improvements had been made in the years since, but most of them had involved privacy. Which was why, despite the glass inserts in the ornate mahogany doors, I saw only my own face staring back at me: pale, bruised skin, mascara that had run everywhere, and rain dripping off the end of my nose.
It was spotting my new leather jacket.
Goddamn it.
I should have left the jacket in my car, but I’d needed it for modesty’s sake, since Marlowe’s magical fabric hadn’t proven so magical after all. Of course, it might have been fine if it hadn’t started raining halfway through the long hike back to Slava’s. Which I’d chosen over explaining to a cabbie why I was wandering around Manhattan looking like a war victim.
So in addition to being bruised and bloody and barefoot, I was close to indecent by the time I slogged ten blocks in a downpour.
And found Slava’s all but deserted.
The guests had fled, Æsubrand had taken off immediately after I had, and Marlowe and his senior vamps had taken off after him. The younger ops had been left to pacify the human authorities, who were out in force by the time I returned, and to chisel out the ice cubes upstairs, who were being carted away for interrogation on the off chance that they knew anything. And to deal with me.
Only they hadn’t seemed to know how to deal with me. They hadn’t said anything as one of them brought my car around, and another gave me his phone—because mine was in my purse and my purse was God-knew-where—probably so the boss could call and cuss me out later. And then a third handed me a couple of trash bags, because Marlowe wanted a delivery.
Oh yes, he did.
I’d stared at the vamp and he’d had the grace to look embarrassed, because we both knew what this was. Okay, yes, some top-notch necromancers, like the kind the Senate had on call, could occasionally extract information from a recently dead vamp brain. But “recent” did not equal the hour and a half Slava had been out of commission by the time I dragged him back. The necromancers who had prowled the battlefields in the bad old days, searching for important corpses to brain-loot, had known they had only minutes at best. And those corpses hadn’t been frozen, broken into chunks and half vaporized.
So, yeah, I was going with the revenge theory. But I’d taken the damned bags anyway, because I doubted I’d get paid for tonight—and I was so getting paid for tonight—if I didn’t. And because it was SOP to clean up your own mess, especially when it involved a bunch of vamp parts littering a popular tourist area. And now all I wanted was to drop them off and have this nightmare of an evening finally be over.
Only I couldn’t if nobody ever let me in.
I pulled out my phone and stabbed in Marlowe’s number, even though it was already programmed, just for the satisfaction. But I may as well have saved myself the trouble. I wiped the rain off the phone’s little face and the mystery was solved: no bars.
I shook it, even though that never helps.
It didn’t this time, either.
“You’re going to make me do it, aren’t you?” I demanded.
Apparently, it was.
I gave in and performed the traditional dance to the cell phone gods, holding it up, turning it around, doing the hokey pokey and restraining a strong impulse to smash it against the wall. And nada. Unless you want to count a sad little blip, which I assumed was the electronic version of the finger.
I shoved the useless thing back into my pocket and looked up at the discreet camera hidden inside some elaborate stonework, knowing that someone was getting a belly laugh at my expense. I didn’t bother to scowl back. The problem with being five feet two, dimpled and female is that no matter what your reputation, most people are going to underestimate you.
Even people who ought to know better.
I sloshed back to my car and got in.
There were advantages, I reflected as I backed up, to driving a piece of crap. Like you didn’t have to worry about leaving coffee rings on the dash or getting mud on the carpet, and finding the occasional fossilized French fry was more a source of wonder than a reason to freak out. You also didn’t let the thought of a few new dents bother you. Like when you put it in drive and floored it, spraying water and mud while gunning straight for the lousy security door that nobody had ever bothered to replace. Because who would be crazy enough to break in to a mansion full of vampires?
Guess they found out, I thought, grinning as my ancient Firebird tore through the flimsy wooden shell over the entrance and flew down a corridor, burning rubber straight into the well-maintained interior.
Which for some reason smelled like ass.
I skidded to a halt beside some beautiful old exposed brickwork. As always, the place looked more like the nineteenth-century carriage house it had once been than a parking garage, with dark wooden beams and original tack on the walls. Unlike always, it smelled like the horses were still in residence.
Rottin
g, diseased horses, I thought, wrinkling my nose as I got out.
