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He looked up, halfway through a bite. “Oh, man.”
“Oh, man what?”
“Oh, man, I knew you didn’t remember.”
“Remember what?”
“What happened after we came through the portal.” He looked at me in amazement. “You don’t, do you?”
No, and I was suddenly thinking that might be best. I didn’t usually get a description of one of my blackouts that made me happy. Or, actually, ever.
But Ray was already telling me.
“It was crazy. I was trying to hack the portal and Radu was rapid-fire guessing passwords, and I’m not sure which of us succeeded but I think maybe it was both. Or maybe that thing is just so damned powerful—I mean, did you see it on the other end?”
“No.”
“Oh, yeah. Well, anyway, it’s huge. And when we broke the seal it just flat out grabbed us—and not just us, but half the guys in the corridor.”
“It took the zombies, too?”
“Oh, yeah. Fire and all. And that damned master, you know, Marlowe’s guy?”
Frick. I nodded.
“Well, he just didn’t quit. He grabbed hold of you halfway throug
h the portal and then we were tumbling around and Radu was trying to beat him off you but there wasn’t time and then all of us shot out the other end. And I mean shot, like we must have gone two, three dozen yards, fighting and yelling and rolling and smoking.” Ray waved a beer bottle around. “It was crazy!”
“I bet.”
“And I hit a wall and almost got my head stove in, and by the time I got back to my feet, people were pouring in from everywhere and you and that master zombie were going at it and your eyes had gone all glowy and you’d ripped his damned arm off and were beating him with it—”
“I did not.”
“Oh, yeah. You so did. Only it was more the fire that got him in the end. You round-kicked him and he hit the wall and kinda went poof, just crumbled—”
“And then that was it?” I asked—hopefully, because Ray’s expression was kind of looking like that hadn’t been it.
“Oh, hell no. I mean, it might’ve been, but you didn’t stop. You were completely freaking out—just attacking everybody.”
I stopped chewing, my appetite suddenly evaporating. “I went dhampir at the consul’s?”
“Oh yeah. Big-time. It took like a dozen of ’em to hold you down and I didn’t know if even that was going to be enough. You kept throwing them off, and they were hitting the walls and flying into the air and—and you shoulda seen a few of their faces. It was priceless.”
Yeah. Priceless.
I got another beer. “But that ended it, right? I mean, when the guards arrived—”
“Oh, the guards weren’t doing shit,” he said dismissively. “They tried, but the only people getting anywhere were the upper-level masters who saw you chewing up the guards and started lending a hand. Only they were having problems, too. And I think a few people were starting to get worried, ’cause a couple drew weapons. And then Radu started yelling at them, and then Louis-Cesare ran in—”
“Why was he there?”
“I dunno. He said something later about wanting to talk to your father—maybe about Zheng. I don’t know. I didn’t get a chance to ask him much, ’cause we came in different cars—”
“Came where?”
“Here. The estate he just bought. It’s like eight miles from the consul’s place, so it wasn’t a long—”
