Chapter
14
The street was still
dark, even to Augusta’s eyes, but I discovered other ways to see.
All along the road were people, hidden in the night—in tenements,
scurrying along the street or congregating in pubs. Many of them
were amorphous, dark-clothed shapes against the night, but all of
them had heartbeats, and it was those thousands of living, beating
organs that called out to me like a siren song. Beyond the human
river were darker spots, just a few streets back, but my skin
prickled with awareness of their power. Vampires.
I pulled away so I
wouldn’t see Augusta’s features reflected in the dark glass.
“There’s a lot of vamps in the area,” I told Pritkin, “maybe a
couple dozen.” I had managed the sentence without my voice
cracking, but my palms had started to sweat. Even in Augusta’s
body, there was no way I could fight those odds, and for all his
toys, Pritkin wasn’t likely to do much better.
“How long until they
get here?” He sounded far too matter-of-fact for my frazzled
nerves.
“What difference does
it make?” I fought to keep from screaming it at him. “We need to
find Mircea and hide—fast. It’s the only sensible
plan.”
Pritkin walked out
the stage door and down the steps. I followed him, all the way to
the front of the building, where he stopped, looking up and down
the frost-covered road. “Humor me,” he said.
“In case you’ve
forgotten, the Senate isn’t the only problem, ” I told him, low
enough that I hoped no passing vamps would take notice. “I can’t
let Myra run loose—”
“Then don’t. Deal
with the rogue. I will handle this.”
“You’ll handle this?”
I’d rested my hand on a lamppost and didn’t realize until I tried
to pull away that I’d sunk my fingers almost completely through the
cast iron. I pulled them out cautiously and leaned the listing post
against a building so it didn’t fall over. Getting angry in a
vampire body was obviously not a good idea. “A corpse isn’t much of
an ally!” I told Pritkin frankly. “Some of these are Senate
members. I doubt you could even slow them down. We need to
hide.”
“They could track us
by scent alone. Hiding isn’t an option.”
“And suicide
is?”
I would have said
more, but someone grabbed me from behind. Again. For a half second
I thought it was a vamp, but then I felt the heartbeat against my
back and smelled the stink of unwashed man and stale beer. I pulled
away, but the man came with me. I gave what felt like a gentle
push, hardly expending any energy at all, and he went sailing
across the street to crash into the heavy glass window of a pub. I
could see the frozen shock on his face, the half dozen glass
slivers that pierced his skin, even trace the arc of blood on the
air.
His friend, whom I
hadn’t even noticed, gave a bellow of rage and ran at me, fist
pulled back. I ducked and managed to subdue him by slipping an arm
around his throat, cutting off his air supply. It was absurdly
easy—the bones in his muscular workman’s neck felt brittle, like a
baby bird’s, and instead of it being difficult to hold him, the
challenge lay in not accidentally breaking anything.
I had never really
thought about how delicate humans are, especially not human men,
most of whom tower over me. It was suddenly all too apparent how
careful vamps had to be not to leave a trail of bodies behind them.
The man was making what he probably thought of as a violent attempt
to break free, but to me, it was like holding a fragile butterfly
by the wings and trying not to tear it. Just a little pressure to
cut off the air, but carefully, gently, or the windpipe would
collapse and this brawny creature would crumple like paper in my
hands.
He finally went limp
and I laid him down to check for a pulse. I found one and breathed
a sigh of relief. “You seem to be doing well enough on your own,”
Pritkin commented.
“Against humans! It
isn’t humans hunting us.”
“No, but the
principle is the same. When they looked at you, the two men saw
only a weak woman, where they should have seen a predator.” He gave
me a brief, mirthless grin. “I often have that same
advantage.”
“You can’t take them
all, predator or not!”
“The principle is the
same,” he repeated, wrenching the heavy lamppost I’d ruined out of
the ground, then shoving it back into the hole, hard. The gas main
underneath the street ruptured and caught fire with a whoosh,
sending a bright plume skyward. I jumped back, Augusta’s
instinctive terror running through me. But a vamp I hadn’t even
noticed caught fire and ran screaming into another. Pritkin grinned
viciously. “Never be what they expect.”
