Chapter Forty-three
I resurfaced from the latest memory-related time-out, but this time it didn’t go so well. Instead of popping back into my right mind, whatever that meant anymore, it felt like I’d fallen into a kaleidoscope of fractured images. As if my brain was a giant jigsaw puzzle, where most of the pieces were missing.
And the ones that were left weren’t anything good.
Radu was on the floor to my right, covered in blood. The female vampire with the strange-colored hair was lying on my other side, her limbs splayed out like a broken doll’s. Neither was moving; they looked almost like unconscious humans. But they weren’t human, and a vampire doesn’t go down without catastrophic damage.
Strange; they didn’t appear to be hurt that badly, unlike one of the dark-haired master’s servants, who was lying a few yards in front of me. Or part of him was. The whole top half of his body was missing.
My own body was in pain, everywhere at once, a throbbing mass of injury. But that was easily ignored. The problem with my mind was less so. My head felt heavy, confused, almost . . . spelled.
And I suddenly understood why the vampires weren’t moving.
Stun spells didn’t usually work on their kind, since they lacked most of the bodily functions such spells targeted, but this one seemed to be different. It had also had an effect on me: I was awake, but my vampire abilities were not. A psychic scream, my own stun weapon, was impossible right now, as was trying to get inside anyone’s head. But that wasn’t why I lay where I’d fallen, while a battle raged around me.
No, that was due to shock.
Because we were losing.
I watched the impossible through my lashes: dozens of high-level vampires, any one of whom constituted an army all on his own, being batted aside by half as many mages. The way the spells were being flung was casual, almost as an afterthought. Yet I saw a vampire ripped in half, and another immolated while he leapt through the air, in a fireball that filled half the room.
What was left of him rained down as ashes.
“We have to stop meeting like this.”
I blinked my eyes open to see a woman bending over me. Well, sort of. She was actually bending over the massive chandelier I seemed to be lying under, which was all I could see except for dust clouds and rubble. But I could hear—
“Don’t even think about it,” she said, suddenly sounding like a drill sergeant on a bad day.
She didn’t look like one. She looked like a soccer mom out on the town, in a sparkly top that went well with her short gray-brown hair and big blue eyes. She even had a drink in her hand: Crown Royal with ginger ale, judging by the smell, garnished with two maraschino cherries.
I’d been about to turn around and see where all the talking, grunting, and subdued moaning was coming from, but stopped on command. Mainly because my body didn’t seem to be talking to me anyway. And if it had been, it would have been cursing.
She belted back her drink, made a face, and tossed the glass over her shoulder. “Okay,” she told me, looking determined. “I’m going to get this thing off you, and then we’ll see.”
I had no idea what she was talking about. She looked to be around fifty—the fluffy, comfortable sort of fifty, not the runs-marathons-in-her-spare-time fifty, and even if she’d been the latter she couldn’t possibly lift—
I hadn’t even finished the thought when the huge, heavy, multifaceted chandelier was chiming its way into the air, and I was noticing the wand in her other hand.
“There,” she said, sounding satisfied and proud and faintly relieved as the massive crystal monster floated away . . . through a mostly missing wall. And across a sidewalk. And into the street.
The sound of a car swerving and hitting brakes at the same time drifted to us through the gap, along with some inventive cussing, and—
What the fuck?
“Uh, can somebody get that?” she asked hopefully.
Somebody went to get that.
She turned back to me. “Okay. Now, isn’t that better?”
And then she noticed the blood spurting from a couple dozen holes in my body, which I guess the dug-in crystals had been keeping inside.
“Well, shit.”
The remains of the incinerated vampire blew on the wind coming through a destroyed window. I saw the powerful one notice, the one my twin liked. He jerked his head around in disbelief, while snapping the neck of the mage in his hands.
And then he disappeared.
For a moment, I didn’t believe my eyes. One second he was there, and the next he was not, and not because he moved. But as though he’d simply—
Veiled.
I took the word from my twin’s mind.
Not going invisible, then, so much as phasing to another plane of existence. It was . . . interesting . . . one of the more useful vampire gifts I’d seen. But the fact remained: he’d had to use a master’s power against a handful of mages, in order to save his life.
And it had. A trio of spells exploded where he’d just been standing, destroying a wall and setting several rooms beyond on fire. But they didn’t hit him, because he was no longer there.
