The man’s partner, who was slightly more intelligent, if no more capable, uttered an expletive. “What is taking so long? You said she wouldn’t be a problem.”
“She isn’t.”
“Then what—”
“Her father,” Lawrence said viciously. Of course it had been Mircea; of course it had. Cobbling together some form of bastardized consciousness for his pet. Why, Lawrence couldn’t even begin to imagine. The man gave him the fucking creeps sometimes.
“That vamp isn’t here,” the partner said sharply, challenging him.
And causing Lawrence to have to clench a fist to keep from dropping the SOB, then and there. “He’s done something,” he said shortly. “Something I’ve never seen before. I don’t know what it is, or how to counter it.”
“You’re saying you can’t manipulate her memories?”
“I’m saying I can’t do it right now, in some hatchet job on a pier!” Lawrence retorted, shoving damp hair out of his eyes.
Half of it was salt water, the other half blood splatter from the girl mixed with his own, because this had to look real. Ten to one, Mircea would be extracting her memories, and he would recognize a wholesale implantation. So Lawrence had had to take a few bullets, after already taking a portal to one of the nastier hell dimensions. And now he learned it might have all been for nothing?
God, he wanted to kill something.
“But she has to remember the ship, or they won’t go to Slava’s!” Idiot #1 said. “And that you died, or Marlowe will change the passwords and then we’ll really be screwed—”
“We’re going to be screwed anyway if you don’t come on,” Idiot #2 said, a phone to his ear. “Jonathan says now.”
“Jonathan can—” Lawrence cut himself off. Soon. Very damned soon, he’d deal with Jonathan and the rest of them. He would deal with them slowly. He stood up. “Take her.”
“Take her? Take her where? If she’s no use to us, we gotta clean the scene. We gotta—”
Lawrence shoved the man’s hand away, the one he’d raised with the gun in it. “We need her!”
“Not if you can’t—”
“Put her in one of the labs. The girl got off a call for help, right at the end. I have to wait here for a few minutes, in case anyone comes, and then bail out that fool of a necromancer. Then I’ll deal with her.”
“And if she wakes up before then?”
“She won’t. And even if she does, she’ll be weak from blood loss and mentally confused. I did enough when I knocked her out for that. She won’t be going anywhere until we release her.”
“But she’s supposed to be found here,” the man argued. “Bleeding out. If we take her away, how are we supposed to explain—”
“Leave that to me! Do as you’re told; I’ll handle the rest. This is a minor setback.”
“And it would have been,” Lawrence said, shivering into existence beside me. “Except for you and your father. And my old master, who changed the damned passwords anyway, for no reason!”
“He has gut feelings sometimes,” I said, cursing myself.
I don’t read minds, much less those of powerful mentalists. I should have known I wasn’t picking somebody else’s brain on my own. Should have realized that Lawrence was showing me the scene on the pier, the scene he’d withheld for so long, for a reason.
So he’d have time to find me.
“I’ll gut him,” Lawrence said cruelly. “Just as soon as I finish with—”
Me, I assumed, judging by his expression. At least, the one he’d had a second ago. Before the gun I’d thought into existence blew it away.
He’d forgotten that I’d learned that much, at least, from our former encounters. Or maybe he hadn’t noticed, since I hadn’t been able to use it very effectively. And it didn’t look like that had changed, because he was healing before he hit the ground, make-believe bullets apparently not carrying quite the punch of the real thing. Or maybe he knew some kind of trick to minimize his damage in here.
Too bad I didn’t.
And he didn’t give me time to come up with anything. In a liquid movement that blurred my vision, he surged to his feet and caught my wrist. And then broke it so viciously that I thought for a second he’d ripped my hand off.
He hadn’t, but the pain was so excruciating that the whole wharf wavered as I emptied the clip into him anyway, as I stumbled back, as I stared around for somewhere to run—and came up empty. I didn’t know how to access Louis-Cesare’s memories, and besides, that hadn’t worked so great last time. And there was nothing else in sight except the scene on the wharf, frozen in place, and the skyline with its missing chunks of sky and—
And the rift.
