by Karen Chance
And found portals opening everywhere when we hit the great hall, and I do mean everywhere. One appeared in the floor almost under our feet, even before we managed to exit the stairwell, swallowing up the last few steps and almost swallowing us. We leapt across as creatures started crawling out, clearing them by inches, only to hit the ice rink the floor had become and slide into the thick of the fight.
Which, ironically, was the only thing that saved us.
Marlowe’s boys had been fighting back-to-back against a mob of the bird-type things that had attacked Anthony. They were losing, which I couldn’t understand since they seemed to outnumber the creatures. Until one of the guards turned my way.
I froze, partway to my feet, staring into the face of a vamp wearing the shoulders of a golden breastplate. It was all he had left after what looked like giant talons had ripped away the rest, and most of the flesh underneath. His heart was gone, his chest just a raw cavern of broken ribs and shredded lungs, his throat savaged.
Yet he was on his feet.
But not due to his own power.
“Dory!” Ray cried, and jerked me back. But Ray couldn’t get any traction, and I still had the damned heels on because I’d been afraid my feet would freeze to the floor otherwise. So instead of getting away, we hit the ground again, just as the zombie lunged—
And had a thrashing mass of Weres fall on his head.
Judging by their expressions, I don’t think they’d expected their portal to open over a sixteen-foot drop. And startled Weres have exactly one reaction. They demonstrated it by attacking everything in sight, giving our guys a moment to regroup and us a chance to scramble out of the way. And duck into a dark alcove, because there was nowhere else to go.
Busts and statues were cracking and falling in huge chunks. Lights were bursting and raining down glittering glass. Bullets were whizzing around thick and fast, and creating an impossible-to-navigate obstacle course down the whole length of the corridor. And then there were the portals, which worried me more than the rest, since there seemed to be no rhyme or reason to them, no way to predict where the next one would show up.
Because it didn’t look like the other side cared.
One sprang into existence in front of the wall just down from us, which would have been bad. Except it was maybe a foot away from the marble and facing it. That left the vaguely lizard-type things inside scrabbling uselessly against the flat, shiny surface as more and more tried to push through, until the ones in front finally turned around and tore into the ones threatening to crush them from behind.
None of them made it out.
But the creatures in a second portal had it worse, when their doorway on the world opened in what would have been a prime spot in the middle of the hall—if another portal hadn’t already been occupying it. And no, I’d never stopped to wonder what would happen if a portal tried to open inside another one. But I would have guessed that maybe you ended up with two metaphysical “tubes” running one inside the other.
Only apparently not.
What you got instead was a blur of color as the two portals met, but didn’t meld. The currents started fighting it out, which in turn began pulling them out of shape, distorting the usual round openings into odd and conflicting shapes. Which probably wasn’t good for them but was even worse for the creatures trying to come through.
“Duck!” Ray screamed, as a slurry of bones and fur and mangled flesh was suddenly flung around, like someone had stuck a knife in a blender.
But other than for dropping into a squat, we didn’t move, because there was simply nowhere to go. If a squad of master vampires couldn’t break out of this corridor, Ray and I sure as hell weren’t going to do it. But the odds on getting back to the stairs weren’t looking that great, either, since the battle had shifted and the fighting was taking place right in front of them now. But we couldn’t stay here much longer without—
I stopped, my thoughts skidding to a halt as a third portal caught my attention.
Not because of what came out this time, since it was already open.
But because of what went in.
Nothing much. Just a couple of the hundreds of spent casings rolling underfoot, which had been kicked this way in the scuffle. And which had fallen into the portal, because the bottom of it was intersecting the floor.
Fallen in and hadn’t come back out.
I looked at Ray. “Did you see—”
“No.”
“But I think it’s—”
“I know what it is!” he said feverishly. “And we’re not jumping into some random portal when we don’t know where it goes. We are not ending up any-freaking-where! We are not doing this, do you understand? For once we are not going to take the craziest possible—”
I didn’t try to convince him. I didn’t have to. The Senate’s men had been getting pounded by an army of creatures whose abilities they couldn’t have known about because they weren’t supposed to exist. And by the steadily worsening odds, as portal after portal spit out reinforcements that our side didn’t have. And by the fact that every time they lost a colleague, he or she abruptly ended up on the other side.
Facing them.
Marlowe’s boys were well trained, but they weren’t used to having to hack apart the bodies of their fallen friends. Or to being abandoned by their own kind. Or to having a portal full of gelatinous, acid-filled creatures open in the ceiling directly overhead and start to rain down fiery death.
The first sizzling lump had barely squelched against the floor when they broke and ran.
I didn’t blame them.
Only they couldn’t retreat, because of the mass of civilians behind them, most of whom hadn’t made it out of the ballroom. So they surged forward, running into the minefield of portals ahead. Because they’d last longer there than they would standing in a rain of unquenchable fire.
And they took the creatures they’d been fighting right along with them.
There was no hiding from those kinds of numbers, no standing and facing them. There was only one option that didn’t equal certain death, and I guess Ray felt the same. Because when I jumped for the maw of the suspicious portal, he jumped right along with me.
