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But what caught my eye was the figure chained to the altar. Naked except for a wisp of a sheer scarf that was draped across her stomach, her long golden hair flowing across the marble, a delicate elf was manacled by her hands and feet. She was screaming, but the chanting drowned her out. I glanced up behind the figure with the sword and saw a black void forming in the air behind him. A Demon Gate! Holy crap . . . they were opening another Demon Gate!
I turned to race back for help. Unfortunately, I’d been so focused on what was unfolding in the amphitheater that I hadn’t been paying attention to what was going on right behind me, and I ran into yet another cloaked figure. Morio was right, I thought. I might be invisible, but I still took up space. The thud as I accidentally knocked the man down was real enough, as was the fact that I ended up tangled in his robe and sprawled across him with a loud “Oof.”
Holy hell, this was bad—real bad. As I scrambled to my feet, he grabbed for me—for air, rather—and managed to get hold of my braids. He yanked, and I snarled, reflexively smacking him a good one. As my hand landed on his cheek, I saw a ripple shiver through the air as I began to shimmer back into sight. Oh fuck. I’d just attacked him, and now he could see me.
“What the fu—” The voice was oddly familiar, and I yanked his hood back, revealing Duane. Oh delightful. One miscreant I could do without. “Who the hell are you?”
He reached to grapple with me, but I hauled back and punched him a good one, slamming my fist against his jaw. I heard the bones break as he passed out. A quick glance around the hall told me that he hadn’t been alone. Another cloaked figure was running toward the wall, shouting. At first I wondered why he wasn’t just running away, but then a blaring siren filled the hall, and I knew what he’d been doing. At first I thought it was a fire alarm, but then I saw the lights blinking near the ceiling and realized that it was some sort of general warning. Oh shit.
I jumped up and started toward him, but he dove for cover in the nearest room, and I heard the door lock. Ignoring him, I headed back to gather the others. We’d lost all our advantage of surprise, but too bad. We couldn’t leave that girl on the chopping block, not with the Demon Gate opening.
The door opened, and Camille and Morio raced out, followed by the others.
“Should we head out?” she called.
I shook my head. “No, they have another girl prisoner; she’s still alive, but my bets are she won’t be for long. I think she’s providing lunch for a demon they appear to be summoning.”
“Then let’s get a move on,” Roz said.
I turned and headed back for the amphitheater, the others keeping close to my heels. As we neared Duane’s prone body, there was a sudden rush of shouts, and the stairs were filled with men. They’d left their cloaks behind, apparently, and there looked to be a good twenty or thirty of them. Some were a lot older than college age. Dante’s Hellions’ roster seemed to include a healthy alumni.
“Freakin’ A,” Camille said. “Spread out, and let’s get busy.”
I’d expected us to slaughter our way through the group, but I got a nasty surprise when I found myself battling one of the Hellions. It only took me moments to register that he, too, was a vampire. Oh shit. They weren’t all human. At least not anymore.
He’d been around forty when he died, that much was apparent, and he was in damned good shape: average height but above average build with way too much muscle for comfort and a hungry, red gleam in his eye. As I engaged him, my fangs extended, and I gave a little hiss as we circled one another.
“She a problem, Len?” a voice rang out.
“She’s a vampire, too!” he shouted back.
Damn it. Now everybody knew I was a vampire. I closed in on him with my usual spin-kick but something went awry. Len seemed to be anticipating my move, and he leapt back. Unbalanced, I fell forward, and he leapt on me. Down we went, rolling on the floor, a flurry of snarls and hisses.
The sounds of clashing metal, fireworks, and shouts all filtered through my anger-soaked mind. I tried to focus, to gauge just what kind of threat this dude was.
I was holding Len at bay, so he wasn’t stronger than me. In fact, he was using all of his strength to keep me from lunging at him, but he couldn’t quite manage to throw me off. So I had more force than he did. He also had a couple of wounds on his throat, which told me that he’d either offered himself up as a soda pop for some other vampire, or he had been attacked. Was he weak, then? The wounds had to be fresh; they’d have healed over if they’d been more than a few hours old, they were so small.
“Bitch—just who the hell are you?”
The question echoed from off to my left. Had to be aimed at Delilah or Camille, unless one of the dudes here got off on calling men bitch.
“Your worst nightmare!” Camille’s voice came thundering through the crowd. Original maybe not so much, but there was a loud explosion, and the hall filled with smoke. I prayed she hadn’t sent herself up in flames again. As my opponent reared back, startled, I seized the opportunity and decided to deal with him the way I’d dealt with the ghouls. I broke his neck. Wouldn’t kill him but—
“Hey, Roz! Stake! I need a stake!”
Before Lenny boy could react, Roz was beside me, stake in hand. He plunged it into Len’s chest, and my vampire buddy went buh-bye in a cloud of dust and ashes. I leapt to my feet, looking around to calculate the mayhem we’d gotten ourselves into.
Four of the men were on the ground, choking, singed. I glanced around for Camille, hoping that she hadn’t got caught in the backlash. She was in a corner, kneeing some dude in the balls. He groaned and toppled—she was damned good with that knee—as Delilah rushed by, chasing one of the men with Lysanthra, her dagger. He was screaming and covering his head.
Two more were on the ground, bloody red shirts attesting to the fact that they’d never take part in another frat house party. Vanzir had backed my old friend Larry up to the wall, and as I watched, he lashed out with one hand and without so much as a blink, Larry dropped. What the hell had the demon done to him? Morio, on the other hand, had changed into his full demonic form and was towering over a group of five of the men, who looked scared out of their wits. One of them had pissed his pants, that much was apparent by the odor wafting through the air.
“Round them up—bind and gag them—” I started to say, thinking we could hand them over to Chase, when a sudden hush fell over the area. My words vanished into the abyss. One moment I was speaking, and the next, I couldn’t hear a word I was saying. I looked around, confused, and saw the same bewilderment on everyone else’s face.
A movement from the stairwell caught my attention. In fact, everybody was looking at the figure emerging from the gloom. He was cowled like the others, but there was something menacing about him: a dark glamour that the others lacked. Even Len the vampire had lacked the sense of brooding power behind this cloaked figure.>Motioning everybody back down the tunnel a few feet, in low whispers I told them what I’d heard. “We’ll head for the room Delilah and I found the bodies in. We can hide in there—”
“Remember, I’ve got an invisibility spell,” Morio said. “It’s not foolproof, and it doesn’t cloak sound or scent, but a couple of us can use it from there to scout out what’s going on down the hall.”
“Great idea.” I actually found myself patting him on the back, relieved. At least we had some semblance of a plan. It seemed like our main method was to rush in, beat the enemy senseless, and hope we didn’t get hurt. Maybe others were more adept at this saving-the-world gig, but I had the feeling we’d forever remain the Three Stooges plus of the he-man set.
