by P. N. Elrod
I was going to have to figure a way to get him out of this.
I could always stake him later.
“Then he was lying,” Cheung said, looking satisfied.
I glared at Ray, whose eyes were still doing the huge and pleading thing. He clearly thought this was it. It didn’t help that I was pretty sure he was right.
I sighed and accepted the inevitable. “Not exactly.”
Cheung’s forehead creased slightly. “You are assuming responsibility for him?”
“I am saying I already have it.” I reached down and jerked Ray over to me by his collar. His eyes bugged out a little, but he didn’t protest. If nothing else, that told me how serious this was. He usually whined nonstop. “He’s mine.”
“Yours?” One dark eyebrow rose. “You did not sire him. By vampire law, he is my property to do with as I wish. And I doubt the senate will flout thousands of years of tradition, even to save the life of their favorite … what is the word? Canary?”
“Your vocab’s a little out of date,” I said sourly. “And that’s not how I remember it.”
“I beg your pardon?”
“The last time you, me, and Ray were all together, you gave him to me.”
The crease grew into a frown. “I did nothing of the kind.”
“In exchange for me helping to cover up the fact that you’d kidnapped a senator’s brother, threatened him with death, and trashed his new and very expensive car. Ring any bells?”
“There was no formal transfer made. You misinterpreted a casual remark.”
I had done no such thing, and he damn well knew it. “I guess we can let the senate decide that.” They’d have to support Ray, like it or not, or lose all that lovely information he still had locked in his fat little head.
Scarface came up the stairs and Cheung glanced at him. “Careful,” he told him, looking at me narrowly. “She is dhampir. I don’t know what she can pick up.”
Not a hell of a lot, I didn’t say. Vampire mind-speak had never been my forte. Especially not if it was in Cantonese.
But Mircea had spent some time in the East, and for all they knew, so had I. I decided to capitalize on the moment. “May I speak to Ray privately?”
Cheung hesitated for a moment, but then he nodded, probably wanting his own private confab. I didn’t give him time to change his mind, but dragged Ray through the door into the office and slammed it shut with my foot. “Are we private?” I demanded.
He sighed morosely. “There’s a privacy spell on the room; they can’t hear us. Not that it matters. They’re going to kill me.”
“You should be more worried about me at the moment,” I hissed. “Why the hell did you tell Cheung I was your bodyguard?”
“Well, you should have been,” he said spitefully, suddenly growing some backbone. “Or somebody shoulda been. What did you think was gonna happen, as soon as I started spilling my guts? The master was gonna give me a medal?”
“He knew I was going to take you in. He had to expect—”
“What he expected was that I’d die before the senate could question me. I was a little under the weather, if you remember?”
The sarcasm was understandable. Ray had been sans a head at the time Cheung and I had cut our deal, and the body parts he’d had left had been pretty beat-up. Vampires are sturdy, but what he’d been through would have killed many at a higher power level than he was ever likely to reach. Cheung’s conclusion had been reasonable.
But Ray was tougher than he looked, and he’d had some supernatural help Cheung hadn’t known about. He’d not only lived, but once all his parts were reattached, he’d sung like … well, like a canary. And what a song it had been.
“Why didn’t you ask the senate protect you?” I demanded. “You’ve given them enough information already to shut down half the illegal smuggling in Manhattan.”
“I did!” he said indignantly. “But this challenge mess is all anyone can think about. And I don’t think they believed the master would move against me, not with him vying for a senate seat and all. He’s supposed to be on his best behavior.”
“Yes, he is,” I said hopefully. “Maybe we can use that. He’s risking a lot.”
“He’s risking nothing! When I disappear, the senate might suspect him, sure. But I also could have lost my nerve and run. I thought about it, you know. I got a lot of contacts among the fey, and they can hide anybody. If they didn’t creep me out so damn much … Anyway, without proof, they can’t move against him. And since Lord Cheung is my master, nobody else can trace me.” He slumped onto the edge of the desk. “I’m toast.”
