“Not within the last ten days,” he agreed. “Which is as far back as my scent record goes.”
I just looked at him, but he wasn’t kidding. And then he wasn’t there anymore, either. Because the bat shit crazy loon had dissolved and flowed straight through the portal.
“Lawrence!” I hissed, but it was too late.
He was gone.
Not being insane—well, not at the moment—I jerked my coat open and dragged out my key chain. I snapped off an Eye of Argos charm, threaded it through my belt and broke the surface with that, trying to peer around. On the plus side, the belt didn’t catch fire or get chopped off, shredded, or otherwise destroyed. On the negative, I couldn’t see shit, even after adjusting the charm, except for a few tumbled rocks. The portal’s light on the other end was blocking everything else.
I sat there on my heels for a second. If it had been just the two vamps we were talking about, I wouldn’t have been too worried. Anything a vampire—well, anything a normal vampire—could survive, so could I. But the presence of the mage made it hinky. Mages had tricks and spells and wards and traps and a whole host of other nastiness at their disposal, and that was just the light kind. I really, really didn’t like the idea of going through an unknown portal into a dark who-the-hell-knew with a possible black mage running around.
But I liked leaving Lawrence to face him on his own even less. I could call in, explain what had happened and wait for backup—which is what sane people did, Lawrence—but by the time it got here, he would have already dealt with or been dealt with by whoever was down there. There would be nothing left but picking up the pieces, assuming we could find them all, which in his case wasn’t that likely.
“I never leave a partner behind,” he’d said. Except when he did. Or when he assumed the crazy dhampir would be right on his heels. And I guess he was right, because the next thing I knew, I was slipping down through the middle of the portal and feeling the not-water closing over my head.
Chapter Nine
“What are you doing?” a voice demanded, causing me to bite my tongue on a scream. It was extraordinarily bad timing, because I hit the ground a second later, jarring my jawbone and causing my fangs to pop out. And then plunging them into my own flesh.
Which was just as well, as it kept me from uttering any of the comments that were trembling on the tip of my mangled tongue. I pried my teeth out and spat blood. It took a few seconds, because there was a lot of it, and then I looked up to find Radu hovering over me.
Literally, since his feet weren’t touching the floor. “How are you doing that?” I demanded when I could talk.
“How should I know?” he asked, looking like a testy angel with that long dark hair floating around that beautiful face. “I told you, this is new to me, too. But at a guess, the laws of physics don’t work when it’s all in your head.”
“Tell that to my jaw,” I said, rubbing it.
“Well, I’m sorry, but Mircea wants—” He stopped, tilting his head. “Mircea wants me to take you out, but Kit is arguing against it.” He winced.
“What is it?”
“Louis-Cesare is…objecting…to something Kit said,” Radu told me diplomatically.
I hoped the objecting hadn’t involved any thumps, because the day that happened I damned well wanted to be there to see it. But right now there was something I wanted more. “I need to finish this.”
Radu shook his head. “It isn’t a good idea, Dory. We can come back—”
“And the missing vampires?”
“You know they’re…” Radu looked uncomfortable. “Well, you know the odds.”
“And you know how tricky first- and second-level masters can be.”
He sighed. Considering who his brother was, yes, he did. “It would be best to be able to go after them sooner rather than later,” he admitted. “But—”
“Then get out of here.” I’d gotten to my feet and now I tried to push past him, but a pale, long-fingered hand gripped my arm. It was always surprising to remember that ’Du was a vampire, too, and also second-level. He didn’t look it, didn’t act it. But the strength of that hand was unmistakable.
“There are four missing men, ’Du,” I said, because I couldn’t break his grip. I might have, on a good day, since fighting isn’t only about strength and I know a hell of a lot more about it than Radu ever bothered to learn. But he was right—I was getting tired. Trying to fight my way out would just end this all the sooner.
But Radu didn’t let go. “When did they become men?” he asked softly.
“What?”
“They’re vampires, Dory. Not too long ago, they would have been things to you. We were all merely things.”
“No.”
“Yes.” The wavering beams of light threw odd shadows across that handsome face, making it hard to read his expression. “You killed our kind—”
“I killed the bad guys, ’Du,” I said impatiently, because I really was tired. And in pain. All the little aches Louis-Cesare had soothed away were coming back, not at full strength, but enough to remind me that he was better at killing things than healing them. “I never went after anybody who didn’t deserve it.”
