Embrace the Night

Chapter 11

I stared at Mircea in shock. "You're supposed to be downtown!" The version of me who'd just chased Jimmy across the parking lot had escaped from MAGIC earlier that night. And although its wards had allowed me to be tracked into the city, no one had been sure exactly where I'd gone. While Tomas, Pritkin and a vampire named Louis-Cesare came here, Rafe and Mircea had gone to Tony's main offices. Or so I'd thought.

"I was. I left Raphael there, in case you made an appearance," Mircea said, his eyes narrowing slightly. "May I ask how you knew that?"

"Probably wouldn't be best," I said, wishing hysteria was a luxury I could afford.

Mircea just stood there, looking ridiculously model-pretty with his tousled hair and faintly amused mouth, his rich black suit perfectly showcasing his—objectively speaking—extremely attractive body. I didn't know if he did it deliberately, but his clothes always seemed to run just a little snug around the biceps and thighs, drawing my attention where it absolutely had no place being. Not to mention that Mircea in black looked like sin. The only saving grace was that at least it wasn't leather—and why was I even going there?

He held out a hand. It was a silent invitation, but it made my stomach flip. My stomach was an idiot.

I jumped back, almost stumbling over my own feet. "Don't touch me!" The last time I'd encountered Mircea in the past, the geis had leapt from me to him, starting this whole mess by doubling the spell. Would I triple it if he got close enough now? Because I didn't think either of us could survive that.

Somewhere nearby, people were yelling and Pritkin was swearing and a couple of terrified-looking wererats scurried past, dripping blood on the asphalt. "We must go, dulceata?" Mircea said mildly.

The fact that he was still using the pet name he'd given me years ago, meaning "dear one," was probably a good sign, but I doubted it was going to last. I needed to get gone, but I really didn't want to shift in front of him—it would tell him a lot more than I wanted him to know. But I couldn't exactly outrun him, and I sure couldn't let him get close enough to touch me.

"Cassie." Mircea looked at me reproachfully when I continued to ignore his outstretched hand.

But, I thought, desperately backing away, the screwup had come in an era before the geis was cast. That Mircea hadn't had it, so the spell had leapt from me to him to complete itself. But this Mircea did have it, had both strands, in fact, so he should be immune. Right?

"Cassandra!"

"I'm trying to think here!" I told him as he started toward me.

"You can think at MAGIC, where it's safe."

"You know," I said savagely, "considering how often I hear that word, it's amazing how frequently I end up almost dead!"

"That will not happen tonight," he said firmly, and took my hand. I stared at him in horror, waiting for the electric sizzle that would tell me I'd just managed to kill us both. But other than the faint tingle the geis always gave off, there was nothing.

Nothing except a sweet, cloying odor, like flowers on the verge of rot. Where had I smelled that before? Mircea said what I suspected was a very bad word in Romanian and abruptly pulled me behind him.

"Cass, you know the last time we were here, how a couple of dark mages showed up for the party?" Billy asked, his voice quavering slightly.

"Why, what does that have to—" I looked around Mircea's coat to see a group of dark shapes silhouetted against the street lights. "Oh."

"I'm thinking maybe I missed a few on the recon," Billy said, looking freaked.

I did a quick count. "A few?" I squeaked. "Eight is not a few!"

In the distance, a blue cloud started to spread over the parking lot. I remembered that—Pritkin had employed some kind of tear gas in combat and almost choked us all to death. It had been no fun inside, my lungs burning for hours afterwards; of course, it wasn't currently a thrill a minute on the outside, either.

"The seer goes with us, vampire," one of the mages said.

I expected Mircea to try to talk him around, to use some of the famous charm that had made him the Consul's chief negotiator. I guess the mages did, too. Because they looked really surprised when the speaker suddenly went flying through the air.

He landed in the power lines overhead, snapping one of the bigger ones on impact and getting caught on several of the smaller. A hiss of electricity stuttered wildly around his body for a moment, then he plunged toward the ground, only to be snatched back up again by a line that had gotten tangled around one foot. He bounced a couple of times before starting to swing slowly in space, dangling upside down by an ankle like the Hanged Man in my tarot deck.

