by Karen Chance
John thought briefly of the small granny with her broom, and hoped she’d be all right. And then he hoped he would, as he pointed at the fast approaching behemoth, and then at the gap. “Protect!”
The doughboy didn’t hesitate, flinging its still mammoth body across the opening and creating a wobbly, orange, rapidly evaporating bridge that the vampires looked at with almost identical you-have-got-to-be-kidding-me expressions.
John was not kidding.
“Go!” he yelled, because they didn’t have much time. And not just because of the mages. Enormous clouds of orange steam were already boiling off into the night, making it look like a fog machine had been set up on the rooftop—and not just theirs. Within seconds, orange clouds had billowed across the surrounding buildings, the streets, everything, to the point that John could barely see his hand in front of his face.
Damn it! Where the hell was the thing? he thought, wondering how he’d managed to lose something that big—a second before he bumped into it. And there was no mistaking what it was. The “flesh” was hot and getting hotter, since he’d basically put a pan of water over an open fire. But not dangerous—not yet.
He caught a fistful of squashy, too-warm orangeness and heaved himself upward.
He heard Zheng behind him, cursing at his extremely reluctant vamps, or maybe at John, or maybe at all of them, John didn’t know. He was busy trying not to look down at the gap between the buildings, and at the conflagration trapped under all that fake blubber. But it was hard to ignore. It was almost exactly like being in an oven, hot as the hinges of Hades, with fiery tongues licking the underside of his creation and causing clouds of steam to well up beneath the translucent flesh, turning it into some kind of hellish light show.
The vamps didn’t seem to like it any better, John noticed, when he finally tumbled off the other side. And looked back to see half of them following him, their faces scrunched up, their eyes closed, being guided by whatever other senses they possessed. Because, if they looked down, they were lost.
And they were the brave ones.
The rest were still on the other side, appearing completely panicked by the surrounding conflagration, the fiery, floating trash piles, and the billowing orange steam. And the bridge to hell in front of them, looking thinner by the second. Which it damned well was, which was why they needed to hurry!
“Go! Go! What are you waiting for?” John yelled, at the same time that Zheng bounced over from the other side.
He’d dragged two of his men along with him, one tucked under each arm the way he had towed John up the side of a building. That left only Kong behind, who the big vamp had obviously planned to go back for, but John grabbed his bicep. Because the “bridge” had just sprung a leak, sending a massive geyser of steam shooting upward.
It was soon going to be joined by others, judging by the numerous thin spots in the body, which wasn’t so round and roly poly anymore. The geyser had gone a long way toward deflating it, leaving it less of a mountain and more of a flat skein of rapidly thinning power stretched over the gap, one he was not at all sure would support Zheng’s weight. Or anyone else’s.
Kong seemed to realize that, too, and to finally understand that he’d waited too long. It was in the suddenly jittery motions twitching his limbs, in the rapidly whipping head that was trying to look in two directions at once, and in the hugeness of the eyes that he turned on his master. Right before he took off for the side of the building, obviously preferring to take his chances with the war mages below.
Only that wouldn’t work out any better, considering how they responded to anyone who got in their way. And that included anyone kamikazeing them from above! He was going to get himself killed.
Zheng obviously felt the same, making a quick gesture with his hand that, despite being nowhere near his vamp, served to trip him up. But that wouldn’t help for long. Not with the war mages practically on top of them, the manlikan’s energy almost gone, and the roof under their feet threatening collapse.
And then Zheng tried to grab his wayward child—from across a couple dozen yards.
For a moment, John thought the flickering firelight and the fog were playing tricks on his eyes. But then he blinked and saw the same thing: two ridiculously elongated arms chasing a panicked vamp around a rooftop. Master’s powers, he realized, the kind of freakish abilities some of the older vampires developed. Although they were usually more deadly!
And more effective. Because the rubber like appendages had to be withdrawn a second later, when the doughboy erupted in another geyser, this one at least two stories high. The flames weren’t getting through yet, but it was only a matter of seconds.
They were out of time.
“Envelope!” John yelled, pointing at Kong. Who stopped running long enough to stare at him, obviously wondering what the hell he was talking about. Before his eyes slowly slid over to what was pulling off the building, what was rising into the air, what was—
“Auggghhh!” Kong screamed, as what looked for all the world like a dark orange lava monster rose to its shapeless feet, its melted looking hands, face and body brilliant against the darkened sky, its untethered mouth a gaping wound in its lump of a head, one that appeared to be screaming a warning as it lunged for the petrified vampire.
And did as it had been instructed.
A second later, John and Zheng were still looking at Kong, only now he was suspended in the midst of a gelatinous mass of magical power, staring out at them in terror from his orange prison. But not as much as when the manlikan responded to another command, in the form of the wild, beckoning gestures John was making. And took a run and then a flying leap over the huge gap between the buildings, the hapless vamp along for the ride whether he wanted to be or not, the lava like flesh taking and absorbing several more energy bolts from the pursuing mages—
Before finally bursting apart high overhead, in a shower of what felt like boiling rain that pattered down all around them.