Something snatched at my arm, something else tore my dress, and a breath hot as fire skimmed along my neck—for an instant. And then the portal grabbed us and threw us around and spit us out. Onto a long, rectangular balcony in what looked like some kind of cave, with a line of fiery blue swirls dotting the side of a rock-cut wall beside us.
And a bunch of men and fey who looked kind of surprised to see us there.
For a second, we looked at them and they looked at us, and yeah, they were Svarestri, all right. At least the fey were. The war mages with them were typical—old leather trenches, ass-kicking boots and a crap ton of weapons. They looked a little grubby next to the fey, with their silver eyes and silver hair and haughty expressions, though the last were kind of overwritten by shock at the moment.
“Well, I don’t know what I expected,” Ray said blankly.
And then we were diving back into the portal, the wrong way around because there was no time to turn—or to avoid the hail of bullets that came after us. But we landed as we’d fallen—on our backs—less than a second before the barrage whizzed by overhead, one bullet cutting through my hair on my way to the floor. Then I was rolling and jumping and getting back on my feet—
And slamming back down, because they were shooting on this side, too.
We’d ended up back in the great hall, just as a new group of guards appeared from the ballroom. They started laying down a deadly salvo ahead of them, which flew over our heads since we were hugging the ground. But that wouldn’t be a huge help in a second, because they were coming our way.
And they didn’t look like they planned on stopping.
Ray and I dove back inside the portal as a solid wave of heavy-booted feet pounded toward us, since friendly fire kills you just as dead as the other kind. We found the same group of bad guys st
anding about three yards ahead of us on the other side. Only they were facing away from us this time, having an animated conversation, I guess on the assumption that we wouldn’t come back out the same portal.
And you know what they say about assumptions.
I dropped three of them with the vamp’s gun before the rest even turned around, and then we threw ourselves backward, hoping like hell that the charge was over.
It was, only it didn’t look like it had been too successful. Because the vamps were now coming back this way, chased by what looked like half the corridor, and that same trick wasn’t likely to work twice. I guess Ray didn’t think so, either, because he picked me up and threw me out of the way, which would have been great if I hadn’t hit the consul’s marble wall quite so hard.
And if he’d been able to get out, too.
And he might have—if four fey hands hadn’t reached out of the portal and dragged him back again. No, I don’t think so, I thought savagely, hugging the wall as guards and things pounded past, ignoring me in their rush. And then lurching for the portal again.
Only to find something in my way.
A big something. I looked up to see a handsome, blood-flecked face with dark eyes and hair and a tiger prowling around the side of it. Zheng.
“Where do you think you’re going?” he demanded.
“In there,” I growled, trying to push past, but he grabbed me with one huge, overmuscled arm. I could see it because he’d lost his tux jacket and his shirt had taken a beating. But not as much as he was about to. “Let me go!” I told him furiously. “They have Ray!”
“Who does?”
“The fey!”
“Where?”
“In there!”
Zheng looked at the portal. “Son of a bitch.”
And then he let me go and we were both diving in headfirst. We hit the ground and rolled back to our feet to find the same bunch, minus three, facing away from us again.
Because some people never learn.
“Surprise, motherfuckers,” I snarled, and grabbed my vampire.
“About…time,” Ray choked, because one of the mages had been trying to chop his head off. He hadn’t succeeded since it had been sewn on pretty well the last time, and because heads don’t just pop off.
Not that Zheng seemed to be having any problem.
“That was really satisfying,” he told me, as three more mangled bodies hit the floor.
And then we hit it right after them, courtesy of Ray, who had just jerked us both down.
“Shh!” he said, looking desperate.
“What—”
“Shh! Shh!”
I looked around, searching for a reason to panic. But I didn’t see one. Just the drop-off, with a bunch of what looked like murky caves beyond, an arched doorway on one side and the portal wall washing us with alien light from behind. And some old, iron-barred cages I hadn’t noticed before, because they were swaying in the air overhead, occasionally dripping some of the nastier bodily fluids down on us and the already badly soiled floor.
I didn’t have to wonder what had been in them, since they reeked like the creatures we’d just been fighting. It looked like there was some sort of pulley system that brought the cages down to the level of the wall, where they could be opened right into a portal’s mouth. I guess the fey didn’t like dealing with their experiments any more than we did.
But the cages were empty right now, having already had their contents sent through. And while there was another line behind them, snarling and spitting in the air over the edge of the balcony, it was far out of reach. So I didn’t see the problem.
“What’s the prob—” I began.
“Don’t you know what shh means?” Ray hissed. “And that’s the problem!”
His eyes went across the ledge.
It was a wide one, and since I was almost nose to filthy floor, I couldn’t see anything beyond it. I couldn’t hear anything, either, but not because the place was silent. The roar of what sounded like every ocean ever bounced off the walls, serving as damned good white noise.
So I decided to check it out.
I heard Ray curse behind me, but Zheng didn’t say anything. And the next thing I knew, he was right beside me, slinking over the rough-hewn floor in a liquid motion that belied his size. And then Ray was there, too, I guess on the assumption that there was strength in numbers.
Only we weren’t the ones who had them.
“Aiyaaaa,” Zheng said softly.