The lights were flickering, like the storm was causing electrical problems. But not enough that I couldn’t see that the damage was minimal. And hey, the bumper had been lumpy anyway. I went around and popped the trunk.
And dear God.
It looked like I owed the horses an apology, because I had found the stink and the stink was me. Or, at least my passenger, who had still been more or less frozen when I picked him up, but no more. Slava was sloshing around in his little Baggies, one pale blue eye staring through the film like a goldfish being carted home from the store. And reeking like a three-day-old corpse left out in the sun.
I swallowed, suddenly less concerned about dinner. It looked like my mad dash had ruptured a bag, and something absolutely foul was leaking out. And yeah, vamps decay faster than humans, having a head start on the whole dead thing. But damn.
And now I was going to have to drag him all the way upstairs.
I looked up, hoping for some outraged staff coming to bitch at me about the door, fully intending to pawn Mr. Slushy off on them. But either they were really in a mood or they’d been warned about what I had in the trunk, because no dice. I grumbled something uncomplimentary about their ancestors and leaned in to grab bag #1.
And was grabbed back by bag #2.
For a second, I just stood there, years of experience no match for the sight of a half-liquefied arm trying to choke me to death. But I snapped out of it before it snapped me, and I grasped the slimy surface—only to have the remaining skin slough off like a molting snake. I choked down nausea and staggered back, tearing at veins and sinew and protruding bone, while cold, gelatinous fingers clawed at me.
I couldn’t seem to get a grip on the slimy flesh, so I pulled a knife from my jacket and sawed through the wrist, causing the hideous thing to spasm away from my neck. It dropped like a bloody spider onto the ground, or maybe a hand in a fingerless glove. Because the fleshy tips had come away, leaving only the bare bones sticking out.
Which I suppose is why it made a clicking noise on the concrete when it suddenly lunged at me again.
I pulled the mage’s .45, which I’d reloaded in the car because it isn’t paranoia when shit like this happens all the freaking time. And nailed it straight through palm. And then I shot it again. And again. And then one more time because gah!
I didn’t stop until it was a bunch of tiny, unconnected pieces twitching uselessly on the floor and I was panting and trembling and seriously revolted.
And then I noticed that my hands were on fire.
Not literally, but it sure as hell felt that way, and it wasn’t my crazed imagination. Angry pinkish red blisters were rising from my skin as I watched. And I didn’t need to feel my neck to know that the same thing was happening there, like acid had splattered me wherever that thing had touched.
And not just me. The floor underneath the remains of the hand was blackening, while a nauseating yellow fluid seeped from the flesh and boiled into the air, adding to the stink. And to the whole skin-tightening horror thing we had going on in here.
And that was before my trunk started to spew out the rest of bag #2 in gory chunks.
One got caught in an oil stain from somebody’s car and writhed around, like an eel in water—except that eels don’t usually set oil on fire. But others were making more headway, leaving blackened, bloody trails on the ground as they wriggled and clawed and slimed in my direction. And okay, I thought, backing the hell up, money was a good and fine thing, but on the whole, I really thought the Senate could have this one.
I turned around and started for the ramp—and the door and the rain-soaked street, which, yeah, was looking pretty good right about now.
Only I wasn’t going to be seeing it anytime soon, as I discovered when I started up the ramp. And smacked straight into something I couldn’t see, but that packed a wallop, sending me rolling back down the incline again, smoking and swearing. And looking up to see an imprint of my body at the impact point, weirdly inverted face, flailing limbs and all, etched on what appeared to be thin air.
It wasn’t. The glowing bluish me faded in seconds, leaving only a ghostly outline flickering in the ominous lighting. But the reason for it remained: someone had turned on the Senate’s wards, which probably explained why the lights were messed up and why my phone hadn’t worked. Wards as big as the Senate’s played havoc with electrical devices.
They also kept things out really effectively.
Like ’89 Firebirds, for instance.
So either someone had just raised them, coincidentally right after I arrived, or someone had dropped them to let me through and then raised them again right after. And for some reason, neither of those options was making me feel all that great. And that was before somebody screamed, a high, ear-shattering sound that sent me back to one knee before I’d finished getting to my feet.
I looked around, dizzy and disoriented, trying to figure out the direction. But it was a little hard when all I could see was a slurry of bricks and cars and impossible horrors all sliding together in a gut-wrenching stream of what-the-hell. And then whoever-it-was did it again.