“Not hurting is a different thing from saving,” he replied quietly. “There was a time when you would have let Raymond burn up in your hallway. When you would not have cared if four strange vampires died. When you would have been like your friend Claire, who says all the right things but looks at us as if we were roaches crawling across her kitchen floor.”
“You…didn’t act like you noticed that.”
“Of course not. I am charming,” Radu pointed out.
“Yeah,” I said, because in his own, extremely weird way, he sort of was. He was also sort of right, but I didn’t think now was the time to go into it.
“Can you go Oprah on me later?” I asked. “If I’m going to do this, I really need—”
“Shit!”
The drop was a bitch. Fourteen feet isn’t fun anyway, but landing on a lot of pointy rocks is even less so. Fortunately, the points were fairly small, leaving me beat up and bloody instead of impaled. Unfortunately, they were also hot as fuck.
“Shit! Shit!”
I jumped up, getting hard boot leather between me and the floor. It looked perfectly normal—beige and rocky, except for clearer bits here and there covered with sand—but the Ray impression I was currently doing said otherwise. The knees of my jeans were burnt out, one sleeve of the leather jacket I’d been wearing was melted to my arm, and my hands—
“Damn it!” The portal’s light showed me palms full of blisters, which wouldn’t have been so bad except for the half ton of gravel embedded in them. And the damned stuff was continuing to blister the areas around it even as my body tried to heal. It was like picking up a handful of embers, only these didn’t seem inclined to go out.
After a second, I bit the bullet and wiped my hands on my jeans, leaving blood and skin behind along with the gravel, because I didn’t have time to pick out every individual piece. My soles were already starting to smoke, and when they went, it was time’s up. And since it looked like that would take all of another minute or so, I faced reality and pulled out the big guns.
Or, to be more precise, the big cheat.
Being a dhampir has certain advantages—better senses, rapid healing, greater strength, speed, etc. What it does not have is magic, of any type, kind or variety, which is a problem considering many of the things I fight. But as flat-chested girls and balding guys learned a long time ago, what nature didn’t give you, you can often buy. And mages have to make a living, too.
But the cool toys don’t come cheap. I mentally tacked another grand onto the tally for tonight’s little outing, and pulled a Baggie out of an inner coat pocket. Inside was a cheap-looking bracelet, bronze and cuff style, like the magnetic crap shysters are always trying to pawn off on arthritis sufferers at the mall. Only this one actually worked.
Not for healing, but for making sure you didn’t need any. The thing was a temporary shield, fine as any a war mage could project, which was fair, since I’d bought it off one. But like all shields, it ate magic like candy. And it wasn’t like I could generate more when the reservoir ran dry. A plastic strip on the side showed the drain—fifteen minutes under ideal conditions, which was stupid when the whole point of having the damned thing was that you weren’t in ideal conditions.
Anyway, I could hope for maybe five here. I also hoped that nobody with superfine hearing was paying attention, because the big boy didn’t play well with others. Specifically, it required dropping all other shields, which interfered with it for some reason I didn’t understand since magic theory made my head hurt. But the mage’s instructions had been specific, so the sound shield had to go.
The new spell closed over me, a cool bubble of protection molding to my scorched skin like air-conditioned glass. I gave a—very brief—sigh of relief as the temp dropped a good fifty degrees, allowing me to breathe. I also took a few precious seconds to shoot a line with a grappling hook back through the portal and onto the boat, making sure it caught. It was retractable, so as long as I managed to get back here, and the line hadn’t burnt up, and nobody was shooting at me on the way up, I’d be fine.
Yeah.
So.
The only good thing was that I didn’t have to choose directions. Behind me was a wall, and while there was a chance that Lawrence had found a way through it, I wasn’t going to. He was either somewhere ahead or he wasn’t, and I had about four and a half minutes left to find out. I started moving.
SOP in cases like this is to take a couple steps, check for snares, take another couple steps, repeat as needed. But (a) that would get me all of ten yards before my protection gave out, (b) I didn’t see Lawrence’s mangled body anywhere and (c) why the hell bother to put a snare in here? The corridor of the damned was enough of a barrier all on its own.