But the mage he’d attacked was.
He was lying where he’d fallen, still twitching, but his eyes were already glazing over. So they could be killed, then. You just had to make sure they never touched you, never came close. For even a glancing blow from one of those overpowered spells could be deadly.
Understood, I thought, and surged to my feet.
Crown Royal was yelling at me.
“Get back here!”
I wasn’t getting back there.
I wasn’t sure where I was going, but there was something very, very important I had to—
Oh, yeah.
I spied Louis-Cesare under a couple tons of fallen concrete—and tasteful sandstone and parquet flooring and another goddamned chandelier—and scrambled toward him over mounds of rubble. It wasn’t easy; my legs didn’t work right, and the debris was studded with fallen draperies, half a piano, a dust-covered settee, and Radu, standing by a bar. And making himself a drink despite the fact that most of his hair was burnt off and a chunk of his torso seemed to be missing.
I did a double take while he belted back a stiff one, and I almost ran into Marlowe, who still hadn’t found any pants. But who had swathed himself in a curtain and was doing his best Caesar impression. Which seemed to mostly involve yelling at me.
I ignored him and finally reached Louis-Cesare, who was bleeding, bleeding everywhere, and my hands were shaking and someone was crying, but it wasn’t me, it wasn’t me, because I was yelling now, too.
“Help him! Help him!”
Someone was pulling on me, which wasn’t going to work, only it did because I was weak as water.
“Will someone put her the hell out?” Marlowe demanded.
Nobody did.
“I said, does anybody have the power left to put her—”
Someone touched my arm, someone other than Crown Royal, who was still tugging from behind. I looked up to see Horatiu’s kindly old face. Unlike everybody else, he looked pretty much like always, in a dapper, if dust-covered, tuxedo, and peering at me myopically from under a fall of thick white hair.
“I’ve been looking for you,” I told him.
“Sleep, child,” he said, and put a heavily veined hand on my forehead.
“No, I can’t sleep. I have to—”
I felt the unmistakable scrape of steel on bone, the frisson up the spine it always caused echoing through me. But the bone wasn’t mine. A mage in front of me hadn’t been shielded, and the arrogance proved fatal when I slipped a knife between his ribs.
A second and third went down, their hamstrings cut, and then their throats as they fell. Another died when an upstroke, coming off the last two, gutted him like unzipping a coat, and a fifth—the last easy one—died trying to warn the others that they had another problem. And kept on trying, his mouth still moving even as his head bounced across the floor.
It had taken perhaps a few seconds, one stroke flowing into another, a familiar, deadly dance, the blood painting streamers in the air around me. But it was enough for the other mages to stop attacking and shield. My knife slid off one; stuttered against another; failed to puncture a third, even so much as dent it, despite the fact that all my strength was behind it.
That wasn’t normal.
But then, neither were these shields.
“Like I give a damn what you want!”
Crown Royal was yelling at somebody, I didn’t know why. And then I noticed that she was facing off with Marlowe and I understood. He just kind of brought that out in people.
I looked around. We were in Mircea’s apartment, sort of. I mean, there were still some walls left; and a window, somehow pristine despite standing almost on its own; and the ceiling—
Okay, forget the ceiling, I thought, staring up into what had been a very nice ballroom and was now a skylight.
“I was planning to renovate anyway,” Radu said.
It concerned me that I could see through his stomach.
“How do you keep the alcohol in?” I asked, and he patted me on the head.
I think I lost some time, because there were suddenly red and blue lights flashing in my face, lighting up the rubble. Even for me, getting the cops called twice in one night was . . . okay, not a record. But not exactly every day, either.
I wondered what I’d been up to.
Then I saw Louis-Cesare, lying on a stretcher between two of Marlowe’s men. And the next thing I knew, I was stumbling over there, and nobody tried to stop me this time, probably because Marlowe was getting into a dustup with the cops. There was some yelling and the usual “gas leak” explanation, which it didn’t sound like anybody was buying, and then somebody spied Radu and started to freak out—
“Oh, for goodness’ sake!”
That was Crown Royal.
Who I guessed spelled the cops, because nobody got shot.
I didn’t know. I was too busy pawing at Louis-Cesare to turn around and find out. And then hitting him, because he wasn’t responding, he wasn’t doing anything.