"That was unwise," the nearest mage told Mircea calmly, right before a wall of scorching hot air slammed into us. It lifted me completely off my feet and threw both of us back against the fencing. I missed the spine-shattering post, but it felt like some of the links might have become permanent additions to my anatomy.

Mircea was back on his feet in a blink, and two mages spontaneously caught fire. They put it out almost as quickly, however, and by the time I had crawled out of the metal net, they'd responded with a blistering ball of electric blue and white. It drove Mircea to one knee, but he caught it, hands sizzling audibly, then lobbed it back at the sender. The mages' shields deflected it into the power lines above, causing a pulse of electricity to run along them like blue fire. The streetlights popped in a long line like firecrackers, and a pulse of energy exploded against the hanging mage, sending him spiraling the rest of the way to earth with a power line snapping and stuttering around him.

The electrocuted mage was twitching slightly against the ground, like he might still be alive. Then I got a good look at his face, which was slack-jawed, with open, glassy eyes and a blackened tongue, and decided no, probably not. One of his colleagues apparently reached the same conclusion, but instead of mourning his friend, he elected to use him. He animated the corpse with a gesture, raising it vertically until it looked like a scarecrow in a windstorm, all jumping limbs and dangling, jittering feet, hovering just above the ground.

I glanced from the dancing corpse to the widening blue cloud, but enough flashes, rumblings and muffled gunshots were coming from inside that I felt marginally safe from having our fight overheard. It was the only thing I felt safe about, especially when a metal trash can came flying at our heads. It stopped in midair, about a foot from my nose, then reversed course and flew apart, razor-sharp fragments peppering the line of mages like shrapnel. Shrapnel that did not, it appeared, make it through their shields.

The rusty tan Pinto that slammed into the mages a second later didn't, either, but it did take their combined effort to throw it off. It went flipping away across the night, rotating three times before exploding against the nearest line of cars. Most of the mages were fine, if seriously pissed. But one was either younger or less well trained than the others, because for a split second he lost his concentration—and with it, his shields. And a second is all it takes.

A master vampire does not need to touch a person to drain him, a fact that Mircea took this opportunity to demonstrate. I think he was trying to intimidate the others into running, because he did not go for a clean kill. He extended a hand and the mage jerked to a halt, bloody tears suddenly springing to his eyes. But instead of streaming down his cheeks, they flowed outward, flying across the distance between us to Mircea's palm, where the tiny droplets were immediately absorbed.

And then it wasn't only his eyes bleeding; it looked like every pore on his face had ruptured, sending not a trickle but a flood twisting through the air, like a long red ribbon. In a few short seconds the mage crumpled, face now snow white, bloodless lips open in a silent oh. He was dead before he hit the asphalt.

If intimidation had been the object, it didn't work. The mages merely scattered and mounted separate attacks. They probably assumed that Mircea couldn't watch the remaining six at once, and while he was dealing with one, the others would take him out. I was desperately afraid they might be right. The animated corpse moved closer, and a cloud of glass fragments from the destroyed cars rose up from the ground behind it, glittering in the flames like deadly diamonds. As if that wasn't enough, a group of burning tires rotated off the asphalt, looking like a squadron of UFOs against the dark.

I lost track of exactly what happened after that, as everything came at us at once—most of it too fast to see. I blinked and the next time I looked, a segment of fencing had jumped in front of us, acting like a shield to catch the various flying objects. I realized why the corpse had continued to move even after death when it crashed into the fence and the whole thing lit up with sparks. Around its foot, the downed power line was still coiled like a long black snake, hissing and crackling, spitting fire as deadly to a vampire as to a human. But it couldn't touch us, and in a moment, the body went dancing back across the parking lot like a demented puppet.

Mircea sent the segment of fencing flying toward the nearest mage, and it hit his shields with an avalanche of sparks. They held, ensuring that the hot metal didn't touch his skin, but they couldn't stop the fence from wrapping around him like a blanket. The links almost immediately began to glow with a new, more-intense light, melting into his shielding the way hot water sinks into ice.

The other mages had paused for some reason, and I didn't wait to find out why. I dove for Mircea, intending to shift us out before they got their wind back, even if it blew my cover. But a solid wall of energy met my outstretched hand, searing a stripe across my skin that felt like a bad sunburn.

