Death's Mistress

CHAPTER 25

I thinksubrand was almost as surprised to see me as I was to see him, but he recovered fast. His boot came down in the middle of compost and wet leaves, right where I’d been lying. I wasn’t there anymore, because I’d flung myself backward into the now two-way portal.

I crashed to the hard floor of the pantry and rolled into Louis-Cesare’s legs. And then the lunatic picked me up and started trying to stuff me back inside. “What the hell are you doing?”

“Attempting to get you to safety.”

“That’s a damn strange way of doing it!” I panted, bracing my hands and feet on the shelves on either side of the gaping maw, like a cat trying to avoid a bath.

“I will get the others out. You have my word,” he said, trying to prize me off. But every time he removed one limb, I curled the others through the metal supports of the shelves, holding on for dear life.

I was sucking in breath to explain, when he jerked me back, ripping the whole shelving unit off the wall. It came away, concrete screws and all, but I held on like my fingers were welded to the metal. He cursed in exasperation. “Why will you not let go?”

“Becausesubrand’s out there, you complete lunatic!” And then it wasn’t true, because he was suddenly in the house and crashing into me.

I don’t think he’d expected to find someone physically blocking the portal, because he hadn’t come through with a drawn weapon. But that was the only good thing. The portal flung him into me, I lost my grip on the shelves and we tumbled to the ground. And then he was suddenly gone. It took me a moment to realize that Louis-Cesare had picked him up and flung him back through.

“I can’t believe you just did that,” I said, half-appalled, half-impressed, as he turned toward the door. I pushed the shelving off me and grabbed him. “Stay here. Hold offsubrand.”

“Where are you going?”

“To get my duffel.”

“Now?”

“Yes, now! Ray’s in there! If Cheung gets him before we do, he’ll have no reason to stick around.”

“I will go,” Louis-Cesare said as the sound of crossed swords and gunfire came from the hall.

He left before I got the chance to tell him that I’d really prefer to face Cheung and his men than the ice-cold prince of the fey. But then the portal started to activate again. I panicked just slightly at the thought of facingsubrand with nothing but a short sword for a weapon. So I started throwing everything I could reach down the portal’s wide gullet.

Heavy bags of beans and rice—Olga always bought in bulk—were swallowed up, along with bottles of condiments, large-sized cans of soup and vegetables, and a broken TV that someone had stuck on a shelf. I’d hoped that, if the portal was open and active on one end, someone couldn’t use it to come through on the other. It seemed to make logical sense, but I forgot—magic is rarely logical. As was demonstrated when a bloody leg poked through the portal almost in my face.

No, not blood, I realized, ketchup. I hacked at it with my sword. Okay, now it was blood. And then the fey it belonged to emerged and grabbed me around the throat.

It wasn’tsubrand, but he was damned strong anyway. I slashed at his arm with the sword, and he pulled back, saying something in their language that sounded fairly obscene. I took the few seconds that bought me to shove the shelf over the mouth of the portal.

That didn’t help as much as I’d have liked. It was just ordinary metal shelving with an open back, through which he started slashing at me with his own sword. It was a lot longer than mine and glowed faintly, giving him plenty of light to murder by. Only I wasn’t going to make it easy on him.

The open-sided shelf worked two ways, so I used that, grabbing a mop—we had a mop? — and using it to poke the fey back into the open maw of the portal. It sort of worked—his bottom half disappeared into the swirl of color on the wall—but he grabbed onto the shelf with one hand, preventing the rest of him from getting sucked inside. He made a pass with his sword with the other, and I was suddenly left holding nothing but a mop head.

I danced back out of reach as that sword took a swipe at my chest. But that gave him the chance to bat the whole unit out of the way. And then Louis-Cesare was back with the duffel. He held off the fey with a sword he’d found somewhere—it glowed slightly, so I assumed he’d taken it off one of our other attackers—while I rooted through the bag.

“Hey! That’s my eye!” Ray groused, and then my hand was closing over the explosive putty.

I grabbed it and ripped off a sizable wad. “Move!” I told Louis-Cesare, who spun out into the hall as I threw the piece overhand, like a baseball. I dove for the kitchen as the explosive did what it was designed to do and collapsed the portal—with the fey still partially inside.