He ran down the
street after the fleeing vampires, whooping and generally making as
much noise as possible, and the dark wells of power in my vision
began to turn the same way. The vamps didn’t know what was going
on, but they’d been looking for a fight, and Pritkin seemed ready
to give them one. And he called me insane.
I ran back into the
theatre and found Billy cowering behind the ticket booth. I nodded
approval. There was no safe place at the moment, but it beat having
him with me or the maniac outside.
I turned my attention
to finding Myra. There were three people in the building, and only
one was human. I could hear the strong, steady heartbeat, could
feel it at the back of my throat as something thick and sweet. The
vamps weren’t bothering with trivialities like having a pulse, but
I could smell them. And even at this distance Augusta’s keen nose
could pick out the crisp scent of pine.
I followed Augusta’s
hunger through the backstage areas, trying to zero in on Myra’s
exact location, but the place was a rabbit warren of tiny rooms and
dead-end corridors, with props stuck here and there haphazardly. I
fumbled out of a forest of painted trees to find myself in the
wings of the stage. The theatre was dark, enough so that to a
human’s eyes little would have been visible. I could make out a few
props—a chest, a couple of flags and some blunted lances—waiting
for the next performance. There was no sign of activity, however,
and the human’s heartbeat was still a good way off.
I finally located my
target in a room behind the stage, down a stairway filled with dust
and old suits of armor. I kept a wary eye on the battered knights
as I slipped by, but none so much as twitched. The first room I
reached was set up like a dining room, with a large shiny wood
table that practically reeked of beeswax. It was oak to match the
paneling on the walls and the beams on the ceiling. There were a
bunch of portraits scattered around and a big stone fireplace. It
had a gothic feel to it that would have served as a good backdrop
for a couple of vamps, only there weren’t any.
The still-glowing
embers in the fireplace and the decanter and two used glasses on
the table told me that they hadn’t been gone long. I peered into
the next room, drawn by an odd smell, and found the human. It
wasn’t Myra.
A tall, portly guy
with dark hair and, oddly enough, a red beard, stood by a counter
with his shirt open over a pale, hairy belly. He had a candle in
his hand and I identified the odor: cooked human flesh. He appeared
to be trying to melt the skin on his chest and stomach, patches of
which were already a flaming, lobster red. A few that had received
extra attention were starting to bubble. He was crying silently,
tears coursing down his cheeks to soak his beard, but he didn’t
stop.
I ran forward and
knocked the candle away. It rolled across the floor and went out,
and he looked after it blankly. Then he reached to the shelf behind
him, got another one and was in the process of lighting it when I
jerked it away, too. I looked into his eyes, but there was no one
home. Somebody had hit him with a suggestion, a strong one. I
slapped him, but it didn’t seem to help. I tried to catch his eyes
with mine, but it was hard to get him to focus enough to get a
hold. Vampires have a hard time influencing people who are really
drunk, high or crazy, because their minds don’t work right.
Apparently that goes for those who’ve been hit with a prior
suggestion as well.
In the end, I got his
attention by throwing his candles and matches into a garbage pail
and refusing to let him retrieve them. He woke up enough to notice
I was there and along with the recognition went a wince of pain.
That was going to get a whole lot worse as his brain unfogged, but
for the moment he was just uncomfortable.
“Where’s Myra?” I
asked. He stared at me as if he was having a hard time remembering
English. “Have you seen a girl, shorter than me, weird
eyes—”
“The master and Lord
Mircea are dueling,” he said sadly. I tried repeating the question,
but he just stared at me. There was only one thought in his head,
and it wasn’t about Myra.
“Where is this duel?”
I didn’t need to find Myra if I located Mircea—she’d find
me.
“Onstage.”
“I was just
there—it’s empty.”
“They have gone to
Lord Dracula’s rooms for weapons.” His face twisted in pain, but I
think it was less from his wounds than from the thought of his
master in jeopardy. I had never met Mircea’s infamous younger
brother and wasn’t enthusiastic about the idea. But what really
concerned me was the fight. Half the Senate was after them, and
they were taking time out to duel?
“Why are they
fighting?”
“If my lord wins, he
goes free—his brother has sworn it. But if Lord Mircea wins, he
must go back into captivity, possibly forever!” The big man started
sobbing as if his heart would break. I sighed. I should have known.