From inside my head.
“Shut up!” I yelled, smacking my blistered hand down on the floor, hoping the pain would help clear my messed-up brain. It didn’t, but something else happened, although I wasn’t sure it was an improvement.
Because suddenly I was hearing voices.
“Wha—who? Is someone there? Who is that? Who is THAT?”
“Stop. Screaming,” I grated out, because the voice had almost been as loud as the initial shriek.
“Whoisthatyoutellmerightnow!”
“Augggh!” I replied, because a pinkish blur had taken that moment to come soaring at me through the air.
I managed to put a bullet in it, and it flew back, squelching against something out of sight. Which didn’t make me feel much better, because the other things had figured out that they could jump, too—I guess by muscle contraction, although I really wasn’t into analyzing it right then. I was into not letting them get on me, which meant shooting them out of the air while scooting backward through a room that was still fun-housing around me.
And while a hysterical voice demanded that I save its ass.
“Would you shut up until I save mine?” I hissed, and it abruptly cut off.
With the reduction in sound came an easing of the carnival ride in my brain, allowing me to scramble behind a concrete barrier. I crouched there, eyeing the approaching hoard of vamp parts in disbelief and trying to slam home a new clip. It was the second of only two I’d had in my emergency kit, because I don’t use a .45 that much.
Or at all, if I couldn’t get this one in, which was taking forever because of the blisters.
And maybe because a random bit of Slava had just leapt off the floor and smacked against the barrier. And then another and another, splattering the other side like acid freaking rain. Until one missed, flying over my head and taking out the windshield on a BMW.
I stared at the cracks spidering across the supposedly shatterproof glass. And decided I could really live without finding out what that felt like. I slammed the clip home and moved.
Tap, tap, tap.
I swear, it felt exactly like a finger hitting the inside of my skull. I had a sudden vivid image of that annoying paper clip guy that Microsoft created to torment people. It looks like you’re having a nervous breakdown. Would you like some help? I thought wildly, and flung myself behind a car.
“What? What did you say?” The voice was back.
I ignored it, being kind of busy not dying. It was like the damned things knew where I was. I was doing everything right—keeping low, using the cars as cover—but wherever I went, they took out windows, dented doors and sent the smell of molten rubber into the air when they smacked into tires.
It was like being in the world’s grossest shooting gallery.
It was also impossible.
&
nbsp; Leaving aside that no vampire could still be alive after that kind of damage, there was the fact that even magical creatures have physical rules. Whacked-out physical rules, but still. And without some kind of sensory organs, there was simply no way for them to—
Tap, tap, tap.
Is this thing on? I thought irrelevantly.
“Stop it! Stop it right now! Oh my God, this is typical. This is so— They finally send someone after me and she’s insane.”
“Only part of the time,” I said, because for some reason, talking to myself didn’t seem all that strange right now.
There was a sudden silence. And then the floodgates broke. “Dory? Dorina? Oh God, oh my God, is that you?”
“Yes, and I’m kind of busy—”
“Don’t give me that! You come get me, do you hear me? Youcomegetmerightnow—”
“Radu?” I cocked my head, because that particular brand of shrill entitlement belonged to only one guy.
“OF COURSE IT’S ME! Who else has been screaming for help for the last twenty minutes? Where the hell have you been?”
“Twenty minutes?” I repeated, in disbelief. Because whatever else could be said about the Senate, it reacted smartly in a crisis. “Who did you call?”
“Anybody! Everybody! What, do you think I’m going to be picky when I’m facing THAT?”
And suddenly I was getting not just sounds in my head but visuals, too. There was a stomach-churning second of disorientation as my head stayed completely still and yet also whipped around, and then I was staring at a glass wall in what looked like a lab. And on the other side—
“What the hell are those?” I demanded, staring through Radu’s eyes at a bunch of…well, they were vampires. I knew this because I’d seen them less than two hours ago, frozen on top of a building. Which was why it was a little odd to find them currently up and mobile and scratching at the glass, including one still half encased in ice—
“WHAT DO THEY LOOK LIKE?”
I knew what they looked like, but that wasn’t possible, that was just crazy, because vampires didn’t—