That was one visual image I could do without, which was just as well, because I didn’t see it. The pantry exploded behind me in a hail of shelving and flying cans as the portal destructed, and I slid to a stop beneath the heavy old table. I tipped it over, grabbed my guns out of the duffel and slammed home extra clips—my last—as a couple of fey rushed in from the hall.

I sprayed them with bullets from both guns. The first one got some kind of shield up in time, but not the second, who jittered back against the wall before sliding down it on a smear of red. Looked like they could bleed, after all, I thought, as the first one jumped me.

I was out of bullets, and his weapon was longer than mine, but then it didn’t matter because a glowing sword ripped through his guts. I looked up, expecting to see Louis-Cesare, and saw the vamp I’d nicknamed Scarface instead.

The name was less appropriate now than it had been at the Club, where his face had resembled Frankenstein’s. The livid, puckered lines were much less noticeable now, just barely darker than the rest of his complexion. But his black eyes were no less fierce.

He’d picked up the sword of the fallen fey, I guessed, as he stared at it admiringly. “Carves through shields like butter,” he said, those eyes meeting mine. “Let’s see what it does to you.”

“Let’s not,” I told him, right before my knife caught him in the throat.

It would have been a sufficient discouragement to a younger vamp, but Scarface just pulled it out, ignoring the wash of blood that drenched us both. “Bad idea,” he snarled. “I was going to make it quick.”

He wrenched the sword out of the fey as I scrambled back, underneath the knife rack on the wall. Stainless wouldn’t do much to the fey, but it worked fine on vamps. I’d grabbed the cleaver in one hand and a serrated bread knife in the other before I noticed—Scarface wasn’t pursuing me.

He was watching the fallen fey.

“What’s wrong with him?” he demanded.

I didn’t answer because I didn’t know. The fey usually healed as fast as a vamp, but this one was floundering around like a fish out of water, yet not really getting anywhere. He tried to stand, and immediately went back to one knee. And then fell onto his stomach.

Scarface kicked him over with his foot, and I sucked in a breath. There should have been a small puncture wound, or possibly nothing at all by now. Instead, half his chest was eaten away. It was livid red underneath, with white edges of ribs peeking out. But the boundaries of the rapidly expanding wound looked almost like paper when on fire—gold and brown and then nothing at all as the skin and flesh burned to cinders.

Scarface held up the sword. The naked blade shone in the dim light like fox fire, white with a pale blue luminescence at the edges. “They must have enchanted it.”

No shit, I thought blankly, as the fey started screaming and clawing at the floorboards, hard enough to leave fingernail tracks in the wood. I got to my feet slowly, keeping an eye on the sword in Scarface’s hand. But he didn’t raise it. He seemed as mesmerized as I was with what was happening to his opponent.

Within seconds, the strange fire had burned through the fey’s ribs to the white column of his spine. He suddenly stopped moving, frozen in place like the baby vamp I’d stabbed at the club. But unlike the young vamp, I didn’t think he was going to be all right.

His eyes stared into mine, and the hate drained away, replaced by a desperate sort of pleading. And I could do nothing. Except watch as the fire crept up his torso to the rapidly fluttering heart.

I’d never seen a weapon that could do something like that, that could overwhelm the body’s shields and its natural healing ability so quickly and so completely. But the fey never stood a chance. His heart went up like a flame a second later, a sudden bright flare, and it was over. In less than a minute, the body had been completely consumed. All that was left was a scorched black shape on the floor, like a crime scene cutout.

“What the hell kind of trap did you lay for us?” Scarface snarled, staring from the blistered boards to me. His voice was as belligerent as always, but he looked more than a little freaked out. The sword hung limply by his side, like he was almost afraid to touch it.

I would have been, if I were him; vamps burned easily enough as it was.

“No trap,” I said, my mouth a little dry. “Or did you not notice that he was trying to kill me?”

“Why? You steal from him, too?”

“I didn’t steal from anyone. I’m working for the family who own the rune. They want it back.”

“Finders keepers.”

“Yeah, only you haven’t found it yet.”

“Give me a minute,” he growled, and then his head jerked up. And he leapt—but not at me. It took me a second to realize that he had raced back into the hallway, and I didn’t think it was out of fear of my little knives.

I dropped the bread knife, which had been a lousy choice anyway, grabbed my iron version off the floor where Scarface had tossed it and shoved the bloody thing back into the straps at the small of my back. Then I scooped up the duffel and tucked it under my arm. That left me a hand for my sword and one for the cleaver, and that was as good as things were going to get.

