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I glanced up at the vampire. “You were saying?”
It scowled. It did that a lot. But a moment later, I joined it when the room lurched hard to the right, like a ship on the seas, and ugly cracks ran up the walls. One split the ceiling all the way to the light, causing it to flame out in a shower of sparks. But more light speared through the cracks, crisscrossing the gloom in slivers of hellish orange.
One lit on the bar of a cage, and the metal went as molten as in a furnace. But I had never seen a furnace turn a ba
r white-hot in an instant. Or boil it away to smoke in another.
I did not bother to see what the rest of the rays were doing. My eyes lit on a turned-over table not far away. It was in poor condition, but it had wheels. It would do.
I righted it and started piling things on top.
“What are you doing?” the vampire demanded. It looked like it might have interfered, but the lock was now gone and its back was against the door, keeping it closed.
More or less.
“That will become apparent. Where are we?”
“Nowhere. The dark mages who used this place folded over a piece of a ley line, creating a pocket in non-space—” It broke off with a disgusted sound. “There is no time for this! We have to—”
“There is time,” I said, poking my nose into a large jar. Little round balls of greasy metal. I added it to the pile.
The vampire made another displeased sound, but it answered. “A ley line is a river of great metaphysical power. Among other things, it separates worlds—”
“I know what a ley line is.”
“Then you know that they are meant to be traveled through very quickly—as when stepping through a portal. They are not designed to be used as a permanent residence!”
“Yet someone has done so.”
“Those with an extensive knowledge of magic and a pressing need to hide have used the trick for centuries, but it carries great risk. If the spell they used as an anchor fails, the shield bubble keeping out the ley line’s energy will fail, too, and in that case—” It gestured wildly at the room. “Do you understand?”
I glanced up. In the few seconds I had worked, the scene had changed. It now looked as if the room were made of glass and someone had thrown a ball at it. The impact point was a solid heart of flame, with boiling orange-red energy radiating outward in jagged rays. They lit the remaining pieces of the room like the sun through stained glass, causing the gunpowder in the air to shimmer like gold dust.
So much power.
It was beautiful.
I tore my eyes away. “I understand that we need to get out.”
“Yes, yes! We need to get out! Therefore making a barrier will do us little—”
“I am not making a barrier.”
The vampire looked at the heavy pieces of trash I had gathered on the table. “Then what is that?”
I didn’t bother to answer. “Open the door,” I said instead.
“Efin!” It threw up its hands, and then had to lower them quickly as the door buckled behind it. “Yes, yes, d’accord. Now you and the child, you stay behind me, do you understand?”
I looked at it. It liked to scowl, it liked to demand things, and it liked to talk. It reminded me of someone.
“I understand.”
“Good.” It took a breath. Then another, which made little sense as it did not breathe. And then it spun to the side.
The door crashed open and a snarl of fur and unbridled savagery boiled into the room. And stopped, several yards in, slavering mouths agape. Which is what most creatures would do when faced with the solid field of flame the back half of the room had become.
They would have recovered in a second. I didn’t give them one. I swung the table outward, putting all my strength behind it, and with the heaviness of the metal augmented by the tower of machinery on top. Machinery that spilled over when its base slammed into the shifters’ backs, or stomachs for those with slightly better reflexes, not that it mattered; not that anything mattered. Not with a thousand pounds of falling steel and iron and tiny rolling metal bits sweeping them toward their doom.