And if that meant “holy shit,” I agreed.
A stone floor spread out maybe twenty feet below us, covering what looked like about an acre. Which wouldn’t have been all that remarkable. Except that it was packed with a solid mass of helmeted heads.
I felt goose bumps break out on my arms, because the heads belonged to fey. Row after row of them, crammed tight together in shiny black battle armor and drawn up in front of a huge wall on the right. A wall lined with massive portals.
The gaping blue maws could easily accommodate two or possibly three people at a time. And there had to be at least twenty of them, maybe more. It was hard to tell, given the flickering light sending waves of color rolling over a crowd that looked to be two, maybe three thousand strong.
The only good news was that it didn’t look like anybody was moving through the portals yet. So maybe gateways hadn’t been cut through to the other side. But as soon as they were…
“We’re fucked,” Zheng breathed.
Yeah. That pretty much summed it up.
We were barely holding our own with the trashed experiments and ragtag mercenaries and bio weapons that the fey had thrown at us in the first wave. We wouldn’t last ten minutes with this bunch, not even if the consuls finally got off their asses and ordered their people into the fight. There were just too many and they were better armed, and even a consul might have a hard time fighting after being turned into an icicle.
So yeah.
Fucked.
“Come on,” Zheng whispered, and began crawling back toward the much smaller line of portals behind us, just a dark shadow in the flickering light. Ray and I were less impressive, but we made it because nobody was paying attention to where the riffraff were being launched.
Except possibly the shadows leaping on the wall under the arch, as if someone with a light was coming up some stairs.
“Crap,” Ray said, freezing in place.
“Grab the bodies,” Zheng ordered, flinging two at the portal. Ray and I looked at each other, and then we did the same, snatching one each and dragging them with us into the wild blue yonder. Zheng followed with a corpse tucked under each beefy arm, dumped them on the floor of the great hall and turned on me.
“What the hell?” he demanded.
“You ought to know. Or did your boss get cold feet?”
“Lord Cheung didn’t have shit to do with—”
“Told you,” Ray said.
“—whatever that is—”
“What does it look like?” I asked.
“It looks like a damned invasion force! But who cuts a two-way portal into their staging area?”
“Somebody who made a mistake,” I said, thinking of the other problem portals we’d seen.
“That’s what you get for allying with idiots,” Ray said, stripping the nearest dark mage. And passing me a bunch of potions I didn’t know what to do with, and a gun and bandolier that I did.
“Well, it’s a mistake that’s gonna cost them,” Zheng said viciously. “We—”
“Cost them how?” I asked, draping myself in lead. “Even if we could get a group together, we’d just die there instead of here. There’s no way we have the people to—”
“Then we’ll die on the offensive!”
“Like that’s an improvement?”
“Given the alternative! I’m not staying here and being slaughtered like—”
“Help us and you won’t have to! Marlowe wanted me and Ray to check on the guys he sent to get the shield back up, bu
t we can’t get down the damned—”
Zheng cursed. “You and Ray?”
“Yeah, why?”
“You’re barely able to stand and Ray’s…Ray! Where the hell are Marlowe’s boys?”
I gestured around. “Busy?”
“The ones he sent!”
“He doesn’t know,” Ray said softly. “He can’t contact them.”
“And we know what that means, don’t we?” Zheng asked viciously.
“We won’t know until we find them,” I snapped, panic eroding my already tenuous patience. “Maybe they fell into a portal; maybe they’re too injured to respond—”
“Maybe they’re dead! Face it—if Marlowe’s boys couldn’t get the damned shield back up, when they know every inch this place, we’re not going to. And if we waste time trying, the fey will be through—”
“You aren’t listening. They’re coming through whenever the hell they want! Did you see—damn.”
That last was in response to a group of pissed-off things, mostly Weres, that had started our way.
And equally quickly regretted it.
“Damn, it feels good to be a gangsta,” Ray muttered, watching Zheng let out some frustration.
“You’re a smuggler.”
“Close enough.”
But good as Zheng was, the odds weren’t great. And they were about to get worse as the smell of fresh meat got the attention of more of the Were-things. A large group down the hall had just finished savaging something on the floor, and now they turned hound-like heads toward us, red-stained maws wet and dripping.
“Call for backup!” I yelled, trying to lay down some cover fire as they charged, but they were too fast and there were too many of them. Plus, bullets didn’t do much more damage to them than to Zheng.
“There is no backup,” Zheng growled. “Marlowe’s fucked in there as it is.”
“And what’s your assessment of us out here?” I demanded, as they surrounded us in a space with no portals.
“Been better,” he said, shoving me behind him, because vampire bodies handled damage a lot better than mine did.
But I didn’t know how much longer that was likely to last, when six jumped him and another one came after me and Ray, and I emptied two guns into it at point-blank range. It flew back, only to be replaced by another gaping maw full of teeth that snapped at me as I jumped back—and hit the wall because there was no damned room to maneuver in here. Only that didn’t seem to bother the Were much. I rolled to the side and he hit the wall where I’d just been, slashing and biting at the marble, before turning on me with liquid speed, faster than I could bring up a gun—