Of course Dracula wouldn’t want to go back into jail or whatever
asylum the Senate had fixed up for crazy vamps. But while he and
Mircea battled it out, Myra and her new buddies would end the
dispute by killing them both.
I turned the large
man’s face towards me. “Why were you burning
yourself?”
“Lord Dracula
commanded it, for my failure to keep Lord Mircea from learning his
whereabouts. He came here an hour ago, and I meant to tell him
nothing, but then everything I knew poured out of me.”
“Mircea can be very
persuasive.”
“My lord was very
generous not to end my life for such incompetence.”
His eyes held the
light of a true believer. I didn’t even try to convince him that
his god was really a monster. “What’s your name?”
“Abraham Stoker,
lady. I manage the theatre.”
I did a double take.
Okay, that explained a lot. “It has to be late. Go home and get
some medical attention for your burns. If anyone asks, you were
checking on a sauce here in the kitchen and pulled it off on
you.”
He nodded but looked
torn, so I upped the amp on Augusta’s suggestion. It used up a lot
of energy, and I had to resist the impulse to snatch him to me for
a quick bite. Being in a vampire body had its
downsides.
Stoker started to
leave, but jerked violently halfway to the door and came to a stop.
His head swiveled around to face me, despite the fact that his body
remained facing forward. Another inch and he’d break his neck.
“Tell me, if you can, what sort of spirit are you, to so easily
possess a master vampire?”
“I told you to go
home!” I eyed him cautiously. His voice had sounded funny, lower
and more in control.
“And I told him to
stay. It seems we know who is the stronger here, do we
not?”
I was getting a very
bad feeling in the pit of my stomach. “Who are you?”
“I am one whom the
vile blows and buffets of the world have so incensed that I am
reckless what I do to spite the world.”
I blinked. “What?” He
laughed, and it was a full-throated, sexy sound, one that I was
fairly sure the guy I’d met blub-bering over his candles would
never give. “Have you forgotten me so soon? When we met only last
night?”
“Last night?” It took
a second, but light dawned. “You’re that spirit from the
ball!”
“Incubus, please, my
lady.” I jerked in surprise. So that’s what it was. I’d seen plenty
of incubi, but never outside a host. “May I presume upon our
acquaintance to ask why you are here?”
“You
first.”
He sighed. “I would
prefer not to use this body any longer than necessary. It is in a
large amount of discomfort. Trust the master to scupper my plans
without even knowing what they are.”
“What plans?” It was
making my neck hurt just to look at him. I moved so Stoker’s head
wouldn’t be at that crazy angle anymore.
“But that is what we
need to discuss.”
“Look, I really don’t
have time to chat!” I tried to move past him, but the large body
was blocking the door. “Get out of my way.” I could move him, of
course—even without feeding recently, Augusta was stronger than a
human—but I didn’t want to hurt Stoker. He’d had enough of that for
one night.
“No, I do not think
so. As I recall, I did you something of a favor at our last
meeting. I expect you to return it.”
“Return it how?” I
didn’t like where this conversation was headed.
“I require a body for
the evening, and this one has been rendered useless. It will
collapse at any moment. I need a strong body, and yours will do
nicely.”
I backed up a step.
“You can’t invade vampires.”
“No, but you can see
me even without a body, as you proved at our first meeting. Very
well. I will give directions, and you will follow them, and we will
let this poor fellow go off to his soft bed and his shrewish
wife.”
“I don’t have time to
help you. I have my own job to do.”
He smiled gently.
“Yes. You wish to help Lord Mircea imprison his dastardly brother
and make Europe safe from his fiendish ways once more, am I right?”
He laughed at my expression, and again it was that
goose-bump-inducing sound. “I saw you with Mircea at the ball. I
see his mark on you now.”
He paused because we
both heard it at the same time—the ring of steel on steel from
somewhere nearby. That would be all I needed, for Dracula to kill
Mircea before Myra had the chance! I pushed at him, but he grasped
my arm.
“Tell me, am I right?
Is that why you are here—to save his life?”
I threw him off
violently, not caring at the moment that poor Stoker’s hand hit the
wall with a bone-crunching thump. “Yes! Now get out of my way!”