I thumped him. “And thanks to you, so am I! I’m the only one who can tell the senate you didn’t go on an extended vacation!”
“Then I guess you better figure us a way out of this,” he told me resentfully, rubbing the side of his head.
I’d have thumped him again, but I didn’t have time. I glanced around, but things weren’t looking promising. As I’d already noticed, there was no phone, and mine was still in pieces. There was only one door in or out, and the only window was merely a paler square of brick in the wall behind the desk. Ray’s place wasn’t exactly up to fire code, having been designed for the convenience of the vampire owner and staff, not ease of egress.
“I don’t suppose they left you a phone?” He just looked at me. Of course not. And his penny-pinching ways had led to him skipping the usual magical escape routes.
“I bet you wish you’d invested in a few emergency exits now,” I said harshly.
“You don’t need ’em when you got a portal,” Ray commented, and my eyes jerked to the blank stretch of wall across from the door.
“That’s right. You have a portal,” I said, brightening.
“Had. The senate’s goons were here yesterday. I guess they wanted to plug my link to Faerie before they started on the smaller stuff.”
Typical.
“Then the only exits are in the main room?”
Ray nodded bleakly. I stared at the door and faced reality. As usual, my duffel contained a few surprises, but no way was I carving a path through all that. Not on my best day, which this definitely wasn’t.
I was going to have to come up with something else.
The door opened and Lord Cheung leaned against the sill, looking considerably more upbeat. “I have been reminded that, in a case of disputed ownership, a duel is the common remedy.”
I stared over Cheung’s shoulder at Scarface’s smug grin. I didn’t have to ask who had done the reminding. He’d just seen me walk away from a challenge outside. I was in no shape to duel a kitten right now, much less a first-level master, and he damned well knew it.
“That’s not going to get us anywhere,” I said, trying to keep my voice even. “If you leave me alive, I’ll tell the senate you killed Ray, ruining your chances at a seat. And if you kill me, Mircea will return the favor, for pride if nothing else. Then we’re all dead.”
Cheung’s face gave nothing away, but I didn’t need expressions to know what he was thinking. Mircea could take revenge only if he knew Cheung was responsible for my death, which he might never find out. But then, Cheung couldn’t know who I might have told where I was going. Or, for that matter, what kind of a bond Mircea and I had.
In the end, he decided not to risk it. “You have a better solution?”
“Yeah. You want Ray; so do I. So we’ll gamble for him.”
“You wish to flip a coin?” The sarcasm was palpable.
“Coin tosses can be rigged. I’d prefer something where we both have an even shot, where no one gets dead, and where the outcome is sure.”
“What, then?” Cheung asked, looking wary.
So I told him.
* * *
“Okay,” Ray said, coming in from the storeroom flanked by two babysitters. “This is the lot; this is all I got.”
He carried a cardboard box over to one of the club’s small tables, which had been placed in the middle of the dance floor.
Cheung had chosen the location, I guess to give his boys a chance to crowd around and see him kick my ass. Ray pushed through the throng, but then just stood there, the glass bottles inside the box chiming against each other because his hands were shaking.
“Put it down,” Cheung told him impatiently.
“Th-there’s not room on the table.”
Cheung looked skyward. “Then put it on the ground.” Ray obliged, and peeled back the cardboard top.
“That should be enough,” I said drily, eyeing the stash that was revealed. There were twelve bottles, each holding maybe a pint. That didn’t sound like much, unless you knew what was in them.
Fey wine wasn’t really wine. It wasn’t much like anything else found on earth, either. A distillation of plants, mostly fey in origin, plus some herbs, spices, and God knew what else thrown in for taste, it could put a bull elephant on his knees. That much would drop the whole damn herd, only they weren’t going to be drinking it.
We were.
I’d have preferred something else, since my metabolism neutralizes regular old alcohol almost faster than I can drink it. Unfortunately, the same is true for vampires. If I wanted to win, Cheung had to end up under the table. And that meant hauling out the hard stuff.
