But the human did not shut it. “No, I don’t think I will,” he said pleasantly. “And you should know that I’ve taken precautions. If I were to suffer some…unfortunate accident…on the way home, you would not outlast the week.”
Unlike his servant, the vamp didn’t noticeably react, other than to roll his eyes. Nor did his power even flare. He’d expected the accusation.
“Right. Sure.” He flung out a hand. “I’m guilty as all hell. Only—if I got the resources to kill off fifty guys—fifty fucking good guys— in a couple days, why haven’t I taken over by now? Why am I even talking to you? I should be sitting at home, with a glass in my hand and a smirk on my face, waiting for my supermen to come tell me they plucked off another bunch of the competition. But do you see me at home? Do you see a drink in my hand?”
“Then why did you ask us here?” the second vamp demanded. “I almost didn’t come.”
“But you did. Why?”
“Because we got a problem.”
“And that’s why I called you here. ’Cause I noticed something about those deaths. Not a single one was somebody into narcotics or magic or weapons or ordinary shit. No. They were all in our line of work. So I wanna know”—his glance went around the small circle—“which one of you losers brought in something he shouldn’t have?”
The room exploded for a moment in violent outbursts of color and sound and recriminations. But I was no longer listening. I was watching one of the fey.
Occasionally, a tendril of someone’s power would rub up against that of another’s and spark in the air, like the words their masters were exchanging. One of the tendrils curling off a male fey rose a little higher than the rest, like a twist of smoke escaping from a fire, if smoke glowed from the inside. It could have been random, but I didn’t think so. I stepped back, back, back, as it rose, silent, ominous, searching.
It did not find me.
But something else did.
“You do not listen very well.”
The words were mild, unthreatening. But they were also something else that wasn’t. They were in my head.
I spun away, kicked out and somersaulted backward, barely missing the searching tendril in the process. But barely is good enough. And landing steadily on the pitted metal beam was better, knife in hand and coming up—
And slicing only air.
I looked around, confused, because someone had been there. And still was, for the next instant, the knife was plucked from my grasp—from behind. I spun again, and this time, I saw…
Something new.
That was rare enough to make me pause, if only for a split second. But that was all it took. The edge of my own knife found its way under my chin, denting the skin over the jugular as it pushed up, forcing my head back with it.
“And I am not in the habit of repeating myself.” A rich masculine voice echoed in my mind as I absorbed the sight of a creature made of light.
Hovering in midair.
It was why I had not seen him. I had been looking for someone behind me, balanced on the narrow beam as I had been, because people did not walk on air. But then, people did not burn silver bright against the night, either, like a fallen star. It was so intense he may as well have been invisible, because I could not look directly at him. But I did not think it would have helped.
I had never known anything to give off power like that.
“I understand your Senate’s interest in these creatures,” he told me. “But your habit of interfering in my affairs is becoming…annoying. It must stop.”
I heard the words, but they barely registered. I was too busy trying to retain my balance against the waves of energy rippling over my skin. It felt like a consul. It felt like the end of the world. And then he moved closer and it grabbed me, coiling around me like a vise.
And I Screamed, putting all my power behind it.
The creature fell away, spiraling to the ground like a wounded bird, and I grabbed the beam, barely able to avoid following him. I teetered there for a long moment, breathing harshly, strangely light-headed and terribly weak. I hated feeling weak.
I was also beginning to hate new experiences, but they were becoming…fairly…normal.…
The dizziness in my head was going to reach my limbs soon enough, so I jumped, giving myself time to find the ground my own way. It was farther than I should have risked, but a vampire broke my fall. He didn’t complain, being as unconscious as the rest of them.
And as the light being lying crumpled on the floor, not five yards away.
I knew I should leave. I was weak and he was powerful, and I had been lucky enough to catch him off guard. I shouldn’t press it.
But the psychic scream would leave him unconscious for a few minutes at least, and I wanted to know…
Why he looked like her.
His light hadn’t dimmed. It was spangling the weather-beaten walls and splashing the ugly floor with a pure white luminescence. He had landed on his side, huge wings spread out behind him, and I had been wrong. I had thought they were made of light, some projection of his aura, but they were real. Soft but strong under my hands, like the shoulder I finally grasped, and the face I revealed when I tugged him over.
A face with wide-open eyes, and dark irises reflecting my own startled face.