"Get out of here, Cassie," Mircea said, as I snatched my hand back.

"Here's a thought," Billy said. "Shift both of you out of here."

I gave him my "no shit" face. "I have to touch him!"

"What's stopping you?"

Apparently, he couldn't see the barrier any better than I could. But it was there. Mircea didn't have shields—he wasn't a mage and vamp magic didn't work like that. It had to be pure power he was putting out, surrounding himself and the mages in an energy field that had them trapped as effectively as any cage. But in a way, he was as trapped as they were. He couldn't drop the barrier without setting them free, and I couldn't get any closer as long as he kept it up.

"Mircea is stopping me!" I snapped.

"Cassandra! I cannot hold them forever!" A single drop of sweat ran down Mircea's cheek to hang suspended on the edge of his jaw. "You must go!"

Before I could reply, one of the mages tore free, a young man with acne and mismatched eyes, one green and one blue. He stumbled away from the others, his clothes smoking, his limp brown hair on fire. But a few whispered words put out the flames and when he turned, his face furious, there was something in his hand. Something warm and pale pink, the color of the webbing between his fingers.

The little ball looked innocuous, but I'd been around mages long enough to know how likely that was. And Mircea couldn't move, couldn't defend himself, without freeing the others to do even more damage. Fear, stark and violent, flashed down my spine and my heart started throbbing in my ears, which made no sense because I could feel my skin prickling as the blood drained from my face.

The small ball dropped to the ground and rolled a few feet before coming to rest against a tuft of grass growing up through the concrete. The mage sank to his knees, staring at me with surprise on his face. And then he fell over sideways, still clutching the widening stain on his chest.

"You shot him." Billy looked almost as surprised as I felt.

"I guess he forgot to get his shields back up," I said numbly.

I wanted to sit down. My insides felt trembly and my hand was shaking, which considering that I had a mostly full clip in the gun was probably a safety violation. But then the mages did something that sent Mircea smashing back into what remained of the fence, causing him to momentarily lose his concentration. And as soon as he did, the animated corpse came flying across the parking lot and leapt straight at him.

I screamed, knowing what fire of any type did to an unprotected vampire. Then I was shooting at random, an ache blooming in my chest so sharp it felt like a knife. But the remaining mages all had shields up. My bullets just pinged off a couple as if they were made of transparent steel, and were absorbed by others, like rocks falling into water. They'd killed Mircea and I couldn't even hurt them.

"Cassie!" I turned at Billy's voice, and found him hovering in front of Mircea, hazy and indistinct, like a double negative.

I stared in disbelief as Mircea slowly raised his head. Then I did a double take, my mouth literally dropping open, because he was hanging in the middle of a fence jumping with blue-white energy and there was no way he'd survived that. Just no way.

"Get him out of there or he's a goner!"

"What?" I said stupidly, and then someone grabbed me from behind. The gun went flying out of my hand and a fist cracked against my cheekbone, slamming my head back, making my ears ring. I tried desperately to shift, but I was dizzy and the pain was unbelievable and nothing happened.

"I have her!" a man's voice yelled in my ear, and from the corner of my eye I saw another dark shape advancing on us. But the arms around my waist wouldn't budge no matter how I fought. Someone was screaming nearby, a horrible, hopeless sound that messed with my concentration as much as the hands that were forcing my wrists together.

I kicked out with my foot, as hard as I could, and felt the impact against something soft. Someone swore and a pale, gaunt man with hard gray eyes appeared in front of me. He pulled a wicked-looking knife from his coat and held it in front of my eyes until I was able to focus on it. As soon as I did, he stabbed it down into my right wrist.

I could feel small bones breaking, then he gave it a twist and it tore against tendons, blood dripping down my arm as he ripped it out and held it in front of my face again. "Still want to fight us?"

For a moment, I couldn't scream—there wasn't enough air in my lungs. Then something hard and slick tightened around my wrists, right over the wound. And I gave a shriek that didn't sound right, didn't sound like me, but the pain slammed into me all at once and then I couldn't stop screaming.

