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And yeah. Guy had the creepy-comments part of the villain thing down pat.
“But I did wish to thank you for letting us know where your uncle is hiding. He has proven elusive.”
I didn’t say anything, but that kind of clinched it. A decent number of people knew I was a dhampir, but damned few realized who my father was. Much less my uncle.
One did, though. One old, powerful necromancer did.
Because he’d last attacked me at Radu’s estate.
“He’s like that,” I said evenly.
“But now, I am afraid, our little game is over.”
“Might want to do a recount,” I told him. And dropped Ray’s hand.
“W-what are you doing?” Ray demanded as he was abruptly jerked against the vamp.
“Sorry.” I grabbed something out of my pocket. “But you know too much. I can’t let them have you.”
“Bullshit!” He stared at me, hurt and bewildered and mad as hell. “What are you—auggghh!”
He broke off in a genuinely terrified scream as I pulled my hand out of my pocket and threw something on the floor. Because I guess he didn’t know I was out of grenades, any more than the vamps did. They dove, scrabbling around in the trash, and I raised my gun—at the ceiling. And shot out the last support cable on the elevator.
There was no time to get out, no time to do anything but grab Ray, who was looking at me like I’d gone crazy. And jerk him back into the one safe place as the whole burnt-out, messed-up, bloody elevator car came crashing down around us like a ton of bricks—or two tons, since that’s what the thing weighed. The remaining part of the floor crushed the three puppets, even as the hole left Ray and me standing in the middle of a smoking ruin.
Staring at each other.
“What the hell did you throw?” Ray demanded after a moment.
“A spent cartridge.”
He just looked at me some more.
And then the bell dinged and the part of the doors that was still intact slid open.
On a bunch of very pissed-off vampires.
“It’s out of service,” Ray snarled, and blew one of their heads off.
He jumped out, but I was still in the hole, thanks to the shaft extending below door level.
Which made it hard to see faces but put me on a
line with everyone’s legs. So that was what I targeted, shattering the kneecaps of every vamp I could see. And while normal vamps, much less masters, could have healed an injury like that on the run, these weren’t normal vamps anymore.
And they weren’t healing.
The horror-movie looks should have already clued me in on that, if my brain hadn’t been occupied with freaking out. They looked like they did because their bodies, once damaged, stayed that way. Which was the first piece of halfway good news I’d had, and which explained why they went down like ducks in a macabre shooting gallery.
And why I started to think we just might have a shot at this.
Until Ray screamed again. It wasn’t his usual panicked yelp, which I’d sort of gotten used to by this point. It was a full-on agonized shriek, maybe because two vamps had grabbed him and were doing their best to tear him apart.
I put a bullet in one vamp’s head, discovered that was the last in the .45 and pulled the shotgun. And found that it was empty, too. So I jumped up, grabbed a knife and drove it into the vamp’s shoulder.
Who didn’t so much let go as have Ray wrench away with the hand and arm still gripping him. A punch in the solar plexus had the vamp doubling over, an uppercut had him straightening up again and then a boot to the stomach had him flying back into several others. And then we were stumbling through a heavy steel door because there was nowhere else to go, and barring it behind us.
Ray collapsed to the floor, screeching, and I beat the damned arm off him with the barrel of my now useless weapon. And then looked around for something to trap the gory thing with. And saw a row of familiar-looking steel cabinets lining one wall.
