Embrace the Night

I flinched back as Parindra zipped past, so fast that the breeze ruffled my hair; it looked like he'd found another use for his carpet. He tossed something onto the crowd of mages below that exploded in a yellow haze that ate through their shields like acid and set a lot of them ablaze. It also caused the back of the barge to catch fire, which spooked the elephant.

The beast let out an unhappy bellow and went on a rampage, picking up a mage with its trunk and tossing him against a nearby house, which he hit with a sickening crunch. The attack scattered the rest of the mages, who went ru

"That should do it," Mircea said.

"Wait. What are you talking about? Do what?" I asked, and felt his muscles tense beneath me. The commotion had left the area directly below us momentarily free of mages, I realized, and Mircea intended to take advantage of it. "Oh, no. No, no. See, I'm starting to develop a problem with heights and—"

"Hold on," he said, and we were airborne.

I didn't even have time to scream. I felt a rush of cold wind, a brief weightless feeling, and then we smashed into the deck of the ship. Mircea took the brunt of the fall, but it tore me out of his arms and sent me careening into the cloak, which had apparently jumped right along with us. It didn't feel like a vamp under there—no faint tingle was ru

I didn't have time to find out, because a spell hit the barge, making it shudder and buck beneath us, sending both of us reeling into the railing, right beside where a mage was trying to climb on board. A guy dressed like Ming-de's attendants ran over and started stabbing at him with a spear, but the mage had managed to retain his shields, and all it did was piss him off. He came over the side, and he and the guard went down in a tangle of limbs, before rolling straight into me and the cloak. I got a foot to the stomach, which knocked the wind out of me, but the cloak fared worse, its head slamming hard into the heavy wooden railing of the barge.

Mircea had gotten back to his feet and staggered over to the rail. He barely pulled back before a spell sizzled past, exploding against the stone facade of the house behind us. It was hardly the only one. Spells were being flung around everywhere, making the dark sky look almost as light as day, if daylight came in every color of the rainbow.

"I will never get you through this alive, not without a shield," he said grimly. "And I am too drained at present to provide one. I will have to improvise." He had a brief conversation with the remaining Chinese vamp. "Zihao will protect you. Do not leave the ship," he added, right before jumping over the side.

"Mircea!" I peered over the edge of the barge, but the whole street was a working anthill of activity, and I couldn't see him. I did see someone else, though.

The contessa had apparently finished her meal and come for dessert, and I didn't have to ask who she'd slated to fill that role. Damn it! I knew something like this was going to happen.

She vaulted up on deck and said something in Spanish, which I didn't understand, and smiled viciously, which I did. I tried to get to my feet, but the train Augustine had added to the dress got in the way, wrapping around my ankles like a rope. She started laughing while I tugged at the silky material, which just plain refused to rip or to let go. Then she leaned over and freed my feet with a flick of her wrist.

"If you want heem, fight for heem, but on your feet, witch," she told me, as Zihao managed to find something else to do at the far end of the ship. Apparently defending my life did not include getting disemboweled by a jealous Senate member. I honestly couldn't blame him there.

I scrambled up and smiled tentatively. "That was very, uh, decent, of you," I said hopefully. Maybe we could work this out.

That glittering silver net rose up behind her head like a frame for her beautiful face. "Not really." She smiled. "I prefer to dine standing."

Or maybe not.

The lacy trap launched itself at me, like it had the mage who I was certain hadn't made it out of the house. But it stopped halfway between us, caught in a field of stars that had suddenly swirled up all around me, like a galaxy in miniature. For a few seconds, the mantilla hung in the air, immovable object meeting irresistible force. Then everything exploded outward like a star going nova.

I flung an arm over my eyes to shut out the glare, and when I looked again, the contessa was just standing there, as if nothing had happened. I didn't think that was the case, though. Because I could see pieces of the battle behind her, through the hundreds of little holes the starlight had carved right through her body. And then she fell, toppling off the side of the barge into the road below.

I stood there, staring down at her crumpled body, shocked and more than a little freaked. I was alive, but possibly not for long. Because a master vampire wouldn't be killed by something like that. Hurt, maddened, enraged, yes; killed, no. She could get up any second and, as soon as she did, I was toast. I really needed to get off this barge.

Zihao came by while I was trying to see an opening somewhere, anywhere, in the melee. He'd lost the spear, but had improvised a new weapon out of a large oar, which he started to ram through the cape's head. "Wait!" I sank to my knees, which were pretty wobbly anyway, and spread out my hands. The stars had gone back to their usual places and they didn't appear to be rotating anymore. But the guard paused anyway.

He said something that, once again, I didn't understand. I was starting to envy Ming-de her translation device, however temperamental. He finally seemed to realize that we had a failure to communicate. He jerked a thumb between the cloak and me, as if to ask if we were together, and I nodded vigorously. It wasn't true, but whoever was under there wasn't with the other side, either, and I'd seen enough blood for one evening.

That seemed to satisfy the guard, who ambled off to attack someone else. I turned my attention to the cloak, and wondered if I'd wasted my time defending a corpse. Because the man underneath lay motionless, one pale arm outflung, the hood still obscuring his face. He didn't even look like he was breathing, although there was so much loose material that it was hard to tell. But the arm was warm and it looked human enough, so I tugged back the hood to check for injuries.

And stopped dead.

I could hear the madness going on all around me, the elephant rampaging, glass breaking, people swearing. But none of it seemed as real as the face in the middle of all that black, cast in a myriad of colors by flying spells. A very familiar face.

No. I must have been hit in the head and had just failed to notice, because I had to be hallucinating. I blinked hard a couple of times, but it didn't help: the face stubbornly stayed the same. I pressed the heels of my hands against my eyes and sat like that for a minute, not hyperventilating because that would be weak and I couldn't afford that, but maybe breathing a little hard. By the time I let my hands fall to my lap again, I'd managed to get a grip. A bit of a grip. Sort of.

I stared down at the face and, okay, maybe started hyperventilating just a little as my brain tried to twist around the crazy, stupid, completely impossible thing my eyes insisted on showing me. But they were wrong—they had to be—because that couldn't be Pritkin. I'd left him at Dante's, under the happy belief that I was turning in early. And unless he'd found a time machine somewhere, he was still there. But it wasn't Rosier, either. Because although I knew for a fact that the demon lord could bleed, I doubted he'd have been knocked unconscious by a minor head wound.