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I shuddered; I couldn’t help it.
It was horrible.
“Cassandra—” Mircea began, and then cut off when the consul put a hand on his arm, the bright yellow talons looking like they were sinking into the skin. She glared at me; she could afford to, since the other vamps were behind her. I gave her blank face back. This is partly your fault, bitch, I thought, and didn’t care if Caedmon heard.
Frankly, right then, I wouldn’t have cared if she had.
“Sinking into another mind is awkward,” I said curtly. “There may be some physical reactions.”
“Aye,” the officer said. “The bokor I knew fair shit himself.”
“Oh, that’s great,” Billy said. “I’m really enthused now.”
“Just do it,” I told him.
“Yeah, about that. Like I said, I know the basics for scanning living minds. But I’m not the necromancer here. Dead bodies are just dead bodies to me. Closed off. Silent.”
“What are you saying?” I asked, my gorge rising. Because I was afraid I already knew.
“I’m saying we do this together. Or not at all.”
Chapter Fourteen
Everything was blurry, with almost an underwater feel. I was walking through the tent city outside, or rather, he was. And the dead vamp was walking fast.
I saw a banner flutter overhead like a piece of seaweed caught in a gentle tide. I saw a piece of trash blow by in ultra-slow motion. I saw several human servants chatting over the top of a garbage can on wheels. They looked almost like they were frozen in time.
They weren’t; the vamp was just sped up, darting around the camp with liquid speed. He didn’t like to be out in the sun like this. They’d laced the shield that was protecting the camp—or so they claimed—with spells to shade everyone and given them all something called Night’s Ease as an extra precaution.
Night’s Ease. Ha! It sounded like a laxative and tasted vile, and he still had little red spots on the skin he hadn’t kept covered up well enough!
He scratched at them worriedly. He looked like he’d been sleeping in a patch of poison ivy, and that was despite layering up like it was winter in the Arctic. They said the fey sun wouldn’t burn them, but did they know? What if everyone popped out of the portal only to promptly go up like a bunch of Roman candles? What about that?
Thankfully, some friends had invited him to play cards, to take his mind off things. He just hoped he wasn’t late. He didn’t want to lose his place, since there was nothing else to do here. Except sit around, exhausted and itchy, working himself into knots.
It was better to stay busy. Kept the mind off things. Kept him out of trouble, too.
He scowled at some other vampires lounging by a tent, one of them in a wife-beater. Show-offs. He changed his course to avoid them. What else could you expect from Zakhar’s creatures, little better than animals. They’d have weres here next!
Or worse, demons.
He felt sick suddenly. They couldn’t make him take one, could they? Everyone said not, but he wasn’t sure. It wasn’t right, taking one of those things inside you. It was dirty, wrong! His skin crawled at the very thought.
Of course, it also did at the thought of what his master would do to him if he was sent back. That’s what happened if you couldn’t or wouldn’t work with the creatures: they sent you back to your master, and somebody else had to come in your place. And with war looming, his master wasn’t going to be pleased at having to send one of his best fighters, which he might need to guard his ancient ass!
Instead, he’d sent three musicians and a damned librarian. If any of them were sent back, his master had joked that he was sending the pool boy. Of course, it wasn’t supposed to matter who filled the levy. They were just housing, afte
r all, just flesh that some thing could use.
He thought of what he’d seen a week ago, when he’d first arrived, and shivered. The four of them had stood around, clutching their luggage—a single knapsack only, they’d been told, so no instruments to play to make themselves feel better, not unless they wanted to go without underwear in the damned apocalypse! They’d felt horribly out of place, and probably looked it, too, and then the shouting had started.
We should have just found our tent, he thought now. But he’d been hungry and cold, not having had a chance to eat for over a day. Masters were like camels—they could seemingly go forever without food—but he wasn’t one. He hurt. But when he tried getting a fast meal off some flunky, shortly after they were dropped off, he’d been pulled away by a guard and threatened with bodily harm! For trying to feed!
It was insanity, and no one was telling them anything, and they were hungry and bored. So, of course, they’d gone to see what all the ruckus was about. There had been a huge throng around a makeshift arena—humans as well as vamps—yelling and drinking and placing bets. He didn’t know about the others, but he’d just hoped to get a taste while everybody was too distracted to notice. But then he’d been distracted.
By somebody throwing a giant at his head!
He’d just stood there, watching it come, frozen in disbelief. And would have been flattened if Lucas hadn’t jerked him aside at the last minute. He and the lute player had lain there in the mud, shaken and wide-eyed, the lights all but blinding them, the cheers deafening them, watching the great creature lumber back to its feet, a cudgel the size of a car in its massive fist—