“Is it not customary to cut this?” Cheung asked as Ray poured clear liquid into a couple of shot glasses. A little sloshed onto the table. I was slightly surprised it didn’t eat on through.
“If you feel the need,” I told him sweetly.
Cheung narrowed his eyes at me and tossed back his first shot. He didn’t do anything so unmanly as choke, but his eyes widened perceptibly. And then it was my turn. I’d proposed a drink-till-you-drop challenge for two reasons. Physically, it was all I was up for at the moment. I was in no condition to take Cheung, and even if I somehow did the impossible, no way was Scarface letting me walk out of here after killing the boss. But it was reason number two that I was betting the farm on. Or at least Ray’s continued existence.
One of the interesting facets of life as a dhampir is frequent rage-induced blackouts. They are a natural result of the vampire killing instinct mixed with an excitable human nervous system, but tell that to the people who’ve encountered one of us on a rampage. Not that there are usually any left.
Because of the scarcity of my kind—and the fact that we aren’t on most people’s Christmas card list—nobody had ever bothered to devise anything to control the blackouts. But after hundreds of years of questionable sanity, I’d recently discovered a remedy on my own. It wasn’t a perfect solution: it kept me more or less sane, but it severely reduced my ability in battle—something that, in my line of work, was considerably less than ideal.
It also had some interesting side effects.
I picked up my glass, hoping one in particular was going to kick in. Because otherwise, I didn’t have a much better chance at this contest than I would at a duel. I might drag it out longer, but my half-human metabolism was almost certain to be more susceptible to the wine’s effects than a full vampire’s.
I slammed back the shot, and felt my eyes start to water. Fey wine varied a lot in type and potency, depending on what exactly went into the mix, and this particular batch ought to have been illegal. Of course, come to think of it, it was.
“You okay there?” Scarface asked, looking amused. I nodded, my throat burning too much to speak, and sat the glass down beside Cheung’s. Ray immediately refilled them, while I concentrated on my version of a Hail Mary pass.
I had not inherited the vampire ability to mind speak. But I had found that if I drank the feys’ favorite beverage in enough quantity, I could pick up bits and pieces of what others were thinking. And I could speak to the mind of one vamp in particular.
This had led to some awkward situations, as the vamp in question, Louis-Cesare, was also my … well, I didn’t know what to call him. We weren’t lovers, exactly, at least not yet. And we were only friends in the way that we yelled at each other a lot. But there was definitely an attraction there. And for a few intimate, wine-fueled moments, I’d felt closer to him than to anyone else I’d ever known.
I didn’t know if he could pick up my thoughts from this far away, as we’d never done any actual experimentation with our connection. But a long shot is better than no shot at all. I downed the second shot and thought, Hurry up, hurry up, hurry up!
Fifteen minutes and a full bottle later, it became obvious that Louis-Cesare was not hurrying. I licked numb lips and decided there was a silver lining. At this rate, I wouldn’t be able to feel it whenever they got around to shooting me. “You owe me,” Ray hissed into my ear as I sat staring resentfully at my tenth or fifteenth or twentieth shot. I’d lost count. But it basically added up to too many.
“Nowhere near this much,” I muttered, trying not to slur my words.
“Oh, so now we’re putting a price on friendship?”
“We’re not friends,” I told him darkly. I’d just seen Cheung toss back another shot. He’d lost his suit coat and loosened his tie, but other than that, he looked exactly the same as when I’d come in. The damn vampire wasn’t even sweating.
“Don’t talk,” Ray said, putting a glass in my hand. “Drink.”
I wasn’t aware that I’d been talking. That probably wasn’t a good sign. But at least I was still sitting straight. Cheung had started to list a little.
“That’s you,” Ray said, hauling me upright and handing me another glass.
“Hey!” I protested. “He has to drink first.”
“He just did.”
“I didn’t see.”
