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Because Louis-Cesare was already there, a split second behind me, dangling by one hand from the camera James had been using, leaving him plenty of options for attack. But there was something different this time, between Dory and me. Because she was still awake, leaving us with more options, too.
I took the offense, slipping my foot under the handgrip for the camera, because these things were designed to be used more than one way. And grabbed the controller a reporter tossed me as I passed, using it to somersault under the vampire, grab a club from a troll, come up behind him, and bash him in the back of the head. It felt like hitting a brick wall and did no observable damage.
Of course, I wasn’t done yet.
But we went spinning away before I could try again, because Dory had the controller and was screaming at me: “Don’t kill him!”
Same head, I reminded her shortly, because he was already coming back this way. Don’t yell.
Then answer me!
I didn’t answer, because she didn’t need it. The best way to lose a fight was to use half measures against an opponent using full ones. Especially this one, I thought, watching as he duplicated my movement, only he didn’t grab a troll’s club.
He grabbed the troll.
It was a smaller one, which I dodged easily. But he sent two more my way just afterward, and was moving fast enough to be annoying. I decided to drop into the mental state vampires used in battle, the one that made everyone else seem to slow down, just to be on the safe side.
Only to realize: I was already there.
That would explain why people in the flood were looking around with startled expressions. To them, it must have seemed as if their allies or opponents had simply disappeared, plucked up and tossed like living boulders across the room. It must have seemed like that to the creatures as well: I saw one’s ferocious expression change to bewilderment as he sailed past, especially after I pulled his sword from his hands.
And just managed to get it up in time to meet the one slashing down at me.
The vampire was also strong, I discovered, surprisingly so. He’d fought my twin before, but he’d apparently been pulling his punches. He wasn’t pulling them now, or to be more precise, the creature controlling him wasn’t. If we’d been on the ground, he might have done some serious damage.
But we weren’t on the ground.
We were flying above the battle, balancing on a couple of speeding camera balls, while dodging the spells being flung at us from the ground and a few balconies.
And it looked like he didn’t know how to fight this way.
I smiled, showing fang, as our swords rang together and as Dory took us down at the same moment, ruining his momentum as we dipped underneath and then zipped away. But he learned fast. Because the next time, he didn’t come for us.
He came for the ball.
And it seemed that I had been wrong: he wasn’t fast; he was quicksilver. He was lightning, flashing across the sky. He was faster than the spells we were dodging, which boiled by almost leisurely in comparison.
He was faster than me.
Not by much, just a fraction of a second, but sometimes, that’s all you need. There followed a blur of motion, a strange aerial ballet across the room, each of us standing on a speeding camera, swirling and ducking and somersaulting, and silent except for the staccato ring of swords clashing together almost too fast to see, even for me. It was heady, exhilarating; I’d never known anything like it, as each of us tried to find an advantage, and each of us failed.
Until that split second came into play.
I saw the blur of the blade coming for my mechanical platform, but wasn’t fast enough to dodge it. So I jumped, straight up, just as the blade turned the camera I’d been using into so many flying parts. And I flipped, landing on the vamp in a judo hold, one leg around his neck, a stake in my hand—
Only to have Dory throw off my aim. And before I could recover, a wave of static hit me like a fist. Like a thousand fists, boiling behind my eyes. I heard myself scream, felt Dory convulse but somehow manage to grab the vampire’s controller, felt us spring away. But if she’d planned to send Louis-Cesare careening off while we recovered, it didn’t work.
Because he kicked the camera out from under him, sending it shattering into a thousand pieces against the wall, and fell as we did. And I learned that static could be used in more than one way. It cut out abruptly, either deliberately or because he’d just splashed down, disrupting the creature’s thoughts. And either way, the shock caused me to do the unthinkable.
It caused me to trip.
I landed on a troll’s back, wet with water and blood. But instead of using him as a platform to jump to the nearby balcony and get away, I slipped off his shoulder, heading for the water ten feet below. And hit something else on my way down.
The vampire already had his blade back up, and it pierced our leg, a sharp, biting pain that became agony when it hit bone. And kept on going. The blade was so razor-sharp and was wielded with such force that it took me a moment to realize we’d just lost a leg. The part below the knee spun off into the fight, lost to view, and we fell backward into water over our head, that was immediately fogged with red.
The pain was stunning; the blood loss even more so. I prepared to dive, in the vain hope that I could beat the vampire to the bottom, and lose him in the thrashing, battling pairs all around. Or at least get enough water between us that it would blunt the next blow and save our lives. Instead he lunged for us, in a move almost too fast to see, even in slo-mo.
And jerked us back up.