Until strong hands grasped my wrists, and a blue eye cracked open. The other one was closed, caked with blood and swollen about three times its usual size. It matched the jaw, which was heading for Popeye territory; and the neck, which looked like somebody had tried to burn his head off; and the chest, which had great gashes in it.
I started to cry, great blubbery snot-filled sobs, and Louis-Cesare began to laugh. “You do love me, you do love me—”
“Shut up!” I told him hysterically, and would have hit him again, but couldn’t find anywhere that wasn’t already hurt, which made me cry harder and oh, my God, this was embarrassing.
I was almost relieved when Horatiu tottered over and put me out again.
All the strength and finesse in the world does you no good if you can’t reach your target. And I couldn’t. Neither could the powerful one, who had reappeared, eyes wild and chest panting, despite the fact that he didn’t need to breathe.
I understood: it was that kind of fight.
There were only three of us left: the dark-haired master, the powerful one, and me. The rest were dead or fled or were trying to, the injured grabbing the bodies of the unconscious and jumping through missing windows. The three of us were attempting to distract the mages while the rest got away, by sending massive pieces of debris crashing into those perfect shields. But there were too many of them and too few of us.
This wasn’t going to work.
But I knew something that would.
Get out! I sent mentally to the other two, and saw their heads jerk around in shock.
My twin couldn’t do that, or give them a mental push forceful enough to stagger the dark-haired one when they just stood there. And I doubted I could do it again, under the circumstances. Fortunately, the dark-haired master recovered quickly, grabbed a fallen vampire, and jumped for the nearest window.
I picked up the silver ball the strange-haired girl had dropped when she fell. It was warm and thrumming with power it shouldn’t have had. Like the mages themselves, full of stolen magic.
Not for long.
The powerful one was a bloody mess, and fighting alone now. But the room was clear, the last of our people slipping away while he ducked and dodged and drew heavy fire, and I yelled: “Go! Now!”
I couldn’t tell if he obeyed or even heard. Spell fire obscured my vision, the mages turned on me, and I was out of time. But so were they.
We’d been fighting on the fringes, trying to protect the weaker ones while they scrambled to get away. And thus the mages had ended up largely in the middle of the room, around the plastic containers they were trying to retrieve. Most of those had been taken already, but one was still in place.
And if it contained what I suspected, one was enough.
I threw the silver ball on the fly, while running for the nearest window. I didn’t hear the explosion; didn’t hear anything; couldn’t see. Light was suddenly everywhere, like being in the heart of the sun. All I knew was the feel of a mage’s body slamming into mine, and the floor falling out from under me, and falling—
“Aughhhh!”
I sat bolt upright, screaming. That felt familiar. And other things that weren’t so good, I thought, as the room slurred violently around me.
Only it wasn’t a room. It was a van, or maybe an ambulance. It wasn’t the usual, boxy shape, but it was kitted out with a lot of medical gear, much of which seemed to be attached to me.
I stared at it, but didn’t take it loose. Not because I was being a good patient, but because my brain had finally caught up and was making connections to things. Things that had seemed random, but were suddenly coming together into a picture.
One I really didn’t like.
And then somebody grabbed me, and I lost my train of thought.
It was Marlowe, who was still there and still yelling, maybe because the van had swerved when I screamed and clipped a line of cars. It righted itself, briefly going up on two wheels in the process, and then we were off again. And Marlowe was in my face, furious brown eyes glaring into mine.
“How did you know that would happen?” he demanded, shaking me. “How did you know?”
“Let her go!” Somebody was tugging ineffectually on his arm. “Damn it, if you pull out the IV—”
“I’ll let her go when she answers the question!”
“You’ll let her go now.” That was Louis-Cesare. He was propped in a corner, among half a dozen other vamps, none of whom appeared to be conscious.
Kit sneered at him. “You’re in no position to give orders—or condition, either, after all that!”
“But by tomorrow, I’ll be back to normal.”
Louis-Cesare didn’t reference the butt kicking.
I guess he thought it was memorable.
And, apparently, Kit agreed, releasing me with one of those cat noises he likes to make.
I fell back against a very inadequate pillow, which I wasn’t complaining about right now. And noticed that I did have a needle in my arm; I guess I’d lost a little too much blood. Might account for why it took energy to breathe.
It didn’t explain what had happened to the rest of them, though.
