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The shout was unnecessary, because the reporter had already spotted me. He was standing on the balcony below Curly and staring at me with his mouth hanging open, I have no idea why. I waved the ball around at him, and then pointed with my toes, since my hands were busy.
“Over there! Send me there!”
But he didn’t send me there. He didn’t send me anywhere. He just stood there, the controller limp and useless in his hands, while the camera and I went around and around in a little circle.
“Dick!” I said fervently, as a vamp jumped up at me from the floor.
And missed, because Richard suddenly got with the program and swerved me abruptly to the side.
And then sent me careening through a minefield of leaping vampires, slashing water, and a merman that tried to stab me with a trident, because I guess to him all humans look alike. But I did a handstand on the ball and he ended up stabbing the vamp jumping up behind me instead. And then I jerked his weapon out of the vamp and sent it flying into the group around the crate.
What looked like blue-white electricity spidered across the knot of vamps, causing some to fall out and everyone else to look around in shock. Right before I added to the chaos by plowing into the middle of them. I grabbed the crate, hit a vamp in the head with it, got hit back, saw stars, and ended up hanging off the camera ball by my knees with the crate in my hands, while three—make that four—vamps tried to pull it away from me.
But the camera was stronger than it looked, and kept on tugging, and I hung on to the crate with one hand while I used the other to get a stake in the lead guy. He let go, and since the others had been holding on to him, they all fell back, too, and suddenly I was flying.
Straight at someone who had just appeared on the balcony, grabbed the remote from Richard, and used it to jerk me over to him. Somebody with a topknot of dark braids and burning, alien eyes. Somebody who looked like he’d like to rip my throat out like the vampire he wasn’t, but which the damned bitch riding him had once been.
James. I felt my lips form the word, but no sound came out. It was okay; there was nothing of the man I knew in those eyes anyway.
But there was surprise when I tossed the crate to Olga, grabbed the ball with one hand and him with the other, and jerked him over the balcony.
“I have the controller,” the thing that wasn’t James snarled. “What do you think this is going to do?”
“This.”
I used my feet to push off from the railing, as hard as I could, sending us speeding back into the thick of the fight—and straight into the path of one of Cthulhu’s thrashing limbs.
The next thing I knew, I was eating stone on the other side of the room.
Chapter Fifty-nine
I don’t know how fast we were going when we hit the wall, but it was officially too damned fast. I felt myself peel away and fall heavily to the floor, the slo-mo vamp senses that were supposed to protect me kicking in a split second too late. They didn’t help with the blow, but did make it feel like I took a long time to crash down, giving me a chance to notice an imprint of my made-up face that had been left behind on the plaster.
Huh.
And then James was on me.
He must have somehow gotten a shield up in the maybe two seconds he’d had, because he wasn’t looking all that affected. Or maybe you didn’t with a vargr riding you. After all, they didn’t care how much damage they caused their avatar, but I did. Which would have left me at a disadvantage if I’d been planning to fight him, but I wasn’t.
I wasn’t planning to break his nose, either, but my senses were screwy, and my aim was off.
“Sorry!” I said insanely, and heard it echo in the distortion of the slo-mo, while his head kicked back, allowing me to get a leg around him and bring him down. I was also fumbling for the wrist of the hand he was raising to curse me with, but I didn’t get it. Not because he was too fast—human reflexes in slo-mo are ridiculously sluggish—but because I was seeing double or maybe triple, and couldn’t figure out which one it was.
But the next second he went limp anyway, which had my heart hammering until I noticed Rufus standing over him, syringe in hand. I lay back against the carpet, panting and thanking Cthulhu. And wondering where all the vamps had gone, because nobody else seemed to be attacking me.
“Louis-Cesare,” Ray said, when I asked.
His voice was distorted and echoey, because I couldn’t seem to snap out of slo-mo. Like I couldn’t seem to stand up properly, even when Ray levered James off me. I smacked the side of my head a couple times, but it hurt so I stopped. And looked around for Louis-Cesare, but didn’t see him.
“Where is he?” I asked Ray. He was covered in blood, but I got the impression that it was mostly other people’s.
“Don’t know.” He tried to put an arm around me for some reason, but I batted him away. “He showed up, cleared the balcony, then ran off chasing some vamps. Now let’s get out of here!”
“We can’t get out. We only did half the job.”
I’d been on the way to my feet, but they got confused and I abruptly sat down again.
Ow.
