Marlowe didn’t even appear to notice. His eyes were fixed on me, and they were blacker than I’d ever seen them. It was like staring into two black holes, only not as friendly.
“Wait,” I said.
And then I was airborne.
Which might not have been so bad, but Marlowe was, too. I got a split-second impression of him launching himself over the balcony I’d just sailed across, and then my back hit the floor of the arena. Hard.
And oh, yeah. That’s what I needed tonight, I thought, rolling over. And thereby missing the vampire who landed on light cat feet right beside me. And getting squashed by the one who smacked into me like a sack of potatoes a second later.
“Okay, okay,” Ray said, from atop my butt. “Let’s not be—”
And then he was sliding backward, too, like a toboggan, only without the sled, across the shiny floor. And I was jumping back to avoid the fist of an enraged master vampire. Who seemed to have forgotten that he needed my brain intact in order to probe it.
“Is this the first match?” I heard someone say, as I ducked and dodged and tried to explain what was going on, only I didn’t have the breath.
“Tell him!” I gasped at Ray, who ran back up as I bobbed beneath an iron fist.
“Dory’s here because she thinks the bad guys got the password to the consul’s portal,” he said quickly. “And that they’re about to bring a fey army through. Tonight,” he added, since Marlowe didn’t seem real impressed.
I nodded, and darted behind a confused-looking guy who was consulting his ticket.
“Am I in the wrong place?” he asked me.
“No, you’re fine,” I breathed, avoiding the blows Marlowe was aiming to either side of him. And then dropping to the floor and scurrying behind some startled bystanders, when Marlowe growled and picked the guy up, setting him aside like he weighed nothing.
“Only I’m trying to tell her that they don’t. Have the password, that is,” Ray added. “Or that it wouldn’t matter if they did.”
“Wouldn’t matter?” I asked, stopping to glare at him through some chick’s legs.
Only to have Marlowe dive between them and grab me around the neck.
Well, that was fast, I thought resignedly, when the girl’s outraged date—who clearly didn’t know who he was dealing with—kicked Marlowe in the head. It didn’t do much more than distract him, but my patent leather stiletto was a bit more forceful, and his grip slipped. And I slithered away with only the loss of a few chiffon bits.
They don’t make evening dresses like they used to, I thought, as Ray caught my eye.
“It doesn’t matter because nobody’s getting back into Central,” he yelled at me. “It’s on a major lockdown, so they don’t have access to the gate. They couldn’t use the password if they had it!”
“Yes, they can!” I insisted, furiously dodging through the crowd. And yet somehow meeting Marlowe coming the other way.
Crap.
“And just how do you expect them to do that?” Ray demanded, as a hard hand grabbed me around the throat.
But not so hard that I couldn’t talk.
“What if Cheung happened to mention to his would-be employers just how you got your network?” I asked Ray, as I was jerked up. “And what if they decided to take a page out of your playbook? You said it yourself—it’s easy enough once you think of it, only nobody ever does.…”
Marlowe’s hand tightened, almost to the point of strangulation. Which didn’t stop him from demanding information. “What are you saying?”
I looked up at the mirror, looming huge at the far end of the room, and a shiver went up my spine. Or maybe it wasn’t just me. Because for a second, it looked like the whole room was shivering. And then I realized why, when another ripple—tiny, tiny, like a single drop of rain on the surface of a lake—shimmied across the supposedly hard glass.
“I’m saying…what if they hack it?” I gasped, just as the whole surface exploded outward.
Marlowe threw me to the ground and fell on top of me, as hard shards of glass erupted across the combat oval, tearing at my skin and sending the crowd into panic mode. Or maybe that was more about what was coming through the now quite visible portal. From under Marlowe’s arm, I watched five huge, shaggy creatures break off from the horde and make straight for us.
They looked kind of like werewolves—in the same way that saber-toothed tigers look kind of like kitties. They were huge—at least twice the size of normal werewolves, but with none of the elegant lines and dignified bearing of the Clans. Who would probably have run screaming at the sight of them.
I kind of felt like that, too, until Marlowe threw out a hand.
And their heads exploded, one after another, like gory firecrackers.
The bodies thudded to the ground, still sliding forward on their own blood and past momentum, almost reaching us before Marlowe jerked me back. “How sure are you?” he yelled, to be heard over the screaming and the yelling and the whoosh of the vampire guards descending on the rest of the horde like a blurry wave.
