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The world went violently swimmy as soon as I moved, as if I was in a boat on the high seas. I clutched the cold stone underneath me and stared around, waiting for my eyes to adjust and my stomach to settle down. I didn’t get any help with that, because the healer—damn her—was missing, although that might have been her screaming somewhere in the distance. I couldn’t tell. It was a woman, but there were men’s shouts, too, and bangs and crashes and—
I grabbed my head, feeling cold hair on one side and bumpy, burnt flesh on the other. It was concerning, but less so than the pain. What had that bitch done to me?
I didn’t know, but I slowly realized that I’d been moved into the shadow of the great stairs, as had Hassani. He was lying nearby, with the remains of his smoke blackened robes still white enough in places to show up in the gloom. He was out cold, but since he hadn’t dusted away, I assumed he was in a healing trance.
Lantern Boy was there, too, standing a little way off and bisected by a jagged backdrop of half-light, half-dark from the slant of the staircase. It lit up his own white and blue robe and the hand he was using to clutch the stone. I couldn’t see his face, but his body language read “freaked out” loud and clear.
Makes two of us, I thought, and rolled to my knees. This did not improve the massive migraine that the vamp hereafter to be known as That Bitch had given me. But I somehow managed to drag myself back to my feet.
The fury helped. It helped a lot. I’d been left with a half dead consul and a kid who couldn’t be more than a couple years into his vampy life.
“I’m the weak one,” I heard Louis-Cesare say again.
Sure, asshole.
Which is why you stuck me at the kiddie table.
We were going to have words about that, oh, yes, we were, but first I needed to find out what the hell was going on. And there was only one person to ask. I tried a few steps, managed not to fall on my face, and limped over to junior. Only I guessed he hadn’t noticed.
“Hey,” I croaked, and had to jump back to avoid his swinging fist.
He recognized me after a second and stumbled back against the stairs, a hand clutching the fabric over his no longer beating heart. Vamps are hard to sneak up on, but this was one was clearly not doing well. The huge, liquid dark eyes were wide and panicked, and the already mangled lip had been bitten all the way through a couple of times. He had one fang up and one down, and was looking frankly deranged.
I frowned at him. “What’s wrong with you?”
This was not the right question. The result was some more bruises courtesy of a pair of slender hands that forgot to be gentle when they grabbed my upper arms, and a panicked torrent of part English, part Arabic, and part something I couldn’t identify with my head swimming and people screaming and what sounded like a full-on battle happening on the other side of the stairs. But my lack of comprehension seemed to disturb him even more, because after a moment, he shook me.
“Do you understand?”
“No.”
And then something flew by overhead, big as a small airplane, and briefly blocked out what little light there was. Lantern Boy ducked with a shriek, his hands over his head, and something hit the far wall of the chamber like a bomb. It rocked the room, sending shrapnel flying everywhere, and dust billowing like a desert storm had blown up inside.
“The hell?” I coughed, and hugged the side of the stairs myself.
I didn’t get an answer. Not that I really needed one. A piece of stone the size of a VW Beetle had hit the wall beside the dwarf and spun to a stop, showing a curved shape with familiar carving on it.
I stared at it, slowly coming to terms with the fact that one of the massive columns that supported the roof had just been launched across the room. I had no idea how, and wasn’t likely to get one with my only informant huddled and incoherent. I decided to see for myself.
There was a lot of dust floating around beyond the stairs, and some large piles of rubble that had probably been pillars a little while ago. A torch still burned over the closest heap, on the side of a still intact column that the rubble had washed up against. It was sending flickering shadows to lick the floor, although they didn’t help much since the torch was guttering, and the debris blocked much of my view.
I glanced around, but didn’t see anybody brandishing weapons, or anybody at all. This area seemed completely deserted. I took a chance and ran, reaching the bottom of the rubble pile safely, and intending to climb up for a better vantage point.
&
nbsp; That turned out to be harder than I’d thought. My hands were fumbling and clumsy, and my feet were no better, acting as if the rubble was on some kind of conveyor belt. Which wasn’t far from the truth, as it was loose and moved every time I did. Damn it, how could this simple thing be such a royal pain in the—
There!
I felt an inordinate sense of accomplishment after finally surmounting a hill that had started to feel more like Everest. The damned torch was right overhead, searing my eyes and making it impossible to see anything. But I instinctively hugged the rocks, anyway, staying low, staying out of sight.
Battlefields were no place to poke your head up.
Not that I could hear much fighting anymore, come to think of it. Or any, really. Things were suddenly, eerily quiet.
I shifted position, putting myself in the flickering shadows along one side of the heap, next to the still intact column. The dimness helped my vision, but not my mood. Because the huge room was littered with corpses.
And some of them were still stumbling around.