I ran past him,
fairly flying toward the stage, and reached the wings in record
time. On the boards, two figures were engaged in a sword fight like
nothing I’d ever seen. Power sizzled and crackled around them,
brighter than the sparks that were struck off their swords. I
concentrated on Mircea, but if he’d been hurt there was no sign of
it. He wore a white shirt open at the throat, and there were no
bloodstains on it that I could see. His hair had come out of its
usual clip and it followed his motions, whip cracking around his
lean form as he flowed through complex moves with deadly grace. I
blinked and looked away, forcing myself to concentrate. When I
looked back, I got my first glimpse of his legendary
brother.
Usually, I get a
tingle up my spine when I see a vamp, but there was nothing this
time. I wasn’t sure whether that was because I was in Augusta’s
body, or because my brain was too busy screaming to focus. There
was a strong sense of wrongness emanating from the vamp like
nothing I’d ever felt. It was like the danger in the room had
coalesced into a red mist, as if there was blood in the air. It
went well with his dead white face and burning green eyes, the
color of emeralds on fire. It did not go well with Augusta’s
instincts, which were practically begging me to run.
The two vampires
flowed through the motions of battle like it was silent, deadly
poetry. Even with Augusta’s senses I had trouble following them,
their blades were striking so quickly. The sound of clashing metal
echoed around the theatre like machine-gun fire, and every time I
blinked they’d moved yards away from where they’d just
been.
I clutched the
curtains, watching with my stomach in my throat as Mircea flung
himself to the ground, barely evading a savage slash from his
brother’s sword. He flicked his own saber at his assailant’s
ankles, but Dracula leaped, clearing the blade easily. By the time
he landed, Mircea was back on his feet and they were off
again.
“ ‘Out, out brief
candle! Life’s but a walking shadow, a poor player, that struts and
frets his hour upon the stage, and then is heard no more.’ ” I had
been so intent on the combat, I hadn’t sensed the Stoker’s arrival
until he started quoting.
“What do you
want?”
“I told you before,
dear lady—your help.”
“I’m busy,” I
snapped. Dracula flipped over his brother’s head, his sword
slashing downward, and if Mircea hadn’t moved even faster than
Augusta could see, it would have been over.
“Is it your plan to
stand by and watch as they kill each other?” Dracula’s blade had
nicked Mircea’s left arm, splattering his shoulder and chest with
red, and I didn’t think it would be the last time. Mircea was
rumored to be a better-than-average duelist, but it looked to me
like his younger brother was the faster of the two. It was a tiny
difference, a fraction of a fraction of a second, maybe caused by
the wound Dmitri had inflicted the night before. But sooner or
later, it would be enough. And if Mircea lost, I somehow doubted
Vlad had prison in mind for him.
“Who would have
thought,” the incubus murmured softly, a silken whisper in my ear,
“the old man to have so much blood in him?”
Their shadows
flickered in and out of the scenery, soaring against the back wall
in a deadly dance. Something clicked as I watched them. I’d seen
this before. It was the same scene as in my vision—the one that
ended with Mircea’s ghastly death. I swallowed thickly and turned
to the incubus. “What’s your plan?”
He pointed out a very
familiar-looking box behind the curtains. I grabbed it with a sense
of profound relief. I’d been wondering what to do about Myra since
I’d left my box in a backpack somewhere in Faerie. She might be
playing for the ultimate stakes, but I wasn’t thrilled about having
another death on my hands. Even hers.
“What’s your interest
in this?” I asked when I returned with the trap.
“The same as yours.
We have much in common, I think. We both love dangerous
creatures.”
“You’re Dracula’s
lover?” It looked like Stoker had gotten one thing right, after
all. Only he’d put succubi in his novel. A nod to
nineteenth-century morality, I guessed.
“I have waited many
years for my master’s release,” the spirit said, “but it will
profit neither of us if he is killed shortly thereafter. The Senate
knows he is near—I spent most of the night laying false trails, but
they will not work for long. They are coming. My master does not
believe that imprisonment is better than death, but I feel
otherwise.”
Things suddenly made
more sense. “That’s why you helped me at the ball. You wanted
Mircea alive so he can trap Dracula.”
