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It would be on some tower. That was what my father did. He built towers. They were the nexus of his power and now I knew why. The taller the tower, the more he could claim with one pulse.
“You are our best chance,” Evdokia said. “There are things we can teach you, but this will take time. You have to buy us this time. You have to prevent the claiming.”
“How?”
“We don’t know,” Sienna said.
“We supported you,” Maria said. “We helped you and supplied you with undead blood. We didn’t do all this so you can go and sacrifice yourself like a dimwit.”
I always knew the witches didn’t help me out of the goodness of their hearts. They wanted a return on their investment. “He killed my mother.”
“Obnyat e pluhkuht,” Evdokia sighed.
To hug and cry. That was what exasperated Russians said when there was nothing left to do.
“Your mother gave her life so you could live,” Evdokia said. “Your dying dramatically isn’t going to help anyone. It won’t honor her memory and it won’t protect any of us. There are people in this city who depend on you. Do whatever you have to do, but you must prevent the claiming.”
I spread my arms. “What do you want me to do? Should I go up to Roland and ask him nicely to please not claim the city as a favor to me?”
“If that’s what it takes, yes!” Maria snapped.
This was a ridiculous conversation. “You do realize he’ll try to kill me the moment he sees me?”
“That’s not certain,” Sienna said. “For almost six months now I’ve done nothing but look into your future. I’ve seen you die in dozens of ways and I have seen you survive. But I have never seen him die.”
Awesome. Just awesome. “Thanks. This is really helpful. Is there anything else?”
Evdokia bit a thread off her knitting and tossed the sweater at me. I caught it.
“Pure wool,” she said. “Will keep you warm even when wet. Put it on and don’t take this off for the next twenty-four hours.”
I shrugged off my jacket, pulled off my sweater, and slipped into the woolen one. “You know something I don’t?”
Evdokia sighed. “Honey, we can fill this place with what we know and you don’t.”
Ask a stupid question. “If I can find a way to resolve this Hugh d’Ambray dilemma, I may need witnesses for my negotiations with the People. Will the covens act as my witnesses?”
“Yes,” Sienna said. “We’ll send representatives to the Keep.”
I turned around and headed out. Behind me the ice cracked, releasing Ascanio and Derek.
Outside Robert and Desandra waited.
“How did it go?” Robert asked.
“Roland is coming to claim the city. They want me to stop this from happening.”
“How?” Desandra asked.
“They don’t know. They have no instructions. Their helpful suggestion is to ‘just do it.’” I growled and headed out of the forest. So far this had been one hell of a day.
• • •
I CROUCHED IN the shadow of an apartment building. Desandra, Derek, and Ascanio leaned next to me, while Robert took a running start and ran up a seemingly sheer wall. We’d left Cuddles tied to an oak in Centennial Park. Nobody in their right mind would steal an animal belonging to the witches. If vampires sighted her, they would let her alone.
We were on the edge of the Slave Pens, a housing development next to the Casino reserved for Casino employees and journeymen, who’d given it its name. The original plan called for going down Centennial Drive but the vampires were too thick. We had to turn around, loop north and west, and approach the Casino from the Slave Pens. It cost us a precious half hour and if I thought about it longer than a second, it made me grind my teeth.
From my vantage point I could see Undead Alley, a four-lane street that now lay deserted. Past it, a vast paved lot stretched out, large enough to accommodate hundreds of cars. In its center, the Casino rose, glowing like a mirage born from cold air and asphalt desert. The huge dome of the main cupola shone with the pale bluish glow of feylanterns, surrounded by slim minarets and tall textured walls of white stone. On a good day, the sight would take your breath away, and then you noticed vampires crawling on it like fleas on a white cat.
The main entrance to the parking lot that surrounded the Casino lay to the west. We were at the southwest corner.
A pair of vampires trotted along the edge of the parking lot. I held my breath. They passed out of sight. They were the third pair I’d seen in the last five minutes. The People were on high alert. I could feel eight vampires patrolling the parking lot and three more stationed at random points, one to the north and the other two to the west and south of us.
Robert slid down and landed next to me without making a sound.
“Where is the observation post?” I whispered.
“There.” He pointed to the east at the crumbling remains of the Centennial Drive overpass jutting against the night sky. At some point three overpasses had crossed there, one above the other, but now the top two had collapsed onto the lowest one. Frost had slicked the concrete and parts of the overpass, and enameled in silvery moonlight, they almost glowed. The whole thing didn’t look particularly stable.
“There are two entrances,” Robert breathed into my ear. “One in the east and one in the south. The southern entrance is there.” He pointed to a pile of rubble across the street on our left. A vampire sat on top of it.
“How far is the east one?”
“On Marietta.”
A mile away, half of it in plain view of the Casino. If we doubled back to draw a wider circle around it, we’d have to go around the wreckage of Phillips Arena, which would cost us another half an hour or more. Getting this far unnoticed was a miracle. Trying to circle the Casino with that many patrols out would be impossible.
I turned to the vamp perched on the rubble. Even if we managed to take it by surprise, this close to the Casino it would do us no good. When a vampire died suddenly, its navigator usually went catatonic or panicked, because his mind, still connected to the undead, became convinced that it was the navigator who had died. Experienced Masters of the Dead honed their reflexes enough to disengage in time and some navigators survived the sudden death, but most ended up as vegetables. The moment we killed that vampire, one of the navigators inside the Casino would either scream in panic or start drooling, and the Casino would vomit enough vampires to turn us into jerky.