“That was a good trick,” he told me softly. “Want to see another?”
And he slid into my mind, smooth as glass.
Lightning flashed, thunder boomed, and I sat bolt upright, sucking a harsh gulp of air into screaming lungs. I felt the bolt all the way through my head, a flash of agony across my temples, pain exploding behind my eyes. I didn’t know where I was and it was pitch-dark and something was moving off to the side.
I screamed as it brushed my face, a whisper-soft caress that was somehow more ominous than a blow. And then I grabbed it, far slower than my usual speed, but quick enough to—
Capture the delicate sheer from over a window.
I couldn’t see the window, couldn’t see anything, but the silky fabric was cool with the night breeze, and smelled faintly of a soft drizzle falling somewhere outside. It was safe, it was nothing to worry about. It was just a stupid piece of fabric.
So let go of it, Dory, I told myself, as my clutching fingers stayed stubbornly shut.
I finally pried my fist loose and let the curtain fall back into place. My eyes had adjusted, and I could see a tall rectangle of dark gray with what might have been tree branches outside, whipping in the breeze. I decided to go with that thought, because I didn’t think my heart could take another jolt. It was already threatening to slam its way through my ribs as it was.
Where the hell was I? I’d just been at Central with Ray and Radu. Hadn’t I? And something had gone wrong, something about vampires and necromancers and…
God, my head hurt.
I lowered it into my shaking hands and closed my eyes, but it didn’t help. Pieces of reality and the tattered fragments of a dream tumbled around in my mind like trash in a whirlwind, impossible to sort out. Particularly when I was in pain.
A lot of it, I realized, as my thudding pulse sent heated beams flashing back and forth between my ankle and my head, kindly stopping along the way to light up a dozen other hot spots around my body. Like a commuter train of pain. Or like a giant had grabbed me and twisted, trying to pull me apart—and damned near succeeded.
Everything hurt, from the wounds I could remember getting, like the throbbing ache in my calf from the piece of metal I’d fallen onto in the elevator, to the ones I couldn’t, like the slick skin on my hands and arms, new and too smooth, like freshly healed burns. Or the pain in my jaw, as if it had been dislocated at some point and then shoved back into place. Or the bullet wound in—
I decided to stop counting.
But maybe that was why I felt so strung out, so unraveled. My cheeks were hot, and when I put a hand up, it came away wet. I rubbed the moisture between my fingers, confused. The pain wasn’t that bad. And I couldn’t remember the last time I’d cried. I couldn’t remember.…
“Dory?”
My head jerked up, my heart in my throat, but I still couldn’t see much. Just velvety darkness, seamless and unbroken, except for a wedge of misty gray seeping in through an opening door. It looked like maybe there was a treeless window in the next room and diffuse beams of moonlight were spilling over.
Just enough to limn the shape of a man.
I couldn’t make out features, but I didn’t need to. Didn’t need the breadth of shoulder or the glimmer of liquid eyes that were all the faint light would show. He stepped beside the bed and the scent was enough, rich, sweet, and completely addictive—
“Butterscotch,” I murmured, and reached for him.
“What?”
I didn’t answer; I just kept tugging at him with all the strength of an anorexic puppy. But he came anyway, sliding a knee onto the smooth cotton sheets and then lying down next to me. He had on a robe, some silky thing. I pulled it off. I needed warmth and skin and—
Yes.
“You’re not supposed to be awake,” he told me softly. And then he tried to gather me up. But that wasn’t what I wanted.
“No.” I pushed at him, ineffectually.
“What is it?”
“Little spoon.”
“You are hungry?”
I didn’t answer, because he wasn’t making sense. I just arranged him the way I wanted, needed. A big, warm, muscle-y pillow that I could drape myself around, like a child with a favorite toy.
A toy with a lot of hair. A mass like silk hit me in the face, making it hard to breathe. I pushed it up and over the soft mound of the pillow, and then snuggled up behind him, pressing my face to a neck that smelled like—
Yes.
Yes.
I took a deep breath, and sighed it out into his ear.
“Ah,” he said, a hand covering the one I’d placed on his stomach, as I pulled him back against me. “I see.”
I sighed again, my whole body relaxing. The pain, the confusion, all of it releasing, slipping away. Like the room. And then a thought occurred, right on the edge of sleep.