The spirit blinked
Stoker’s eyes at me. “Next year or next decade, I will find a way
to free him again. As long as he is alive there is
hope.”
“So you want to trap
him to save him? He won’t thank you.”
“Perhaps; perhaps
not. What does it matter to you?”
He had a point. And
with Dracula safely tucked away, Mircea would have no reason to
hang around this death trap. I held out the box. “Okay, so tell me
how to work this thing.”
A couple of minutes
later I was crawling behind the scenery, the box in my pocket and
doubt in my mind. If the incubus was playing me I was in a lot of
trouble; if not, I was still in a lot of trouble, but at least one
problem would be solved. Of course, I should have known better—I
never get one mess cleaned up before another makes an
appearance.
This time was no
exception. Myra flashed in so close to the fight that she might
have been skewered had the two opponents not broken apart at just
that moment, pulling back from an impasse. Dracula did something
that caused Mircea to stumble—it was so fast I didn’t see it—and he
whirled to face the new threat. But before he could run her
through, a dark shape plummeted from the rafters overhead and would
have landed on him like an anvil if his reflexes hadn’t been so
sharp.
“Pritkin!”
He caught sight of
me. “They’re coming!”
“Oh,
shit.”
I looked around but
saw no hordes of vamps. But Pritkin had his full arsenal out and
his shields up, not something he did lightly. I finally got a
chance to see Mac’s handiwork in operation. The sword that slashed
and danced around the mage’s head had the same design as the one
I’d seen Mac painstakingly carving into Pritkin’s skin. But it was
larger—easily half as long as me—and as solid and shiny as a real
weapon. It also appeared to pack quite a punch. One swipe at
Dracula threw him back almost ten feet, and if he hadn’t deflected
the blade, it would have bisected him.
Suddenly, Dracula and
Mircea were fighting side by side, their own feud forgotten in the
face of the new threat. Luckily, the two brothers were so busy
concentrating on the mage and his bevy of flying weapons that they
didn’t notice me. Unluckily, they forgot about Myra, too, who had
shrunk back from the fight, and her hands were clenched as if she
held something. I reached her just as she threw the sphere in her
left hand, and felt the effect slam into me like a tidal wave. Oh,
joy. Little Myra had got herself a null bomb.
We went down in a
tangle of Augusta’s voluminous skirts, Myra screaming and me
swearing. The thing in her other hand turned out to be another
sphere, this one dull black and about the size of a softball. I
didn’t recognize it, but if it was magic it wouldn’t work right
now, so I ignored it. Myra raked her nails down my cheek, almost
resulting in Augusta going through eternity with a
less-than-fashionable eye patch. I turned my head at the last
second, avoiding the worst, but the scratches still hurt like a
bitch.
“Girlfriend,” I told
her, blinking to clear the blood out of my vision, “you so do not
want to fuck with me today.”
Her eyes got big,
then her expression turned murderous. “You!” Myra didn’t seem to
like it that I’d been able to appropriate a stronger body, because
she went for my throat, her reaching hands formed into claws. I
managed to wrestle her hands off with minimal damage to either of
us, but all I got in return was a snarl and a kick that caught me
in the shin.
I slapped her hard
enough that her head shot back and her eyes briefly lost focus,
buying me a few seconds to check on the fight. The magical sword
had disappeared and a few of Pritkin’s knives were on the ground,
their animation lost to the null’s effects. The vamps had dealt
with the others by simply allowing them to burrow so far into their
flesh that they couldn’t pull back out again. Both of them were a
bloody mess, but they would survive. I was a lot less sure about
Pritkin. He had his revolver out, but steel bullets wouldn’t do
much against master-level vampires, even assuming they
connected.
Billy suddenly walked
out onstage, in my body but with his usual swagger. He was looking
up and so was Myra, and she was laughing. One glance and I knew
why—the rafters were suddenly swarming with vamps. They poured in
from the roof, the windows, the doors—my God, there had to be a
hundred of them. I stared in stupefied awe, Augusta’s voice in my
head telling me what I already knew. We were screwed.
A vamp dropped in
front of me, plummeting the three floors from the rafters without
even missing his footing on the landing. Before I got a good look
at him, Billy reached into his pocket and tossed something at us. I
caught a glint of gold as a tiny shape arced in the air, and then
it changed.
