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Especially when he started climbing the goddamned snake.
I married a crazy man, I thought, hugging myself to keep from going up there after him. Louis-Cesare could survive being flung against a stone wall. I doubted that I could, especially now.
But damn it, climb faster.
The great beast wasn’t making it easy. The skin was slick, and the creature wasn’t staying put to hunt for us, because we weren’t the target. Hassani was. And to flush him out, any of his people would do.
The huge body suddenly moved like quicksilver, spotting some of the fleeing vamps and crossing the room after them in seconds. But they weren’t staying still, either, and had jury rigged a few surprises in the short time they’d had. Including working together to topple one of the already cracked pillars, sending it crashing down onto the beast and causing huge, broken pieces to scatter everywhere.
One passed through me as I ran after them, but didn’t kill me because of the Veil. But we had seconds left there at best, and Louis-Cesare wasn’t even half way up the great body. I could see him through the dust and debris, looking impossibly small next to those acres of scales.
Hurry up, I thought savagely. Whatever you’re going to do, do it now! Before we’re both—
Back.
A flying bit of rock cut a line across my cheek, a burning warning as I stumbled back into real space. I looked up, and sure enough, Louis-Cesare was visible, too, clinging to the great hide as the creature lunged after the fleeing vamps. Who were suddenly fleeing the other way.
I stared in disbelief at those crazy bastards, who swarmed the huge body, not one or two of them, but all of them, all at once. It was futile, like a bunch of ants charging a bull elephant. But for a brief moment, it worked, causing Sokkwi to pause in confusion.
And a moment was enough.
A blade flashed, high on the scaly hide; the great head reared back as if in pain, and a stream of poison spewed wildly everywhere. Several of Hassani’s people cried out and then were silenced, their bodies dusting away to ashes when the droplets touched them. And something that looked a lot like a long, jagged fang arced through the air—
And was caught, but not by me.
Not by Hassani, either, although he was there, in the shadows of the great stairs as another army joined the fray. One composed of emaciated brown bodies that reflected the torchlight like lacquer as they surged down the steps, including the one in front, whose shriveled, date-like eyes I’d seen staring at a door for centuries, waiting—
For this.
Louis-Cesare jumped free, unable to use the weapon he’d provided them without dusting to powder. But the poison didn’t seem to have the same effect on the prisoners. Their skin burned with it, but they didn’t disintegrate, I didn’t know why.
“They’re his Children,” Zakarriyyah said, coming up beside me. “It gives them limited immunity.”
Limited being the word, I thought, watching great wounds open up in that strange skin, but the prisoners didn’t seem to care. They waded into the fray, the fang held aloft in the leader’s hand, who used it like a dagger to do what steel never could, and tear open the belly of the beast. The prisoners immediately swarmed into the flood of viscera, tearing, clawing, biting.
And laughing.
Terrible, yet joyous laughter rang around the room and echoed off the stones, sending hard chills climbing up and down my body, while the monster writhed and twisted, trying to throw off his tormentors. Only they weren’t there anymore. They were inside, ripping their former master apart from within, eating him alive even as they were themselves consumed.
Hassani staggered over, pale as a ghost, which he nearly was. The rich blood o
f a consul had gone to feed the prisoners for this, their final battle. But it seemed almost futile, with what we knew.
“He’ll just come back,” I said hoarsely.
“Let us test that theory.” Hassani looked at Louis-Cesare, who had come up on Zakarriyyah’s other side. “If you would be so kind?”
Louis-Cesare handed over his rapier, with the col de mort attached, which Hassani threw to the leader of the prisoners. He’d been waiting alongside the great wound he had made, waiting while his skin burned and his people died, waiting, for what I didn’t know. Until one of them brought it forth: a huge, still beating heart.
“Your consul didn’t understand the need, when she fought him,” Hassani said, his usually rich voice a soft rasp. “He was but a pile of bones. What could bones do?”
A lot, I thought dizzily, if they happened to belong to a demigod.
“My friend, the honor is yours,” Hassani said to the leader.
I didn’t know if it would be enough; Hassani had said that Sokkwi did not have the same weaknesses as other vamps. But the next moment, the air was suffused with ashes, a huge swirling storm of them, coating our eyes, our ears, our tongues, everything. And when we finally emerged from the choking cloud, we stared around in wonder.
The great body had disappeared.