“What happened to them?” I panted, looking at the piled-up vamps.
“Spell,” Radu said, from somewhere behind me. “They’re all right. They’re just stunned.”
“It wasn’t a spell!” That was Kit again. “There’s no spell that can do that, not to us!”
“That’s all very well for you to say. It didn’t hit you.”
They continued arguing while I concentrated on breathing. It wasn’t going well. “Oh God.”
“No, it’s Kathy.”
I stared up into the pleasant face bending over me, and thought it looked slightly—
Oh.
“Crown Royal.”
“No, Kathy.”
“Well, I could use . . . a drink, Kathy.”
She patted my arm. “Couldn’t we all?”
“—well, obviously, they were adjusted.” Radu was still talking, and now he sounded pissed.
“Adjusted?” That was Kit. “You’re talking about goddamned toys. They’re supposed to be harmless!”
“Mostly harmless.”
“What?”
“As Douglas Adams would say.”
“What?”
“Read a book sometime, you philistine.”
“Radu,” Louis-Cesare said. His head was leaned back against the van’s side now, and his eyes were closed. He looked wiped.
“Very well. My point is, these toys, as you call them, aren’t toys at all. They’re low-grade weapons made for personal defense—”
“PPDs,” Kathy said.
“What?”
“That’s what they’re called in the trade. Personal protection devices.”
“Thank you.” Radu looked like he was making a note of it. “In any case, the only difference between these . . . PPDs . . . and whatever we encountered tonight is the amount of magic they hold. The spells are the same—”
“Bollocks!” Marlowe snapped. “Those damned things killed some of us!”
Radu paused. I could almost hear him reminding himself that some of the dead had belonged to Kit.
“He’s right.” That was Kathy. “My uncle has said for years that there ought to be more regulations on PPDs. There are plenty of guys flagged by the Circle so they can’t buy real weapons, who get some of the low-grade stuff, add a bunch of extra magic, and go to town.”
“And who the hell are you?” Kit demanded.
“I already told you. I’m one of the night docs for the Brooklyn on-call service—”
“I know that! It doesn’t mean you know anything about weapons!”
“I don’t,” she agreed placidly. “My uncle does. Why do you think I was at your party?”
Marlowe didn’t look like he cared. “You should have left with the rest!”
“I have a patient to look after, and you’re not the boss of me.” Kit blinked at her, his expression somewhere between angry and surprised. Like a lion being lectured by a mouse. “Anyway, my uncle is Aaron Samuelson,” she continued.
Nothing.
“Of Samuelson & Todd?”
I’d never seen Marlowe go from asshole to angel that fast. “Ms. Samuelson!” An attempt was made at a smile. “My apologies. It’s been a difficult night for all of us—”
“Oh, I don’t know. I think it’s been kind of stimulating.” She smiled back. “You have a nice butt.”
And, for the second time in one night, I saw Marlowe at a loss for words.
“This is what I think happened,” Radu said. “Our opponents needed a large number of weapons, but were having difficulty acquiring enough from their own sources. The Black Circle is formidable, but weapons manufacturing is a specialized field. Just because you’re a mage doesn’t mean you’ll be any good at it.”
“People train for years,” Kathy agreed. “There’s an apprenticeship and everything.”
“Exactly. It isn’t merely casting a spell; the ones designed for weapons have to last, have to be bound to something portable, and have to be stable enough not to blow up in your face. The Black Circle likely has spellbinders working for them, but not enough for a major war. They needed outside sources.”
Kathy nodded. “Somebody must have figured out that the PPDs use the same spells as the more powerful stuff, so you don’t need a spellbinder. You just need the magic to . . . plump them up.”
“It all makes sense,” Radu agreed.
“It makes no kind of sense!” That, of course, was Marlowe. “Those weapons weren’t merely ‘plumped up’! They were like nothing I’ve ever seen. Each spell felt like it had the combined force of a hundred mages behind it—and there were cases of them! No one has that much magic—not the Black Circle, and certainly not a bunch of slavers. So how the devil are they doing it?”
Nobody said anything.
But I suddenly remembered what I’d realized earlier, in that brief moment of clarity. Dorina had shown me that vampire remains could be hugely powerful, but it was almost impossible to get them anymore. But there was another magical creature that was dying in quantity, and that nobody seemed to care about.
“They’re using fey bones,” I told them, and passed out.