Along with a completely freaked out, utterly traumatized, and—for once—completely silent vamp. Kong hit the rooftop steaming and juddering and coated with orange goo, and Zheng snatched him up. Then the whole group took off, dodging the spell bolts streaming after them—although there weren’t many. Because the pursuing mages were piling up on the other side of the roofline, behind what was now a leaping wall of flame.
“Why the hell . . . didn’t you do that . . . before?” John demanded, running alongside Zheng.
“Do what before?”
“The arm thing!”
Zheng shrugged. “Didn’t want to risk stretching over the fire. Besides, it’s one of my master’s powers. An ‘if I tell you, I have to kill you’ sort of thing.”
John stopped running.
Zheng laughed and clapped him on the shoulder. “Don’t worry. You’re safe, war mage— ‘till you start to annoy me. Now keep up!”
John endeavored to keep up.
Chapter Seventeen
C aleb made it. John picked up his signal once they reached the ground again, using the other half of the tracker charm. He’d affixed it to the inside of his arm, where it pulsed with a steady, regular heartbeat—his friend’s. If it had been his own, it would have been a hell of a lot faster.
“Well?” Zheng asked, or rather mouthed, because John couldn’t hear a damned thing.
That might have had something to do with the weapon’s shop across the street, which was in the process of burning down. It was shooting bolts of multicolored spells skyward in a less impressive, but no less loud, version of what they’d left behind in the alley. In addition, the heat seemed to have gotten to the more prosaic weapons, detonating ammo boxes like staticky bombs with bursts of bullets flying everywhere.
Not surprisingly, this had caused the crowd in the area to panic and run, not that they hadn’t already been doing that. He and Zheng’s crew had pulled back around the corner of a building, not that it helped much. But it helped some, John thought, as a burst of gunfire nail
ed an illuminated restaurant sign just overhead, sending a shower of golden sparks down onto the cursing vamps.
“Damn it, is it working?” Zheng yelled.
“Give me a minute!” John yelled back, because even vamp hearing probably needed an assist at the moment. And because it should have been obvious that the answer was ‘sort of’.
John thumped the little device on his arm again and the staticky blue square hovering in the air in front of him straightened up. It was a grid pattern, not showing streets or buildings, or even height and depth, because all that added complexity to the spell and made it that much more likely to be discovered. Trackers were designed to be used on dangerous dark mages, among other threats; they prioritized stealth over everything else.
Because walking into a dark mage trap after he realized he was being tracked was . . . not optimal.
However, that left the rudimentary grid John was looking at, where that same heartbeat was pulsing, pulsing, pulsing away, nine squares over from them. John did the mental math, and looked up at Zheng. “He’s within half a mile, and moving fast!”
“Half a mile? That’s all it says?” Zheng grabbed John’s arm, and the grid went wonky again.
“Cut that out!” John said, and knocked the creature’s hand away.
And promptly found himself up against a wall—literally. His remaining shoe was dangling a few inches off the street, his head had just taken another jolt, and his back was feeling like it had been shoved at least part way through the concrete. So much for that brief window of camaraderie.
For a moment, he was keenly aware of the fact that he was basically out of magic, out of weapons, and facing seven unhappy, fanged faces, including one he’d have had difficulty dealing with even at his best. As it was, they’d have to fight over who got to drain him first.
But then he flashed on an image of Cassie as he’d first seen her: sprawled on the floor of the North American Vampire Senate, tumbled blond curls in her face, wearing a ridiculous happy face t-shirt in a bright, sunshiny yellow. She’d been a victim if ever he’d seen one, and facing off with the type of vampire that would have given this lot nightmares for weeks.
Which was why what came next had been so surprising. John had seen that same perfect victim—delicate, powerless, and unarmed—look up at the creature humans had once called simply “The Ripper.” And stare him down.
At the time, John had thought her either mad or extremely stupid. It was only later that he’d realized: she’d been playing the best card she had. The vampires wanted something from her and wanted it badly; they weren’t going to let the bastard feed. But if she’d wavered, even for an instant, if she’d shown that he could scare or intimidate her, they might have let him try some non-lethal but very unpleasant methods to get her to do as they asked.
But she hadn’t wavered. Hadn’t blinked. Hadn’t done anything but glare at the son of a bitch in a way that clearly said “you’re not helping your case.”
Causing the creature to back off, even before John had started trying to be the hero.
She’d taught him something that day, something he utilized when he looked from Zheng to the huge hand the vampire had splayed on his chest. And slowly raised an eyebrow. “Am I annoying you already?”
Zheng glared at him some more, and then let him go, so abruptly that John would have staggered if he hadn’t been expecting it. “I have the feeling you were born annoying!”
“My father would agree with you.”
John thumped the disk on his arm again while the vampires huddled around, providing some protection from the battering of the crowd. Not that it helped. The other half of the tracker had melted into Caleb’s skin, an invisible, weightless presence that was supposed to be impervious to blood, sweat and tears. But not to magical conflagrations, apparently.