The breech in the wall between Dorina’s consciousness and mine was still there, and still frightening. But I didn’t hesitate, because things couldn’t get any worse. I threw the gun at him and ran, straight into the enveloping clouds around the entrance. Straight past the gaping pink maw, a fluttering tentacle brushing softly over my face. Straight through the flickering scenes of a life I had lived but didn’t know. Straight into—
Darkness.
Chapter Forty-seven
It wasn’t wholly dark.
The pinkish light from before had faded, but other, brighter sources had taken its place. Pieces of memory flickered against the gloom, but not like last time. Before, they had been vague, washed out, wavering oddly. Like a hundred projectors turned onto someone’s laundry. Now it was more like walking down a dark street in Chinatown, assaulted by glowing neon signs on all sides. Or maybe holograms would be a better analogy, because they floated in the air as well as clinging to the rift, like flattened portals to other places, other times.
And there were more of them—a lot more. I glanced behind me, trying to spot Lawrence, and saw bits and pieces I recognized, as well as a lot I didn’t. It looked like the memories were colonizing this new ground, washing in from both sides to jumble up in the middle, creating an obstacle course of ever-changing light and shadow.
A little too much light, all things considered, with the brighter scenes shedding a haze of illumination for several feet around them. But it was still better than outside. I darted behind the darkest one I could find, slammed back against the skin-slick wall of the rift, and watched a younger me crawling through a trench, knee-deep in muck.
The visual was stark, almost like a film shot in black and white, although it wasn’t. That’s just how the place had looked: dark coils of barbed wire pushing up into a washed-out sky. A dead tree. And an unburied bone, possibly animal, possibly human, poking out of the mud.
Flanders, First World War.
And no, no way was I hiding in that one.
Or in any of the rest of them. What had Radu said? Something about people getting lost in their own minds, wandering around aimlessly from memory to memory, trapped forever in their past?
I swallowed, feeling an involuntary shiver ripple over me.
My past hadn’t been that great, frankly.
“Nice try.” Lawrence’s voice filtered to me in strange echoes. “But bullets don’t have quite the same effect on me as on most of my kind.”
No, I didn’t guess so. Like it wasn’t a problem to fake death when you came apart anyway. Son of a bitch.
But there’d been more than just the one reason to suspect him. Mircea had told me that Lawrence had three master’s abilities, but I’d seen him use only two: the Hound senses and the dissolving trick. I had never thought to wonder about the third, despite Marlowe’s saying that mental abilities had gotten Lawrence out of trouble before.
And me into it.
“You may as well come out.” Lawrence’s voice came again, sounding so close that it had me whipping my head around violently. Only to see nothing there. “You can stall all you like, but you forget that we’re in the mind. Outside time is meaningless. Weeks could pass for you here before anyone even realizes you’re in danger.”
I didn’t answer. He could be telling the truth, for all I knew. But he could just as easily be lying. I didn’t know how this mental stuff worked. I just knew I needed to stay near the pier, or as close as I could manage, where Mircea might eventually come looking for me. If I went too far in—
“And then there’s the small fact that you don’t have a choice,” Lawrence informed me. “Neither of us does. I am your only way out, just as you are mine.”
Okay, that got my attention. But he didn’t elaborate. Even when I waited he didn’t. He was going to make me ask, going to try to use conversation as a way to zero in on my location.
I didn’t give much for his chances. The walls seemed to trap some sounds and magnify others. His voice was simultaneously nearby and distant, with some words so far off I could barely make them out, while others sounded like they were coming from only a few feet away. It was spooky as hell—but it might also be useful.
“Meaning what?” I demanded harshly, and heard my own voice coming back at me in receding echoes.
“That neither of us has a guide; neither of us has a way to resurface. Unless one of us dies.”
“And then the survivor wakes up.”
“Yes. As would have happened last time, if your father hadn’t cheated and come after you,” he said, sounding annoyed.
And for a second, all I could see was Mircea’s bloody face, stony and white and resolute as he let this bastard carve him up to give me time to get out. All I could see was Louis-Cesare lying on the floor, unconscious and worse, because he might be Europe’s champion but he didn’t know how to fight this way.
Neither did I, but I wanted to. I felt my fangs drop, and for the first time, it didn’t bother me. It felt good, like his flesh would feel under my teeth, the way his blood would taste on my lips, the way his screams would—
I swallowed and looked away.
