Midnight's Daughter

It bought me some time, but not much, and my limbs still felt like they were moving through molasses. Then my hand closed around something long and sharp and hard, and I gripped it like the lifeline it was, even though the blade cut into my palm. I was trying to turn it, to get a cutting edge against that damnable hide, when a gaping hole was slashed in the darkness. A cascade of water droplets blew in on me, wetting my face, and I gasped in a great lungful of the cold, clean scent of rain.

“Dorina!” I was hauled from the bloody cavern, my body making a squelching sound as it tore free. “Dorina!” Blood was in my ears; I could barely hear, but the sound of Louis-Cesare’s voice got through somehow. I pried open my eyes, blinking God knew what aside, and he caught me in a fierce embrace. His saber arm was crimsoned to the shoulder, and his other hand was gloved with gore. I’d never been so happy to see anyone.

“I’m okay,” I croaked, wondering if it was true as the world spun around me. I felt myself being lifted. One second we were by the carcass, the next beside the house. Louis-Cesare pressed me against the stucco, gripped my face in one large, muddy hand and kissed me. I fought free after a moment, gasping for air, trying to keep the heavy mass of hair dripping down his bare shoulders from suffocating me. “Not the time!” I choked.

“Est-ce que vous êtes folle?” His voice was harsh.

“No more so than you,” I gasped, spitting out something squashy that I didn’t look at too closely. “And considering everything, I really think you can use the familiar.”

“I told you that I was coming—” For some reason, he was shaking.

I had a bad taste in my mouth. I spat and it was red, but I didn’t think the blood was mine. “What? Did you think one little bird was going to do me in?” The liquid fatigue in my muscles forced me to lean against the house to keep from falling over. I took a deep, shuddering breath. “Hell, that was just a warm-up.”

Louis-Cesare muttered something I didn’t catch. Probably just as well. I ran a trembling hand over myself to check that all my parts were still there. I appeared to be okay, other than for assorted claw marks. The only ones that worried me were those on my abused shoulders. They were bad enough to limit my movement.

I tried to step out of the circle of Louis-Cesare’s arms—we were under an overhang from the roof, and considering that I was soaked with bird goo, I preferred to stand in the rain. But he tightened his grip and glared at me. “You are not going anywhere!”

“Oh, okay. You’re going to round up Radu’s little horrors and guard him from whatever has already slunk into the house, and get the wards up all by yourself?” I gestured at the shadowy landscape, where all that exotic foliage was rustling menacingly. Some of that was due to the rain, but not all.

“I will do what I must.” Despite his mud-splattered skin and the fact that the waterlogged towel was drooping dangerously, he managed to make it dignified.

I bit back a smile and a very inappropriate comment. “I can take care of myself.”

His jaw clenched. “As you did a moment ago?”

I opened my hand and showed him the knife I still clutched. “Yeah.”

Louis-Cesare stared at it for a long moment, expressionless. “You’re hurt,” he finally protested.

I brushed a piece of intestine off my shoulder. “It’s hurt worse.”

“You can assist Radu—”

“I know jack about wards,” I said flatly. “I know a lot about killing things. You and ’Du get the wards up around the pen, and make sure they recognize me. I’ll do the rest.”

No answer, just the interlacing of warm, strong fingers with my own. The knife was tugged from my grip. I let it go—I needed something bigger anyway.

“Louis-Cesare…”

“No!”

“Louis-Cesare,” I repeated quietly. “Look at me. I’m covered in blood and entrails. I just gutted a creature that would send most people into gibbering fits. And speaking of fits… well, let’s not. The point is, I can take care of myself.” I took a breath. “I’m not Christine.”

I braced for anger about my prying. What I got instead was a look so far from anything I’d expected that it took a second for me to recognize it: the quiet, professional assessment of a colleague. “I will send you assistance,” he finally said, “and once the perimeter wards are up, I will return to help you.” A sword was pressed into my hand.

I nodded. “Deal.” I glanced down and couldn’t help but smile just a little. “And Louis-Cesare—get some pants on.”

Geoffrey joined me a few moments later, as I was tying up something I’d fished out of the bushes. It was mostly tail and claws and a lot of bumpy protrusions. I’d eyed them with concern, but apparently they were just cosmetic, because nothing spurted or oozed out at me.

“We’re going to need more rope,” I told him, “a lot more. I found some in a gardener’s shed, but there has to be a hundred of these things roaming around, and ’Du doesn’t want us to kill any more than we have to.”

“I will bear that in mind,” he replied, and stabbed me.

I saw the blade coming. Unlike my own, deliberately dulled versions, he was using a nice, shiny one that gleamed like a beacon in the dim garden light. But I wasn’t quite fast enough to completely avoid it. It bit into the fleshy part of my side instead of hitting my heart, not that that improved my mood any. “You’re the traitor!” I said stupidly, stumbling backward.

“You should have died in San Francisco,” he said furiously. I tripped over a garden hose and fell against a birdbath, while barely avoiding being skewered again. As it was, I lost the sword, which went flying out of my hand like a silver arrow. Either Geoffrey was faster than he had any right to be at his age, or I was slowing down. Either way, not good.

“Sorry to disappoint you,” I told him, and threw a heavy earthenware pot, complete with hibiscus, at his head. He dodged and snarled. It looked really odd on that usually stoic face.

“Or at di

“You poisoned Stinky!” Okay, now I was pissed. I drove the plinth from the stone birdbath into his gut, hard enough to make him fall to his knees retching. I looked around for the basin, which would hopefully be heavy enough to finish him, but in the few seconds it took me to locate it, Geoffrey was gone. His knee prints in the dirt were still there, rapidly filling with water, but there was no sign of the vamp himself.

“The freak ate from your plate—it was intended for you!” He fell on me out of the branches of a dripping bottlebrush tree, knife flailing, but I skipped back. One swipe of his weapon ripped a gash in the peasant top, but missed my skin. I had a second to be glad it was Radu’s wardrobe being decimated this time, instead of mine, while Geoffrey went sprawling in the mud. Then he was up and coming at me again.

I brought up the basin like a shield, hearing the scrape of the knife on stone, then slammed it into his face and leapt back, skirting a trellis that ran along one side of the house. It created a small, very dark arbor, shadowed by grapevines as big around as my wrist. Something snatched at me from the foliage. I got a quick impression of a scaly body, a naked tail and a sharp snout with needle-thin canines. I retrieved my sword, which was still quivering from landing point first in the ground, and poked at it. It retreated, chittering in displeasure. Unfortunately, I didn’t think Geoffrey would be so easy to deter. After attacking me, he’d have to kill me, or Mircea would rip him to pieces.

I sca