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Mircea’s vampires, so easy to pick out in a crowd, their power ghostly white against all the richer colors, started converging on all sides. They looked like spectral angels, perhaps vengeful ones. I looked desperately around for an advantage.
And found it above my head, in a swirl of angry magic from several arguing vamps. Not nearly as big as before; the room was still somewhat cowed from the lashing the consul had dealt the other master. But displeased, quarrelsome. Offense had been given and apology was demanded.
So I jumped, not out this time but up, into the angry clouds, and looked down through the glittering swirls of their power at the master I’d just left, who was bowing lower now and wondering what the great man wanted from him.
The great man wanted me, but didn’t find me. He was angry, but hid it well, making small talk with the vamp while mentally searching the surrounding area. He was worried; he knew what I could do, and better than the rest. I wanted to talk to him, to explain, but that . . . did not always go well. Sometimes he listened; many more times he did not.
And this time, I could not take the risk.
I also couldn’t hold free flight for long, and started looking around for an avatar.
And found something else.
* * *
* * *
One of the main advantages of being a dhampir is the natural camouflage. We register as human, even to high-level masters who ought to know better, unless they have something approaching Mircea’s facility with the mind. Fortunately, few do.
Unfortunately, all of them are able to smell blood, especially freshly spilled, and I was covered in it. And I didn’t exactly have time for a shower and change. So there was no hope of switching places with a human servant, grabbing a tray of drinks, and just waltzing my way into where I needed to be.
Of course not, I thought grimly.
That would be too easy.
And then there was the small matter of being out of time. Dorina didn’t fuck around. When she decided on something, she went for it, and that little party in Mircea’s rooms had held me up. I needed to get to the consul and I needed to do it now.
So I ran, but not through the dark-as-pitch passageways. I didn’t know them and didn’t have time to figure them out. And, anyway, Marlowe had probably flooded them with his people by now.
Of course, he had people on the main thoroughfare, too, the one cutting a swath from the entrance hall along the front of the building, forming an extended audience chamber. They were so thick there that this had to be it, had to be where the consul was holding court. I couldn’t see her yet, because of the length of the damned thing, and because there were a crap ton of people everywhere. But I could see Marlowe’s masters.
And vice versa.
They were already headed this way, and they were fast, but so was someone else.
And I didn’t mean me.
“Stop them!” I told a nearby guard, one of the ones dressed in Roman-looking armor that were standing at attention everywhere, guarding the Senate. They were there for show more than anything else, standing around all night trying to look shiny and not too bored. But they were bored, and the nearest was now looking hopefully at me.
“Protect me, goddamn it!” I told him. “Do your job!”
They did their job.
I started for the great hall at a dead run, and from every side, Marlowe’s masters jumped out at me. And looked everything from comi
cally surprised to seriously pissed when the Senate’s ceremonial guards jumped for them. And quickly demonstrated that they’d been picked for more than how good they looked in a leather skirt.
Meanwhile, I ducked between masters, dodging the knives Marlowe’s boys had switched to, because I guess they didn’t want to spray bullets into the crowd. There was no time for subtleties, or apologies for the drinks that went flying or for the important types who got elbowed or for the outfits worth the price of a house that were splattered with hors d’oeuvres. There was only time—
For nothing, because somebody grabbed me.
But it wasn’t Marlowe.
Dorina had been hovering in the air overhead, and had dropped down on top of me like a bird of prey taking a mouse. Suddenly, I was seeing everything through the garbled vision of two sets of eyes. And even more worryingly, I was running again, correcting the stumble I’d taken when she took me and fumbling at my belt for the gun and—
Oh, no you don’t!
* * *