The static was getting worse.
“We need to get away from that,” John said, nodding in the direction of the weapon’s shop. “I think it’s interfering.”
“You think?” Zheng said savagely. His temper had undergone a noticeable change since they climbed down from the rooftops, and it wasn’t hard to see why. This was his city, or it had been before his recent elevation. And it was falling apart.
In more ways than one, John thought, as the street suddenly moved beneath them.
The vamps mouthed curses he couldn’t hear over the heightened screams from the crowd, while he went staggering back against the wall. And then the street did it again, harder this time, the upheaval almost knocking him off his feet. The vampire’s servants stood firm, like sailors on the rolling deck of a ship, but their eyes were wide and more than a little panicked.
They obviously didn’t know what was going on, either.
Unlike Zheng, who appeared to have figured something out. Because he took off like a shot, leaving John and the boys staring at each other. And then trying to follow him through the now stampeding crowd.
It was harder than it looked, and it looked pretty damned impossible.
The streets were narrow, there were too many people, and the ground kept heaving everyone into the sides of the alleys, where they were deluged by waterfalls of trash from above. Burning trash, in many cases, which had the vamps spooked as hell and John cursing his lack of shields. And that was from the minor tremors.
The major ones caused the whole street to buck like a bronco—or more accurately, like an earthquake had hit it, sending the weaker buildings imploding, people screaming, and rapids forming in all the water swirling underfoot.
Then something else hit, more ephemeral but no less worrying. It caused John to jerk his head around, and wonder if another combined spell had just exploded nearby. Because a wave of magic had accompanied the latest tremor, but it wasn’t a kind he knew.
But Zheng obviously didn’t feel the same. With a curse loud enough to be heard over the chaos, he went striding out of the latest alley and into the midst of a square of falling buildings and floundering people, where confused war mages seemed to be attacking everything now. They were sending blasts at the detritus flying at them on the wind, at the tiles cascading off surrounding rooftops, and even at each other when one stumbled across another’s path. They were attacking anything and everything that could be viewed as a threat—which definitely included a seven-foot-tall vampire!
John grabbed Zheng’s arm and slammed them both into the side of a building, just as the silvery tail of a dissolution spell flew past their faces. It detonated against a nearby shop, where the big glass windowpanes melted rather than shattered, running like liquid into the raging river the street had become. The same would have been true for the two of them, had it hit them without shields, which neither of them had at the moment!
“What the hell do you think you’re doing?” John yelled.
“Getting to the bottom of this.”
“You won’t make it five feet out here! You don’t have shields!”
“Then shut up—if you’re able—and come along,” Zheng growled. And the burly idiot started off again, before John could point out that he didn’t have shields, either!
At least not conventional ones, he thought, catching sight of something out of the corner of his eyes. He grabbed a vampire. “Smash that window!”
It was a testament to how bad things were that the creature didn’t hesitate at being ordered around by a war mage. He smashed the window. And John grabbed an armful of the warded umbrellas inside, tossing most of them at the vamps and keeping three for himself and Zheng.
If he could find the man!
He spotted him up ahead, throwing people out of the way as he forged a path across the square, apparently heedless of the fact that any of the spells flashing by could take him down and some of them could blow him up!
“Phalanx!” John snapped, and a dozen umbrellas opened at once, linked together, and formed a shield wall of black cloth and blue defensive shields that John really hoped were stronger than they looked. But there was no time to find anythin
g else.
“Forward!” he yelled, and the seven of them went barreling across the square, umbrellas to the front and sides and overhead, first at human speed and then at something a good deal faster, when the vamps on either side of John grabbed him under his arms and he found himself running on thin air.
But they caught up with their insane master in time to prevent a vicious looking crimson spell from sheering his head off.
It went bouncing from umbrella to umbrella instead, popping the shields and turning the electric blue fields black and smoking. Before jumping off to melt a nearby, plastic garbage can into goo. The vamps dropped the ruined armor and regrouped behind the devices that were still active.
Not that it helped much.
There was magic everywhere, with multicolored fragments of deflected spells bouncing between shielded umbrellas like sprites, lighting up the darkness in vivid hues. Cool puddles of defensive spells, mostly greens and blues, surrounded people and parasols and extended a little way into the air around them, smacking John reproachfully whenever he got too close. And the vivid reds, oranges and yellows of the more offensive variety strobed his vision, blurring with the rain, and fighting with the neon signs all around for dominance.
The latter were mostly coming from the war mages, but some originated with the crowd, as people fought to escape to some safer part of the city. Which most seemed to have identified as the opposite of the way his group was going! It left John feeling like a salmon tying to swim upstream, if the other salmon had all decided to head the other way and were armed.
And then that strange magic hit again, another wave that rippled over the street, sending the spell fragments scattering like multicolored confetti, darkening half of the glowing umbrellas, and causing one of the vehicles commonly in use around here to spiral out of the sky.