The rain was coming down harder now, drumming on the windows and the ceiling overhead. But not enough to muffle the ring of steel on steel. I ran to the hall door and saw two things: Cheung and Scarface, halfway up the stairs, fighting three fey back to back. And Louis-Cesare battlingsubrand in the middle of the vestibule.

All around there were blackened marks on the boards of the floor, the stairs and, in one case, in a man-shaped smudge on the wall. Shapes I strongly suspected were the remains of Cheung’s men. I glanced up, and through the ruined ceiling spied other battles going on above our heads, but there looked to be more fey than vamps.

And then I wasn’t thinking anymore, because my eyes had caught sight of the glowing sword insubrand’s hand. My heart lurched sickeningly and an icy fist tightened in my gut. And then I was throwing everything in my bag at anything that moved, but especially at him.

I had a small fortune in legal and not so legal weapons, and I used them all. A couple of disorienting spheres did nothing—I was going to stop buying the damn useless things—but a disruptor had more luck. It packs the punch of a few dozen human grenades, and I timed it perfectly—it hit the floor at his feet and exploded almost at the same time, too fast for even a fey’s reflexes to knock it away.

But when the dust cleared, I saw a chasm where the floor had been, new holes in the roof and half the remaining stairs gone. Cheung and Scarface had one less opponent, who was now a smear all over the wall behind the stairs. Butsubrand was still standing.

It hadn’t gotten through his shields.

“The little creature spits and hisses,” he said, mockingly. “Come, dhampir. Is that the best you can do?”

“Get back!” I told Louis-Cesare, who in a fit of complete insanity was about to jump the chasm. He saw what was in my hand, and his eyes widened, before he changed direction and jumped for the door of the living room instead. Scarface cursed, grabbed Cheung around the waist and dove for the second story. And I threw the nastiest weapon I had.

I didn’t see the dislocator hit, because I’d leapt back into the kitchen the second it left my hand. I didn’t hear it, either, because those things don’t explode in the conventional sense. But I felt the deadly current ripple past. I crouched behind the heavy table, huddled over the duffel bag and stared at nothing.

“What the fuck was that?” Ray whispered below me.

Oh, shit. Ray. “Tell me you were behind something,” I said, belatedly realizing I hadn’t thought to check.

“Fuck yeah, I was fucking behind something,” he whispered viciously, as the vibrations slowly subsided. “My ass is outside with the sane people!”

I breathed a sigh of relief. Dislocators do exactly what their name implies. And it wouldn’t help Ray to get him back together if the pieces were all jumbled up.

After a minute, I edged around the blackened mark on the floor, the edges of which were still sizzling, and crept across the kitchen. Everything was quiet, peaceful. I stuck my head out the door, cautiously looking around. I didn’t see anything.

That was a disappointment, as I’d been hoping for an arm growing out of a wall, or maybe a torso where the banister used to be. As long as it wassubrand’s, I wasn’t picky. But there was nothing.

He must have had time to get out the back door, I thought furiously. I shouldn’t have hesitated, waiting for Cheung, but as much as I had no reason to like the guy, dislocating half his organs seemed a bit much. But now that complete bastard was probably half a block away—

And someone grabbed me from behind.

“Stop doing that!” I said as I was yanked back against a hard chest. “You’re going to scare me to death.”

And then Louis-Cesare walked out of the living room—on the opposite side of the hall.

“That would at least be a novel way to die,”subrand said, casually breaking my wrist. The sword fell to the ground with a clatter.

I sucked in a breath and fought not to scream, while my brain gibbered somewhere in the background that that was impossible, that no shields held against a dislocator, that that was why the damn things were so illegal that it was a life sentence just to possess one. I’d always been willing to take the risk, on the logic that life in jail was better than no life at all. And dislocators were the option of last resort when nothing else worked.

And now we were screwed, we were screwed, we were so very screwed, my brain helpfully informed me. Because I didn’t have anything worse. I didn’t even know of anything worse.

“Release her,” Louis-Cesare said, prompting a laugh out of my captor. I could feel it vibrate through me as he jerked me hard against him.

“And if I do not?” he asked, sounding amused.

