by Karen Chance
The creature fell away, spiraling to the ground like a wounded bird, and I grabbed the beam, barely able to avoid following him. I teetered there for a long moment, breathing harshly, strangely light-headed and terribly weak. I hated feeling weak.
I was also beginning to hate new experiences, but they were becoming…fairly…normal.…
The dizziness in my head was going to reach my limbs soon enough, so I jumped, giving myself time to find the ground my own way. It was farther than I should have risked, but a vampire broke my fall. He didn’t complain, being as unconscious as the rest of them.
And as the light being lying crumpled on the floor, not five yards away.
I knew I should leave. I was weak and he was powerful, and I had been lucky enough to catch him off guard. I shouldn’t press it.
But the psychic scream would leave him unconscious for a few minutes at least, and I wanted to know…
Why he looked like her.
His light hadn’t dimmed. It was spangling the weather-beaten walls and splashing the ugly floor with a pure white luminescence. He had landed on his side, huge wings spread out behind him, and I had been wrong. I had thought they were made of light, some projection of his aura, but they were real. Soft but strong under my hands, like the shoulder I finally grasped, and the face I revealed when I tugged him over.
A face with wide-open eyes, and dark irises reflecting my own startled face.
“That was a good trick,” he told me softly. “Want to see another?”
And he slid into my mind, smooth as glass.
Lightning flashed, thunder boomed, and I sat bolt upright, sucking a harsh gulp of air into screaming lungs. I felt the bolt all the way through my head, a flash of agony across my temples, pain exploding behind my eyes. I didn’t know where I was and it was pitch-dark and something was moving off to the side.
I screamed as it brushed my face, a whisper-soft caress that was somehow more ominous than a blow. And then I grabbed it, far slower than my usual speed, but quick enough to—
Capture the delicate sheer from over a window.
I couldn’t see the window, couldn’t see anything, but the silky fabric was cool with the night breeze, and smelled faintly of a soft drizzle falling somewhere outside. It was safe, it was nothing to worry about. It was just a stupid piece of fabric.
So let go of it, Dory, I told myself, as my clutching fingers stayed stubbornly shut.
I finally pried my fist loose and let the curtain fall back into place. My eyes had adjusted, and I could see a tall rectangle of dark gray with what might have been tree branches outside, whipping in the breeze. I decided to go with that thought, because I didn’t think my heart could take another jolt. It was already threatening to slam its way through my ribs as it was.
Where the hell was I? I’d just been at Central with Ray and Radu. Hadn’t I? And something had gone wrong, something about vampires and necromancers and…
God, my head hurt.
I lowered it into my shaking hands and closed my eyes, but it didn’t help. Pieces of reality and the tattered fragments of a dream tumbled around in my mind like trash in a whirlwind, impossible to sort out. Particularly when I was in pain.
A lot of it, I realized, as my thudding pulse sent heated beams flashing back and forth between my ankle and my head, kindly stopping along the way to light up a dozen other hot spots around my body. Like a commuter train of pain. Or like a giant had grabbed me and twisted, trying to pull me apart—and damned near succeeded.
Everything hurt, from the wounds I could remember getting, like the throbbing ache in my calf from the piece of metal I’d fallen onto in the elevator, to the ones I couldn’t, like the slick skin on my hands and arms, new and too smooth, like freshly healed burns. Or the pain in my jaw, as if it had been dislocated at some point and then shoved back into place. Or the bullet wound in—
I decided to stop counting.
But maybe that was why I felt so strung out, so unraveled. My cheeks were hot, and when I put a hand up, it came away wet. I rubbed the moisture between my fingers, confused. The pain wasn’t that bad. And I couldn’t remember the last time I’d cried. I couldn’t remember.…
“Dory?”
My head jerked up, my heart in my throat, but I still couldn’t see much. Just velvety darkness, seamless and unbroken, except for a wedge of misty gray seeping in through an opening door. It looked like maybe there was a treeless window in the next room and diffuse beams of moonlight were spilling over.
