Midnight's Daughter
Page 54

“It looks like he’s half-right.” I realized why his voice was strange—Radu’s chest was all but gone, the red-streaked white tissue of his lungs clearly visible through his shattered ribs. There was no place for sound to resonate.
He grinned up at me weakly. “Don’t believe it. I’m hard to kill.”
“Radu . . .”
He gripped my hand, hard. “I never had any honor, Dory. I’ve been sneaky and underhanded and downright dishonorable my whole life. Just like Father.” A quiver of mad laughter bubbled up from his throat, along with a lot of blood. “I only ever . . . I did one thing right. One thing . . . don’t let that bastard take him away.”
Before I could answer, the air shivered and broke apart, shattered by a soundless scream. Somewhere nearby, power had been unleashed—a lot of it. Louis-Cesare, I thought, and forgot everything else. I ran.
The winery was equipped with bare-bulb lighting overhead, but it was currently out of commission. A few lanterns burned here and there instead, seeming almost unnaturally bright as I exploded out of the dim corridor. The place was larger than I’d expected, on two levels, with the lower housing the stainless-steel vats used for fermentation. They lined the walls like chubby sentinels, their shiny surfaces reflecting my own face back at me multiple times. Up a set of wooden stairs was a catwalk leading to the rest of the building. At the moment it was ringed by faces—Caedmon, Drac and Olga were looking down, not at me, but at the crumpled body in the center of the floor. A mage lay in a twisted pile, like a doll thrown down by a two-year-old. I didn’t need to check to know that he was dead. Unfortunately, he wasn’t Jonathan.
Drac recovered first and lunged at Caedmon, who sidestepped the blow, his sword back up in the space of time between thoughts. Even in the narrow confines of the catwalk his fighting form was perfect, a smooth flow of muscle and sinew, every motion exquisite. Drac’s style wasn’t nearly as pretty, but it seemed effective. Caedmon was bleeding in several places, while Drac was bloody only on one arm. Too bad it wasn’t his sword arm.
My brain was so focused on what was happening ahead that I didn’t notice the faint rustle of wings behind me until the room was suddenly filled with the tuneless howl and fury of the leader. It came at me out of the dark, trailing one wing uselessly, but it didn’t need it in the confined space. I leapt backward, away from those slashing claws, and then I saw them, Louis-Cesare, Jonathan and some flunky on the floor near one of the huge vats.
At almost the same moment, Jonathan glanced up, probably at the sound of the leader slamming into the vat beside me, and our eyes locked. He huddled over the vampire’s unmoving body protectively, like a predator over his latest kill. Before I could move, he drew a knife from his boot and cut a deep gash across Louis-Cesare’s throat.
A white hiss of panic crowded rational thought from my head for a stunned moment, as blood flooded down the pale torso and across my vision. But one thought got through clearly enough: challenge had been made. I couldn’t see if Louis-Cesare still lived; all I knew was that he wasn’t moving, and it was more than enough. Challenge was accepted.
As I started forward, Jonathan threw a hand out, shedding a trail of fox fire in its wake, and something exploded around me in a wave of red sound. Power rolled over me, knocking me to my knees, turning the room hot and vivid and scarlet, until I was drowning in the blood-ripe taste of it. I tried to reinforce my shields, but I couldn’t sense them, couldn’t sense anything but the crash of those waves across my body. Somehow, I’d ended up on my back. I watched Jonathan start to drag Louis-Cesare toward the wooden staircase leading to the upper areas of the winery while my pulse throbbed in my ears and I struggled to breathe.
“Dorina! Behind you!” The shout came from the fight above—Mircea’s voice. I was still so disoriented that it took a moment to realize what he was talking about. The creature had righted itself from its wild ride into the vat and begun to stalk me with quiet, deadly intent. I could see it getting larger, a black hulk reflected in the nearest vat, lurching at me across the floor. But there wasn’t a damn thing I could do about it.
Jonathan had hit me with a souped-up disorienting sphere. I’d seen them before, but never been able to afford one. Apparently, the mage had a bigger bank account. I could throw off the usual kind in a matter of minutes, but this version was a wartime weapon used to take out whole groups of mages at once. I had no idea how long the effect would last, and it didn’t look like I’d live long enough to find out.
Above me, blades clashed hard enough to strike sparks, and Caedmon gave way first. Drac pushed him back using sheer force, striking with hammer blows that Caedmon met but didn’t have the strength to return. So much for the Fey’s boast about his dueling ability. I struggled to move, but couldn’t even manage to sit up. I felt a presence behind me, and braced for the attack.