Mac’s eagle swooped
down in a beautiful dive, gray feathers a blur against the dark
theatre, but those glittering eyes just as bright as ever, and the
vamp was suddenly not there anymore. A scream, a thud, and he
landed in front of me again, this time missing a good chunk of his
throat. He was a master—he’d live—but he wasn’t going to be doing
any fighting anytime soon.
The vamps attacked in
a swarm, flooding the stage, and Billy threw the remaining wards
into the air in a glittering arc. A wave of spitting, hissing and
howling beasts tore into the vamps. A miniature tornado took out
half a dozen, tearing along a rafter, tossing bodies everywhere
before fading away. A snake the size of an anaconda dropped around
another vamp’s neck, winding its coils over his eyes, causing him
to stagger blindly off the stage into the orchestra pit. A huge
wolf jumped on one, snarling and tearing huge chunks out of his
torso, while a spider the size of a Volkswagon had another wound up
in silk, hanging him from the rafters with an air of pleased
concentration.
Myra brought my
attention back to earth by attempting to stake me. Luckily, Augusta
believed in whalebone—and lots of it—for stays. I ended up with a
bruised rib and Myra with a blunt stake. I grabbed it out of her
hand. “I’m already Pythia! There’s no changing it!”
Myra only laughed. “I
already killed one Pythia,” she said viciously. “What’s one
more?”
“You killed Agnes?” I
almost let her go in surprise. Not that it surprised me that she
was capable of it, but what about the prohibition? “Then why are
you after me? Even if I die, you’ll never be Pythia!”
“If you’re clever,
there are ways around almost any problem. ” She glanced at the
combatants. “We’ll see what can’t be changed!”
The other ball had
become tangled in my skirts, but a kick from her started it rolling
slowly across the floor toward the fight. I finally got a grip on
her by grabbing a handful of hair, but although it must have hurt,
she was smiling, her eyes following the black orb like it carried
the secret to all her dreams. Considering that her dreams involved
mayhem and death, and that she’d probably gotten that thing from
her good buddy Rasputin, I decided that it would be very bad if it
succeeded in crossing the stage.
It was just like my
vision—Mircea covered in blood, fighting for his life, and someone
tossing a weapon at him from the shadows. I knew what came next,
but with Myra fighting me every inch of the way, I couldn’t reach
the ball in time to stop it. I dropped her in a heap and ran after
her little contraption.
I hadn’t gotten two
steps before she tackled me, and it was like trying to get away
from an enraged octopus—everywhere I moved, she seemed to be there
first. Normally, Augusta would have been able to stow her under one
arm and run with her or simply knock her unconscious. But the first
idea would slow me down and the second was out because I didn’t
know Augusta’s strength well enough to risk it.
Half walking, half
crawling, I moved slowly toward the ball, but it was taking too
much time. I caught sight of a flash of blue out of the corner of
my eye and didn’t hesitate. “She’s going to destroy the theatre!” I
screamed, pointing at Myra.
Myra looked at me
like I was mad, but the theatre ghosts heard me just fine. The
woman’s face had already been screwed into a vicious snarl,
watching the mess being made on her beloved stage, and now she had
someone to blame. She threw the severed head, which was suddenly
looking a lot less jolly, straight at Myra. When they merged, Myra
gave a shriek and started convulsing. I shoved her away from me
just as the woman joined her tiny partner. A whirl-wind started up
that left me unable to see more than a thrashing tornado of white
and blue.
This was no mere
mugging—the ghosts had obviously given all the warnings they
intended and had gotten down to business. A living person should
have been stronger than they were, but it was two against one and
they were on ground that had held generations of the bodies of
their ancestors. That’s like an extra battery pack for a ghost,
something Myra must have figured out. She screamed as they dove for
her again, half in fear and half in rage, and
vanished.
I lunged after the
ball, but a vamp got in my way. I threw Myra’s stake at him, more
as a diversion than anything else, my aim being what it is.
Apparently, Augusta’s was better, because it
connected.