Just enough to limn the shape of a man.
I couldn’t make out features, but I didn’t need to. Didn’t need the breadth of shoulder or the glimmer of liquid eyes that were all the faint light would show. He stepped beside the bed and the scent was enough, rich, sweet, and completely addictive—
“Butterscotch,” I murmured, and reached for him.
“What?”
I didn’t answer; I just kept tugging at him with all the strength of an anorexic puppy. But he came anyway, sliding a knee onto the smooth cotton sheets and then lying down next to me. He had on a robe, some silky thing. I pulled it off. I needed warmth and skin and—
Yes.
“You’re not supposed to be awake,” he told me softly. And then he tried to gather me up. But that wasn’t what I wanted.
“No.” I pushed at him, ineffectually.
“What is it?”
“Little spoon.”
“You are hungry?”
I didn’t answer, because he wasn’t making sense. I just arranged him the way I wanted, needed. A big, warm, muscle-y pillow that I could drape myself around, like a child with a favorite toy.
A toy with a lot of hair. A mass like silk hit me in the face, making it hard to breathe. I pushed it up and over the soft mound of the pillow, and then snuggled up behind him, pressing my face to a neck that smelled like—
Yes.
Yes.
I took a deep breath, and sighed it out into his ear.
“Ah,” he said, a hand covering the one I’d placed on his stomach, as I pulled him back against me. “I see.”
I sighed again, my whole body relaxing. The pain, the confusion, all of it releasing, slipping away. Like the room. And then a thought occurred, right on the edge of sleep.
“If I’m not supposed to be awake, why are you here?” I mumbled.
“To be the little spoon.”
And okay, that made sense.
I pulled him closer and fell off the cliff. And this time, I didn’t dream.
Chapter Twenty-nine
I awoke a second time to sunlight seeping over the bed, which freaked me out until I realized that Louis-Cesare wasn’t there. Nobody was. I lay in the middle of an orgy-sized bed without the orgy, or anybody for company except a butterfly flirting with the sheers over the window.
I was hugging a comforter, which was big and plushy, but a lot less satisfying than its owner would have been. And Louis-Cesare was its owner, I thought blearily, gazing around. Because if ever a room had matched the man…
The walls were cream, topped by an elaborate molding done in little rosettes and curlicues and swags, to match the surround on a fireplace and the thin stripe on the blue Louis-the-something chairs in front of it. It would have been a little too precious, a little too feminine—except for the heavy curtains framing the tall French windows.
They were thick, midnight blue velvet, a huge stretch of it, easily twelve feet long, and not the synthetic stuff, either. Plush and buttery and vaguely medieval, they looked like they should have been gracing a Roman emperor’s tent, or some barbaric king’s chamber. Like the exposed beams in the ceiling and the rough planks on the floor.
The room reminded me of its owner, all genteel old-world manners on the surface but something more primitive below. I preferred the primitive, but I couldn’t deny that the veneer had its charms. Like the view outside the windows, where garlands of fat white roses were nodding in a breeze. Possibly the one stirred up by the yellow bu
tterflies that were feasting on the abundance, so thick in places that they looked like another kind of flower.
It was…well, it was stupidly beautiful.
It was also really weird.
Not the view, but the fact that I was looking at it. I’d expected to wake up at the consul’s, despite the fact that that would not have been fun for so very many reasons. Like the last time I’d visited, when I’d thought my head was going to explode. The sheer number of vampires—strong, highly ranked ones—buzzing around in there had set my dhampir blood to boiling, and made me feel like a few thousand ants were running across my skin.
Bitey, angry ants.
But we’d been headed there, since as far as I knew, that was the only place Central’s portal went. And since I wasn’t dead, I assumed we’d made it. So why was I lying in a bed that smelled like Louis-Cesare? In a room that looked like it had been designed for him?
I didn’t know, and right then I didn’t care. Possibly because I was starving to death. Or maybe for another reason. I sat up and the world went swimmy, a slur of yellow and white and midnight blue that would have been pretty if I hadn’t thought that maybe I was going to throw up.