It never came. Olga tossed something over the balcony, and a gray blur hit the floor with a graceful roll. Before I could identify it, the tiny whirlwind was streaking across the floor at me, snarling and snapping useless fangs and launched itself right over my body. It took forever to figure out which way to turn my head to see what was going on. When I did, I was treated to what even a baby Fey can do when it’s really and truly pissed.
Stinky’s long, twiglike fingers had found purchase on the leader’s neck. His tiny body was saved from that vicious beak by the simple method of hiding behind the creature’s own head. Stinky was little more than a fuzzy bump on the vast expanse of leather-like back, safe from beak and claws as he slowly choked the creature to death. It was a great plan, except that the leader realized that the game was up and decided to try to take me with him. Instead of moving forward, in a vain attempt to cross the last few yards to me, it suddenly sprang backward, directly into a huge holding vat. It had dented the thing earlier; now the force of its final assault punctured the steel, letting loose a river of wine that spilled outward in a crimson flood, threatening to drown me.
Finally, the madness I’d been expecting, but which Claire’s presence had prevented, washed over me. Only this time, it didn’t pull me under, didn’t make me black out. I’d never in five hundred years had a chance to find out what happened during one of my fits, other than to examine the carnage afterward. I found out now.
The disorientation didn’t go away, but the animal that lives in my veins was far less affected by it. I didn’t manage to stand, but I didn’t need to stand. Hands and knees got my head above the wine, and propelled me in a drunken crawl toward the staircase. I caught a glimpse in another vat of a crazed-looking creature with matted hair, gleaming fangs and mad, amber eyes staring out of a black-streaked face. I hoped it was me, because I really didn’t want to fight it if not.
Movement made the disorientation worse, as my confused inner ears tried to keep track of new sensory input when they hadn’t yet sorted out the old. Colors, shapes and sounds all ran together around me. I ignored them and stayed focused on Jonathan, who had almost reached the top of the stairs with his prize.
I knew I’d reached the bottom step when I felt old wood under my hands. I dragged myself onto it by feel alone. Jonathan was trying to heave Louis-Cesare’s deadweight the last few feet while fighting off an attack by Olga, who had positioned herself in front of the door leading out. He didn’t see me, but the mage helping him did and panicked. Instead of throwing a spell, which might have worked, he grabbed the nearest lantern. The oil lamp arced through the air, straight at my wine-soaked clothes. I caught it in the air and whipped it right back.
It hit the mage, but glanced off his chest to shatter on the hard wooden slats of the catwalk. The oil spread rapidly over the wine-spattered floor, fire caught and within seconds the circle of boards was a ring out of hell. The mage backpedaled, batting at the tongues of flame that had landed on his shirt and trousers, the soles of his boots aflame and starting to singe. He bumped into Olga, who tipped him over the balcony with a casual motion of one huge hand. There was a sudden whoosh, and the wine-soaked floor exploded in flame.
I caught sight of Stinky, scaling the side of the vat like a little monkey, well ahead of the flames. He leapt from the top of the vat to the catwalk, and turned to stare at me, as if to say, what’s taking you so long? My legs were like rubber, but I made headway using my arms, scraping my palms as I dragged myself slowly upward.
Caedmon had been driven back almost to Olga’s position, and his perfect form was starting to falter. His eyes kept straying to the burning catwalk, and the fire that was quickly spreading their way. Drac, on the other hand, was shining with power. His sword strokes were easy, and he ignored the smoking hot floor beneath his feet as if the threat didn’t exist.
The two of them reached Olga at the same time that I topped the stairs. Caedmon made a misstep and dropped to one knee, Drac surged forward for the kill and Olga’s hand shot out, palm forward, as if she thought she could merely push him back. Drac looked at her, his flat expression saying as clear as words that he was considering how best to snap her neck. I would have screamed if I’d had the voice—no matter how strong she was accustomed to feeling, there was no doubt Drac was stronger. But then I saw that there was something in Olga’s hand.
It flared to life the instant it touched Drac, and within seconds was so bright I could see it through the flesh of her hand, like sunlight through butterfly wings. Drac dropped his sword and stood staring down at his chest. He looked up at Mircea, and there was something in his eyes for a second, something that looked almost like triumph. A shudder started at his head and ran to his feet, gathering force like a fist about to land. And then he exploded from the inside, raining blood and bits of flesh over everything.
Something fell to the catwalk and rolled off, bouncing down the stairs, boring and dull once again. It hit my foot before disappearing into the flames below—just a tiny piece of stone, gray and unprepossessing. I looked up at Olga, stunned and impressed as hell. I should have remembered: she’d been married to one of the big names in the illegal-weapons trade. Of course she’d have brought a few nasty surprises.