"Shut her up!" someone said, and an arm clamped over my windpipe, cutting off the noise and also my air. I desperately tried to shift again, and for a second I thought I had it. Just like in the caves, I could feel time as a syrupy, elastic mass, only it wasn't quite right, wasn't enfolding me like I wanted.

Suddenly I hit the ground, stunned and bleary-eyed, and when nobody grabbed me again, I started trying to crawl away. But my hands were bound with a hard plastic tie, I couldn't put any weight on my broken wrist and my directional sense was shot. I ended up rolling into a puddle of something warm and sticky.

I looked down to see a diamond pattern burnt into the asphalt. All around it were shreds of fabric, which I finally recognized as crisped blue jeans and the singed remains of a cotton shirt. There were hard white bits sticking up here and there, marring the pattern, and something that looked like hair. It finally hit me. The fencing. Mircea had wrapped it around the mage, and it had burnt through his shields and then it had—

I scrambled to my feet and staggered away, bile rising in my throat, my breath coming hard and fast enough to actually hurt my lungs. My head was reeling, and when I tried to steady myself, the space around me shook instead. I would have run straight into the fence if Billy hadn't shouted at me.

"Your shoes! They're rubber-soled, Cass!"

For a moment I didn't know what he was talking about, but then blue-white fire flashed in front of my eyes and I got it. The power line had come loose from its human delivery device and attached itself directly to the fence, slithering back and forth over the asphalt like a huge electric eel. My head kept swimming and my eyesight was trying to black out and my fingers didn't seem to want to do what I told them, even on the hand that didn't feel like it was on fire. Getting the sneaker off was a nightmare, and even holding on to it was a challenge—how was I supposed to use it for anything? And why was nobody trying to stop me all of a sudden?

I didn't want to risk touching the line directly, rubber soles or no. I tried throwing the sneaker, but my aim was even worse than usual and I finally ended up kicking it instead. It took four tries, but I managed to jar the downed line until it lost contact with the fence.

As soon as it did, I had a vague sense of Mircea jumping away and attacking the remaining mages. I heard what sounded like a neck snap and a body hit the asphalt nearby, but I couldn't seem to concentrate on it. It was all I could do to fight the urge to relax and sink into the welcoming darkness that hovered at the edges of my vision.

I stumbled backwards, and my heel hit something that crunched under the light pressure. When I looked down, I saw two bodies on the ground. The nearest was a woman, so elderly as to be cadaverous, her skin papery and mottled with age spots, her hair wispy and bone white. The other was a man, at least I assumed so, based on his clothes. The slight breeze sent tiny pieces of a disintegrating mustard-colored shirt blowing away, like pollen on the air. The body underneath looked like a recently unwrapped mummy, all crinkled brown skin stretched over visible ribs. I stared at them, stunned and uncomprehending.

"Cass! Cass!" Billy was talking to me, and something pale rolled against my remaining sneaker. "Throw it!"

My eyes finally managed to focus on the small item, which I identified as the ball the mage had been holding earlier. Billy must have retrieved it, but I couldn't understand why until I looked up and saw five more mages rushing towards us from the far side of the building. It looked like the cavalry had arrived, but with my usual luck, they were for the other side.

I shook my head, trying to clear it, and that jolted my arm, and oh, God, that hadn't been a good idea. Luckily the mages weren't paying any attention to me, either because they hadn't seen me yet or because, compared to Mircea, I didn't look like much of a threat. He was providing a hell of a distraction, stepping on one mage's neck while wrenching another's head almost completely off his body. It looked impressive, but if he had resorted to old-fashioned hand-to-hand, he was pretty damn drained. I didn't know if he could survive another attack and I didn't intend to find out.

I tried to grab the sphere, but my hands were slick with blood and I couldn't seem to keep hold. Every time I thought I had it, it slipped away, my fingers just not able to hold on. I accidentally kicked it and held my breath, waiting for it to detonate and kill us all, but it only rolled off a few yards until stopped by a ridge in the concrete.

"Cass!"

I looked up to see that I was out of time. The mages had paused a cautious distance from Mircea, but that was only because any master vampire deserved a certain respect, even a wounded one. Maybe especially a wounded one. But the attack would come any second now. And I couldn't stop it.