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I didn’t have a chance to pursue him, because I had to hit the deck again to avoid the chandelier that came crashing down like a ball of ice. Literally, I realized, as it shattered against the floor, and some of the pieces flew up and hit my arm. And left marks on my skin, because they were cold enough to burn.
And I didn’t have to ask why. Bullets were flying everywhere, prompting me to jerk Ray to the ground as several whistled by overhead. Because a new group had joined the party. And if I’d thought the other Weres were strange, they were nothing compared to the new arrivals.
They looked like Hollywood’s idea of the wolf man, with grotesquely elongated hands, talon-like claws and weirdly distorted faces. And vaguely human bodies, because I guess it’s hard to carry that much hardware in full wolf form. And they were armed to the teeth.
Fortunately, cannon fodder didn’t seem to aim too well. Unfortunately, it didn’t matter. Because every place one of their rounds landed turned into a winter wonderland.
The floor was suddenly mostly ice, crackling around my shoes and threatening to freeze my feet through the soles. Mirrors cracked and shattered on all sides, fissures appeared in the walls where marble slabs had been adhered to the surface, and a few slid off to detonate in thunderclaps against the floor. The consul’s balcony was hit, carving off a chunk, and causing one of Ming-de’s servants to abruptly meet the ground. And to then shatter into a hundred pieces, because he must have been caught in the spell, too.
The fey spell was wreaking havoc, but the wards were doing exactly bupkes about it. So either they were down, which seemed impossible this fast, or the spell was so alien that they didn’t recognize it. And either way, we were—
“Come on!” Ray said, tugging on my hand. “There’s nothing we can do. We gotta get out of here!”
“How?” I yelled, to be heard over the din.
It was already threatening to become a mass stampede, with the people who hadn’t slipped on the icy floor starting to trample each other in a desperate bid to get out. This wasn’t helped by the late arrivals, who obviously didn’t realize what was going on. They were still pushing from the opposite direction, trying to get in before they missed the excitement and managing to create even more.
And then the lights blew out, and everything went dark.
The crowd issued a collective scream and panicked. And the resulting chaos made it impossible to hear any directions that might have been given. Not that anybody appeared to be bothering.
I could still see, after a moment, due to the glistening blue light coming from the portal. It wasn’t much, but it lit the consuls, who were watching the events occurring below as if they were spectators at a play. A not very interesting one.
Hassani looked bored and vaguely irritated, and wasn’t doing anything that I could see, although a few of his vamps were using the creatures for target practice. But Ming-de must have been annoyed about her shattered servant. Because she was peering over the edge of the balcony, a slight smile on her pretty features as she watched her apparently knife-edged fans decapitate creature after creature.
For his part, Marlowe had delegated some of his boys to try to corral the crazy by the exit and to hunt down the creatures who were thrashing around here and there. The rest were grouped around the portal, systematically decimating the cannon fodder still coming through. Most of which weren’t even making it completely out before being cut down.
Despite the initial pandemonium, things were slowly getting back in hand, and I breathed a brief sigh of relief. It looked like maybe Marlowe had been right after all—this wouldn’t take long. Someone even seemed to have gotten the lights back on, although they must have been the emergency variety, because they were blue, too.
Blue and swirling, I realized, a second before I threw Ray to the icy floor and dove after him, as what looked an awful lot like another portal opened up almost on top of us.
I jerked him back, into the maybe three-foot gap between the portal and the wall, as a wash of slime started vomiting out the other side.
“What the hell is that?” Ray shrieked, which might have been a problem if the things pouring out in front of us had had ears. But they didn’t—or hands or feet or anything except gelatinous, squid-like bodies that squirted around underfoot harmlessly for a moment, to the point that I wondered what they were even doing here.
Until one of them a few yards away began to quiver. And to shake. And to explode, sending a familiar burst of acid-laced pus shooting into the air and setting a nearby guard’s clothes on fire.
And it was only the first, like the initial kernel in a bag of popcorn. A minute later, gelatinous bombs were going off everywhere, setting little fires across the dark. Which would have had normal vampires in hysterics, but the nearby area was mostly filled with guards, who had been better trained than that.
Until they realized that the fire didn’t go out.
As bad as the blood of Slava’s vamps had been, the gel-like bodies of the creatures were worse. Because they stuck like glue, and the fire burned like phosphorus, and any guards who couldn’t whip off a piece of affected clothing before the poison reached their skin began to burn like living candles.
One ran past us, screaming and flaming and flailing—and slamming stra
ight into the crowd. Which was also largely composed of vampires. And although he was tackled by two of his fellow guards a split second later, it was too late. “Panic” wasn’t the word for what broke out, with crazed people even jumping for the consul’s balcony in their terror, only to be smacked right down again by the guards.
Until one of Hassani’s men smacked a guard in return and somersaulted over the balcony, decapitating a Were with one sword stroke and grabbing a nearby girl who had been about to be lunch. He threw her up to one of his fellow soldiers, and then started grabbing random guests, plucking them off their feet and tossing them after the girl, with no regard for fine clothes or hurt feelings. Not that anybody seemed to be complaining; in fact, after a second he was all but mobbed, although his fellow soldiers didn’t look real interested in—
“Dory!”
The voice came from above, and I looked up to see Radu’s blond hanging over the edge of the balcony, dangling something. It was red and twisty—the curtains, I realized, a split second before I grabbed it. And then Ray grabbed me and a moment later, we were airborne again.
We were hauled over the side of the balcony, not by the blond, but by Anthony. He was back in his clothes, a bright purple toga in this case, and back in charge. “Go, go, go!” He had a sword in one hand and used the other to slap the shoulders of a double line of vamps pouring over the side of the balcony and into the fray—the guards from outside, I assumed.
He caught my eye. “Having fun yet?”
“No! What the hell is going on? I thought we only had one portal to worry about!”
