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A black cloud formed around their feet and rose as far as their knees before the ash settled back down on the ground. Maybe a little more rain would be a good thing - but the water that was coming down so far was still just a drop here and there.
"These are mine," Frost told Marsilia, raising one arm theatrically. "I have bound them to me in such a way that if I die tonight, they will all die. I thought it only fitting that they witness this."
He looked around again. "So it is you and the Soldier who will fight me, then? Who is your third?"
Marsilia just smiled at him - and I realized we were missing someone. I tried to remember when I had last seen Hao, and it was a long while ago. Long before Frost had done his sudden-appearance act. The sharp smell of the burnt building, so much more sour than true woodsmoke, made it impossible to pick out one vampire from so many. If Hao was somewhere nearby, I couldn't find him. I wanted to turn around to look, but controlled the impulse. If he had disappeared, it was for a reason. The broken-cement remnants of walls stuck up waist high in places. Maybe he was hiding behind one of those.
Frost laughed again, and all of his people laughed in unison. They all had exactly the same expression as he did on their faces.
Unable to help myself, I snarled. Frost looked at me with a sudden intentness that told me he'd been paying attention to me all along.
"Don't tell me that you're going to pull the coyote girl into this? What exactly is she supposed to do - besides die?" The words were a chorus spoken by all of his vampires in time with his lips. I could tell from Stefan's careful expression that I wasn't the only one who was getting creeped out by it.
"I've been good about not dying so far," I said. "You should quit concerning yourself with my health."
I didn't say it very loudly, and the vampires were too busy talking to each other to pay attention to me. But Asil frowned at me and made a motion with his hand. I recognized the soundless instructions because Adam used the same ones with our pack. Asil thought we should leave.
But I had a feeling that leaving was not an option. For some reason, Marsilia had wanted me here.
"I have heard about you, Frost," said Marsilia, sounding bored. "I had disregarded it as vindictive gossip, but I see that it is true. You are a show-off who wastes resources making himself look impressive. You talk and talk, and it is empty talk. You will bring in a new era of vampire freedom and power, and blah blah blah. And yet you have only puppets. When their strings are cut, you have nothing."
The other vampire's lips flattened, and he said silkily, "Marsilia, raise your right hand."
Her lips tightened and both of her hands fisted.
Pay attention, coyote, whispered a voice in my ear. Can you see what he is doing? How he is doing it?
Stefan, to whom the voice belonged, was several feet away. My stomach clenched. He wasn't supposed to be able to do that anymore. The blood bond between us had been broken when Adam brought me into the pack.
Stefan glared at me and tilted his chin toward Marsilia.
"Marsilia," said Frost again, focusing his attention on her. "Raise your right hand."
I felt it then, the thread of power he used - it was sort of like the power of Adam's voice when he'd roll it over the pack and bring them to heel. I could almost see ... I squinted at Frost and tried to look, as I'd learned to see pack bonds without meditation. I had used that method to see Peter. But this needed some of the part of me that ran on instinct. The same part of me that ran on four paws gave me a little push and left me using coyote's eyes while still my human self.
And I could see magic.
Frost pushed his power at Marsilia. To me, his magic appeared to be a black spiderweb of nastiness that tried to stick to her. Greasy threads of power slithered from him to his puppet vampires. I wondered how much of the way I viewed his magic had been dictated by Marsilia's comment about puppets, because Frost's vampires had strings of his will tied around each hand and foot and a whole slender web around their heads. Or maybe Marsilia could see his magic, too. The vampires weren't the only thing he was controlling. Fainter threads of power dripped from his hands to the ground, glistening faintly where they snaked across the floor and climbed the walls surrounding us, disappearing over the edges.
Frost was a Puppet Master. I actually thought the name in capital letters, which meant I'd been hanging around the vampires too long. Marsilia had called him the Necromancer, and that was worse than Puppet Master. Names have power and I refused to give him any more than he already had. "Frost" would do, "Gauntlet Boy" if he got really scary. I looked at the threads trying to crawl up Marsilia's body and thought that I might be able to destroy them the same way I had the ones that ensnared Peter. And as if she read my mind, Marsilia's brilliant red eyes met mine. She jerked her hands and the Puppet Master - the Gauntlet Boy - stumbled forward. The strings with which he'd tried to capture Marsilia were broken on the ground in front of him, and they faded to nothing after a few seconds.
He was able to control every move of his vampires with very little effort, but he couldn't get Marsilia to move one hand. It was true that she fought him, and his minions had given up, but he still had thirty vampires dancing to his tune. That Marsilia had resisted showed everyone here that Marsilia wasn't just the Mistress of the City - she was a Power.
And the way she'd met my eyes made me think that she could have put a stop to it earlier. She had wanted to give me a chance to see what his magic looked like.
Marsilia knew more about walkers than I did. When she'd come to this country, banished from Milan, there had been no Europeans here. I wasn't sure how long she'd been in this area, but it was a couple of centuries. She'd seen walkers kill other vampires, lots of vampires.
This summer, on my honeymoon, I'd met other walkers for the first time. I'd been exchanging e-mails with them ever since, trying to learn more about what I was. They knew more than I did, but they still suffered from the same problem I had. Too many walkers had died before they could pass on their knowledge to their heirs, and much of it was lost.
She'd had Stefan contact me deliberately. He'd never have shown me he could still talk in my head because he knew I would hate it. So did she. She hated that Stefan and I were still friends. She was teaching me what I could do to fight a necromancer - and doing her best to drive me away from him. I thought that she was wasting her time with that last, because Frost had been right.
She was going to pick me to fight with her. I was pretty sure that Frost was right about my chances of survival, too. She wouldn't have to worry about Stefan being my friend because I was going to be dead.