I looked down at the slim hand holding me so easily. He was only using one; the other was still wrapped around that damned sword. I watched its pale glow leech over the boards and wondered if it was going to hurt much.

The fey hadn’t looked like he’d enjoyed it, as I recalled.

“I will kill you,” Louis-Cesare said simply.

subrand sighed. “It was an intellectual challenge to breach the wards. But now that it is done, I find myself growing bored.” That hand came up around my throat again, smearing mud and someone else’s blood. “Give me what I want or die,” he said calmly.

“I knew you were a villain,” Louis-Cesare said calmly. “I did not know that you were also a coward.”

Unlike Cheung,subrand ignored him, instead tightening his grip on me. Louis-Cesare made a small movement and the hand around my throat cut off my air entirely. He stopped.

I was running scenarios through my mind, and the only one sticking was the time. I could hear the clock in the kitchen ticking so slowly that I was sure something must have been wrong with it. How many minutes were left until the wards cycled back on? Two, three?

Because I didn’t think I had that many.

And thensubrand jerked and spun, throwing me against the wall and slicing through the air behind us with the sword. It should have taken off his assailant’s head, but the guy who’d just nailed him in the temple with my lost stiletto didn’t have one. And then the knife at my back was out and stabbing up.

subrand turned at the last second, or I’d have had him; as it was, the cold iron carved a bloody furrow across his chest. It looked like those shields didn’t hold so well against one thing, I thought, as two fey dropped to the ground from overhead.

They landed almost on top of Louis-Cesare, and several others poured out of the remains of the pantry. They were trying to overwhelm him with numbers, but Scarface gave a yell from overhead and dive- bombed them, a sword in each hand and a huge grin on his face. I didn’t see any more, because I was trying to avoid getting the same treatment as the fey in the kitchen.

It wasn’t easy.subrand didn’t even flinch, either at the blood pouring down his temple or at the gash in his torso. He also didn’t slow down, and he moved even faster in person than his doppelgänger had, a blur of silver against the dark hallway.

I’d dropped as soon as the heart blow missed, grabbed my fallen sword and rolled to the side. But I hadn’t had time to get back to my feet before that glowing blade stabbed down, hard enough to stick into the floorboards. He wrenched it out, and a split second later, it was flashing down again, and again, and again, as I rolled around the vestibule, dodging the staccato-like stabs, barely staying ahead of the blade and only getting my own sword up once.

That resulted in getting it sliced in two, as I was going to be any minute now, and thensubrand stumbled, cursing, the first sign of pain I’d seen. Of course, that was understandable, considering that a vampire head had latched onto his ankle like a rabid pit bull.

The rest of Ray was in the vestibule, hiding behind some furniture, which he started lobbing at us. A side table hitsubrand in the chest, and a lamp struck him in the shoulder, and then Ray’s head was sent flying to land with a wet-sounding thump well down the hallway. Whereupon his body went into a frenzy, tossing everything and anything it could get its hands on. And it wasn’t bothering to aim anymore.

Or maybe it was and it just couldn’t see that well—I didn’t know—but in short order I was pelted by a wooden chair, a vase, the matching side table, and I barely ducked in time to avoid a large mirror.subrand had been headed for me, but had had to jerk back to avoid the mirror, giving me a second to strike. And a second was all I needed.

I lunged, the broken sword that remained in my hand up and aiming for his torso. That close, I never miss—unless I’m using my left hand and wearing a dress with a trailing hem. My foot caught on the fabric, I tripped and slammed face-first into the wall. This is why I wear jeans, I thought furiously, as I spun, and plunged the sword blindly into warm, yielding flesh.

There was no chance to see what, exactly, I’d hit, because the next second I was thrown back a half dozen yards into the vestibule. I hit Ray and we went down in a tangle of thrashing limbs. I jumped back to my feet again, sword in hand—only to find that the battle was over.

Suddenly the only fey in the hall were four bodies left sprawled on the muddy boards. I scrambled toward the nearest, tripped over the dress again, cursed and staggered the rest of the way to its side.

I rolled the limp, blood- soaked figure over. The face was unrecognizable, but the torso was relatively clear of wounds—no jagged stab line and minimal blood.

The next one was the same, and the next, and the next. I stood up and kicked the wall, so furious I could barely see. I’d had him. Goddamn it, I’d had him.

Until I’d missed.