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Mircea didn’t care. He was already waist-deep in water, with waves crashing into h
im on the regular, washing away worse things than that. Much worse.
He held on to the little boat full of fish. And tried to keep the waves from slamming the damned thing into his half-healed legs. Something he couldn’t very well prevent and hold on to the briccole, the wooden pillars used for docking, at the same time!
He and the witch were down a little way from the bridge, near where the vampires had been doused earlier. The side of the canal was built up here, to make a decent pier. Enough to hide them from eyes on the quayside, if they didn’t look down. And they wouldn’t, not with what they were about to see.
That was the hope, anyway, Mircea thought, fighting with the boat. It was an old hulk of a thing, a repurposed gondola with its once-shiny paint now mostly gone and the wood beneath cracked and splitting. Which was less of a problem than whether it would stay afloat!
“They’re coming.” He felt Dorina rejoin him, after briefly flitting about the nearby streets.
Mircea was surprised it had taken them this long. The first five vampires had been nobodies, just hunting in local taverns and rousted out by the urgency of the praetor’s command. But her real troops were out now, and augmented by whomever they could press into service. There must be literally thousands of vampires on the streets, looking for them.
And thanks to Dorina’s whispers in the leaders’ ears, most of them were now coming this way.
How long? He asked her mentally.
Now.
Damn! He grabbed the witch, who had been hugging a briccola to stay upright. “Do it!”
She swallowed and looked at the boat, which had a mage and a vampire in it. Or, to be more precise, half of each, two of the bodies from the fight at the now-vanished portal, wedged in and weighted down by piles of fish and nets to look like they were sitting up. One wore Mircea’s face, the other her own. And either she was low on power, or she had overestimated her gift, because Mircea’s doppelganger had one eye higher than the other, and a terrifying grin on his face, while hers . . .
Well, that would cure a man from going to brothels, he thought wildly.
But perhaps it would be good enough from a distance.
“I’m going to let the boat go, and then you do it, all right?” He repeated the plan, because she wasn’t looking all right.
“I hope this works,” she told him rapidly. “I haven’t done this much. Or any. I mean, when I was younger, before they realized . . . I had the usual training, but I don’t actually use . . . I mean, I never—”
Mircea fought an urge to shake her. “It’s all right. Just try to concentrate.”
“Yes.” She swallowed again. “When—when did you want me to—”
“Now.”
“Now?”
Mircea’s head jerked up, because all of a sudden he could feel them. And by God, it was an ocean of vampire power surging their way. Irresistible, unstoppable, overwhelming. They were both going to die!
“Yes, now! Now, now, now!”
“All right—”
“Now!”
“Stop yelling at me!”
“NOW!”
“Then launch the damned boat!”
He didn’t have to launch it so much as let the sea take it. He shoved it, nonetheless, as hard as he could, out into the swollen canal. Which grabbed it like a child with a new toy.
Mircea grabbed her, jerking the woman back among the briccole, and slamming them both up against the canal, where the raging sea had carved a shallow channel into the side.
He couldn’t see the vampires, assembling somewhere above them. Could barely even see the boat, through the water that kept hitting him in the face, and the mountainlike waves. Couldn’t see anything—