I flopped back against the pillows, wondering what the hell? Because I hadn’t been hurt that bad, had I? I couldn’t remember anything after being plucked off my feet by Radu, but I didn’t think so. And all the parts seemed to be accounted for, which was always a good sign. And while my rash of bruises had acquired another layer, I could live with it. I could live with a lot if the room would just stop spinning already.
But there was nothing to do except lie there and admire the view while it did its thing, until it finally got bored and quit. I stayed put a few more minutes, just to make sure, because puking in somebody’s bed is not the way to get invited back. But my stomach felt okay all of a sudden. In fact, it was up and ready to rumble—or to yell at me to feed it something already.
I fell out of bed, because it was becoming kind of a habit now. And because the mattress gave me a support to help get me to my feet. And because my stomach was demanding that I follow the fragrance of frying butter that was seeping in from…somewhere.
It smelled so good that I was halfway to the door before I realized I was naked.
I grabbed the only thing available—a huge blue brocade robe that had puddled at the foot of the bed and then at my feet once I dragged it on. But it covered the bruises and it smelled better than whatever was coming from downstairs. Which was saying something, considering how hungry I was.
Then I went looking for breakfast.
I didn’t meet anybody on the way, which wasn’t too surprising. Judging by the view out the window, it was high noon, and the closest thing to hell in the vampire day. Most would be sleeping through it, waiting for nightfall, particularly the younger ones. Some of the masters were undoubtedly up for security’s sake, but they must have been patrolling somewhere else, because I didn’t see them.
I did see a ton of rooms that didn’t look like they were involved in a reno. Not unless the default around here was “palace.” There wasn’t a half-painted wall or a drop cloth or a half-filled packing box in sight. Just room after room filled with fresh flowers and old paintings and sparkly chandeliers and rugs so luxurious that my bare toes were hardly visible over the nap.
And mirrors. Lots and lots of mirrors, each and every one showing me back an image that didn’t belong here, that didn’t go with any of the above. So it was kind of a relief to follow my nose down a small access stairwell and into a huge underground kitchen.
Where a couple of vampires were arguing over a stove.
“Eet ees an abomination,” Verrell was saying, his entire frame vibrating in indignation.
“You haven’t even tried it yet,” Ray said, poking at something in a pan. He’d finally acquired some new clothes, I was relieved to see—just jeans, loafers and a bright orange polo, but far better than the jungle man getup. “And anyway, you’re one to talk. If there was anything to eat around here, I wouldn’t have needed to call my boys to—”
“Nothing to eat?” Verrell gestured around expansively at the long rows of cabinets and the walk-in pantry and the two fridges wedged in between old stone countertops. “Zere is everything!”
“Blood sausage. Tripe. Freaking pâté, man.” Ray shook his head.
“And what ees wrong wiz zee pâté?”
“What is wrong? You take a duck, shove corn down its throat until it pukes, and call it cuisine?”
Verrell drew himself up. “You are zee Philistine,” he accused, pointing at whatever was in the pan. “And zat ees not food. Zat ees not even—” He caught sight of me standing in the doorway. “Ah, zere, you see? She ees up and nothing is ready!”
Ray looked over his shoulder, and waved a greasy spatula at me. “Ignore him. It’s almost done. Get some beer, will ya?”
He nodded at a couple of brown paper grocery bags on the counter, and I moseyed over to have a look. There was beer. Three different kinds. And snacks, most of which I didn’t think were long for this world if Verrell’s expression was anything to go by. Apparently, Slim Jims did not count as food, either. I tossed a brew at Ray and got one for myself, and sat down at a big wooden table, stomach rumbling.
“I’m introducing Verrell to the wonders of fried egg sandwiches,” Ray said, flipping one of the components onto a piece of buttered toast. He slapped some Velveeta and another slice of toast on top and squashed the whole ooey-gooey mess with his spatula in the frying pan for a minute. Then he slid it onto a plate and set the plate in front of me.