“It’s difficult to see anything when one’s eyes are crossed,” Cheung said. And then he giggled.
I know I wasn’t imagining it, because his vamps’ heads all swiveled in his direction, expressions of incredulity on their faces. Scarface scowled at them and they quickly looked away. But a few were coughing and one had to abruptly leave the room.
I downed another shot and grinned at Cheung. “I c’n do this all night,” I told him. “And you’re already drunk.”
Cheung gave me a superior look and tried to pick up his glass. He missed.
“He may be drunk,” Scarface said, “but you’re about to fall on your ass. And as soon as you do, that son of a bitch is ours.” He scowled at Ray, as if his boss’s loss of dignity were all his fault. Ray must have interpreted it that way, too, because he quickly sloshed some more liquid into the glasses.
“I am not even close to being on my ass,” I said, offended. “And Ray’s gonna be fine.”
“That’s right,” Ray said staunchly.
Fifteen minutes later, I’d decided Ray really was toast.
“It’s okay,” he said, massaging my shoulders. “You’re doing great. Just really, really good.”
“How many more bottles are there?” I asked blearily. The way I felt, we must have gone through most of the case.
“Nine.”
“Nine?” I did a little mental arithmetic, which was way harder than it should have been. “We’ve only been through three ?”
“Three and a half,” he said, and refilled my glass.
“That wasn’t so bad,” I decided after downing the shot. Maybe I was getting my rhythm.
“Because you threw it over your shoulder,” Scarface told me, looking smug.
“Did not.” I looked behind me, only to see an outraged vamp with fey wine dripping down his face. “Oops.”
“It was for luck,” Ray said defensively, wrapping both my hands around a glass. “Drink!”
I drank.
An indeterminate time later—my eyes couldn’t seem to focus on my watch anymore—someone slapped me across the face. “Big, bad dhampir, remember?” Ray said, his face looming large in front of mine. It appeared agitated.
“Big, bad dhampir wan’ go sleep.”
“They’re laughing at you,” he said, grabbing my chin and turning my head toward Cheung’s men. “Look at them. They’re laughing!”
&nbs
p; It took me a moment to focus, but when I did, they didn’t look like they were laughing. Mostly, they looked bored and a little nervous. Apparently, the novelty of seeing the boss shit-faced had worn off, and a few of the smarter ones had started to wonder just how much they were going to pay for having witnessed this.
One look at Cheung, and I didn’t think they needed to worry.
His tie was gone, his shirt was open halfway down his chest, his bangs had all flopped into his eyes, and while he might not have been sweating, he was looking pretty damn green. I wasn’t sure how much he’d remember tomorrow, which was just as well, since he also appeared to have developed a fascination with Scarface’s hair. He kept reaching up to poke at the spikes, and appeared amazed when they weren’t sharp.
“You can take him!” Ray whispered in my ear.
“Damn straight.”
The next thing I remember, Ray was fishing me out from under the table. Or at least he was trying to, but Scarface’s foot was in the way. “On. Her. Ass,” Scarface said proudly.
“She just slipped,” Ray said, sounding frantic. “Anybody could slip. She’s fine!”
“Like hell she’s fine. Look at her!”
“I am,” someone said, from somewhere behind us. “Would you care to explain to me what is wrong with her?”
Scarface slowly straightened, his foot sliding off Ray’s wrist. Ray seized the opportunity to drag me upright. “I love you, man,” I told him blearily, catching one of his hands.
“God. Just. Shut. Up,” he muttered.
The room appeared to be spinning anyway, so I followed it around to where a handsome auburn-haired vamp was standing by the main entrance. He had a sword in either hand and appeared miffed. Louis-Cesare, my brain supplied helpfully, after a minute. I was pleased to see him, although I couldn’t exactly recall why. But I sent him a sloppy smile anyway.
“She has not been injured,” Scarface said, stepping away from the table to give himself room to maneuver. And as soon as he did, his boss slowly slipped off his seat and into a well-dressed lump on the floor.