“About what?”
“The fey!”
“Pretty sure. But—” I looked at the more immediate problem. “What are they?”
“Cannon fodder,” Marlowe said grimly. “The real army will be behind them.”
“And when it gets through?”
“It won’t. I have a group on the way to the basement now. Stay out of the way; this won’t take long.”
“The basement—what?” I asked, but he was already gone.
I didn’t have a chance to pursue him, because I had to hit the deck again to avoid the chandelier that came crashing down like a ball of ice. Literally, I realized, as it shattered against the floor, and some of the pieces flew up and hit my arm. And left marks on my skin, because they were cold enough to burn.
And I didn’t have to ask why. Bullets were flying everywhere, prompting me to jerk Ray to the ground as several whistled by overhead. Because a new group had joined the party. And if I’d thought the other Weres were strange, they were nothing compared to the new arrivals.
They looked like Hollywood’s idea of the wolf man, with grotesquely elongated hands, talon-like claws and weirdly distorted faces. And vaguely human bodies, because I guess it’s hard to carry that much hardware in full wolf form. And they were armed to the teeth.
Fortunately, cannon fodder didn’t seem to aim too well. Unfortunately, it didn’t matter. Because every place one of their rounds landed turned into a winter wonderland.
The floor was suddenly mostly ice, crackling around my shoes and threatening to freeze my feet through the soles. Mirrors cracked and shattered on all sides, fissures appeared in the walls where marble slabs had been adhered to the surface, and a few slid off to detonate in thunderclaps against the floor. The consul’s balcony was hit, carving off a chunk, and causing one of Ming-de’s servants to abruptly meet the ground. And to then shatter into a hundred pieces, because he must have been caught in the spell, too.
The fey spell was wreaking havoc, but the wards were doing exactly bupkes about it. So either they were down, which seemed impossible this fast, or the spell was so alien that they didn’t recognize it. And either way, we were—
“Come on!” Ray said, tugging on my hand. “There’s nothing we can do. We gotta get out of here!”
“How?” I yelled, to be heard over the din.
It was already threatening to become a mass stampede, with the people who hadn’t slipped on the icy floor starting to trample each other in a desperate bid to get out. This wasn’t helped by the late arrivals, who obviously didn’t realize what was going on. They were still pushing from the opposite direction, trying to get in before they missed the excitement and managing to create even more.
And then the lights blew out, and everything went dark.
The crowd issued a collective scream and panicked. And the resulting chaos made it impossible to hear any directions that might have been given. Not that anybody appeared to be bothering.
I could still see, after a moment, due to the glistening blue light coming from the portal. It wasn’t much, but it lit the consuls, who were watching the events occurring below as if they were spectators at a play. A not very interesting one.
Hassani looked bored and vaguely irritated, and wasn’t doing anything that I could see, although a few of his vamps were using the creatures for target practice. But Ming-de must have been annoyed about her shattered servant. Because she was peering over the edge of the balcony, a slight smile on her pretty features as she watched her apparently knife-edged fans decapitate creature after creature.
For his part, Marlowe had delegated some of his boys to try to corral the crazy by the exit and to hunt down the creatures who were thrashing around here and there. The rest were grouped around the portal, systematically decimating the cannon fodder still coming through. Most of which weren’t even making it completely out before being cut down.
Despite the initial pandemonium, things were slowly getting back in hand, and I breathed a brief sigh of relief. It looked like maybe Marlowe had been right after all—this wouldn’t take long. Someone even seemed to have gotten the lights back on, although they must have been the emergency variety, because they were blue, too.
Blue and swirling, I realized, a second before I threw Ray to the icy floor and dove after him, as what looked an awful lot like another portal opened up almost on top of us.
I jerked him back, into the maybe three-foot gap between the portal and the wall, as a wash of slime started vomiting out the other side.
“What the hell is that?” Ray shrieked, which might have been a problem if the things pouring out in front of us had had ears. But they didn’t—or hands or feet or anything except gelatinous, squid-like bodies that squirted around underfoot harmlessly for a moment, to the point that I wondered what they were even doing here.
Until one of them a few yards away began to quiver. And to shake. And to explode, sending a familiar burst of acid-laced pus shooting into the air and setting a nearby guard’s clothes on fire.