I took it a little warily, because I hadn’t known that Ray could cook. But it was perfect—the sandwich part crisp and buttery and the yolk just a little runny with the white browned around the edges. I dug in.
“See?” Ray said to Verrell, looking smug.
“She ees starving. Eet ees not a fair test.”
“I think I’m gonna crumble some potato chips in the next one,” Ray said, eyes narrowing. Verrell squinted back. And then suddenly the brown bags of goodness were gone, the pudgy chef booking it out of the kitchen with one under each arm.
“You’re not gonna chase him down?” I asked a little wistfully. Because this was not a one-sandwich morning.
“Relax,” Ray told me, and pulled up the edge of a kitchen towel. “I got more.”
And sure enough, there was more faux cheese under there—but no potato chips. Too bad. It had sounded kind of intriguing.
Ray lost no time in getting to work on a replacement, and I went back to making room for it. So there wasn’t a lot of talking until he slid plate number two under my nose. And sat down opposite me with one of his own.
“So, your guys are here?” I asked, butter dripping down my chin.
Ray saw and grinned. “Yeah. Louis-Cesare said he didn’t mind, and they’re safer here, at least till I can get things worked out.”
“And where is Louis-Cesare?”
Ray rolled his eyes. “Getting his ass chewed, probably.”
“Why?”
He looked up, halfway through a bite. “Oh, man.”
“Oh, man what?”
“Oh, man, I knew you didn’t remember.”
“Remember what?”
“What happened after we came through the portal.” He looked at me in amazement. “You don’t, do you?”
No, and I was suddenly thinking that might be best. I didn’t usually get a description of one of my blackouts that made me happy. Or, actually, ever.
But Ray was already telling me.
“It was crazy. I was trying to hack the portal and Radu was rapid-fire guessing passwords, and I’m not sure which of us succeeded but I think maybe it was both. Or maybe that thing is just so damned powerful—I mean, did you see it on the other end?”
“No.”
“Oh, yeah. Well, anyway, it’s huge. And when we broke the seal it just flat out grabbed us—and not just us, but half the guys in the corridor.”
“Oh, yeah. Fire and all. And that damned master, you know, Marlowe’s guy?”
Frick. I nodded.
“Well, he just didn’t quit. He grabbed hold of you halfway through the portal and then we were tumbling around and Radu was trying to beat him off you but there wasn’t time and then all of us shot out the other end. And I mean shot, like we must have gone two, three dozen yards, fighting and yelling and rolling and smoking.” Ray waved a beer bottle around. “It was crazy!”
“I bet.”
“And I hit a wall and almost got my head stove in, and by the time I got back to my feet, people were pouring in from everywhere and you and that master zombie were going at it and your eyes had gone all glowy and you’d ripped his damned arm off and were beating him with it—”
“I did not.”
“Oh, yeah. You so did. Only it was more the fire that got him in the end. You round-kicked him and he hit the wall and kinda went poof, just crumbled—”
“And then that was it?” I asked—hopefully, because Ray’s expression was kind of looking like that hadn’t been it.
“Oh, hell no. I mean, it might’ve been, but you didn’t stop. You were completely freaking out—just attacking everybody.”
I stopped chewing, my appetite suddenly evaporating. “I went dhampir at the consul’s?”
“Oh yeah. Big-time. It took like a dozen of ’em to hold you down and I didn’t know if even that was going to be enough. You kept throwing them off, and they were hitting the walls and flying into the air and—and you shoulda seen a few of their faces. It was priceless.”
Yeah. Priceless.
I got another beer. “But that ended it, right? I mean, when the guards arrived—”
“Oh, the guards weren’t doing shit,” he said dismissively. “They tried, but the only people getting anywhere were the upper-level masters who saw you chewing up the guards and started lending a hand. Only they were having problems, too. And I think a few people were starting to get worried, ’cause a couple drew weapons. And then Radu started yelling at them, and then Louis-Cesare ran in—”