A very pale and
shaky-looking Stoker lurched out of the wings, staggering toward
the ball as fast as his unsteady legs would carry him. It wasn’t
fast enough. The small sphere had reached the fight and rolled
under the feet of the two combatants, who were now fighting against
a circle of Senate members. It was getting pushed about as they
shuffled and jockeyed for position, going first one way and then
the other. The look of abject terror on Stoker’s face was enough to
make me run full-out after it.
I arrived just in
time to get hit in the face by a sandbag on a rope that had fallen
from the rafters. It was one of four that were swinging around,
being dodged easily by most vamps, except the one who hadn’t been
paying attention. It had to have weighed fifty pounds, and had got
up a lot of momentum on its arc. By the time I noticed it, there
was no time to do anything but take it. It knocked me off my feet
and I went skidding on my back for several yards.
“Dislocator!” Stoker
had collapsed onto the stage, and unfortunately it was on his
stomach. He screamed, but it was the same odd word, over and
over.
I scrambled back up
as the duelists paused, looking down at the small sphere at their
feet. Everyone froze for half a second. Then the Senators melted
away, flowing out of the theatre as quickly as they’d come into it,
Mircea grabbed Billy and jumped straight up to the rafters, and
Dracula ran towards us after snatching up Stoker. Pritkin threw an
arm around my waist and took a flying leap off the stage. We landed
in the orchestra pit, and because he’d rolled us at the last
minute, he took the brunt of the impact.
It knocked him out
and rattled my teeth, and the next second, a wave of power shot
over our heads from stage level. The bomb must have found something
to connect with, maybe some of the fallen vamps. If so, I didn’t
think they’d be getting up again. The impact had felt nothing like
a null bomb. It was darker and almost greasy, and in no way would
ever be mistaken for a defensive weapon.
I raised my head to
find that I was almost nose to nose with Dracula. He looked
strangely pleased to see me; then I was staring at the knife hilt
sticking out of my chest, right between the third and fourth ribs.
It hurt, but not like I would have expected. There was no bright,
searing pain, and very little blood. That might have been because
Augusta hadn’t fed recently or because the bastard had missed her
heart by a fraction of an inch.
Vlad was preparing to
take off her head, why I couldn’t imagine. Maybe because she was
helping Mircea? Maybe because he was a nut? Who knew? But he was
taking his time about unsheathing the long knife at his side. The
one he’d used on me was one of Pritkin’s—he must have pulled it out
of his own flesh—but this one looked like an old family weapon,
with a heavy, inlaid grip and a fine, polished blade. Too bad he
wouldn’t get a chance to use it.
“Billy, you’re about
to have company!” My yell echoed off the theatre walls. “Get down
here.”
“You have caused me a
great deal of trouble,” Dracula was telling me as my body tore
towards us across the stage. “I will enjoy this.”
“I doubt it,” I said,
and shifted.
A very confusing
split second later, I ended up almost running off the stage. Billy
screamed in my head and I stopped, balancing on the very edge. It
gave me a perfect view of Dracula getting acquainted with Senate
member Augusta. He should have decapitated her without the fanfare
while he had the chance. As it was, she was more than happy to give
a demonstration of exactly how she’d gotten onto the Senate in the
first place. What she lacked in fighting skill she made up for in
ruthlessness and utter practicality. She tore Pritkin’s knife out
of her chest, ignoring the splitting, fleshy sound it made, and
stabbed it into Dracula’s while he was still gloating over his
kill.
Unlike him, she
didn’t miss.
I saw the shock on
his face as the heart was pierced, and heard the sound of metal
splitting wood when the knife hit the floor below. She sank it
deeply enough to trap him like a bug on a pin, then snatched off
the arm from one of the first-row seats nearby, using his heirloom
to carve the end into a nice, jagged point. The metal weapon
wouldn’t kill him, although it didn’t seem to be doing him any
good, but the stake would. Augusta glanced up, as if waiting for me
to intervene, but I just looked at her. I’d saved one of Mircea’s
brothers; I didn’t owe him two.
Augusta’s arm flashed
down, almost too fast to see. But the makeshift stake hit only the
floor of the theatre, connecting in an arm-numbing jolt that echoed
loudly in the empty space. Dracula was simply not there anymore. I
didn’t understand it and neither did Augusta, but then I saw Stoker
clutching a small black box. He gave me a slight smile, then slid
sideways and passed out. The incubus rose from his chest, looking
as smug as a largely featureless spirit can.
