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I started frantically trying to shoot him with my numb hand, since I needed to hold on with my good one. Which would have worked better if he hadn’t taken that moment to start kicking me in the head again. It became a race to see if he could kick me off before I could line up a shot I couldn’t feel and take him out.
I lost.
My neck snapped back, making me wonder if it was broken. And then making me wonder some more as it flopped about randomly when he lashed out again and I went flying. For a second, until the cord jerked me up and pulled Slava’s pants down and we met in the middle, with me hanging off my possibly dislocated wrist from the belt of a pair of trousers that had slid down his chubby legs to puddle around his flailing feet.
And this time I didn’t have a convenient vampire to hide behind. This time I didn’t have anything but a limb that I had grown quite attached to left vulnerable and exposed and useless. And a body being slung around like a newspaper caught in a storm as the two conflicting air streams met and mixed and created a miniature cyclone outside Slava’s ballroom.
And a gun I still couldn’t feel.
Which was going to have to do, I decided, as Æsubrand said something that sounded like a curse and raised a heel. And I managed to get the weapon pointed more or less in his direction. And fired.
It worked. Sort of. Or it would have, if Æsubrand hadn’t dodged at the last second, so that the shot intended for him hit—
Well, crap.
I scowled, Æsubrand cursed, and Slava went white and cold and frosty.
And then the storm hit us, with a force like a closed fist. And when I say “us,” I mean Marlowe, too, who finally managed to grab Æsubrand when we slammed back against the building. Just in time to get dragged out the window when an updraft hit.
On the plus side, getting pounded in the face a couple dozen times by a ticked-off master vamp seemed to be messing up Æsubrand’s control over the weather. On the negative, that made our wild ride even wilder, with nobody steering. Except fate, the evil bitch, who decided to toss us up, up, up and over. And onto the building’s flat roof.
Where a bunch of vamps were pouring out of a rooftop door and running straight at us.
“Oh, come on!” I screamed, because they weren’t Marlowe’s. And they didn’t look too happy at having the boss turned into an icy-pop. Or at being blown back against the door by a pissed-off fey prince.
But that would have actually improved our odds—if a shiny black helicopter hadn’t chosen that moment to loom up over the building. Slava’s ride, I assumed, only it seemed that the guys on board had been brought up to speed by somebody. Because, instead of landing, they started trying to maneuver so that the vamps inside could level machine guns on us.
And that was enough to get even the dynamic duo’s attention. They stopped battling each other long enough to stare, openmouthed, at this new threat. “Are they idiots?” Marlowe asked. “If they hit Slava, he dies!”
Æsubrand’s bloody face whipped around. “He is not dead now?”
“No. Vampire flesh does not behave the same way as human—”
“But he is frozen!”
“He can be thawed,” Marlowe said, wiping his bloody face. “As long as he doesn’t end up in pieces before then.”
“That would not be a risk had someone not shot him!”
“I wasn’t trying to shoot him; I was trying to shoot you!” I told Æsubrand furiously.
“Then you have exceedingly poor aim.”
“You dodged!”
He looked at me like I was slow. “And you expected me to stand still?”
“I didn’t expect you to be here at all! What the hell—”
Æsubrand didn’t get a chance to answer, assuming he’d been planning on it, because the helicopter opened fire. For about a second. A burst sparked off concrete, but came nowhere near us, thanks to the wind that smacked the copter like a giant fist, picking it up and throwing it through the air. Straight at the water tower.
The wooden relic was old enough to be considered an antique, constructed at the same time the building was. It didn’t look like it had ever been updated—no one saw it from the street and it satisfied the ordinance requiring buildings to have an independent source of water. Only this one was about to be in violation, I thought, as the copter smashed into the tower, and the tower fell over and smashed into the ground, and a huge wave of water spilled out and smashed into Slava’s vamps, who had gotten back to their feet only to be washed off them again.
And I decided to keep them that way. I’d finally managed to wrestle my wrist free, allowing me to actually aim two-handed as I raised the mage’s gun. And fired.
But not at them.
There were too many of them and they were too spread out, and anyway, there was a better choice. Like the cresting wave that was breaking over them in a roar and a rush. And that was going to be breaking over them for a while—like until someone chipped them out. Because what I was suddenly looking at was a giant frozen wave with little vamp parts sticking out of it.
