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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.
He waved a hand, and all the other members of Dante’s Hellions fell to the floor, facedown. What the . . . ? They acted like he was some sort of god.
Oh shit. Was he? Was he a demon they’d managed to summon before we could stop them? But though demonic energy clung to his aura like a rodeo rider on a bucking bronco, it wasn’t emanating from him.
As he approached, we formed a battle line. Camille glanced at me and tried to say something, but no words emerged; no sounds filtered through the passageway at all.
And then the figure let his robe fall open, and I saw that it was a carbon copy of Harold, only older. Harold’s father? No, too young. Maybe an uncle? He was geeky looking, but the brilliant fire that flashed in his eyes told me he was far from stupid, far from safe. The slow hand of death enveloped his aura like the cloak he wore around his shoulders. Necromancer —he was their death mage. And he was adept but careless. The energy rode him, rather than the other way around.
And then Camille pointed, and I followed her gesture. Around his neck hung a pendant. A gem of swirling blues sat centered in the silver filigree: a diamond-faceted, round cabochon of aquamarine. The energy that spilled from the gem made me want to sink to my knees. And then I knew what Camille knew, what Delilah was realizing. He was wearing a spirit seal. Our enemy possessed the fifth spirit seal, and he was aiming directly for us.
CHAPTER 25
I backed up, wondering if he knew what the spirit seal was. Was he in league with Shadow Wing? He closed in on us, his gaze dancing from Camille to Morio. He must sense the death magic that they’d been working with. Oh shit, if he thought they were a threat—and they were—he might target them first. I raced over toward Camille, intending to jump between her and the necromancer, when he waved his hand, and all of a sudden, I couldn’t run anymore.