Augusta snatched up
the box, but hesitated when she saw the way the spirit’s face
changed. She glanced from its demon visage to me, then again
demonstrated utter practicality. She dropped it and
ran.
I looked around, but
no vamps were visible. Weirdly enough, other than for the chair arm
and some blood smears on the stage, the theatre looked like nothing
had ever happened. Still, something was missing. “Where are the
wards?” I asked Billy.
He drifted out of me
slowly, as if reluctant to leave the shelter of my body. He peered
around, but there was no sign of the theatre ghosts. They were
probably recovering from the energy drain of whatever they’d done
to Myra. “Destroyed—the dislocator took them out.”
“They’re gone? All of
them?”
“They wouldn’t have
lasted anyway, Cass. They weren’t offensive wards. They were
designed to operate defensively on a body, as protection, not like
some kind of weapon. What you saw was them
self-destructing.”
I thought of the
eagle making one final dive and my throat got tight.
“Cassie!” Billy’s
voice was like a slap. “Don’t do this—not now! We have no wards and
the vamps will be back any minute. We need to get
gone.”
I searched around for
Myra, but without Augusta’s senses, it was futile. I didn’t believe
for a second that the ghosts had killed her. For one thing, it
would take a lot more than one ghost, or even one and a half, to
drain a healthy human. For another, I’m just not that lucky. I
briefly contemplated trying to go back in time, to be there to
catch her before she made her grand exit, but the presence of that
other bomb made me hesitate. I’d seen what a dislocator could do in
my vision; I didn’t want to experience it firsthand.
I slid off the stage
with considerably less than Augusta’s undead grace and picked up
the black box. It weighed no more than it had before. I shook it
doubtfully, but the spirit only smiled. It looked rather strange
with bloody eyes and fangs. “He is in there, I assure
you.”
“Now what?” I asked,
as its features slipped back into benevolent
vagueness.
“I wait,” it said,
with a lot more serenity than I’d have felt in its position. Still,
if you were immortal, I guess the prospect of a few decades’ delay
didn’t faze you much.
Pritkin’s eyelashes
were fluttering. “Myra’s gone,” I told him before he could ask. He
nodded but didn’t say anything. I looked back up at my nebulous
ally. “Have you seen Mircea?” I assumed he’d survived, since the
sequence of events from the vision had been interrupted, but I had
to be sure.
“I believe he will be
along.” It started to fade, and I held out a hand to stop
it.
“Thank you for your
help. I know you didn’t do it for me, but—well, anyway.” I suddenly
realized something. “I don’t even know your name. I’m Cassie
Palmer.”
It fluctuated to a
light pink. “So few people bother to ask,” it said in a pleased
voice. “I have used many names through the centuries. It varies,
depending on the sex and culture of the body I am inhabiting. I was
Aisling once in Ireland, Sapna in India, Amets in France. Call me
what you will, Cassie.”
It flushed a darker
shade, almost a rose, which I guess was good because it started
quoting Shakespeare again. “ ‘When shall we three meet again, in
thunder, lightning, or in rain? When the hurlyburly’s done, when
the battle’s lost and won.’ ” It started fading out once more, and
this time I let it.
Pritkin grasped the
side of the orchestra pit and hauled himself up onstage. He peered
back over the side, holding out a hand, but I ignored it. Something
was tickling the back of my mind. It felt like I’d just been handed
a puzzle piece; only I didn’t know what it was or where it
fit.
“Are you hurt?”
Pritkin’s voice floated down to me.
“No.” I finally took
his hand and crawled back onto the stage. Almost the moment I did
so, hysterical shrieks erupted from the pit behind me. Stoker had
woken up, and with no incubus to deflect it, the full force of his
wounds hit him all at once. Burns are painful, and ones as bad as
his had to be excruciating. Pritkin jumped back in the hole, but
the man’s pitiful cries didn’t stop.
I was about to follow
him when a black box dangling in front of my face suddenly filled
my vision. A low, rich voice purred in my ear. “Good evening,
Trouble.”