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But obviously she hasn’t, I thought, as that boot came down by my right ear, hard enough to crack concrete.
Rolling to the left, I lashed out at the same time, and landed a punch that—finally—connected. But she melted into the mist before I could follow up, just a shadow among shadows, no more solid than any other. I jumped back to my feet and whirled around, trying to watch every direction at once. It would have helped if I’d been able to concentrate, but I couldn’t. Because a big, fat realization had just hit me, harder than her fists.
I wasn’t getting out of this.
I wasn’t even if she didn’t manage to kill me. I wasn’t even if I somehow managed to get back without a guide. I wasn’t because Marlowe had been in that room.
He’d heard every word that was sai
d before I went in—or under or whatever the hell Mircea had done to get me here. And he’d undoubtedly been given a play-by-play of everything that had happened since. His natural nosiness would have insisted on that much, even without the paranoia of current events to help it along.
But even if not, even if Mircea had realized the implication of that shattered wall and avoided questions, it didn’t matter. Marlowe wasn’t stupid. He was likely figuring it out right about now. And as soon as he did…
As soon as he did, I was dead.
Until now, I’d just been a dhampir. Longer-lived than most, maybe, and a little saner, but a dhampir nonetheless. And as much as the Senate hated my kind, I’d been tolerated because Mircea was who he was. And because I was who I was: strong enough to be useful at times, and weak enough to be controlled.
But Dorina…Dorina wasn’t weak. And Dorina wouldn’t be controlled, easily or otherwise. Dorina was a crazy first-level master with five centuries of experience under her belt and a hard-on for killing vampires.
And now she was out.
Just like Christine.
And we know what happened to her, don’t we? I thought grimly.
I didn’t get an answer, except for a flurry of blows that came out of nowhere. Including one I thought I’d dodged that clipped me across the mouth, sending a spray of droplets flying. And surprise—it was possible to bleed in here.
Too bad I seemed to be the only one doing it.
“Dorina!”
The voice came again, closer this time, and it must have startled her as much as me. Because there was a half-second lull in the pounding. And I said screw it and used the only advantage I had, and imagined a .44 Magnum into my hand.
It worked great—the hard, cold steel materializing in my palm with no trouble at all.
For about a second—until someone else imagined it right out again.
Fuck!
And before I could come up with any more bright ideas, that damned boot was back, stabbing down all around me. Which wouldn’t have been as much of a problem if there had been any cover out here. But there wasn’t, except for one of the streetlights. And then not even that after the boot lashed out again, and hit the lamppost.
Or, more accurately, destroyed the lamppost. The metal groaned and bent double, heading for me like a toppling tree. I leapt back to miss it—
And managed to miss the ground instead.
Someone tackled me halfway through the fall, but instead of hitting dirt, we didn’t hit anything, with me clawing and fighting and struggling against the arms around me until I heard Louis-Cesare’s voice. And then still struggling because we were still falling, even though there was nothing to fall off of, except the side of the wharf that we were nowhere near. And anyway, that would have been a drop of a yard or two, not the several floors it felt like we’d plunged when—
Whummmp.
I landed on top of something hard, cold and wood-like, and Louis-Cesare landed on top of me. It wasn’t as bad as it could have been, because I think he was trying to miss. But I still ended up with my chin striking down and my eyes crossing and nothing making sense.
And then they uncrossed and it still didn’t.
“What the—”
“I brought you into my memories,” he told me, a little hysterically, and then he pulled me to my feet. And into the thick of a crowd.
A really unruly one. People were running and slipping and sliding on icy wood, and before I could ask Louis-Cesare what he meant, a guy in a full-length fur coat smashed into me. And my breath—what little was left of it—went out in a whoosh. And then condensed into a cloud in front of my face.
